Something wild and unexpected uncoiled inside of her, making her breath stutter. Shocking her with its sudden intensity.
He was not careless. He was in no way relaxed. He was only pretending to be either of those things.
But then, she was banking on that. Surely her brother, who cared only about money and power, would not be as obsessed as he was about this man unless he was a worthy opponent.
“You know my name?” she asked. She managed to keep her composure despite the humming reaction that shimmered through her, surprising and unsettling her. It was the Barbery family trait, she thought with no little despair: she could appear to be perfectly unruffled while inside, she was a quivering mess. She had learned it at her father’s emotionless knee—or suffered the consequences. And she wanted only to use this man for her own ends, not succumb to his legendary charisma. She had to be strong!
“Of course.” One dark brow rose higher, while his full, firm lips twisted slightly. “I pride myself on knowing the names of all my guests. I am a Greek. Hospitality is not simply a word to me.”
There was a rebuke in there somewhere. Tristanne’s stomach twisted in response, while he looked at her with eyes that saw too much. Like he was a cat and she a rather dim and doomed mouse.
“I have a favor to ask you,” she blurted out, unable to play the game as she ought to—as she’d planned so feverishly once she’d realized where Peter was taking her this afternoon. There was something in the way Nikos regarded her—so calm, so direct, so powerfully amused—that made her feel as if the glass of wine she’d barely tasted earlier had gone straight to her head.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, surprised to feel a flush heating her cheeks. She, who up until this moment had considered herself unable to blush! “I wanted to work up to that. You must think I am the rudest person alive.”
His dark brows rose, and his wicked mouth curved slightly, though his enigmatic eyes did not waver, nor warm. “You have not yet asked this favor. Perhaps I will reserve judgment until you do.”
Tristanne had the sudden sense that she was more at risk, somehow, standing in front of Nikos Katrakis in full view of so many strangers than she was from Peter and his schemes. It was an absurd thought. You must be strong! she reminded herself, but she couldn’t seem to shake that feeling of danger.
Or stop what came next. What had to come next—even though she knew, suddenly, with a deep, feminine wisdom that seemed like a weight in her bones, that this was a mistake of unfathomable proportions. That she was going to regret stirring up this particular hornet’s nest. That she, who prided herself on being so capable, so independent, did not have what it took to handle a man like this. One should never rush heedlessly into a dragon’s lair. Anyone who had ever read a fairy tale knew better! She bit her lower lip, frowning slightly as she looked at him, feeling as if she fell more and more beneath his dark gold spell by the moment. It was if he was a trap, and she had walked right into it.
The trouble was, that didn’t seem to frighten her the way it should. And in any case, she had no choice.
“The favor?” he prompted her, something sardonic moving across his face. Almost as if he knew what she planned to ask him—but that was silly. Of course he could not know. Of all the things that Tristanne knew about Nikos Katrakis—that he was ruthless and magnetic in equal measure, that he had clawed his way from illegitimacy and poverty into near-un-imaginable wealth and influence with the sheer force of his will, that he suffered no fools and tolerated no disloyalty, that he alone drove her cold brother into fits of rage with his every success—she had never heard it mentioned that he was psychic. He could have no idea what she wanted from him.
“Yes,” Tristanne said, her tone even. Confident. In direct contrast to the mess of unsettled churning within. “A favor. But just a small favor, and not, I hope, an entirely unpleasant one.”
She almost called it off then. She almost heeded the panicked messages her body and her intuition were sending her—she almost convinced herself that someone else would do, that she need not pick this man, that someone less intimidating would work just as well, could accomplish what she needed.
But she glanced to the side then, to ease the intensity of Nikos Katrakis’s gaze and to catch her breath, and saw her brother shoulder his way into the bar area. Half brother, she reminded herself, as if that should make some difference. Peter’s familiar scowl was firmly in place when he looked at her—and who she was with. Behind him, she saw the clammy-palmed financier Peter had handpicked for her—the man he had decreed would be his ticket out of financial ruin for the modest price of Tristanne’s favors.