“Did you see this?” Her father had said excitedly that morning, spreading the newspaper across their tiny kitchen counter. “Darius Kyrillos sold his company for twenty billion dollars!” He looked up, his eyes unfocused with painkillers, his recently broken arm awkward in a sling. “You should call him, Letty. Make him love you again.”
After ten years, her father had said Darius’s name out loud. He’d broken the unspoken rule. She’d fled, mumbling that she’d be late for work.
But it had affected her all day, making her clumsily drop trays and forget orders. She’d even dumped a plate of eggs and bacon on a customer. It was a miracle she hadn’t been fired.
No, Letty thought, unable to breathe. This was the miracle. Right now.
Darius.
She took a step toward him on the sidewalk, her eyes wide.
“Darius?” she whispered. “Is it really you?”
He came forward like a dark angel. She could see his breath beneath the streetlight like white smoke in the icy night. He stopped, towering over her. The light frosted his dark hair, leaving his face in shadow. She half expected him to disappear if she tried to touch him. So she didn’t.
Then he touched her.
Reaching out, he stroked a dark tendril that had escaped her ponytail, twisted it around his finger. “You’re surprised?”
At the sound of that low, husky voice, lightly accented from his early childhood in Greece, a deep shiver sent a rush of prickles over her skin. And she knew he wasn’t a dream.
Her heart pounded. Darius. The man she’d tried not to crave for the last decade. The man she’d dreamed about against her will, night after night. Here. Now. She choked out a sob. “What are you doing here?”
His dark eyes ran over her hungrily. “I couldn’t resist.”
As he moved his head, the streetlight illuminated his face. He hadn’t changed at all, Letty thought in wonder. The same years that had nearly destroyed her hadn’t touched him. He was the same man she remembered, the one she’d once loved with all her innocent heart, back when she’d been a headstrong eighteen-year-old, caught up in a forbidden love affair. Before she’d sacrificed her own happiness to save his.
His hand moved down to her shoulder. Feeling his warmth through her thin coat, she wanted to cry, to ask him what had taken so long. She’d almost given up hope.
Then she saw his gaze linger on her old coat, with its broken zipper, and her diner uniform, a white dress that had been bleached so many times it was starting to fray. Usually, she also wore unfashionable nylons to keep her legs warm while she was on her feet all day in white orthopedic shoes. But today, her last pair had been unwearable with too many rips so her legs were bare.
Following his gaze, she blushed. “I’m not really dressed for going out…”
“Your clothes don’t matter.” There was a strange undercurrent in his voice. “Let’s go.”
“Go? Where?”
He took her hand in his own, palm to palm, and she suddenly didn’t feel the snowflakes or cold. Waves of electricity scattered helter-skelter across her body, across her skin, from her scalp to her toes.
“My penthouse. In Midtown.” He looked down at her. “Will you come?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
His sensual lips curved oddly before he led her to his shiny, low-slung sports car and opened the passenger door.
As Letty climbed in, she took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of rich leather. This car likely cost more than she’d earned the past decade waiting tables. She moved her hand along the fine calfskin, the color of pale cream. She’d forgotten leather could be so soft.
Climbing in beside her, Darius started the engine. The car roared away from the curb, humming through the night, leaving her neighborhood to travel through the gentrified areas of Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights before finally crossing the Manhattan Bridge into the New York borough that most catered to tourists and the wealthy: Manhattan.
All the while, Letty was intensely aware of him beside her. Her gaze fell upon his hand and thick wrist, laced with dark hair, as he changed gears.
“So,” his voice was ironic, “Your father is out of prison.”
Biting her lip, she looked at him hesitantly beneath her lashes. “A few days ago.”
Darius glanced back at her old coat and fraying uniform. “And now you’re ready to change your life.”
Was that a question or a suggestion? Did he mean that he wanted to change it? Had he actually learned the truth about why she’d betrayed him ten years ago?
“I’ve learned the hard way,” she said in a low voice, “that life changes, whether you’re ready or not.”
His hands tightened as he turned back to the steering wheel. “True.”
Letty’s eyes lingered on his profile, from the dark slash of eyebrows to his aquiline nose and full, sensual mouth. She still felt like she was dreaming. Darius Kyrillos. After all these years, he’d found her at the diner and was whisking her off to his penthouse. The only man she’d ever truly loved…
“Why did you come for me?” she whispered. “Why today, after all these years?”
His dark gaze was veiled. “Your message.”
She hadn’t sent any message. “What message?”
“Fine,” he murmured, baring his teeth in a smile. “Have it your way.”
Message? Letty felt a skitter of dark suspicion. Her father had wanted her to contact Darius. For the last few days, since he’d broken his arm in mysterious circumstances he wouldn’t explain, he’d been home on painkillers, sitting next to her ancient computer with nothing to do.
Could her father have sent Darius a message, pretending to be her?
She glanced at Darius, then decided she didn’t care. If her father had interfered, all she could be was grateful, if this was the result.
Her father must have revealed her real reasons for betraying Darius ten years ago. She couldn’t imagine he would even be talking to her now otherwise.
But how to know for sure?
Biting her lip, she said awkwardly, “I read about you in the paper this morning. That you sold. Your company, I mean.”
“Ah.” His jaw set as he turned away. “Right.”
His voice was cold. No wonder, Letty thought. She sounded like an idiot. She tried to steady herself. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you. It cost ten years of my life.”
Ten years. Those two simple words hung between them in silence, like a small raft on an ocean of regret.
Their car entered Manhattan, with all its wealth and savagery. A place she’d avoided since her father’s trial and sentencing almost a decade before.
Her heartbeat fluttered in her throat as she looked down at her chapped hands, folded tightly in her lap. “I’ve thought of you a lot, wondering how you were. Hoping you were well. Hoping you were happy.”
Stopping at a red light, Darius abruptly looked at her.
“It was good of you to think of me,” he drawled in a low voice, once again with that strange undercurrent. In the cold night of the city, headlights of passing cars moved shadows across the hard lines of his face.
The light changed to green. It was just past ten o’clock, and the traffic was starting to lessen. Heading north on First Avenue, they passed the United Nations plaza. The buildings had started climbing higher against the sky as they approached Midtown. Turning off Forty-Ninth onto the gracious width of Park Avenue, they approached a newly built glass and steel skyscraper on the south side of Central Park.
As he pulled his car into the porte cochere, she was craning her neck back in astonishment. “You live here?”
“I have the top two floors,” he said casually, in the way someone might say, I have tickets to the ballet.
His door opened, and he handed the keys to a smiling valet who greeted him respectfully by name. Coming around, Darius opened Letty’s door. He held out his hand.
She stared at it nervously, then put her hand in his.
He
wrapped it tightly in his own. She felt the warmth and roughness of his palm against hers.
He had to know, she thought desperately. He had to. Otherwise, why would he have sought her out? Why wouldn’t he still hate her?
He led her through the awe-inspiring lobby, with its minimalist furniture and twenty-foot ceilings.
“Good evening, Mr. Kyrillos,” the man at the desk said. “Cold weather we’re having, hope you’re staying warm!”
Darius held Letty’s hand tightly. She felt like she might catch flame as he drew her across the elegant, cavernous lobby. “I am. Thank you, Perry.”
He waved his key fob in front of the elevator’s wall panel, and pressed the seventieth floor.