One Reckless Decision

She did not want to feel this way. She wanted to play her part the way she’d planned—bright and easy and seductive—and instead she kept tripping herself up on her own jagged emotions. Was it him? Was he the reason she could not control herself the way she wanted to—the way she had prided herself on doing the whole of her adult life? Her control had saved her in tense interactions with her family—why couldn’t she summon it now?

Nikos did not move, and yet he seemed to loom over her, around her, filling her senses and her vision. Filling the whole universe with his smooth muscles, his dangerous mouth, his molten gold eyes with that hard edge within. Just as she feared he would do. Just as she knew he would.

He reached over and brushed her hair back from her face with a gentleness that belied the tension she could feel shimmering between them, then followed a long strand down toward her neck, pulling it between his fingers as if he could not quite bear to let it drop. His mouth moved as his hand returned to his side, but then he shook his head slightly, as if thinking better of whatever he had been about to say.

A couple strolled too close to them on the narrow quay, almost jostling into Tristanne. But Nikos shot out a hand again and moved her out of the way, his touch shocking against her skin for all that it was protective, even kind. He did not speak, but he did not drop his hand from her forearm, either. Tristanne imagined she could see the force of his touch, the feel of it, dancing over her like light, illuminating all of her hidden places, her shadows.

She could not do this. Any of this. She could not feel. Neither temper nor despair nor…this softer, scarier thing she dared not name. Emotion had no place here, between them. She could not allow it.

She cleared her throat. “I am speaking rhetorically, of course,” she said, her voice husky with the things she could not show, not even to herself.

“Of course.”

His mouth flirted with that half smile of his that she was appalled to realize she wanted to see, even yearned to see, while his eyes gleamed almost silver in the dark. She shivered, though she was not cold.

“Come,” he said quietly. “It is time for food, not fighting.”

Chapter Six

NIKOS did not understand how he could possibly have rowed in a public street. With a woman he had yet to take to his bed, no less. It defied all reason. It went against nearly forty years of habit and precedent, for that matter, and disturbed him deeply.

He was not in the habit of suffering through emotional scenes, his own or anyone else’s. He did not soothe hurt feelings or tactfully contain angry explosions. He had never before entertained the faintest urge to do either. He did not allow emotion into his life, in any form. Not anymore. It had been long years since he’d backed down from a challenge or left accusations unanswered—in fact, he preferred to respond as forcefully as possible, decimating his accusers, grinding them into dust beneath his feet, ensuring neither they nor anyone in their vicinity would dare to test him again.

Until tonight.

He sat across from Tristanne in his favorite waterfront trattoria, the light from a hundred flickering candles playing over her lovely features, wondering what spell she had cast upon him to make him behave so unlike himself. He paid no attention to the fine, fresh food before them—airy foccacia with a tangy olive tapenade, hand-crafted pasta flavored with pesto corto, grilled peppers and anchovies, and the freshest fish imaginable tossed with garlic and olive oil. How could he concentrate on food? He was galled by his own uncharacteristic display of something very close to weakness. The worst kind of weakness—and to a Barbery, no less!

Was that her game? To make him betray his own vows to himself? If so, he was appalled to see how well it was working. What was next? Would he break into sobs in the center of the village piazza? Weep for his wounded inner child? He would more readily saw off his own head with the butter knife that rested on the crisp white linen tablecloth before him.

“You are by far the most mysterious member of your family,” he said, because that was the point, after all, of this charade, was it not? To destroy the Barberys by whatever means necessary, to gather the information he needed to do so? More than this, he needed to break the silence. Quiet between them seemed too dangerous now; too fraught with undercurrents and meanings he refused to explore. Sexual tension he understood, even encouraged. Anything beyond that was anathema to him. He was here to seduce her, to wreak his revenge on her very skin—not to comfort her.

“Mysterious?” He noticed the way she tensed in her chair. Did she expect an attack? Perhaps she should. Her eyes met his briefly. “Hardly.”