His voice was soft. She had come to know that softness. It hid a rock-hard determination but she was determined, too. It was time to decide how to progress, if to progress, whether to stay with Demetrios until the inevitable end or walk away now.
She didn’t know which way would be the best, even after spending most of the day thinking about it. Pain now, or pain later? It was an impossible decision. She’d always found relationships so easy to handle. Amanda had talked a little about how tortured she’d been, trying to figure out what she felt for Nick; Carin had sworn how much she despised Rafe to anyone who’d listen, and Sam had just taken it all in and wondered how a woman could possibly become so confused in her dealings with a man.
She owed her sisters an apology.
“You wonder if we went into what too quickly?” Demetrios said, and she looked at him.
If sleeping with your boss was a mistake, falling in love with him was sheer disaster. Of course, she wouldn’t tell him that. She’d say that she’d decided she realized she couldn’t give up the loss of independence that would go with being intimately involved with him, that it had been a mistake to let the relationship become personal.
“Into this—this—”
“We are lovers.” He spoke curtly. “Is that so difficult to acknowledge?”
“No. It’s not. What I mean is…Don’t look at me like that!”
“Like what?” he said, and told himself that if he’d been required to pay a drachma for every time he’d wanted to shake this woman since he’d met her, he’d be well on his way to the poorhouse by now.
Sam shoved back her chair and got to her feet. “Don’t!” she said, as he sprang up, too. “I am perfectly capable of moving around on my own. I sprained my ankle, Demetrios, I didn’t break it.”
“Ah.”
“Ah, what? Must you always sound so smug?”
“I was right,” he said calmly. He could be calm, now that he knew the problem. For a few seconds, he’d thought she was about to tell him she’d decided against their affair. Their relationship. Whatever in hell you called it when a man fell in love with a woman who didn’t love him, a woman he didn’t want to be in love with.
But that was ridiculous. Samantha enjoyed being with him. She enjoyed what happened in bed. All she needed was a little reassurance that he would respect her independence. Well, he could manage that. He just had to back off a little, convince her that all he wanted from her was what they already had.
It wasn’t even a lie.
Try as he might, he had no idea exactly what he did want. Marriage? Children? From what he knew of such things, he wasn’t exactly desirous of them. He would tell her that, let her see that she risked nothing by continuing their affair.
And, over the weeks and months that came next, if he changed his mind, well, then he would set out to change hers. If he didn’t…if he didn’t, that would be that.
It was a logical solution. He felt better for having reached it, and he smiled as he walked towards her.
“Sam, kalóz mou…” To his surprise, she slapped at his hands when he tried to clasp her shoulders.
“I just don’t…” Her throat tightened. What was wrong with her? Was she going to cry because he called her his beloved without meaning it? “I want to say what I need to say, all right? Without you stopping me.”
“But it isn’t necessary.”
“God give me strength! You’re impossible, Demetrios! You always think you know what’s necessary. Well, I have news for you. You don’t. ”
“Sweetheart,” he said with total sincerity, “I understand what’s troubling you.”
Sam folded her arms. “In that case, tell me. Go ahead. Read my mind.”
“You are concerned that I’m taking over your life.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that.”
“Mostly, you are afraid I may want too much from you.”
How could a man be so wrong? “Really,” she said dryly.
“But I don’t. I won’t.” He put his arm around her. She didn’t melt into him, as she would have last night, even this afternoon, but she let him do it. He took that as a good omen. “I understand how difficult it is for a woman like you to have an affair with a man like me.”
“Of course you do. You know everything.”
He decided to let that pass. “My mother was American. Did you know that?”
“Maybe. Amanda might have said…” Sam puffed out a breath. “You’re not going to divert me by talking about your mother.”
“She was a singer. A coloratura. Do you know what…?”
“Yes,” she said impatiently, “of course I do. It’s a soprano with an exceptionally light, clear voice.”
“That’s right.” He tugged her down beside him on a wicker love seat. “She was a good woman, but she and my father should never have gotten married.”
Sam stared at him. “What?”
“She was like you,” he said, bringing her hand to his lips. “Beautiful. Fiercely independent. Argumentative. Difficult.”
“I am neither argumentative nor difficult.”
He smiled. “And my father…well, I suppose I am very much like him.”
“Conceited. Impossible. Authoritative.”
“I am Greek,” he said, as if that explained everything. “Well, half-Greek, but it is the same thing. He was the one who raised me.”
Sam had promised herself she wouldn’t let him drag her down this detour but not asking the inevitable question was impossible.
“Why? What happened to your mother?”
His smile dimmed. “She’d become restless. She missed her country, her friends, her career…” He caught himself in midsentence. This was not what he’d wanted to tell her. His father had explained what had driven his parents apart, but that was not the point. “They quarreled often. She would leave, fly to New York. He would go after her and bring her back. And then, one day, he didn’t go after her. She stayed in America and he stayed here.”
“I don’t understand. Didn’t you grow up in Greece?”
“Yes.”
“But you just said your mother went back to the States.”
“I didn’t go with her. My father would not permit it.”
“He would not…?” Sam stared at him, at that imperious face that no longer bore a smile but had, instead, taken on the stoniness of marble. “She let him get away with that?”
“Sam. You must try and understand. This is Greece. The rules are different here. A man is still the head of his household in my country.”
“What you mean is, your father could keep you despite your mother’s wishes.”
“Yes. No.” Demetrios frowned and got to his feet. The conversation was not going at all as he’d planned. “She didn’t mind. She loved me, in her way, but she was not a woman whose maternal instincts ran deep. Do you understand?”
“No. I don’t. If I had a child, I could never let anything keep me from it.”
“The law was on my father’s side. Would you expect a man to give up his own flesh and blood?”
“There’s such a thing as joint custody. In America—”
“I tell you again, this is Greece. Besides, why would anyone wish a child to be batted back and forth across the Atlantic, like a ball at a tennis match?” He hadn’t intended to say that, either. What did such things matter, after all these years? “This is all beside the point, Samantha. What you should understand is—”
“What happened?” Sam asked softly. “To your parents’ marriage?”
“They were divorced.”
“And where is your mother now? I know your father died a few years ago but I don’t think I ever heard anything about your mother.”
“She is still alive,” he said stiffly. “She lives in Argentina with a man who raises horses.”
“She moved there after the divorce?”