Xenakis's Convenient Bride

As he had wrapped his injury, he had realized he couldn’t use the global health insurance that covered Steve Michaels, heir to a multinational pharmaceutical corporation. Using his Greek surname for the admission form had been another gamble. The nurse, a woman approaching retirement, had eyed him, saying she had attended school with a local woman who had married a Stavros Xenakis. Any relation?

He had ducked raking over the past. It promised to be a lot worse than this dull ache in his shin. Besides, Antonio had managed to get through two weeks without blowing his cover. Stavros’s ego refused to fail where his friend had succeeded.

He spotted Calli standing in the shade near the Vespa. As he approached, her gaze took an admiring sweep over his still-naked torso, betraying that her disdain for him was an act even as she shook out a T-shirt and offered it to him with an expression on her face like an offended matron’s.

The shirt was imprinted with a subtle design of the Greek flag in stripes of white against the blue of the shirt, which was something he might have chosen for himself if he wore T-shirts with logos.

“I expected ‘Greece’ is the word.”

“I almost got the one that said ‘Made on Mount Olympus,’ but, you know, why state the obvious?”

“Careful, Calli. That sounds like you find me attractive.” He shrugged on the shirt, telling himself it was his competitive nature that made him provoke her. Pursue her. She was a nanny, for God’s sake. One who was snobbishly turning down the pool boy. That made her an amusing distraction, not someone worth obsessing about.

“Keep telling yourself that.” She turned to reach for her helmet.

“You are telling me.” He caught her arm, waiting for her gaze to flash up to his. “Every time you look at me.” He demonstrated by taking her other arm and gently pressing her elbows back, giving her plenty of opportunity to recoil, but she didn’t, not even when her breasts nudged his chest.

She caught her breath and set tense fingers on the sides of his rib cage, even notched her chin in a signal of defiance, but she didn’t tell him to stop. A fine quiver made her lashes tremble. Her pulse fluttered in her throat and she searched his gaze for his intention, but she wasn’t afraid. She was excited.

She was daring him.

This was why he was obsessing. A primitive, powerful hunger rose in him, answering the siren song she was singing.

“I know the signs of desire in a woman.” He looked down at where her nipples were hard beneath the soft cups of her bra. He wanted to bite at them through the fabric. “They’re painted all over you. Just as I’m sure you felt me hard against your ass the entire ride down here. We react to each other. Why fight it?”

He was hard again, steely and aching as he watched her lips part. His ears buzzed, awaiting her words, but she only let panting breaths whisper between them.

The compulsion to plunder her mouth nearly undid him, but he tasted the side of her neck first, liking the tiny cry of surprise that escaped her as he ran his hot tongue over salty skin that smelled of coconut and lavender. He delicately sucked, then nibbled his way up her neck. She melted with each incremental bite of his lips against her skin.

By the time he got to her mouth, she was making a delicious noise of helplessness, leaning her body into his, breasts pressing in soft cushions against his chest. Her lips were as plump and responsive as any he’d ever tasted. More. He was starving. Rapacious. She’d been driving him crazy, invading his dreams every night and now, finally, she was his.

Releasing her arms, he let one hand trail down to cup her ass and draw her soft belly into the ache pulsing between his thighs. His other hand went into her hair, tugging to pull her head back so he could feast on her throat again, loving the way it made her knees weaken so she twined her arms around his neck and hung helplessly against him, mons pushed against his straining erection.

He wanted to back her into the shade and take her against the wall of the clinic, but he could hear a car crunching on the gravel as it entered the lot behind them. He forced himself to lift his head and waited for her heavy eyelids to blink open, for her honey-gold eyes to focus.

“Did you want to make another remark about my finances now, to put me in my place?” He kept his tone light, but he never let anyone get away with insulting him. Screw Sebastien’s challenge. He was still a man and he wasn’t a weak one.

She paled beneath her golden tan and pushed out of his arms, gaze dropping with shame. “This was a punishment? Well, didn’t you teach me.”

The scrape of bitterness in her tone dug like talons into his gut. She covered her glossy black hair with the helmet, avoiding his gaze, but he could see her thick lashes moving in rapid blinks.

He was used to sophisticated women who made the most of their attraction and offered themselves without ceremony. Lately, since his grandfather’s wish that he marry had become known, there had been an even bigger frenzy of pretty piranhas circling and luring, promising any carnal act he requested if he would only put a ring on a finger.

This one stood before him with her bare, fraught expression and mouth still pouted by their kiss, wearing an unassuming wardrobe over a body that looked fit from sporty exercise, rather than sculpted by starving herself and bankrolling a plastic surgeon. When she had kissed him back, it hadn’t been the toying provocation of a woman trying to lead a man by his organ. She’d been hot and wanton, completely swept away—as he had almost been.

He put his hand on her flat stomach, urging her to pause and look at him. “I kissed you because I wanted to.”

“You kissed me because you thought you were entitled to.” She snapped the buckle under her chin. “I knew what kind of man you were the day we met.” She grasped his finger, disdainfully peeling his hand away from her abdomen and discarding it. “I forgot once, but I won’t make that mistake again.”

“American?” The contempt curling her lips went into him like a blade, even sharper than the first time. “Not Greek enough for you?”

“A tomcat. Here for a good time, not a long time.”

* * *

Calli caught sight of a car, not her mother’s, but close enough to make her take the opposite direction out of town, not wanting to pass her father’s end again.

Besides, she found the southern end of the island more peaceful. Fishermen launched their small boats and grape growers eked out a living from the dry, rocky land. It was very desolate, but also very Greek. It was home.

She loved this island. She had stayed after her father threw her out for many reasons, money being the big one, at least at first. She hadn’t had the means to get off the island, let alone to New York, and hadn’t wanted to be exiled from her home along with losing everything else.

She hadn’t wanted to leave until she could go to America, but no matter how she tried, those goalposts kept moving. Takis had even tried to help her, but that had fallen apart. Meanwhile, he gave her a better job than anyone with her limited skill set could expect. The longer she stayed, the deeper her ties to him and Ophelia grew, rooting her here even more.

Staying had been a statement of defiance, too, as much as a lack of choice. Her father thought she had shamed him? So be it. She had stayed and lived in what appeared to be flagrant sin with a man much older than herself, continuing to shame him. He deserved to feel ashamed. She would never forget what he had done to her and her son. She wanted him to know it.

But soon she would have to say goodbye and make her way to New York. Once Ophelia left, Calli planned to leave, too.

She was terrified.

“He’s in a better place,” her mother had said, two days after Dorian was gone, when Calli had caught up to her at one of her cleaning jobs.

“Stop saying that! He’s not dead.”

Her father could shout that lie until he was blue in the face, but Calli knew. Brandon’s parents had offered her money to hand over the baby, claiming they had a nice family who would raise him to their standards, but she had to give up all claim to him. She had refused.

Then suddenly Dorian was gone and she knew, didn’t have proof but she knew her father had taken the money and sold her son to them.

“Why are you doing this?” she had cried at her mother. “Why are you letting him get away with it?” It was more frankness than had ever passed between them, so many things always left unsaid to keep the peace.

“Look at you!” Her mother had turned on her with uncharacteristic sharpness. “You’re a child. One turned willful and wild. What kind of mother would you make? And you want to bring up your baby in this?” She’d showed no pity as she waved at Calli’s swollen eye and cut lip, the bruises on her shoulders and back, the dirt clinging to her clothes and hair from sleeping on the beach.

It was true she didn’t want her son raised under the heavy hand of a hard, angry man like her father. She had learned an even uglier rage lived in him than she had ever feared or imagined.

“I’m going after him,” she had declared.

“Don’t. Those are powerful people, Calli. They can offer more, but they can take more. He is in a better place. Accept it.”

“What kind of mother are you to say that to me?” Calli had ducked the scrub brush that came flying at her, then had run out of the house to avoid a fresh beating on top of the one still throbbing black-and-blue under her skin.

She had numbly retraced this long stretch of ragged coastline on foot after leaving that stranger’s house, fighting her mother’s words. Calli had been a good mother, for the short time she’d been allowed to try.

But she’d been young enough to still put stock in the words of those who were older, those who seemed to know better. As she was forced into more and more desperate decisions simply to stay alive, she had started to wonder if her mother wasn’t right. She was a terrible person. Not fit to be a mother.

Now it was six years later and she had tried several times to locate her son, but things had happened to prevent her. Each small failure had reinforced that she wasn’t meant to have him.

He was in a better place without her.

But she would never rest until she knew that for sure.

It made moments like this bittersweet. As the road quieted and the cool, salt-scented air swept over her, she drank it in, trying to relax and live in the moment. To accept life’s hard turns and just be.

But that made her hyperaware of Stavros’s strong frame surrounding her.

It made her remember their kiss.

Think of Brandon.

That memory was a distant recollection of flattery and pretty lies that she had believed because she had wanted to. Those first stirrings of attraction were nothing compared to the way this man’s aura glowed off him and sank through her skin, slanting rosy hues through her without even trying. He set her alight in ways she hadn’t believed were possible.

She told herself the vibration of the bike caused her nipples to feel tight and her loins to clench in hollow need. She was hot because it was a hot summer day. She was flush against the front of his hot body while the hot sun beat down.

Still, it was all she could do to stop herself from inching back into the hard shape pressed to her butt. She knew what it was and it provoked an ache into her breasts and belly and the juncture of her thighs. It was maddening.

She told herself not to give him this power over her, but it wasn’t voluntary. It simply was.

And now she was forced to slow and extend this ride. Up ahead, the road was plugged with sheep, the herd thick between the thornbush-covered hillside and the rail that kept traffic from dropping off the short, sharp ledge to the scrub-covered shoreline.

On impulse, she made a sharp right onto the narrow peninsula that jutted out into the sea. Might as well be a decent hostess if they were right here. At least she could take a break from the physical contact.

Behind her, Stavros said something, a curse or a protest, she wasn’t sure. His hands seemed to harden on her hips, fingertips digging in, but not in a sensual way.

Worried about getting back to work?

“The sheep will be twenty minutes clearing the road. It would take that long to go back around the other way,” she called back as she wound along the goat track to the end.

The motion rubbed their bodies together even more and she was relieved to finally stop the bike and climb off. “At least there’s a breeze out here. And it’s pretty.”

It was spectacular. The jut of land provided a near 360-degree view of the horizon. As she took off her helmet, there was no sound except the whisper of wind in the long grass and the rush of foaming waves against the boulders that formed the tip of the spit.

The rugged beauty was deceptive, though. Sometimes people walked out on those boulders, tourists who didn’t know better. One slip could be deadly. The currents were dangerous and if bad weather was headed for the island, it showed up here first, chopping the sea into crashing waves, then throwing itself against the land in mighty gusts and nasty pelts of rain.

When Stavros stayed by the bike, she glanced back. “Is your leg bothering you?”

He sent her a filthy look, one loaded with resentment and hostility, taking her aback.

She parted her lips, not knowing what to say.

The way he stalked behind her, toward the tip of the spit, had her stammering, “You can’t swim here. It’s too dangerous. People die.”

“I know.” The gravel in his voice made her scalp prickle.

Stavros paused where the end of the striated rock had been broken off by a millennia of waves, the pieces left jagged and toppled in the churning water below.

Part of her had disbelieved that he had ever lived here, but as he looked out as if he saw something in the rolling, shifting sea, she had the impression he had stood in that exact spot before. Searching.

Her heart dropped.

He seemed very isolated in that moment, with his profile stark and carved, his hands slowly clenching as though he was bearing up under tortuous pressure.

His anguish was palpable.

She moved without consciously deciding to, standing next to him, searching his expression, wanting to reach out and offer comfort.

His flinty gaze seemed to drill a hole into the water, one that led directly to the underworld. He looked as though he was girding himself to dive straight into it.

His ravaged face made her throat sting. His posture was braced and resolute. Like he was taking a lashing, but refused to cringe. He accepted the castigation. Bore it, even though there was no end in sight for this particular punishment.

A clench of compassion gripped her, but he was a column of contained emotion.

“Stavros.” It was barely a whisper. She wanted to say she was sorry. How could she have known this would be so painful for him?

His face spasmed before he hardened his jaw and controlled his expression. When he cut his gaze to hers, it was icy cold. His voice was thick with self-contempt.

“Man whore is the least of my character flaws.”

Her heart lurched. She knew how deeply that word whore cut. She hadn’t meant to sink to that level when she had called him a tomcat.

In that moment, she knew he was nothing like superficial Brandon who threw money at an unplanned child to make it go away. Stavros was as deep as the vast sea they faced, churning beneath the gilded surface he presented to the world.

“I didn’t know—” She touched his cold arm, but he shrugged off her light fingers.

“Let’s go. I have a job to finish so I can get the hell off this island.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE WATER CURTAIN had been only a drawing and some footings when his father had died. Stavros was laying the tiles around the base of the two columns, standing back to assess his work, when Calli spoke.

“I’ve been making spanakopita. I thought you might like some.”

He’d been trying to keep her at a distance these last few days, feeling exposed since she had blithely forced him to face what he had been avoiding for twenty years.

Swim for shore. I’ll be right behind you.

He had always had a defiant streak. He came by it honestly. His father had flouted rules just as often.

Why do I have to wear a life vest if you don’t? he had asked his father as they’d boarded the small skiff.

Do you want to go fishing or not? I’ll be fine. Put on your vest or we’re not going anywhere.

Sebastien had asked Stavros why he owned a boat he didn’t use. That was why. Boating made him sick and it wasn’t mal de mer.

He’d always had it in his mind that he would overcome that weakness, though. Perhaps he would even sail these waters one day.

To what end? So he could do this? Relive the day he had, for once, done as he had been told and swam? Swam as if his life depended on it, because it had?

While abandoning his father to his death.

He kept thinking that Sebastien could have the damned yacht. He didn’t want it. It certainly didn’t bring him any sort of happiness, exactly as Sebastien had called it that night in St. Moritz.

He should have helped his father get to shore. That was the voice he used money and toys and women and death-defying feats to muffle. It wasn’t only his opinion. That truth had been reinforced in his grandfather’s interrogation after the accident and colored every word his grandfather had spoken to him since.

Use your American name. It’s better for business. Translation: “You don’t have the right to use Stavros. That was your father’s name.”

You want the company to succeed, don’t you? Don’t let your father’s dreams die with him.

Think of your mother and sisters. Do you want them to be well supported or not? It’s up to you.

Basically, “do as I say or I will turn all of you onto the street.”

Despite Stavros saying nothing to Calli about the way his father had been killed, she had offered a doe-eyed empathy that had been too tender a thing to bear. He had brought her back here and worked until dark, only pausing when she had brought out a plate of ground lamb sprinkled over triangles of grilled pita, and a dollop of tzatziki with a salad of peppers.

“I’ll have to start over with the moussaka tomorrow, but no sense letting this go to waste,” she had said.

She was acting compassionate when he had only ever seen grief in his mother and sisters and that well-deserved censure from his grandfather.

Yet, since that day on the spit, he hadn’t been dwelling on the accident so much as how his grandfather had yanked them off this island and sold the house immediately after the accident. He had changed their names and refused to hear Greek under his roof, denying Stavros this connection to his roots. To his memories of a happy childhood.

“Keep the keys for the Vespa,” Calli had told Stavros when he finished up that evening. “If I need it, I’ll let you know.”

Her generosity had been hard to assimilate against the criticism that had dominated his life for nearly two decades. He had taken the keys, but turned from her kindness like it was too hot, too bright.

He had worked half days on the weekend, spending the afternoons reacquainting with the island, allowing himself to remember more than his fatal mistake, all the while trying not to wish her curves were spooned against his back. He didn’t need a woman cuddling him through this. He had to face it alone.

He had come to a decision among the seared hills and unforgiving water. He wasn’t a boy any longer and his grandfather would no longer be his master. He would buy back his former home, if only to have somewhere to go when his grandfather made good on his promise to cut him off.

The decision eased the turmoil in him, put a fire in his belly. Put him in a conquering mood as he eyed the woman who moved with such unconscious grace. Her loose hair swung as she set the plate of triangular pastries on the low table next to the lounger. Her peach-colored shorts hugged her perfect ass and her breasts moved freely under her sleeveless pink top. The tails of the shirt were knotted above her navel, exposing a strip of skin he instantly wanted to touch. Taste.

He wanted her, wanted to lose himself in her. He wanted to imprint himself on her as if he could imprint himself on this island with the action. As if he could become the man he should have been by conquering her.

While she wanted to stroke his hair and say, “There, there.”

He moved to the sink in the wet bar and washed his hands, shaking them dry as he said, “Quit feeling sorry for me.”

She blinked. “I don’t.”

“What are you out here for, then?”

“I thought you might be hungry.”

“I am.” He advanced on her, watching her eyes widen. “But not for food.” A small lie. He was starving and broke after using the wages he had been given last Friday to pay her back for the stitches. “No appetite for charity, either.”

* * *

Calli scented danger, but held her ground.

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