by Caro LaFever
“O Theós gamó̱to.” He’d sent thousands and thousands of dollars. Where had the money gone?
He turned his white-hot gaze on his grandparents. They stared back at him, both defiant.
The limo crunched to a stop. No one moved.
“What’s wrong?” the witch said.
Aetos turned to scowl at her since scowling at his grandparents had not produced any answers. “I sent thousands of dollars.”
A blonde brow quirked and the ever-present curiosity bloomed on her face.
“So they could repair this place,” he snarled.
Comprehension and some kind of wisdom he couldn’t understand flashed in her eyes. “They don’t want your money.”
He stared at her blankly.
“They only want you.”
Chapter 16
The farmhouse charmed her like a long-lost friend.
Natalie followed the two elderly people into the simple home. The whitewashed walls were filled with pictures of the family and religious icons. Wooden beams arched in the ceiling above them, and under their feet the same sturdy oak was scuffed and worn. The old man eased himself down on a shabby leather chair and sighed with contentment as his wife bustled into the tiny kitchen lying off the main room, chattering in Greek.
The man standing beside her vibrated with tension.
She glanced at him. His jaw was tight, his hands fisted. At any moment it appeared he might burst with the ugliness inside him. She wasn’t any happier about this situation than he was. Still, what were their choices? To upset these sweet old people by rejecting their hospitality? She couldn’t have taken a chance at disturbing Leonidas Kourkoulos’s recovery by agreeing to his grandson’s proposal that they stay away from the family in some impersonal hotel.
She was stuck. Precisely like he was.
Fear danced around in her head and ran up her spine. Sharing a bed with this man, this man she unwillingly wanted, held so many dangers to her heart, she couldn’t even count them all. Two weeks and more of lying by his side, watching him slumber, listening to him breathe. Since the moment she’d made the commitment, she’d shivered and shook deep inside. What if she did something stupid in her sleep: reaching for him, touching him. What if he responded only because she was a female in his bed and she gave him more than her body while he used her as a mere release?
The wild thoughts tumbled around in her brain, but there was no way out. He might be stuck in the situation. She was pinned like a captured slave. Though, at least she was being a better sport about it.
The man beside her glared and gritted his teeth. His hand shot forward as if he were about to speak and spurt out the ugliness inside him.
“Aetos.” His grandfather’s voice was soft, comforting. “Kaló̱s í̱rthate sto spíti.”
She knew what those words meant. In the endless hours at the hospital, Rhea had started to teach her some rudimentary Greek and she had a knack for comprehending new languages.
Welcome home.
“Ti échete kánei me óla ta chrí̱mata ou?” The man beside her did not respond to the welcome with happiness or gladness or joy. Instead, the man shot the question from his mouth with fury.
“We will speak English for Natalie.” His giagiá’s words were halting but understandable. She stood at the entry to the kitchen, her hands busily tying a long blue apron around her round body.
Her grandson grimaced, yet he complied. “Tell me. What did you do with the money?”
The money. Always money with this man. When she’d reminded him of the truth in the limo, that his family only wanted him, he’d fallen silent, but he still didn’t get it. He still didn’t understand.
“We have saved it.” His pappoús lifted an ancient wooden pipe and started to tamp down the leaves of tobacco he’d stuffed into the horn.
“The doctor said no smoking,” Aetos said the words with a careless flip.
Yet…yet…
A flash of fear crossed his face. His dark eyes grew nearly black with the feeling and the anger and disgust she’d felt towards him during the last two days—hell, during the entire time they’d been thrown together—fell away.
He might have yelled like a madman at his grandmother. He might have totally overreacted at her well-intentioned attempt to heal the breach between him and his cousins. He might have stormed away from the swarm of his family without letting them deal with his anger.
Yet…yet…
He did love them. His grandparents. And his entire family too, if she had to make a bet.
“No smoking.” This time his words were taut and tight.
His grandfather put the pipe to his mouth.
“He will do what he wants.” His grandmother sighed with affection. “He is a man.”
Natalie watched as Aetos struggled to regain control over his fear, replacing it with his usual anger. An emotion he found easier to handle, obviously.
“Fine. Let’s get back to the money.”
The money. Always the money. Hard, brutal memories of her father, uncles, and brother roared through her and it took everything inside her to stop from yelling at him for his idiocy. However, this wasn’t her war or her family or her man.
She kept quiet.
The old man’s eyes were sharp and wise. “Nai?”
“Why?” The question hit the room with a blast of outraged disbelief.
“Well.” The elderly woman shrugged her plump shoulders. “Things happen.”
“It is good to be,” his grandfather halted, searched for the word. “Prepared.”
“Things?” His grandson began to pace, his long legs eating up the small room. The air vibrated with his irritation. “You know I’m prepared to take care of any things that happen.”
He strode to his grandmother and peered over her shoulder at the old-fashioned kitchen. “You didn’t even replace the damn stove. That thing was dangerous seventeen years ago!”
His giagiá patted his chest and smiled. “I cook good. Do not worry.”
“You will not go hungry here, Aetos.” His pappoús chuckled.
“That is not the point.” He flung himself away from his grandmother and walked out of the room and down the tiny hall.
The elderly woman tutted while her husband calmly began to smoke. The scent of spicy tobacco curled around Nat and the memory of her father came back to her with sudden force. When she’d been little, when the family had still been a family, he’d smoked every night before going to bed. She’d often sat on his lap reading stories and breathing in the sweet herbal flavor. The memory wafted around her, bittersweet and aching.
The sound of hard footsteps broke the pause of peace. The golden god descended into the room like an avenging warrior. “The bathroom.”
His grandmother looked placidly at him. “Nai?”
“What happened to the new tub and shower I sent over from the States?”
“They are in the shed.”
The elderly man’s words appeared to light the fire blazing inside his grandson into a raging inferno. “Skatá! Why the hell are they in the shed?”
His giagiá tut-tutted again. “Do not swear. I taught you better.”
“They are in the shed.” His pappoús drew in another smoke. “Waiting for you to install them.”
The silence hung in the air. Only the drift of soft smoke dared to circle and dip, as if it were a subtle reminder of ancient obligations and family promises.
“Me?”
His grandfather gazed at him. “It is good you are home, Aetos. Very good.”
* * *
The bedroom was quaint and cozy.
And small.
A fire crackled warmly in the fireplace in the corner. An old wooden dresser leaned along one wall and a line of well-used books filled a stone shelf above the bed.
The bed that was also small.
An evil chuckle came from behind her. “Shall we laugh together, Natalie?”
No, she didn’t feel like laughing. She’d imagined the w
orst when she’d agreed to this. For the seconds she’d taken in the limo to make a decision—staring across at the two old people who desperately wanted their grandson back—for those seconds, she’d pictured a bed.
With him in it.
And her, too.
Still, this bed wasn’t what she’d imagined.
The mattress could barely be called a double. She hadn’t held out much hope for a king-size bed, but she’d dreamed hopefully of a queen-size. The bed had a cheery quilt of blues and greens lying on it. The two pillows appeared plump and welcoming. Yet no amount of soft covers or warm sheets could conceal the fact the bed was small.
Very small.
He laughed behind her again. A laugh filled not with anger or with humor. The laugh was filled with what sounded like dark, tortured need. A need her body answered with a flare of uncontrollable desire.
She was going to sleep with this man in this bed tonight.
She had few defenses against him and his beauty and his magnetism.
A shiver swept through her, leaving in its wake a brew of intense excitement and acute anxiety.
Moving past her, he slammed down both of their suitcases on the oak floor. The floor had a brightly weaved rug of green-and-gold wool, which looked suspiciously like it had been hand-braided. A cozy and welcoming rug, but not a comfortable place she could spend the night lying down on, without catching her death or finding herself hobbling around with aching muscles. Much like the elderly lady who quite likely made this rug herself out of love for her grandson.
The grandson turned to glower around him, as if trying to find a place in which to escape. Yet this had been his bedroom when he’d been young. A place of refuge, surely. Her childhood bedroom had been filled with posters of her favorite bands and books about travel and even a last remaining Barbie doll. The room had been her place.
She looked around at his place.
The room was remarkably barren. No pictures or posters. No signs of a boy who’d found his place here. Had his grandmother cleaned all of him from this bedroom? It seemed improbable. The way the old woman clutched anything to do with Aetos Zenos to her breast and heart made it highly unlikely she would have given anything of him away.
Only the books gave any hint of its previous occupant.
Nat ignored the man as he paced to the narrow terrace door and stared out at the dark Greek night. She headed for the books. They were old, but someone had lovingly dusted them and kept them in fine shape. The leather bindings gleamed with care and the paperbacks still stood at attention.
Plato and his Dialogues. Homer and his Iliad. Names she didn’t recognize, Menis Koumandareas and Yiannis Patilis. The titles and names were a mix of English and Greek. She slipped one of the books off the shelf and flipped it open. The Greek words were incomprehensible, yet clearly structured. Poetry.
Poetry?
She whipped around to stare at him. His back betrayed his tension in the tight line of his broad shoulders. His hands knotted in fists at his waist. Only the curl of his hair at the neckline of his silk shirt gave a hint of softness.
Poetry? As a boy, this man had read poetry?
“These are your books?” she said slowly, in disbelief.
Aetos glanced over his shoulder and frowned. “She kept them? Why would she keep them?”
Love.
Though the man was clueless, he also felt the same emotion. She supposed if she went out to the ancient shed she’d spotted from the kitchen window, she’d find a heap of things disguised as love sitting waiting for him to come home. He might be impossible for a woman to love, but he did know and feel the emotion himself. For his family. Her inevitable curiosity about this guy couldn’t be contained. “Where’s the rest of your stuff?”
The frown grew deeper, the light of the fire turning the brows to gold. “There wasn’t any other stuff.”
“Just books?”
His shoulders jerked in a sullen shrug. “I didn’t have much as a boy. I didn’t need much.”
An image floated into her mind of this man as a child. Golden-haired, tightly wound. Tall and sinewy and so-out-of-place. An ache of regret, of wanting to make it right for this man, ran through her. “You chose books instead of other things.”
With an exclamation of disgust, he walked over to her and took the paperback from her hands. “These—” he slammed the book back onto the stone shelf “—mean nothing.”
“No?”
“No.” He glared into her eyes, the chestnut brown of his glowing with heat and desperation. “Not compared to the situation we find ourselves in.”
She folded her arms in front of her, afraid she might lose her grip on her emotions and reach out to him and hold him. Soothe this pain flowing in him. “The situation isn’t very funny anymore, I admit, but I don’t see any way around it.”
Grimacing, he ran his shaking hand through his gleaming hair. “There has to be a way.”
The misery in his voice punctured her pride. Nat knew she wasn’t a beauty, had accepted the fact with good grace long ago. The man didn’t have to sound like he was about to descend into purgatory, though, merely because he had to share a bed with her for a couple of weeks. “Don’t worry,” she snapped. “I’ll keep my hands to myself.”
His dark eyes widened. “What?”
Her fingers tapped annoyance and insult onto her arms.
Glancing behind her at the bed, the small bed, his eyes narrowed before lighting with heat. “I’m not talking about that.”
“No?”
“No.” He stared at her, the heat burning. “That won’t be a problem for me in the slightest.”
Since she wasn’t a beauty.
Or…wait. The memory of him touching her on top of Lycabettus Hill came to her. The look in his eyes as he’d leaned toward her. The look…matched his look now.
Maybe she did appeal. Perhaps she was beautiful in his eyes?
It couldn’t be.
The true beauty in this room was not Natalie Globenko. The beauty of the man rushed at her like a storm of fiery darts. They pricked her skin, making it tingle. They pried into her body making it pound. The darts lodged like tiny pinpoints of branding fire in her heart.
The roll of his shoulder muscles filled the white silk shirt he wore and she smelled the pine musk of his distinct scent. He was sweating and unlike any other man she’d seen sweat, it turned her insides to a mush of need. His golden skin gleamed in the firelight, rich and redolent. The honeyed hair gracing his jaw was the ideal touch of roughness amongst the refined glory that was Aetos Zenos.
He couldn’t possibly want her.
Not really. Not the Natalie with the stringy body and non-existent curves. She must be imagining these hot looks meant anything; that the kiss, the one kiss, had meant he unquestionably wanted her.
Even if he did, would she want to do this? To fall further under this man’s spell by giving him her body?
“It’s a problem for you, though, isn’t it?” His voice was rough, taut. “Sleeping with me.”
His words carried a hint of—hurt? She peered into his face and tried to read what was swimming in those chestnut eyes. Had she hurt him when she’d run from him? Aetos Zenos? A man with a thousand women in his past had been hurt by her seeming rejection?
Ridiculous. This man could have any woman he wanted at a snap of one of his blunt fingers.
Including you, Nat?
“Yes,” she stuttered out. “It’s a problem.”
The chestnut color dulled. “Okay. You agree. We need to leave here immediately.”
“We can’t.” She stepped around him, no longer willing to gaze at his overwhelming beauty. Walking to the fireplace, she stared at the flicker of the flames. “We can’t risk upsetting your grandfather.”
“You don’t want to be in this bed with me,” he snarled. “And I don’t want to be here at all.”
“True. But your grandparents want us here and they need you to do the renovations.”
“I’ll hire a contractor before we leave.”
“That’s not going to satisfy them.” She struggled with her frustration at this man’s stubborn denial of what was in front of him. “They won’t let anyone do any work around here except you.”
“I haven’t done any construction in years.”
“What?” She turned and glared at him. “Are you too proud now, Mr. Zenos?”
“No, that’s not it.” He paced to her, glaring back. “I’m too busy.”
“Too busy for your family?”
“Nai.” The word was solid with determination, yet tinged with bitter anguish.
“Too busy to take the time to make sure your grandfather survives?”
With an expletive, he turned and strode away from her to stand by the terrace doors once more.
“Too busy to reconcile with your cousins?”
His whole body went tense. “Shut up.”
But she was on a relentless roll to push this man over his edge. Into reality. The reality that he loved his grandparents and needed to find some way back to this place and this family. “I don’t have to shut up. I hold the final card and we’re playing this the way I choose.”
He whipped around, fierce fury on his face. “You aren’t going to use the fact you’re not my wife as a threat again.”
“I will if I have to.”
His hoarse breath billowed in the room.
Nat stood her ground, even though she shook in shivers of regret. However, someone had to confront this man for his own good. She honestly believed he needed this reconnection. As a consequence, she’d take his hate-filled glares and angry rejections and use them to insulate her own heart while releasing his to his family, his heritage, his home.
“You will regret this.”
“I already am,” she whispered. “Still, this is how it’s going to be.”
Chapter 17
Her scent surrounded him in a wash of verdant freshness and crisp rain. If he’d let it, let her, he wondered if he could be washed clean on the inside with her scent.
