Holly, alone of all women on earth, didn’t seem to give a damn about money.
So his billions would bring her little pleasure. Far from it. With her kind, sympathetic heart, his widow’s fortune would make her an easy target for unscrupulous fortune hunters. First and foremost: his greedy cousin and her spoiled sister.
Stavros looked back at Holly, sleeping so sweetly and trustingly in his arms.
I’ll leave her with a child, he tried to tell himself. That, at least, was something he knew she wanted.
But a child she would raise alone?
He felt sick. He’d seduced Holly under false pretenses. His dream had only shown the stark truth: he’d soon make her love him. He’d already started to make her care. Her heart was innocent; she had no defense against love, not like Stavros. Only he knew what love really meant: surrender or possession. Being the helpless conquered or tyrannical conqueror. No one came out of it unscathed.
Just the fact that she’d convinced herself, even for a moment, that she could love a man as unworthy of it as Oliver only proved how open her heart was. She was not guarded. She had no walls.
So when Stavros died, which he would before next Christmas, he would not leave behind him a dignified wife in a black veil and chic black mourning suit standing stoically beside his grave, as he’d imagined.
Instead, he’d leave a broken woman, bewildered and lost, perhaps with a child to raise on her own. For all he knew, she might already be pregnant. Stavros would soon be dead and buried, forgotten. But Holly would remain, a widow with a broken heart, bitterly cursing him as the liar who’d seduced her with false promises of forever and changed her life in ways she’d never imagined.
A razor blade lifted to his throat as he looked at her, still sleeping trustingly in his arms. He had no choice. He had to tell her the truth. Explain about his fatal brain tumor before it was too late for her to change her mind about marrying him.
If it wasn’t already too late.
“You’re awake.” Holly’s voice was soft and warm as she drowsily opened her eyes, smiling up at him with love shining from her face. “Merry Christmas.”
Stavros looked down at her. His lips parted to choke out the truth. Then he stopped.
He suddenly realized with horrifying clarity that even if he told her about his illness she would marry him, anyway.
As that sister of hers had said, taking care of other people was what Holly did best. She gave and gave and gave, leaving nothing for herself. From the time her parents had died, she’d put her little sister first. From the moment she’d started working at Minos International, she’d put Oliver first. She sacrificed herself for others, even if they didn’t deserve it.
And if Stavros told her he was dying she would do the same for him. She’d take care of him. She’d hold his hand through chemotherapy appointments. She’d love him. She’d never leave him.
Even if it destroyed her.
“Holly,” he said hoarsely, struggling to know what to do, “there’s something you need to...”
He felt a sharp pain behind his right eye, so sudden and savage he jerked back from her. The bed seemed like it was swaying beneath him.
Holding the comforter over her chest, Holly sat up with a frown. “Stavros?”
The pain was nearly blinding, spreading through his head, causing a rough throbbing in his skull. He put a trembling hand against his forehead. How long did he have? Even his doctor had hedged his bets when he’d given him the news two days before.
“No one can say for sure how long you’ll live, Mr. Minos,” Dr. Ramirez had said gravely. But when Stavros had pressed him, he’d admitted six to nine months might be typical for a patient at his advanced stage.
But Stavros wasn’t a typical man. He’d always prided himself on it. He’d always beaten others, proving himself stronger and smarter and faster. His tumor was part of him. All his worst sins bottled up into one fleshy mass rapidly spreading through his brain.
“What is it?” Holly cried. “What’s wrong?”
Slowly getting out of bed, he stood still, blinking until the blurriness passed and he could see again in the dim early light of his penthouse’s master bedroom. Wearily, he stumbled across the room, opened a drawer and pulled on some loosely slung knit pants. He felt as if he was a million years old.
Going to the wall of windows, he stared out at the cold gray city beneath him. So very cold. So very gray.
All these years he’d hated his father as heartless and cruel. All these years he’d despised his cousin as a selfish bastard.
What Stavros had just done proved him to be the worst of them all.
He was dying, so in a pathetic attempt to make his life matter, to be important to someone other than his shareholders, he’d proposed marriage to this trusting girl. He’d taken her virginity. That was bad enough.
But he’d wanted to do so much more.