typical father-son relationship.”
“So I’ve been given to understand, but I suggest the time’s come for you to bury your differences and stop butting heads. He needs to know you care.”
“I wouldn’t be here now, if I didn’t care.”
“Would it kill you to tell him that?”
He gave a snort of subdued laughter. “No, but the shock of hearing me say so might kill him.”
What was it about the two of them, that they held each other at such a distance, she wondered. “Do either of you have the first idea of the pain that comes from waiting until it’s too late to say ‘I love you?’ Because I do. More often than I care to remember, I’ve witnessed the grief and regret that tears families apart because time ran out on them before they said the things that needed to be said.”
He paced to the windows at the other end of the aptly named garden room whose exotic flowering plants set in Chinese jardinieres must give it the feel of high summer even in the depths of winter. “We’re not other people,” he said.
“You’re not immortal, either.” She hesitated, conflicted once again by how much she could say, then decided to plunge in and disclose what she knew, because she wasn’t sure she could live with herself if she didn’t. “Look, Niko, he’ll probably have my head for telling you this, but your father’s not just battling a broken hip. His heart’s not in very good shape, either.”
“I’m not surprised. That’s what comes from years of smoking and hard living, but nothing his doctor said was enough to make him change his ways. He’s a stubborn old goat.”
That much she knew to be true. Pavlos had discharged himself from Vancouver General against medical advice, and insisted on flying back to Greece even crippled as he was, because he refused to put up with the nursing staff’s constant monitoring. They don’t let a man breathe, he’d complained, when Emily tried to talk him into postponing the journey. I’ll be carried out feetfirst if I let them keep me here any longer.
“Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Niko. Where this family’s concerned, you’re both pretty pigheaded.”
He swung around and surveyed her across the width of the room; another long, searching gaze so thorough that a quiver shafted through her. He probed too deeply beneath the surface. Saw things she wasn’t ready to acknowledge to herself. “Perhaps before you start leaping to unwarranted conclusions,” he purred, advancing toward her with the lethal grace of a hunter preparing to move in for the kill, “you should hear my side of the story.”
“You’re not my patient, your father is,” she said, backing away and almost hyperventilating at the determined gleam in his eye.
“But isn’t modern medicine all about the holistic approach—curing the spirit in order to heal the body, and such? And isn’t that exactly what you’ve been advocating ever since you walked into this room?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“How do you expect to do that, if you have only half the equation to work with? More to the point, what do you stand to lose by letting me fill in the blanks?”
My soul, and everything I am, she thought, filled with the terrible foreboding that unless she extricated herself now from the web of attraction threatening to engulf her, destiny in the shape of Nikolaos Leonidas would take control of her life, and never give it back again. Yet to scurry away like a frightened rabbit was as alien to her nature as taking advantage of Pavlos. So she stood her ground, pushed the irrational presentiment out of her thoughts and said with deceptive calm, “Absolutely nothing.”
“Really?” He leaned toward her, dropped his voice another half octave and latched his fingers around her wrist. “Then why are you so afraid?”
She swallowed and ran her tongue over her dry lips. “I’m not,” she said.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE was lying. The evidence was there in her hunted gaze, in her racing pulse, so easily and unobtrusively detected when he took her wrist. And he intended to find out why, because for all that he thought he’d remain unmoved by whatever he discovered when he went to meet their flight, the sight of the old man, so brittle and somehow diminished, had hit him with the force of a hammer blow to the heart. They spent little time together, had long ago agreed to disagree and shared nothing in common. But Pavlos was still his father, and Niko would be damned before he’d let some hot little foreign number take him to the cleaners.
Oh, she’d been full of righteous indignation at his suggestion that she wasn’t quite the selfless angel of mercy she presented herself to be. He’d hardly expected otherwise. But he’d also seen how indispensable she’d made herself to Pavlos; how successfully she’d wormed her way into his affections. His father had never been a demonstrative man, at least not that Niko could remember. Which had made the way he’d clung to Emily’s hand at the airport all the more telling.
If his assessment of her was correct, redirecting her attention would be simple enough. After all, a millionaire in his vigorous prime was surely preferable to one in his dotage. And if he was wrong…well, a harmless flirtation would hurt no one. Of course, when his father figured out what he was up to, he wouldn’t like it, but when was the last time he’d approved of anything Niko did?
“You’re very quiet suddenly,” she said, interrupting the flow of his thoughts.
He looked deep into her dark blue eyes. “Because I’m beginning to think I’ve judged you too hastily,” he answered, doing his utmost to sound convincingly repentant. “But I’m not entirely without conscience. Therefore, if one of us must leave, let me be the one to go.”
Ignoring her whimper of protest, he released her, opened the door to leave the room and found himself face-to-face with Damaris. He could not have orchestrated a better exit. Timing, as he well knew in his line of work, was everything. “Kali oreksi, Emily,” he said, standing back to allow Damaris to carry in a platter loaded with olives, calamari, dolmades, tzatziki and pita bread. “Enjoy your meal.”
He was over the threshold before she burst out, “Oh, don’t be so ridiculous!”
Suppressing a smile, he swung around. “There is a problem?”
“If having enough food to feed an army is a problem, then yes.”
He shrugged. “What can I say? Greeks love to eat.”
“Well, I can’t possibly do justice to all this, and since I have no wish to offend your father’s housekeeper when she’s obviously gone to a great deal of trouble…”
“Yes, Emily?”
She grimaced, as if her next words gave her indigestion. “You might as well stay and help me eat it.”
He stroked his jaw and made a show of weighing his options. “It would be a pity to let it go to waste,” he eventually conceded, “especially as this is but the first of several courses.”
For a moment, he thought he’d overplayed his hand. Skewering him with a glance that would have stopped the gods of Olympus in their tracks, she waited until Damaris mopped up her spilled drink, then took a seat at the table and said, “Try not to gloat, Niko. It’s so unattractive.”
He wasn’t accustomed to female criticism. The women he associated with were so anxious to please, they’d have swallowed their own tongues before issuing such a blunt assessment of his shortcomings. That she suffered no such hesitation appealed to him in ways she couldn’t begin to imagine. He devoted his entire life to challenging unfavorable odds. And took enormous pleasure in defeating them.
Collecting the wine bottle as he passed, he joined her and topped up their flutes. Nothing like dim lights and good champagne to set the scene for seduction. Raising his glass, he said, “Here’s to getting to know one another all over again.”
She