CHAPTER ONE
LETTY SPENCER HUNCHED her shoulders against the frosty February night as she pushed out of the Brooklyn diner, door swinging behind her. Her body was exhausted after her double shift, but not half as weary as her heart.
It had not been a good day.
Shivering in her threadbare coat, Letty lowered her head against the biting wind on the dark street. Snow flurries brushed against her exposed skin.
“Letitia.” The voice was low and husky behind her. Letty’s back snapped straight.
No one called her Letitia anymore, not even her father. Letitia Spencer had been the pampered heiress of Fairholme. Letty was just another New York waitress struggling to make ends meet for her family.
And that voice sounded like...
He sounded like...
Gripping her purse strap tight, she slowly turned around.
And lost her breath.
Darius Kyrillos stood against a glossy black sports car parked on the street. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he was devastatingly handsome and powerful in his well-cut suit and black wool coat, standing beneath the softly falling snowflakes illuminated by a streetlight.
For a moment, Letty struggled to make sense of what her eyes were telling her. Darius? Here?
“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 kne
w 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.”