The Giannakis Bride (7 page)

Reaching across the table, Brianna put a sympathetic hand over his, and this time he was the one taken by surprise. Up to that point, he’d initiated all physical contact between them, and, fragile though her overture was, he liked it. He liked it very much. And that was something he had to guard against.

“Don’t,” she said. “This was not your fault,
Dimitrios
. Do not blame yourself for Cecily’s bad behavior.”

“How do you know it wasn’t my bad behavior that drove her to such extremes?”

“Because I knew Cecily. Better than you did, probably. We lived together for almost twenty-four years, remember, and it doesn’t surprise me one iota that losing her figure struck her as a disaster on a par with the sinking of the Titanic. She was always very…” She shrugged, searching for the right word.

“Vain?”

“Conscious of her image,” she amended. “It’s not surprising, you know. We’d both been brought up believing how we looked was all that mattered. And I’m sorry to say, Cecily believed it. Not only that, I know for a fact that if she decided she was going to party with the wrong crowd, she’d have found a way to do it, regardless of any steps you took to prevent it.”

“Are you speaking from personal experience?”

She withdrew her hand and sat back in her chair, seeming to regret having revealed so much. “She was my sister and I loved her, but…” She sighed and looked off to one side. “Look, I don’t mean to sound disloyal, but for your peace of mind you need to understand that she was always…willful.”

“What about you?” he asked. “Are you as much alike on the inside as you were on the outside?”

“I can be stubborn,” she admitted. “When I make up my mind, I tend to stick to it.”

“I guess I should be glad. Because of that, Poppy might have found a donor.”

She bathed him in the kind of glance that, once upon a time, before he’d disciplined himself to separate sex from sanity, would have reduced him to a mass of raging testosterone. A soft, urgent, melting glance which, even now, he found dangerously distracting. “I might have been motivated by purely humanitarian reasons at the beginning,
Dimitrios
, but that changed when I actually met Poppy, when I looked into her eyes and held her in my arms.” Her breasts rose in a heartfelt sigh—another distraction he didn’t need. “My heart is engaged in a way I never expected. I’ve never before formed such an instant bond with another person.”

He couldn’t help himself. He had to ask. “Never, Brianna?”

Some of the animation faded from her face. “Hardly ever,” she hedged. “And never with a child. Until this morning, I didn’t know…”

“What?” he persisted, when she lapsed into silence.

Clearly undecided about how to answer, she bit her lip, then sat straighter in her chair, very much the posture-perfect model. “How remarkable children are. I mean, look at all Poppy’s going through—being away from you and the people she knows and loves, having needles stuck in her all the time, not having other children to play with. Yet she was laughing and smiling and—”

She choked up suddenly, and he saw tears shining in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I don’t mean to go all weepy and emotional on you.”

“No need to apologize. I have my moments, too.”

She swallowed hard. “How do you do it,
Dimitrios
? How do you manage to hold it together when you see her?”

“Because I have to. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned through all this, it’s that children are amazingly resilient and accepting and brave, and the least I can do is follow their example.”

Again she grabbed for his hand, and this time curled her fingers around his. “I want to help you, not just by testing as a donor. I want to be with you both—see it through with you. Please let me. Please don’t shut me out just because we were once…close.”

“‘Close,’ Brianna?” He freed his hand and poured more wine into his glass. “We were lovers, until you abruptly decided otherwise.”

She reared back in outrage. “Well, what else did you expect?”

“A truthful explanation for your very sudden departure would have been nice.” He paused. “And if you couldn’t do it then, how about now?”

Her eyes grew wide with astonishment. “You really want me to spell it out for you, after all this time?”

“It’s never too late to set the record straight, and I’m tough. I can take rejection. What I can’t tolerate are lies. So explain to me, please, why you bothered pretending you wanted to build a future with me, when all along you planned to jump ship at the first opportunity? Why didn’t you just come right out and tell me your precious modeling career meant more than anything I had to offer?”

“Because that wasn’t the reason, you jerk! I wanted you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, even if I do now ask myself why, but I left because there were some things I refused to share with my sister, your bed being one of them.”

He gave his head a disbelieving shake, sure he’d misunderstood. “What did you just say?”

“Oh, please! Stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about. We made love in your stateroom. You wanted me to stay the night. I wouldn’t, because I didn’t want to start a feeding frenzy of gossip among the crew and passengers if we were found out. So I went back to my own quarters, but I couldn’t sleep. That’s the kind of effect you had on me,
Dimitrios
. I was intoxicated by you. Floating on air.”

“You had a funny way of showing it.”

Ignoring his snide interruption, she continued doggedly, “I finally decided to go up on deck and watch the sunrise. And that’s when I saw Cecily leaving your cabin.”

“Did you?” he said. “And did you ask her what she was doing there?”

“I didn’t have to. She was only too happy to tell me what marvelous stamina you had, what an incredible romp between the sheets you’d given her.”

“And you believed her.”

Suddenly not sounding so confident, she muttered, “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because she was lying, Brianna,” he informed her dully, none of the exhilaration he should have known filling him. Instead he felt hollow, empty. So much time wasted, so many mistakes piling one on top of another, and all because of a misunderstanding that need never have occurred in the first place. “As you’d have found out soon enough if you’d had the guts to shove her back through my door and made her repeat her allegations to my face.”

“You’re the one lying. I saw her. She’d been in your room.”

“Sure she had. Tried climbing into my bed, as well, pretending to be you. It was dark enough that she might even have gotten away with it, if I hadn’t picked up a whiff of tobacco on her breath.”

“Did you confront her?”

“No,” he said sarcastically. “I jumped up and down like a crazed ape, beat my manly chest and bellowed to the whole of Crete how lucky I was to have the Connelly twins fighting over me.” He stopped and drew an irate breath. “What do you take me for? Of course I confronted her!”

“Well, what did she say?”

“That you’d asked her to keep me occupied so that you could sneak off and catch a flight out of
Heraklion
without my knowing.”

Ashen-faced, Brianna stared at him. “But why would she bother concocting such an elaborate story for me? What advantage did that give her?”

“Use your head, woman! She wanted rid of you, because she was jealous, and she knew damned well your pride would never allow you to challenge me and thus expose her deception.”

Rallying, she countered, “It’s easy for you to make that claim now, when it’s too late for anyone to prove otherwise.”

“I’m not in the habit of lying, Brianna, and if it’s a confession of guilt you’re after, I freely admit I slept with her the very next night after you left,” he acknowledged calmly. “A big mistake on my part, certainly, and I’m not proud of it, but a man tends to react badly when he’s been dumped by the woman he planned to spend the rest of his life with. Pour enough booze into him, and if there’s someone else more than willing to take her place, and she happens also to be a carbon copy of the original, well…” He shrugged. “It’s called the rebound factor. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

“It strikes me as a bit more than that. After all, you ended up marrying her a couple of months later, and not a moment too soon, judging by Poppy’s age.”

She looked so crushed that, just briefly, he regretted having spoken so forthrightly. But she wasn’t the only one who’d paid a high price, anymore than he was the only one who’d made mistakes.

“Because she was pregnant,” he said. “Look, Brianna, I could tell you I never loved her the way I loved you, that I cursed myself a thousand times over for being such a bloody fool, and it would all be true, but none of that changes the fact that you and I, not Cecily, were mostly at fault. She seized an opportunity, but we’re the ones who gave it to her because we didn’t trust one another enough.”

“We hadn’t known each other long enough to develop any trust.”

“Perhaps not, but if we’d really been as deeply in love as we thought we were, I’d have fought for you anyway and hoped like hell I wouldn’t live to regret it. But I didn’t. I let you go.”

Again she glanced aside. “I’m to blame, as well. I ran away because it was easier than facing what I thought was the truth. I should have known better. I just never dreamed Cecily could be so…so destructive.”

“Because you didn’t really know her as well as you thought. Nobody did. All we ever learned was what she allowed us to see. She was like an iceberg, with seven-eighths, the most treacherous part, hidden.”

“Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it?” she said miserably.

His cell phone interrupted, sparing his having to comment. Just as well. He might have said something he’d live to regret. “Me sing
khorite
,” he murmured, noticing the name showing on the display screen. “Excuse me. I have to take this call.”

She nodded and, rising from her chair with her trademark grace, wandered over to examine the flowers growing near the fountain. “What?” he barked into the phone, royally ticked off with himself for not being able to tear his glance away from her long, elegant legs and slender hips.

“Where the devil are you?”
Pavlos
, his PA, shot back. “The meeting’s due to start in ten minutes.”

“What meeting?”

“The one slated to make you another cool two million
euros
or more, provided, of course, you’re still interested. The one which has the consortium from Shanghai cooling its heels in the executive lounge and wondering if you really exist or are just a figment of an overactive Greek imagination. Need I go on?”

“
Skata
,
Pavlos
,” he muttered. “I forgot all about it.”

“Not surprising, I guess, all things considered. You’ve got a lot on your mind right now.”

“More than you can begin to guess,” he groaned. “Keep the visitors occupied with the video presentation until I can get there, will you? I’m still in
Kifissia
, but I’ll be there as soon as I can. Traffic’s building, so I’ll leave my car here and take the Metro. I should be there within forty minutes.”

Seeing he’d ended the call, Brianna returned to the table. “Everything all right?”

“
Ohi
. I have to go, but you stay and enjoy the rest of your meal and the wine. I’ll take care of the bill on my way out. If you’re up to exploring a bit more, you might want to browse the boutiques farther down the road.” He pressed his phone into her hand. “You know how to use one of these.
Spiros
is on speed dial. When you’re ready to leave, give him a call and let him know where to pick you up.”

She caught his sleeve as he went to turn away. “Just a minute—”

“I don’t have a minute, Brianna,” he interrupted, making no effort to curb his impatience. “I know we were in the middle of something, but it’ll have to keep until another time because I need to leave. Now.”

“Just tell me before you go. Is it Poppy? Has something happened? Because if it has and you’re headed back to the clinic, I’m coming with you.”

He’d have had to be pretty jaded not to recognize the concern in her eyes and voice. Feeling low as dirt for snapping at her without cause, he squeezed her hand and said more gently, “It’s not Poppy. It’s business. But thanks for caring. Look, I’ll see you later, okay, and we’ll pick up where we left off. Meanwhile, try to enjoy what’s left of the afternoon.”

She watched him walk away, six feet plus of utter competence and self-assurance. Never a wasted word or motion. Never an awkward pause as he fumbled for just the right word. Never a clumsy move.

She, however, was a mess. She’d been on an emotional roller coaster for the better part of three hours. And the last sixty minutes had, in some ways, been the most shocking.

She’d known for a long time that Cecily envied her; that what she herself saw as an equal partnership between sisters had, in Cecily’s mind, become a competition between rivals, one that recognized no boundaries between their professional and personal lives. But that she’d go to such extremes, that she’d deliberately sabotage her sister’s budding love affair…?

On the other hand, was it really so surprising? Casting her mind back, Brianna recalled a number of occasions during the last few months they’d shared an apartment, when she’d been singled out for special assignments which hadn’t included her sister, but she’d missed them because Cecily either “accidentally” erased voice mail messages, or conveniently “forgot” to pass them on.