She did not notice, until much later, that he had not told her why he wanted to marry so quickly. That he had talked around it entirely.
Everything seemed to speed up then, making Tristanne feel almost dizzy. Soon they would be married, she told herself, and they would have the rest of their lives to sort through whatever lay beneath his sudden remoteness. She told herself that this was simply the male version of jitters—and at least her focus on what Nikos was or was not feeling, or how he was behaving, allowed her to avoid focusing on the things she did not want to think about.
He was busy all the time, he claimed. He was always on his mobile, talking fiercely in Greek. When he found time to speak to her, it was to confirm that she was tending to the wedding details he had given over to her. She found a simple dress in a boutique in Athens, as directed. She met with a woman in the capitol city of Argostoli on the island who bubbled over with joy at finding the perfect flowers for Nikos’s bride.
She contacted her family. Vivienne, predictably, was overjoyed—her enthusiasm not quite hiding the tremor in her voice, though she tried.
“That is how it was for your father and me,” she said with a happy sigh. “We took one look at each other and everything else was inevitable.”
Tristanne could not reconcile the cold parent Gustave had been with the stories her mother told of him, but she did not argue. Once her mother arrived, she would be safe. And soon, Tristanne had no doubt, well. It was all as she’d planned, back when she’d believed she could manipulate Nikos to her will.
“You must come to Greece,” she said softly. “We cannot marry without you.”
Peter, of course, was more difficult, even after she had the pleasure of telling him she no longer required his help in any respect—that he could keep her trust fund for the next three years, with her compliments.
“You’ve upped the ante, haven’t you?” He sneered into the phone. “How proud you must be of yourself. I had no idea you could make a man like Katrakis turn his thoughts to matrimony. What a perfect little actress you are!”
“You are, in point of fact, my only sibling,” Tristanne said coldly. “That is the only reason I am extending an invitation.”
“That and the fact it would look powerfully odd if I did not attend,” Peter shot back. “Never fear, Tristanne. I will be there.”
She rather thought that sounded like a threat.
But there was no time to worry about Peter and whatever new atrocity he might be planning. Tristanne was infinitely more concerned about her husband-to-be, whose demeanor seemed to grow colder and more unapproachable by the hour as the clock ticked down to their wedding day.
If it were not for the nights, she would have panicked. But he came to her in the darkness, without fail. She would lie awake until his dark form appeared, crawling over her on the wide bed. Silent and commanding, he made love to her with a fierce urgency that she felt sear her all the way to her soul. He held her in the aftermath, close to his chest, his hands tangled in her hair, and he never said a word.
She should talk to him, she reasoned in the light of day. She should interrupt one of his interminable business calls and ask him what was bothering him. She would have, she told herself, were she not able to perfectly envision the kind of mocking set-down he might deliver. He was not the kind of man who could be asked about his feelings. She was not even certain if he was aware that he had any.
The truth was, she missed him. She missed his teasing, their sparring—that half smile of his and the gleam of old coin gold in his dark eyes—but the sudden stiffness between them felt precarious, like something fragile stretched across a great morass of darkness. Tristanne was afraid to poke at it.
That was the real reason, of course, she admitted to herself only when she was standing alone with the Greek sunlight drenching her in its shine. She was terrified that if she mentioned anything—anything at all—he would think better about all the ways she had deceived him and change his mind. And she could not bear to think of losing him.
It was as simple—as wretchedly, starkly simple—as that.
She could not imagine a day without his touch, without looking at that hard, beautiful face. Without seeing those deep gold eyes, those haughty cheekbones. Without feeling the heat of that steely chest. She did not want to imagine it.
She knew that she should loathe herself for falling so hard, so heedlessly—for risking so much. For being, as Peter had always told her, so very like her poor mother. But try as she might, she could not seem to gain the necessary distance. It was as she’d sensed it would be from the start. Perhaps as she’d imagined when he’d left her breathless at that ball so long ago. The moment she’d let her defenses down, and let him in, she had been forever altered. She wanted him more, it seemed, than she wanted to keep herself safe.