She sucked in a shock breath. “How can you possibly say that?” She demanded. “You know nothing about me.”
He rolled his eyes, not quite sure where his temper was coming from. “On the contrary, I have made it my business to know everything about you. Stop complaining about Cristopher and start taking responsibility for your own decisions.” He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, leaving Claudia feeling as though she’d been slapped over the face.
CHAPTER FIVE
“COME ON, STAV. IT’S Christmas.” Kristos, his younger brother, was unrelenting.
“Oh, is it? I had not realized,” he murmured, thinking of the enormous tree downstairs and the carols Claudia had been singing as she’d decorated it. His eyes were focused beyond the window of his study, on the raging river. It was a crisp winter’s day. The grass was frosted over and the sky was bleak grey, and yet she stood at the edge of the water without a coat, her hair long down her back, her shoulders slumped forward.
Something inside of him clenched as though he’d been hit in the gut.
“So come back. We are all anxious to see you. Rhiannon as well.”
She walked a little further along the bank of the river and he had to shift position to see her properly. She was barely dressed for the weather, the coat she’d grabbed from the boot room a lightweight trench.
“Rhiannon is anxious to see me?” Stavros drawled. “Somehow, I doubt that.”
“Is that what this is about? Your pride is hurt by the fact she has moved onto your own brother?”
“My pride isn’t hurt,” Stavros laughed. “My ego isn’t that fragile. I don’t particularly relish the fact she’s going to be my sister-in-law, though.”
“You broke up years ago.”
“Yes,” Stavros rubbed a palm over his chin. “Exactly.”
“So? What’s the problem?”
“I have business here. In England.”
“Business? Everything is closed for the holidays. What business could you possibly have?”
“It’s … personal.” He said quietly, his eyes knitting together as Claudia spun around and looked towards the mansion. He fought an instinct to step away from her view. Her eyes were roaming the walls, but she wasn’t looking for anything in particular. It was more of a contemplative watch. And it allowed him an opportunity to study her face. To read the emotions that flicked across it.
“What do you mean?” Kristos’s question was unheard by Stavros.
She was such a contradiction! An attention-seeking, glamorous heiress who worried herself only with her tan and her hairstyles one minute, and the next?
He frowned.
What?
What had he felt from her on this trip?
Uncertainty. Vulnerability. Anger. Frustration. Impotence.
But why? She had made it clear to him on plenty of occasions that she was happy with her life. More than happy. She just wanted him to stay out of it. She had a huge circle of equally drama-loving friends, who courted the media’s attention as though they needed it for their survival. She’d had a string of high-profile relationships. No, not relationships, he thought.
Lovers.
The word did something strange to him, though he had no right to feel it. He didn’t like the idea of her being with any guy who looked her way. With Lord This and Duke That. Out of nowhere, he imagined taking her to bed and showing her how a real man felt.
He wanted to dominate her. He wanted to own her. He wanted to mark himself on her so that she’d never be with another man without wishing it was him.
“Stav?”
He brought his attention back to the phone conversation unwillingly, something like danger blaring in his mind. He couldn’t act on this temptation. He wouldn’t.
“Nai?” An impatient bark that Kristos didn’t deserve.