The Giannakis Bride (9 page)

“There’s no ‘possibly’ about it! Maybe I couldn’t save my sister from self-destructing, but I’m not about to stand by and watch her daughter die if I can do something to prevent it.”

“So what are you saying? That you’re here out of guilt or a sense of obligation?”

“Perhaps in the beginning. But certainly not now.”

“Why? What’s changed in the past twenty-four hours?”

“Everything,” she said. “I’ve fallen in love with my niece.”

“For how long? Until she’s healthy again, at which point you’ll disappear from the canvas and that’ll be the last we see of you?”

Was this love-hate pendulum what he meant by a truce? If so, she wanted no part of it. “That is not what I said. Stop putting words in my mouth.”

“Then what, exactly, are your intentions?”

She gave an involuntary chirp of laughter. “For heaven’s sake,
Dimitrios
, you’re not interviewing a prospective suitor.”

His lips twitched in an answering smile. An unfortunate response, she decided, hastily looking away. His mouth was a seduction in itself, and when it came to making love, he knew how to use it. And that was definitely not something she wished to be reminded of, especially not when she was trapped beside him in the intimate confines of his car. “I’m going to make a hell of a father-in-law, aren’t I?” he said.

“I hope so,” she replied, sobering. “With all my heart, I hope we’re both going to see the day that Poppy walks down the aisle, a beautiful bride.”

“You plan on being there for that, as well, do you?”

“Count on it. I can’t take her mother’s place, but I can and will do the next best thing.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said.

They’d reached
Kifissia
by then, and the streets were just coming to life as dusk fell. The aroma of roasting meat and garlic and hot olive oil drifted from the open doors of
tavernas
, displacing the lingering scent of
Penteli’s
pine-drenched air. Groups of people sat outside, their laughter and conversation vying with the music of the bouzouki players wandering among the tables.

Gradually, though, the noise diminished, muffled by the trees lining the streets, and when
Dimitrios
at last turned onto the steep crescent where the clinic stood and pulled up in the forecourt, a hush hung over the land. Stepping out of the car, Brianna caught the faint whiff of some sweet-smelling night flower. Palm trees swathed the parking area in dense shadow. Overhead, the sky had turned a soft violet. Although the hospital windows glowed softly in the encroaching dark, the raucous noise and bustle and bright lights of Athens might have been a continent away, instead of just a few miles.

They found Poppy almost asleep, but at the sight of
Dimitrios
, she climbed up and reached for him over the high rails of her bed. “Papa!” she whimpered.

Scooping her into his arms, he paced the room with her, all the while crooning softly in her ear. Eventually she grew quiet. Her little fist relaxed, its fingers spreading like pale petals against his tanned neck. Her head drooped against his chest. Her eyes fell closed. And Brianna had to turn away, so affected by the sight that her heart ached as if squeezed in a vise.

Quietly she left the room. Now was not the time for a stranger bearing gifts to intrude on such a special moment. Nothing money could buy held a candle to the bond between this big, strong man and his tiny, fragile daughter. Leaving the music box and mobile on a table next to her purse in the anteroom, she walked to the window and stared unseeingly at the gardens below.

She didn’t turn when she heard him leave Poppy’s room. She didn’t want him to see the tears clinging to her eyelashes. But, joining her, he noticed anyway. Without a word he put his arms around her and drew her to him. The last time he’d done that, handling her as tenderly as if she were made of spun glass, had been with the murmured promise of a future together.

This time all he said was, “I know.”

“Does it ever get easier,” she asked, when she was able to speak again. “Coming here and seeing her so alone and ill, I mean?”

“No. But you get used to the pain.”

“I don’t think I will. I’m not strong like you.”

“You’d be surprised, Brianna, at how much a parent will endure to help his child.”

Not very much in my sister’s case, she thought sadly, shaken by a sob she couldn’t stifle. It was all very fine to lay the blame for Cecily’s behavior at someone else’s feet, but the fact remained, she’d left her baby to be brought up by a housekeeper, and shown such disregard for her own life that it ended before her daughter had laid down any lasting memories of the woman who’d brought her into the world. What sort of legacy was that?

“Enough now,”
Dimitrios
scolded. “I’m taking you home. Poppy’s asleep for the night and you’re exhausted. Tomorrow’s Saturday. We’ll come back in the morning when she’s more alert and you can give her your gifts then.”

Still with his arm around her waist, they left the clinic.

Soon enough, they’d left
Kifissia
, too, and were following the twisting mountain road back to
Rafina
. “Doesn’t it bother you, having to drive so far to see her?” Brianna asked, breaking a silence which had lasted almost fifteen minutes.

“No. I like being on the coast. Sailing’s one of my passions—at least, it used to be, when I had the time and inclination to enjoy it. And it’s better for Poppy to grow up away from the city. The air pollution in Athens grows worse every year.”

“Did Cecily like
Rafina
?”

He let out a soft snort of laughter. “What do you think, Brianna?”

“She might have found it a little…isolated.”

“She loathed it,” he said, “although for the first year she pretended it was just what she wanted. But toward the end, she spent hardly any time there at all.”

Puzzled, she said, “Where did she go?”

“I had an apartment in the city, in
Kolonaki
, which I’ve since sold. She stayed there.”

“Alone? She didn’t take Poppy with her?”

“She didn’t take Poppy. And she wasn’t alone.”

Shocked speechless by the implication in his words, she stared at him.

“That’s right,” he said. “She had company. Of the male kind.”

“Why didn’t you divorce her?”

“I didn’t care enough to bother. I—”

The car, until then purring smoothly along the unfolding ribbon of road like a sleek, well-bred cat, suddenly rebelled. For no apparent reason, the engine simply gave up the ghost. The only sound to break the silence was the soft hiss of the tires, and
Dimitrios
cursing as he wrestled with the steering wheel.

Somehow, before it lost all forward momentum, he managed to bring the vehicle to the shoulder of the highway and set the emergency brake. “Son of a bitch!” he remarked pleasantly.

“What happened?”

“Well, I’m not out of gas, so that eliminates one possibility.” He dimmed the headlamps but pressed a button on the dash. “And the hazard lights work, which suggests the problem isn’t electrical, so my guess is some other computer part has failed. Not that I pretend to be any sort of auto mechanic, you understand.”

“So what do we do now?”

“I call
Spiros
to come and collect us.” Lifting the car phone from its cradle, he accessed the number, spoke briefly, and hung up. “Done. Ten minutes, fifteen tops, and we’ll home.”

“What about this car?”

He angled his body toward her and slung a casual arm over the back of her seat. The blinking yellow hazard lights made him appear more shadow than substance, but the heat of his body was very, very real. “It’ll be towed in for repair.”

“I see.” She cleared her throat, all too aware of the solitude of their situation. The last house they’d passed lay several kilometers behind them. “So what do we do until
Spiros
gets here?”

“We wait.” His voice grazed her ear. His warm breath drifted over her face. “And pass the time the best way we know how.”

Her lungs just about seized up on her. “I don’t think we should be doing this,
Dimitrios
,” she protested feebly.

“Why not? If you were telling me the truth earlier, I’m not poaching on another man’s territory.”

Blink, blink, blink went the hazard lights, regular as a heart monitor. Except her heart wasn’t keeping time. It was leaping around behind her ribs like a mad thing. And other parts of her, parts well below her waist, were stirring in ways that left her taut with forbidden delight.

“Perhaps not, but the fact remains, you’re my brother-in-law,” she gasped, turning her face aside and pushing him away with one hand. Big mistake! He was all firm, heated masculine flesh and steely muscle beneath his shirt.

He placed his forefinger at the side of her jaw and effortlessly turned her face to his again. “And now I’m a widower. By my reckoning, that frees both of us to listen to our hearts. I can’t speak for yours,
karthula
mou
, but mine is telling me this is long overdue.”

His mouth nudged hers, masterful, persuasive, and no amount of frantic rationalizing on her part could turn it into a brotherly peck. His hands shaped her face, mapping every curve, every hollow, with the minute attention to detail of a blind man.

“Why don’t we stop pretending we don’t know where this is leading?” he murmured.

She wished she could tell him it wasn’t going anywhere, but the inescapable fact remained that what was happening had slipped right off the friendship scale and veered altogether too close to love of the man-and-woman, Adam-and-Eve kind. He was blatantly, flagrantly, seducing her. Sending time spinning backward. Reviving old yearnings and leaving them screaming for satisfaction.

His fingers stroked down her neck, dipped inside the top of her blouse, close enough to bring her nipples surging to life, but not enough that she could actually accuse him of fondling her breasts.

He was stealing her soul. Making her forget she was supposed to hate him. She should have slapped him. Jumped out of the car and waited on the road for
Spiros
to rescue her. Instead she melted. Enthralled past all reason, she cast off any thought of self-preservation. The kind of magic he wove was too rare, too blissful, to resist. He reminded her of things she’d ignored for a very long time; in particular that, beneath her glossy exterior, she was a very lonely woman who’d been aching and empty for far too long.

Her hand slid up his chest to his neck. Her fingers tangled in his hair. She clung to him, her body yearning toward him, a moan of raw need rising in her throat. If the console separating their two seats hadn’t made it virtually impossible, she’d have climbed into his lap.

The blaze of approaching headlights cut across the scene, a timely interruption that snapped her back to reality before she made a complete fool of herself. Oh, she was hopeless, pathetic, to have succumbed so quickly, so easily, to temptation.

“Thank God!” she breathed, recognizing
Spiros
at the wheel of the Mercedes as it made a U-turn in the road and came to a stop behind them. She groped for her purse lying at her feet and made a grab for the door handle in her haste to get away from
Dimitrios
.

But at the last minute he reached over and stopped her. “Run as far and as fast as you like, Brianna, but what just started here isn’t finished, not by a long shot.”

“Nothing started,” she panted.

“You think not,
karthula
mou
?” he inquired, his own breathing as ragged as hers. “Then I suggest you think again.”

Dinner turned into an onerous affair. The conversation was stilted, the atmosphere charged with tension, the superbly presented
butterflied
scampi and chilled white wine flavored equally with sexual awareness and disapproval.

Brianna sat across from
Dimitrios
with what seemed like an acre of table separating him from her. A safe enough distance, she’d have thought. But its glass top unfortunately provided him with an unimpaired view of every inch of her, from the tip of her black sandals to the top of her head. If she crossed her ankles, he noticed. If she tugged at her skirt or scratched her knee, he saw.

“You don’t seem to be enjoying your meal, Brianna,” he remarked, watching as she rearranged the food on her plate. “Why not? I know how much you like shellfish.”

“You do?”

“Of course,” he said, his lazy gaze traveling the length of her and back again. “I remember everything about you.”

No doubt including the fact that she’d been a virgin when she met him and hadn’t known an orgasm from an
aubergine
!

He’d wasted no time teaching her the difference, and if his scrutiny now was any indication, seemed bent on furthering her education as soon as possible. His camera eyes captured everything they saw and recorded it in the steel trap that was his mind. Smoldering eyes that burned through her clothes and seared her flesh.

At the other end of the spectrum, Erika stood in the corner, vengeful as a crow in her severe black blouse and ankle-length skirt. Ready to defend him should he come under attack, she kept her cold, beady gaze fixed accusingly on Brianna. With good reason, because Brianna hadn’t merely submitted to his overtures in the car, she’d responded to them willingly. Eagerly. And she knew her cheeks glowed like neon signs advertising her guilty secret for all the world to see.