by Tee, Marian
Perfect, he was just so perfect, and their life was almost as perfect if not for the times she was the one who'd catch him looking at her. And it wasn't like the way he used to look at her, and it was obvious he only had fucking in mind. These days, it was different. These days, whenever she caught his gaze on her, his eyes would be haunted and full of pain and remorse. And it hurt. Because he was her everything now, and if he hurt, she, too, hurt.
And one night, lying in his arms, she had so foolishly thought, maybe...maybe if she gave him the words, they would work like magic. Maybe, that was all it would take. And so she said it.
Love you.
And it did work like magic. Because now, her eyes mirrored the same pain. Because she had said the words, and she knew he had heard her...and he had said nothing. She had given him the words, and he had said nothing. Done nothing.
And everything she used to think was right in her world was gone. Poof. Just like magic.
* * *
Schuyler woke up the next day with a heavy heart that prevented her from pretending last night wasn't real. The other side of the bed was empty, and even though the sight hurt, she tried to convince herself it was okay. That things could still work.
The smell of bacon and eggs lured her to the kitchen, and it was there she found Ioniko, beautiful and barechested while making their breakfast. The sight hurt, too, and when he turned around upon hearing her footsteps, the dazzling smile that quirked over his lips hurt, too.
It hurt so, so much because it made her want to ask, How can you smile at me like that and say nothing when I told you I love you?
"Kalimera, koukla mou." His voice was a languid purr while his green eyes glittered another kind of greeting. All of it beautiful, little things that used to make her heart ache with the sheer beauty of it, but now they just hurt her even more. They hurt her so much because this was the first time that his heart was not attuned to hers. The first time that he didn't seem to have any idea how much she was hurting.
Even when he had still been a stranger, it was as if he had been able to read her mind.
But now...
Ioniko grunted in surprise when he suddenly felt Schuyler wrapping her arms around his waist from behind. She had never touched him first before this, and he switched the induction stove off right away and lowered the pan back on the stove. "Schuyler?" He tried to turn around, but when her arms suddenly tightened, he went completely still. "What's wrong?"
"I think..." Schuyler swallowed hard. "I think I can give you the words soon."
Ah. He looked down at her hands, clasped over his waist, and Ioniko slowly covered them with his. "You do not feel pressured or forced to say them?"
She shook her head and fought back tears. Oh, Nik. He used to be so, so good at reading her. Second-guessing her. He used to know her. So why was he saying the most obvious lies? Why was he making it seem that she was the one feeling pressured and forced to say the words...when those words were what he wanted to say?
He was the one who felt pressured. The one who felt forced. The one who had heard her say she loved him and had said and done nothing.
"Tonight," Ioniko heard himself say. That there was still a large part of him that questioned the nature of his feelings for her no longer mattered. He had made her believe he loved her, and she had loved him in return.
That had to be enough, he told himself, and Ioniko strove to put aside all disturbing thoughts as he gently disentangled her arms in order to face her. "When we're alone again, and the world is quiet, and your voice will be the only thing I'll hear, you can give me the words then."
* * *
A glance at his watch told Ioniko that it was already a few minutes past one, and he took his phone out to text Schuyler and make sure that she and Sara already had their lunch. While there were times that both women seemed to love food more than life itself, there were also instances when the two were too caught up with work that they even forgot to breathe.
Schuyler: Yup, done with lunch. Sara's still with me, working. You?
Ioniko: On my way to a meeting. Text me when you're done with work. I'll pick you up.
Schuyler: We'll see. Now go make another billion. XOXO
Ioniko couldn't keep his lips from twitching at the way Schuyler had ended her text. He was willing to bet that not even her best friend would've guessed she was the type to send virtual hugs and kisses to her fiancé, and it felt extremely good, knowing that this side of hers was only his to enjoy.
And for it to stay that way...
His jaw clenched as his limousine rolled to a stop in front of a sports complex. Not exactly the kind of venue one would envision, meeting the man who had won Mairi away from him. Running down the steps leading to the underground basketball court, he was further disconcerted to find Damen Leventis buying what appeared a yogurt drink from the vendo machine.
"I see your tastes have drastically changed, Leventis."
"It's for my daughter, asshole." But the other Greek billionaire was sporting a genial-looking grin as he turned around to shake Ioniko's hand.
"Are you planning to shoot hoops in that?" Ioniko couldn't help asking.
Damen rolled his eyes. "Contrary to what you seem to believe, marriage does not lessen one's IQ." He gestured towards the dugout, saying dryly, "I'm on babysitting duty. Mairi's in New York for a friend's bachelorette."
"Ladies only?" Ioniko guessed. The grimace briefly crossed the billionaire's handsome features was answer enough, and he chuckled.
Upon reaching the court, Ioniko immediately spotted his goddaughter standing in line with several other young girls, and all of them sporting matching basketball jerseys that bore the clubhouse logo.
"It's Nala's favorite sport," Damen explained.
"How good is she?"
"She's not good at it at all." Damen's tone was affable. "She's adorably clumsy like her mother, but she likes it, so here we are." He subjected his friend to a critical look. "And now that we're done with the small talk..." The other man's face became inscrutable but Damen wasn't put off. "Your call this earlier made this meeting sound urgent."
"It is."
Damen raised a brow. "So?"
"What if I tell you I ended up liking someone because she unconsciously reminded me of your wife?"
"I'll call 911," Damen answered without hesitation, "and have you behind bars for being a sexual psycopath."
"I'm fucking serious."
"And you think I'm not?" Damen asked evenly. "Give me the real picture here, Vlahos. It's been years, for God's sake."
"I know."
"And you never gave any indication..."
"That's why I said it was something I might have done unconsciously," Ioniko bit out.
Might have done unconsciously? Damen's gaze narrowed. While he and Ioniko would always have some sort of rivalry going on between them, he had come to regard the younger man as a friend, and one he had gotten to know pretty well over the years.
Well enough certainly, Damen thought, to know that the rather tepid and capricious nature of Ioniko's words were downright unnatural.
"You either like her or not."
"I do." Ioniko's tone seethed with frustration. "Wanting her, being attracted to her has never been the problem. It's how it started that's all fucked up, and I..." He breathed hard. "I just want to make sure that I don't suddenly wake up one day and realize I never liked her for the right reasons."
A taut silence followed, and then Damen asked quietly, "Why did you come to me?"
Ioniko's laugh was hollow. "The fuck if I know." His lips twisted. "But somehow, it was all I could think of."
And he had a feeling he knew exactly why that was, Damen thought.
But first he had to be sure.
"How about the two of you join Nala and me for dinner at home tonight?"
The invitation, coming out of the blue, disconcerted Ioniko. "Do you think it's a good idea?"
"Why wouldn't it be?"
Ioniko's li
ps tightened. Damen's voice was a little too smooth for his liking, but then...the other man was right as well. There wasn't anything inherently wrong about having dinner with Damen and his daughter. Right?
* * *
Schuyler had lied to Ioniko. The truth was, she had canceled on her meeting with Sara. She wasn't even at Associate. Instead, she spent the day walking aimlessly, entering one shop after another, and it was in one such store she had found a book called The Art of Catching a Greek Billionaire.
She had bought it on a whim, grabbed a latte at the nearest cafe, and then settled down to read.
The first chapter began with a lesson.
To catch a Greek billionaire, you must first find a way to get in his line of sight.
And from there, its author - a Greek billionaire named Damen Leventis - began to tell the story of how he had fallen in love with a woman named Mairi. She was an American like Schuyler, and one who had flown all the way to Greece to work as an English teacher...and, as the title suggested, to catch herself a Greek billionaire.
So she was right, Schuyler thought. This was about a gold-digger. But a few pages after, the book's author introduced another character. One who was also a Greek billionaire and happened to be in love with said school teacher as well.
And his name was Ioniko Vlahos.
The book slipped from her fingers and dropped to the ground.
Except for that one time she had looked his Instagram up, she had promised herself to never look the billionaire up online. She had felt it was unfair, knowing that he couldn't exactly do the same to her, and ever since that day he had ambushed her at Starbucks, she had deliberately changed her browser and social media settings to automatically omit any news or search results that included the name Ioniko.
And while she had no intentions of breaking the promise she made to herself...
Schuyler opened her iPad and began typing.
Mairi Tanner-Leventis
She hadn't made any promise not to research about other people so this was technically fine. Right?
The first page of search results came up and she clicked on the top link. And the one after. She clicked until she ran out of content to devour and she moved on to an image search. Hours passed as she studied every image she could find of the woman, and there was something about her...
It would've been easier if what Schuyler was feeling was mere jealousy, but she knew it wasn't. There was a part of her, the part that had known from the very start it was meant to belong to Ioniko Vlahos - that part told her this woman was someone Ioniko should have told her about.
Her gaze flicked back to the woman on her screen. Petite like her, a bit more slender and paler, and that was it. Mairi was a brunette while Schuyler was a redhead. And although the other woman was a few years older than Schuyler, she didn't look like it at all. There was a freshness and radiance about her, and it made the other girl look the type to cry easily but laugh quickly and view the world with rose-colored glasses made rosier by her wide-eyed naïveté---
The sudden vibration of her phone almost made Schuyler jump out of her seat, and when she saw who it was calling her...
Her heartbeat sped up even as the queasiness in her stomach grew, and she had to inhale deeply before answering the call. "Hey."
From the other end of the line, Ioniko frowned at the note of unsteadiness he immediately detected in Schuyler's voice. "Is everything alright?"
Schuyler cleared her throat. "Of course. I, um, just woke up." And because she herself knew she wasn't really that good at lying, she quickly changed the subject, asking, "Are you done with your meeting?"
"Well, that's the thing. I thought you could join us for dinner." A pause. "I'm with a friend of mine and his daughter."
The tension gripping her form eased slightly. It was another man, Schuyler thought, and not Mairi. The thought made her sick with relief, and when she spoke again, her tone had considerably lightened. "Where do I go?"
As soon as the billionaire gave her the address, she said right away, "Got it, bye!" and quickly hung up, not wanting to let Ioniko insist on picking her up or have his driver with his too-eye-catching limousine wait for her outside Associate.
Since Ioniko's friend's place was just a few blocks away, Schuyler took her time walking, wanting to use every second to expurgate all thoughts of the other woman from her mind. What happened in the past stayed in the past, she reminded herself.
Or so she thought...until she arrived at an luxurious apartment building that looked oddly familiar. She gave her name to the concierge, and the man behind the counter smiled. "Ah, yes." He pressed on the call bell once, and a uniformed attendant appeared by Schuyler's side a moment later. "Charlie shall escort you to the penthouse, Ms. Mathers."
Charlie bobbed his head at her direction. "This way, Ms. Mathers."
He led her to one of the gold-walled elevators, which opened with a tap of Charlie's key card. Inside, Schuyler was surprised that it only had three buttons: Open, Close, and P, and engraved under the last one was a couple's name.
Schuyler whitened.
Mr. and Mrs. Damen Leventis.
* * *
"She said yes then?" Damen asked as soon as Ioniko walked back into the living room.
"She insisted on walking, though," Ioniko said with a grimace.
After serving himself and his friend drinks, Damen invited Ioniko to join him by the bar and asked, "What exactly is she like, this woman of yours?"
"Is that what you really want to know or are you wondering why she reminds me of Mairi?"
"The former." Damen's voice was bland.
Ioniko frowned, not having expected such an answer. But since he also couldn't see anything wrong with it, he allowed his mind to pull up an image of Schuyler and was unaware of how thoughts of her had immediately softened his face.
"She's feisty," Ioniko heard himself say as he remembered all the times she had tried to get rid of him.
As opposed to his wife, Damen mused contemplatively, who was born to be submissive, albeit in the cutest and often most hilarious ways.
"Women who talk too much used to bore me, but with Schuyler, it bothers me when she's silent, and there's little that I enjoy more than verbally sparring with her." More memories poured in, both good and bad, but somehow, he found himself treasuring them all. "I like how practical she is, and the way it makes her predictable."
Practical and predictable, Damen thought in private amusement, were two words that would never apply to his wife either.
"She can be rather stubborn." Exasperatingly so at times, but since it also made her a woman who'd never be easily swayed by other men, he wasn't going to complain about it.
"I see."
Ioniko didn't miss the way those words appeared heavily loaded. "If you have something to say," he said curtly, "then just say it."
"I don't think I have to," Damen said equably. "I think you'll figure it out soon enough."
Ioniko cursed under his breath. "Enough with the cryptic bullshit, Damen. Mairi was the same way, too---"
"And it annoyed you, ne?" Damen smirked. "Despite being attracted to her, a part of you could not help but feel irritated at her tendency to beat around the bush. Am I correct?"
Feeling as if he had unintentionally offended his host, Ioniko started to backtrack...and then he stopped.
Because the other man was right.
Damen leaned back against the couch. "And now...you see it, too." His tone was quiet but serious. "Don't you?"
The wall-mounted phone rang before Ioniko could answer, and as Damen stood up to answer it, he saw in the corner of his eye that his guest had also risen to feet and was heading to the door. He picked his receiver. A glance at the info display told him it was the concierge, and he asked right away, "What is it?"
"It's your guest, sir. She was already on the elevator when she suddenly insisted on having Charlie take her back down...and she just left."
The sound of the door slamming shut had
Damen looking up, and he saw that his other guest had left as well. "It's fine, Thomas. Her boyfriend's on his way to get her back." In more ways than one, Damen thought as he thanked the concierge before ending the call. A moment later, and he heard ringing from the other line.
"Damen?" While Mairi's tone made her surprise evident, there was also no mistaking the soft, eager breathlessness that underscored her voice. It was the kind of sound that only a woman in love could make, and the kind of sound that only a man who loved would be able to hear.
"I miss you," he said simply.
"I miss you, too. So much. I can't wait until I can fly back and see you and Nala again."
"I don't think I can wait that long."
"Oh." Mairi was instantly worried. What exactly did her husband mean by that? Was he saying he was going to leave her if she didn't come home right this minute? Was he saying---
"I'm saying..." Damen's voice was rich with amusement. "You should stay up and wait for your daughter and me."
Her eyes widened.
"We'll be there in a few hours---"
"Yay! Oh my God, I'm so excited! I can't....ah!"
Damen winced when he heard the sound of something...a lot of things...crashing to the floor.
"I'm okay!"
"Do I even want to know what happened, sweetheart?"
"I kinda...um...accidentally...bumped..." Mairi's voice kept getting smaller. "Ming vases...might...pay..."
Classic Mairi, Damen thought, and he wouldn't have her any other way.
* * *
Ioniko found himself running for his life. It wasn't that he think he'd find her gone. It wasn't that at all. He knew his Schuyler, knew exactly where he'd find her, and it was because he knew her that he also knew how much she'd be hurting, and goddammit, he would never hurt her again.
I'm sorry, koukla mou.
