by Tara Pammi
“It is a part of you, Dmitri.”
“I hurt her and I don’t know how to fix it now. I don’t know how to tell her that I need her in my life, and not for all the reasons I made her believe.
“Theos, everything we have built, everything I told myself I needed to fill my life, they mean nothing to me if she’s not there.”
Stavros squeezed his shoulder and left without another word. As if he understood, for once, that there was nothing he could do to help Dmitri.
Long after noon gave way to dusk, Dmitri sat there in that vast kitchen in that house that Giannis had given to him, where he had learned to be civilized, where he had learned that he didn’t have to live with pain, where he had learned that not all men were alcoholic, out-of-control cowards like his father. Where he had learned that he could be more than the product of his genes and his father’s abuse.
But more than anything else, Giannis had tried so hard to give Dmitri back his self-worth. Suddenly, Dmitri was filled with purpose, hope and a yearning.
If he had to spend the rest of his life waiting for Jasmine, proving to Jasmine that he needed her in his life, that he absolutely couldn’t breathe for knowing that she was somewhere in the world and not his...
He would do it. He would show her his heart; he would show her that his life was empty without her.
* * *
Fashion photographers, Jasmine discovered to her utter shock over the next few weeks, were apparently a whole other species who thought they didn’t have to follow the dictates of polite society.
One week into her new career and she felt as though she had been steamrolled, turned inside out for everyone to see.
Maybe it was that she had gotten used to seeing the very obvious appreciation and lust in her customers’ eyes when she had taken the stage at the nightclub, even though she’d hated it at that time. Or maybe because, apparently, she was the twenty-three-year-old village idiot, who knew nothing about how the fashion industry worked, amidst models, both men and women, younger and more experienced than her.
That first week after she had left Dmitri—because her whole life was now clearly demarcated by that one event, before Dmitri and after Dmitri, as if nothing else could even come close to holding significance in her life—had been a seamless blur of outward activity, more than she had seen in the past five years of her life, and a growing sense of stillness within.
She found herself asking the same question during the strangest moments during the day.
Had she thrown away her only chance at life with the man she adored in the name of weakness? Had she traded the happiness of at least a few days for the emptiness in her gut?
The agency had loved her after the screen test, calling her their next big find. With help from Stavros’s lawyer, without whom she would have signed away her entire life, she signed a very tight, time-limited exclusive contract with the agency.
Sick of moping around the flat while she waited, she had made a habit of visiting Leah every day at her factory after a rigorous workout at the gym next door to keep in shape, and really, to keep the ever-gnawing void in her stomach at bay.
There wasn’t a minute that she didn’t think about Dmitri, a day where she felt like she would ever be normal again.
It had been a month of torture, as she started calling it.
Because while she had been crying herself to sleep every night, Dmitri, it seemed, was taking the media and the world by storm.
It had begun when she had heard that the huge charity event organized by Anya Ivanova, the model he had helped, had sported his custom-designed Bugatti bike.
The next week had been an expose about his yacht, which apparently was currently being bought by a Russian oil billionaire. And the most shocking thing of all was when a courier had arrived at her doorstep one evening, following a call from Dmitri’s executive assistant, to pick up the diamond set he had gifted her and she had never worn.
Then came another lengthy phone call with his lawyer about setting up steps for her to pay off her debt to him. Something she had insisted on.
What was he doing? she wondered, going half-mad. Was he moving? Desperate to understand what he was up to, she spent countless hours trawling luxury real estate websites to see if he had put Giannis’s beautiful estate also up for sale.
But not once had she heard anything from him, even indirectly through Leah, whom she saw regularly.
Had he decided that he had had an easy escape?
Then came her first client, a lifesaver in so many ways.
In the first week of the photo shoot as the new face of a small Italian shoe company, she had learned what a stressful, hardworking slog it was. Especially if it was something you fell into as an escape from throwing yourself at the man who didn’t love you.
Her first shoot with the photographer, apparently a Spanish genius called Eduardo de Cervantes, had been the worst. Eduardo possessed no polish like Gaspard had, whatever monster he was in his personal life, kept losing his temper when she couldn’t get a pose or expression right, and at the end of the longest three hours of her life, had called the whole shoot utterly useless and walked away, spewing curses in Spanish.
If she had been the type to burst into tears, that moment had been it. But somehow, or maybe because her heart felt as if it was already encased in ice, she had made it through it without turning into a puddle.
They had finally had a breakthrough on the third day when he had once again snarled at her about not having a sensuous bone in her body and she, smarting about the one thing she was good at, had grabbed his hand, marched him over to the next floor where she had heard they had been shooting a firemen-themed calendar, had then proceeded to show her particular talent with a pole.
It had been quite the glorious thing to see Eduardo’s jaw hit his chest. And the transformation in his demeanor and her response to it had been thrilling. Suddenly, it was as if he knew what to say to her, how to tease her into a pose, how to make her pout, and she’d eased into the rapport they’d suddenly had going, put her trust in him.
She wasn’t exactly an overnight sensation but still her success had given her a new kind of confidence.
After those first two weeks, November passed in a haze as her initial contract with the shoe company got extended to cover Europe and North American markets, and then a fashion magazine invited her to do their Christmas runway show.
She didn’t miss the irony of the fact that, once again, it was her genes that had enabled her entry into the fashion world. Not that it was without hard work.
The money began to flow in. Not huge chunks, not enough to cover her humongous debt to Dmitri, but enough to give her a new insight into life, enough to make her appreciate life and all the exciting opportunities it held. Enough to tell her that her heart wasn’t in modeling and that it was only a way to give herself a cushion, and that she didn’t want to live this life he had given her back doing something she didn’t absolutely, gloriously enjoy.
Which in turn brought her back to Dmitri and how much she enjoyed doing anything with him.
Somehow she had thought she would feel better once she was self-sufficient. Maybe even hoped that the magic of being in love with him would dim with distance and independence.
If so, she was apparently as foolish as Andrew.
Some days, all she could manage was to come home to the flat, wash her makeup and the day’s shoot off herself, drink her smoothie and fall into bed. As if waiting to strike her at a weak moment, the grief and pain came then.
She thought of laughing, smiling Andrew who had loved her so much and yet given in to his weakness, of how she had made excuses for him because she had thought he had never had a break. She thought of her mother, who had had two loving, affectionate children, and yet had chosen to lose herself in drink.
But Dmitri, w
ho had suffered so much worse, had not only made it, but had also looked out for them. It didn’t matter that he’d had help in the form of Giannis and Stavros. It was he who had made something of himself, made himself more than the product of his father’s abuse and violence.
So why couldn’t she?
But you have already, an arrogant voice sounding quite like Dmitri said.
And it was as if the entire world remained the same chaotic, sometimes utterly soul-crushing, sometimes gorgeously life-giving mystery that it was, but it was how she looked at it, how she looked at herself that underwent a seismic shift.
Even through the darkest, coldest, most depressing night of her life in the past decade, she had never once accepted defeat, had never once surrendered herself to things beyond her control; she had never once let herself drown.
It would have been so easy to give in. She had had all the temptation. And with Dmitri, God, she’d had more than temptation.
But she had walked away. It had torn her in two but she had walked away, hadn’t she? And she had kept on walking.
She had stared her weakness in the eye and not only emerged from it unscathed, but she had made something out of herself. She had stood without flinching in the face of a cruel, unfamiliar world that seemed to be even more mercurial than her mother’s moods and stayed the course.
Despite the results to the contrary, why did she keep measuring herself by Andrew’s and her mother’s sins?
She was not them. She was Jasmine Douglas, former pole dancer, maybe model and something fiercer in the future.
She was stronger and she deserved any happiness she could get. And her happiness, oh, her very heart was with Dmitri. It would always be.
Everything changed as if floodgates had been opened.
She didn’t care that he wanted her because he thought she needed protection, that he did it out of guilt.
So what if he wasn’t willing to call it love? So what if he thought he was incapable of it?
He had protected her, cared for her, helped her emerge from her own shame; he had counted her worthy even before she had counted herself. If that wasn’t love... Every second she was with Dmitri, she lived and loved more than she had the rest of her life.
She had never given up before, even when the odds had been stacked high against her. Not on her brother, not on her mother, and now, she wouldn’t give up on the most important thing in her life—she wouldn’t give up on Dmitri.
She would prove to him how much he already loved her, even if it took her the rest of her life.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ONCE SHE HAD made up her mind, Jasmine couldn’t bear to wait another minute before she went to see Dmitri. Even worse was the fact that he was in the same city yet so far away from her.
It took her another week to finish her current photo shoot and find a free day, so close to Christmas. Another day then to drum up enough guts to ask Stavros, when she saw him, about Dmitri’s whereabouts.
He was in London, Stavros had said pithily. When she had probed as to why, he had muttered, “Personal business.” Jasmine had a feeling Stavros hadn’t wanted to give out any information at all.
When she had asked him, tethering her desperation just by the skin of her teeth, when he would return, he had said today. When Leah had glared at him, he had added that he would return to his Athens flat because they had a superimportant deal he was finalizing to talk about.
Jasmine had barely held her curiosity in check, because she wanted to know what deal was so important two days before Christmas and what Dmitri’s personal business was, because it was sure as hell not about her, and not with Leah or Stavros because they had both been in Athens the past week.
Acknowledging that nothing was going to make what she had to do easier, she showered that afternoon and dressed in black pencil jeans and a royal blue sleeveless silk shirt that highlighted her physique without hugging. She paired the blouse with a sleekly cut white jacket. Black pumps and her hair in a French braid and she was ready to go.
Wouldn’t you have a better chance if you were dressed to attract his attention? a devilish voice inside whispered, but she shushed it.
She wanted them to talk rationally. She wanted to tell him everything she had thought of, and dressing demurely would help.
Dmitri’s flat turned out to be a penthouse on a pedestrian street in the city center of Athens, only a short walk from an art gallery and a lively café where she had spent more than a few hours gathering courage and drinking far too much of the dark, thick Greek coffee.
Wired and anxious was not a good combination, her stomach decided, going on a downward dive while the lift took her to the seventh floor.
A landscaped atrium was across the entrance, revealing breathtaking views of the Acropolis and Lycabettus Hill on either side. Early-afternoon sunlight amplified the open plan.
Jasmine stood awestruck, taking in the warm appeal of the soaring ceilings and the refined wood finish. She walked through the atrium and noted that the penthouse expanded on either side, and ahead was a large heated pool overlooking the spectacular Athens skyline.
Hadn’t Leah mentioned to her that Dmitri’s flat was all chrome and steel and utterly soulless?
A small sitting area was by the side of the pool. Her heart hammering against her rib cage now that she was here, Jasmine stood by the pool, not wanting to check each room, and there seemed to be a lot, for him.
She was wondering if she should have called him first when she heard footsteps behind her. Each and every one of her senses tingled as if someone had sent a spark through her body.
Bracing herself, Jasmine turned.
Black sweatpants hanging low on his hips, his torso naked, there was Dmitri, standing only a foot away from her. Jet-black hair cut to enhance that narrow, angular face, olive skin gleaming like the finest velvet while beads of sweat clung to the ridges of muscle, he looked like he had done after he had made love to her that next morning.
He leaned against the wall, as if he was not at all surprised that she was here.
Jas fought to control her instantly volatile reaction—tingling skin, racing pulse, the sudden and insistent tug in her lower belly—and failed. Heat flashed over her as she realized he had blocked her path purposely. Behind her was the narrow stretch of pool and then the skyline of Athens, and before her Dmitri, looking at her as if he couldn’t wait to devour her.
That brought on images of his dark head between her legs and the way he had devoured her, and she pressed her legs instinctively together, the denim rasping against her inner thighs, and then their eyes met and she knew he was remembering it, too, because there was such an intense hunger in his gaze...
Her breath rushed out of her in a shuddering exhale.
She might as well have walked in in her underwear for all the time she had spent carefully choosing her outfit.
“That would have been nice after the torture of the past few weeks,” he said, pushing off the wall, and Jasmine realized she had said it out loud.
It was as if she was standing in a bubble of sensual haze and didn’t have her usual faculties.
She wet her lips, searching for how to start what she wanted to say. “You’ve been busy the past few weeks,” she finally managed to say.
“As have you, pethi mou” came the soft drawl.
“What’s going on, Dmitri? Why so many changes?”
“I decided that I needed to remove all the empty, meaningless things I have filled my life with. All the things that I believed made it better. All the things that I used to hide from the truth.” He ran his knuckles over her cheek as if he couldn’t help himself.
“When Stavros told me you had asked about me...” He swallowed and looked away for a second. When he spoke again, his voice was almost steady. “Tell me, Jas, what are y
ou doing here?”
“I’m traveling to New York for a shoot in January. And I didn’t want to leave without... I came by to tell you that I want a compromise between us.”
He was closer and the masculine scent of him drenched her pores. She inhaled a long breath as if she were a junkie getting her fix.
He was her drug, she realized. But unlike her mother’s and brother’s choice of poison, he made her stronger, bolder, more her than anything she had ever been.
His gaze lingered over her mouth. “What sort of compromise?”
Oh, how tempted she was to taste that mouth of his again... “I want to be with you. I want us to give our relationship a try. But you can’t ask me to marry you again. Not like that. At least, not until we decide together that it is a step we want to take, until we decide it is what we want.”
He flinched. She knew he did because she was standing so close, breathing in every nuance in his face. Slowly, he took a step back and studied her. “But you want this?”
Her heart racing again, she nodded. There was a bittersweet pang in her gut but she ignored it for now. One day, he would admit to her that he loved her. One day, she would prove to him that he was the most honorable man she had ever met.
She stepped forward, eating up the distance between them. Pressing her hands into his shoulders, she pulled herself up and kissed his mouth.
Those large hands of his snaked around her and slammed her against that chest. Powerful frame shuddering around her, he kissed her forehead. “I’m so sorry I hurt you with that arrogant proposal. I have become such a stranger to emotions or love that I didn’t even realize what I was doing until you told me. You were right. You deserve so much more than I offered.”
Hot liquid filled her eyes. Jas blinked, trying to keep the tears away. “Dmitri, are you listening? I’m not afraid anymore.” She clasped his jaw, willing him to understand. “I won’t break like I thought. Loving you makes me stronger, not weaker. All I want is to be with you.”
