LITMIR.BIZ

      The strangest expression glittered in Stavros’s eyes. Her gaze followed the corded length of his thighs as he chose the chair wedged against hers. The memory of how hard and welcoming he had been beneath her suffused her face with warmth. Hoping they would think it was the sun, she smiled pleasantly for Giannis’s benefit.

      Giannis slowly got up from his chair, and both Stavros and she rose from theirs. Grabbing his walking stick, he waved them off. “It is time for me to rest. You both sit,” he said with such a teasing twinkle in his eyes that Leah sighed like a deflated balloon.

      How would Giannis face it when Stavros finally set her free? Would Stavros tell him?

      The moment Giannis was out of sight, she stood up too, the very joy she had found this morning evaporating under her own conflicting emotions.

      His fingers clamping her wrist, Stavros looked up. “Stay, Leah…please.”

      The edgy request warned her not to argue.

      Increasingly aware of the high-pitched chirp of a bird in the olive groves, the rustle of leaves, and the painful thud of her own heart, she studied him under the guise of bravely facing him.

      As always, he was dressed in formal clothes but the shirt was unbuttoned, and his hair looked like he had messed it up quite a bit.

      From the arch of his eyebrows to the straight line of his nose, from the way his mouth tilted up on one side when he smiled to the blunt nails of his long fingers, he was painfully familiar to her now…a desperate longing awoke in her, to trace that austere face, to taste him in tenderness, to just once meet him as his equal without lies and fears.

      “How is your collection coming along?”

      Blinking, she searched for an answer. “Very well. I finalized the design on the last dress. I’m terrified that it might not be as breathtaking as I think it is.”

      “The wedding gown?”

      The smile came naturally then. “Yes. I have to do the cutting on it. I’ve been taking the fabric, laying it all out and then just staring at it for hours… I can’t afford to…”

      “You’re nervous?” he said with such genuine warmth that she flushed.

      “It’s the prize of my collection but it means so much more to me. A wedding dress, as much as it has become a symbol of status and wealth and showing off in these days, it means a lot to a woman, right? It’s the one day she gets to be what she longs to be all her life.”

      Somehow, he had moved closer to her. Her hand lay in his loosely, the pad of his thumb tracing the top of it gently. “What is that?”

      “Beautiful, special, loved.” Pulling her hand away from him, she smiled to herself. “No matter what age, that day, she is the center of the whole universe for this one man…that day, it’s a new beginning, a fresh start, a promise she cherishes that her life will hold meaning to someone else. It’s the first day of a whole new way of life, of the most important, intimate relationship she’s ever going to have…and the wedding dress… it symbolizes all those hopes and dreams she’s ever cherished.”

      Sensing his stillness, she turned and saw the lacerating pity in his eyes.

      It was like the most vulnerable part of her, the part she even hid from herself, had been ripped open.

      Shutting her eyes to stop the heat building behind, she saw what he remembered.

      She had married in a ghastly cream silk dress that had been too tight on her chubby body. With a stone-faced Dmitri as witness while Giannis lay in a hospital bed. Drowning in guilt over Calista, numb that she always seemed to be saying goodbye to loved ones, terrified about what Stavros intended, and hating herself…

      That bleary day had been about punishment and penance, about duty and fear. Just as the moment after when he had pressed his mouth to hers, had been.

      Even then she had been eager for his kiss, had clung to him in her shame when he had put her away from him, and wiped his mouth.

      “At least, that’s the statement I want this collection to make, you know.” Her blasted voice wouldn’t stop quivering. “Like you said, it’s a career saturated with so many fresh faces that you can disappear in a second… You have to be able to put a new spin on your collection, present it almost like a story so that your consumers will fall in love with it, and that’s how—”

      Clasping her chin, he turned her toward him. From casual to a vehement intensity, his expression changed in mere seconds. “Don’t, agape mou.”

      Still, she tried to pretend. “You probably find this intensely boring.”

      “Do I not deserve the truth even in this, Leah?” Resting on his haunches in front of her seat, he took her hand in his. The tenderness in his gaze unraveled her defenses. “Do not lie about something that is so important to you, do not cheapen what truly comes from your heart. Not this…”

      “I…”

      “Did you once dream like this too? Was marriage that important to you?”

      Her throat raw, she nodded. “I believed in the sanctity of it once,

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