by Jane Porter
He stroked her hair, and then the length of her back, until his hand rested on her bottom. “I think I’ve met my match,” he said.
She pushed up on her elbow to see his face. “What does that mean?”
He cupped her breast, stroked the puckered aureola with his thumb. “I think you enjoy sex as much as I do.”
“With you. You’re incredible.”
“It takes two to make it incredible.” Reaching up, he pulled her head down to his and kissed her deeply, his tongue teasing hers in another sensual seduction.
In the middle of the kiss, her stomach suddenly growled. Elizabeth giggled apologetically against his mouth. “Sorry. Hungry.”
“Then let’s find our dinner. I’m starving, too.”
They dressed in what they’d left strewn about the floor earlier. Elizabeth bent to retrieve their clothes before handing Kristian first his pants and then his shirt. Slipping on her dress, she struggled to comb her hair smooth with her fingers.
“I feel like I’m in high school,” she said with a laugh. And then, and only then, it hit her—Cosima.
“My God,” she whispered under her breath, blood draining, her body going icy cold. What had she done? What had she just done?
“Elizabeth?”
She pressed her hand to her mouth, stared at him as he struggled to rebutton his shirt. He’d got it wrong.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded.
She could only look at him aghast, shocked, sickened.
She’d behaved badly. Badly. He wasn’t hers. He’d never been hers. All along he’d belonged to another woman….
“Elizabeth?” Kristian’s voice crackled with anger. “Are you still here? Or have you left? Talk to me.”
He was right. He couldn’t see. Couldn’t read her face to know what she was thinking or feeling. “What did we just do, Kristian?” What did I do?
His hands stilled, the final button forgotten. A look of confusion crossed his features. “You already have…regrets?”
Regrets? She nearly cried. Only because he wasn’t hers.
“Do you have someone waiting for you in London?” he asked, his voice suddenly growing stern, his expression hardening, taking on the glacier stillness she realized he used to keep the world at bay.
“No.”
“But there is a relationship?”
“No.”
Even without sight he seemed to know exactly where he was, he crossed to her, swiftly closing the distance between them. He took her by the shoulders.
She stiffened, fearing his anger, but then he slid his arms around her, held her securely against him. He kissed her cheek, and then her ear, and then nipped playfully at a particularly sensitive nerve in her neck. “What’s wrong, latrea mou? Why the second thoughts?”
She splayed her fingers against his chest. Her heart thudded ridiculously hard. “As much as I care about you, Kristian, I cannot do this. It was wrong. Is wrong. Just a terrible mistake.”
His arms fell away. He stepped back. “Is it because of my eyes? Because I can’t see and you pity me?”
“No.”
“It’s something, latrea mou. Because one moment you are in my arms and it feels good, it feels calm and real, like a taste of happiness, and now you say it was…terrible.” He drew a breath. “A mistake.” The bitterness in his voice carved her heart in two. “I think I don’t know you at all.”
Eyes filling with tears, she watched him take another step backward, and then another. “Kristian.” She whispered his name. “No, it’s not that. Not the way you make it sound. I loved being with you. I wanted to be near you—”
“Then what? Is this about Cosima again? Because, God forgive me, but I can’t get away from her. Every time I turn around there she is…even in my goddamn bedroom!”
“Kristian.”
“No. No. None of that I’m so disappointed in you garbage. I’ve had it. I’m sick of it. What is it with you and Cosima? Is it the contract? The fact that she paid you money? Because if it’s money, tell me the amount and I’ll cut her a check.”
“It’s not the money. It’s…you. You and her.”
He laughed, but the sound grated on her ears. “Cosima? Cosima—the Devil Incarnate?”
“You’re not a couple?”
“A couple? You’re out of your mind, latrea mou. She’s the reason I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t make myself walk, couldn’t face life. Why would I ever want to be with a woman who’d been with my brother?”
Her jaw dropped. Her mouth dried. “Your…brother?”
Kristian had gone ashen, and the scar on his cheek tightened. “She was Andreas’s fiancée. He’s dead because she’s alive. He’s dead because I went to her aid first. I rescued her for him.”
Elizabeth shook her head. Her mouth opened, shut. Of course. Of course.
Still shaking her head, she replayed her conversations with Cosima over again. Cosima had never said directly that she was in love with Kristian. She said she’d cared deeply for him, and wanted to see him back in Athens, but she never had said that there was more than that. Just that she hoped…
Hoped.
That was all. That was it.
“So, do you still have to go to Paris on Monday? Or was that just an excuse?” Kristian asked tersely, his features so hard they looked chiseled from granite.
“I still have to go,” she answered in a low voice.
“And you still have regrets?”
“Kristian—”
“You do, don’t you?”
“Kristian, it’s not that simple. Not black and white like that.”
“So what is it like?” Each word sounded like sharp steel coming from his mouth.
“I…” She closed her eyes, tried to imagine how to tell him who she’d been married to, how she’d been vilified, how she’d transformed herself to escape. But no explanation came. The old pain went too deep. The identities were too confusing. Grace Elizabeth Stiles had been beautiful and wealthy, glamorous and privileged, but she’d also been naïve and dependent, too trusting and too easily hurt.
“You what?” he demanded, not about to let her off the hook so easily.
“I can’t stay in Greece,” she whispered. “I can’t.”
“Is this all because of that Greek ornio you met on your holiday?”
“It was more serious than that.”
He stilled. “How serious?”
“I married him.”
For a long moment he said nothing, and then his lips pulled and his teeth flashed savagely. “So this is how it is.”
She took a step toward him. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m not a man to you. Not one you can trust or respect—”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true.” His shoulders tensed. “We spent two weeks together—morning, noon and night. Why didn’t you tell me you were married before? Why did you let me believe it was a simple holiday romance, a little Greek fling gone bad?”
“Because I…I…just don’t talk about it.”
“Why?”
“Because it hurt me. Badly.” Her voice raised, tears started to her eyes. “It made me afraid.”
“Just like swimming in the deep end of the pool?”
She bit her bottom lip. He sounded so disgusted, she thought. So irritated and impatient.
“You don’t trust me,” he added, his tone increasingly cold. “And you don’t know me if you think I’d make love to one woman while involved with another.”
Her heart sank. He was angry—blisteringly angry.
“What kind of man do you think I am?” he thundered. “How immoral and despicable am I?”
“You’re not—”
“You thought I was engaged to Cosima.”
“I didn’t want to think so.”
“But you did,” he shot back.
“Kristian, please don’t. Please don’t judge me—”
“Why not? You judged me.”
Tears tumbled. “I love you,” she whispered.
He shrugged brusquely. “You don’t know the meaning of love if you’d go to bed with a man supposedly engaged to another woman.”
Elizabeth felt her heart seize up. This couldn’t be happening like this, could it? They couldn’t be making such a wretched mess of things, could they? “Kristian, I can’t explain it, can’t find the words right now, but you must know how I feel—how I really feel. You must know why I’m here, and why I even stayed this long.”
“The money, maybe?” he mocked savagely, opening the door wider.
“No. And there is no money, I’m not taking her money—”
“Conveniently said.”
He didn’t know. He didn’t see. And maybe that was it. He couldn’t see how much she loved him, and how much she believed in him, and how she would have done anything, just about anything, to help him. Love him. Make him happy. “Please,” she begged, reaching for him.
But there was no reaching him. Not when he put up that wall of his, that huge, thick, impenetrable ice wall of his, that shut him off from everyone else. Instead he shrugged her off and walked down the hall toward the distant stairwell.
His rejection cut deeply. For a moment she could do nothing but watch him walk away, and then she couldn’t just let him go—not like that, not over something that was so small.
A misunderstanding.
Pride.
Ego.
None of it was important enough to keep them apart. None of it mattered if they truly cared for each other. She loved him, and from the way he’d held her, made love to her, she knew he had to have feelings for her—knew there was more to this than just hormones. For Pete’s sake, neither of them were teenagers, and both of them had been through enough to know what mattered.
What mattered was loving, and being loved.
What mattered was having someone on your side. Someone who’d stick with you no matter what.
And so she left the safety of her door, the safety of pride and ego, and followed him to the stairs. She was still wiping away tears, but she knew this—she wasn’t going to be dismissed, wasn’t going to let him get rid of her like that.
She chased after him, trailing down the staircase. Turning the corner of one landing, she started down the next flight of stairs even as a door opened and footsteps crossed the hall below.
“Kristian!” a man said, his voice disturbingly familiar. “We were just told you’d arrived. What a surprise. Welcome home!”
Nico?
Elizabeth froze. Even her heart seemed to still.
“What are you doing here?” Kristian asked, his voice taut, low.
“We—my girlfriend and I—live here part-time,” Nico answered. “Didn’t you know we’d taken a suite? I was sure you’d been told. At least, I know Pano was aware of it. I talked to him on the phone the other day.”
“I’ve been busy,” Kristian murmured distractedly.
Legs shaking, Elizabeth shifted her weight and the floorboard squeaked. All heads down below turned to look up at her.
Elizabeth grabbed the banister. This couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t be.
Nico, catching sight of her, was equally shocked. Staring up at Elizabeth, he laughed incredulously. “Grace?”
Elizabeth could only stare back.
Nico glanced at Kristian, and then back to his ex-wife. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Kristian answered tightly. “You tell me.”
“I don’t know either,” Nico said, frowning at Elizabeth. “But for a moment I thought you and Grace were…together.”
“Grace who?” Kristian demanded tersely.
“Stile. My American wife.”
Kristian went rigid. “There’s no Grace here.”
“Yes, there she is,” Nico answered. “She’s standing on the landing. Blonde hair. Black lace dress.”
Elizabeth felt Kristian’s confusion as he swung around, staring blindly up at the stairwell. Her heart contracted. “Kristian,” she said softly, hating his confusion, hating that she was the source of it, too.
“That’s not Grace,” Kristian retorted grimly. “That’s Elizabeth. Elizabeth Hatchet. My nurse.”
“Nurse?” Nico laughed. “Oh, dear, Koumantaros, it looks like she’s duped you. Because your Elizabeth is my ex-wife, Grace Stile. And a nasty gold-digger, too.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
KRISTIAN FELT AS though he’d been punched hard in the gut. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, could only stand there, struggling to take in air.
Elizabeth wasn’t Elizabeth? Elizabeth was really Grace Stile?
He tried to shake his head, tried to clear the fuzz and storm clouding his mind.
The woman he’d fallen in love with wasn’t even who he thought she was. Her name wasn’t even Elizabeth. Maybe she wasn’t even a nurse.
Maybe she was a gold-digger, just like Nico said.
Gold-digger. The word rang in Elizabeth’s head.
Shocked, she went hot, and then cold, and hot again.
“I’m no gold-digger,” she choked, finally finding her voice. Legs wobbling, she took one step and then another until
she’d reached the hall. “You are,” she choked. “You, you… you’re…” But she couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t defend herself, could scarcely breathe, much less think.
Nico had betrayed her.
Nico had married her for her money.
Nico had poisoned the Greek media and public against her.
Stomach roiling, she was swept back into that short brutal marriage and the months following their divorce.
He’d made her life a living hell and she’d been the one to pay—and pay, and pay. Not just for the divorce, and not just his settlement, but emotionally, physically, mentally. It had taken years to heal, years to stop being so hurt and so insecure and so angry. Angry.
And she had been angry because she’d felt cheated of love, cheated of the home and the family and the dreams she’d cherished. They were supposed to have been husband and wife. A couple, partners.
But she’d only been money, cash, the fortune to supplement Nico’s dwindling inheritance.
Nico, though, wasn’t paying her the least bit of attention. He was still talking to Kristian, a smirk on his face—a face she’d once thought so handsome. She didn’t find him attractive anymore, not even if she was being objective, because, next to Kristian, Nico’s good looks faded to merely boyish, almost pretty, whereas Kristian was fiercely rugged, all man.
“She’ll seduce you,” Nico continued, rolling back on his heels, his arms crossed over his chest. “And make you think it was your idea. And when she has you in bed she’ll tell you she loves you. She’ll make you think it’s love, but it’s greed. She’ll take you for everything you’re worth—”
“That’s enough. I’ve heard enough,” Kristian ground out, silencing Nico’s ruthless character assassination. He’d paled, so that the scar seemed to jump from his cheekbone, a livid reminder of the tragedy that had taken so much from him over a year ago.
“None of it is true,” Elizabeth choked, her body shaking, legs like jelly. “Nothing he says—”
“I said, enough.” Kristian turned away and walked down the hall.
Elizabeth felt the air leave her, her chest so empty her heart seized.
Somehow she found her way back to her room and stumbled into bed, where she lay stiff as a board, unable to sleep or cry.
Everything seemed just so unbelievably bad—so awful that it couldn’t even be assimilated.
Lying there, teeth chattering with shock and cold, Elizabeth prayed that when the sun finally rose in the morning all of this would be just a bad, bad dream.
* * *
It wasn’t.
The next morning a maid knocked on Elizabeth’s door, giving her the message that a car was ready to drive her to meet the helicopter.
Washing her face, Elizabeth avoided looking at herself in the
mirror before smoothing the wrinkles in her velvet dress and heading downstairs, where the butler ushered her to the waiting car.
Elizabeth had been under the impression that she’d be traveling back alone, but Kristian was already in the car when she climbed in.
“Good morning,” she whispered, sliding onto the seat but being careful to keep as much distance between them as she could.
His head barely inclined.
She ducked her head, stared at her fingers, which were laced and locked in her lap. Sick, she thought, so sick. She felt as though everything good and warm and hopeful inside her had vanished, left, gone. Died.
Eyes closing, she held her breath, her teeth sinking into her lower lip.
She only let her breath out once the car started moving, leaving the castle for the helicopter pad on the other side of town.
“You were Nico’s wife,” Kristian said shortly, his deep rough voice splitting the car’s silence in two. There was a brutality in his voice she’d never heard before. A violence that spoke of revenge and embittered passion.
Opening her eyes, she looked at Kristian, but she couldn’t read anything in his face—not when his fiercely handsome features were so frozen, fixed in hard, remote, unforgiving lines. It was as if his face wasn’t a face but a mask.
The car seemed to spin.
She didn’t answer, didn’t want to answer, didn’t know how to answer—because in his present frame of mind nothing she said would help, nothing she said would matter. After all, Kristian Koumantaros was a Greek man. It wouldn’t matter to him that she was divorced—had been divorced for years. In his mind she’d always be Nico’s wife.
Elizabeth glanced down at her hands again, the knuckles white. She was so dizzy she didn’t think she could sit straight, but finally she forced her head up, forced the world’s wild revolutions to slow until she could see Kristian on the seat next to her, his blue eyes brilliant, piercing, despite the fact that she knew he couldn’t see.
“I’m waiting,” he said flatly, finality and closure in his rough voice.
Tears filling her eyes, she drew another deep breath. “Yes,” she said, her voice so faint it sounded like nothing.
