saying I married you for companionship and friendship. I married you so I’d have someone to share my life with. I didn’t marry you so you could constantly control me and lecture me and make me feel worthless. My father did that quite nicely and I’ve had enough of being marginalized. I expect better of you. In fact I demand better.”
Ice water seemed to wash through his veins. Damen stiffened. “This is not the way to entice me into your bed, kitten. I do not respond well to demands. Not from anyone.”
“I want you to take me seriously. I want you to respect me the way I respect you.”
“But you don’t sound respectful. You sound like a spoiled, rich woman who thinks she is entitled to whatever she wants.”
Kassiani flinched. “You are calling me entitled?”
He shrugged. “If the shoe fits?”
“It doesn’t!”
“If you say so,” he added with another careless shrug before turning around and walking away from her.
* * *
Kassiani refused to give in to tears. She wasn’t going to cry, not again today or tonight. But her guest room, even though luxurious, felt like a cage and she couldn’t bear feeling trapped so she went down a floor to the living room and dining room and its expansive deck so that she could walk outside on the deck and try to calm down.
Damen had called her entitled. Clearly he—captain of his universe—didn’t know what the word entitled meant.
KASSIANI CHANGED INTO one of her swimsuits and headed upstairs to the pool deck with one of the books she’d brought to Greece with her. They were at sea again and the afternoon was warm, and as she stood at the railing she welcomed the breeze and the panoramic views of shimmering water dotted with distant islands. The Aegean was truly remarkable and she loved how the rich sapphire sea lightened to turquoise and aqua as the yacht approached islands with their shallow bays and inlets.
It was a shame they hadn’t spent more time on Mykonos today.
It was a shame that she and Damen couldn’t get along. She could almost understand why he wanted a contract... He wanted peace. He wanted undemanding companionship. She could respect that. But she didn’t like how he went about it. She didn’t want to be paid to be kind, and pleasant. She was his wife!
After swimming several laps in the pool, Kassiani climbed out and claimed one of the lounge chairs, and tried to read, but her thoughts kept circling back to Damen.
He was such a puzzle. Something had happened to him at some point that had made him mistrustful. Something rather terrible.
She didn’t know what it was, and she wished she didn’t care, but she did. When she and Damen weren’t fighting about power and position, she really enjoyed his company. He was smart and driven and utterly gorgeous, which made him fascinating.
And then as if her thoughts had conjured him, he appeared on the pool deck.
“Is this lounger taken?” he asked, pointing at the chair next to hers.
“I was hoping my husband would claim it, but he’s gone, working.”
“Your husband is working on your honeymoon?”
“Tragic, I know,” she answered lightly. “But he’s brilliant, and really successful, so I try to be understanding.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, and please don’t tell him, because it will only upset him, but I like him.” She smiled wryly. “Do you still want the lounge chair?”
Damen smiled crookedly, and creases fanned from his gray eyes and he looked young and rather boyish. “That was a lot of information. I’m not sure your husband would appreciate you spilling intimate marital secrets to strangers.”
“No, he’d want to tie me up and maybe put some nipple clamps—”
“Kassiani!” Damen choked on smothered laughter, before dropping onto the foot of the lounge chair. “That should not be mentioned outside the bedroom.”
“You have so many rules,” she answered. “It’s hard to keep up. You might want to have one of your secretaries type them all up and put them in a binder or something. That way I’ll have a marital reference manual.”
He laughed again and gave his head a shake. “You are nothing like your sister.”
“Oh, I know. My father couldn’t manage me at all.”
“No, I’m quite sure he couldn’t. You are trouble.”
“I take after his sister. The one that never married.” She grimaced. “She was lovely but so misunderstood.”
“Just like you.”
“Oh, Aunt Calista was far prettier than I am, but I think we both have the same brain. She was miserable. I don’t want to be miserable.”
“I don’t want you miserable, either.” He hesitated, his expression growing sober. “But we’re struggling, aren’t we?”
She nodded. “And I don’t know how to change to be what you want me to be.”
“I don’t know how to change, either.”
She nodded again, and looked out at the sea, still glimmering that stunning blue. Her heart felt suddenly too heavy for such a beautiful place. Damen baffled her, he did.
He could be truly awful at times, and yet she still somehow found him terribly appealing. She wished she wasn’t so attracted to him. It would make dealing with him far easier. As it was, her pulse was a little too fast and her senses a little too stirred. He looked so fit and virile in his linen trousers and fine wool knit shirt, the soft fabric of the black shirt wrapping his biceps and muscular chest as if it had been made for him, that her heart raced, the same wildly distracting feeling she had when she drank too much black coffee.
“What do we do, then?” she asked at length, hating the helpless feeling.
“I don’t have friends. But maybe we try to be friends. Or treat each other as if we’d like to become friends.”
The corner of her mouth lifted. “Okay. Starting...now?”
“Yes, and in the spirit of friendship, would you like to have dinner with me tonight? We’ll meet in the living room for a predinner cocktail and some light conversation before a nice meal.”
She held out her hand, her smile impish. “You have a deal.”
* * *
Kassiani dressed with care for dinner, choosing a long burgundy chiffon gown, with black beading on the neckline and delicate burgundy wispy sleeves. It was a dress she’d planned to wear to Elexis and Damen’s rehearsal dinner, but with Elexis disappearing, the dinner hadn’t happened and the gorgeous dress hadn’t yet been worn.
She drew her long dark hair into a side ponytail and slipped on the pair of burgundy heels. She felt very glamorous even before she added some black pearl teardrop earrings.
Kassiani arrived early and, seeing the living room still empty, opened the sliding glass door to step out onto the deck. The sky was a dark purple and in the distance she could see lights twinkling on a small island, and there was another small island on the other side. Beautiful Greece with the sparkle of water and light everywhere.
She breathed in the cool night air, and shivered a little at the breeze. She probably should have brought a wrap. Deciding she’d be better off inside, she entered the living room just as a young housekeeper began to plump the living room pillows on the two low linen-covered sofas. The maid, who