His mouth flattened but he didn’t say a word. And then their food was brought out, shattering the brittle atmosphere. He examined his plate with clear dispassion that she now felt too.
And, when he sent her speaking look, she grimaced. ‘I’m not going to apologise for the timing. You asked. I answered.’
To her surprise he nodded and, rising, he stepped behind her chair. ‘I’ll have it sent up to our room. Maybe by the time we return, our appetites will have forgiven us.’
She bit her tongue against asking him to reciprocate, since she’d bared her painful past, the helplessness and distress she’d felt.
‘I used to think there was something wrong with me. Something that made him reject his own child. Then I wondered if it was a combination of unfortunate circumstances and a mishap in genetics on my father’s part that caused all that to happen.’
‘No.’ His voice was firm from the fury boiling off him. ‘Don’t excuse his actions as a genetic flaw. You say he loved your mother and yet he picked on everyone else, you included. No one bothered to stand up to him or take steps quickly enough to protect you from him. He wised up when what really mattered to him was threatened—not his child, not your mother. A pile ofbricks was what he cared about most. I’d say spare yourself the efforts of forgiving him, but I sense that you already have.’
There was a searching light in his eyes as he stopped in the hallway and peered down at her, one she couldn’t escape. She didn’t even need to nod or respond audibly. He knew she’d, if not healed completely, at least come to terms with her father’s rejection with help from Nelios’s parents.
But the censure she had expected didn’t arrive. Instead he continued to search her features, as if looking for answershesought.
And then he placed his hand on the small of her back, triggering a deep pulse of yearning as they neared their suite.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CAPALDI ROSE WHENthey entered, clicking off the phone he had been scrolling through.
‘Nothing to report,’ he said.
‘Efkharisto,’Nelios murmured.
The other man nodded and left after Vayle added her thanks. Nelios followed her to check in on their son. Content to see him resting peacefully, she returned to the living room, just as a knock came on the door. He answered and the same waiter who’d served them wheeled in their lunch.
By mutual agreement they ate in near silence. Then over coffee, he levelled a steady gaze at her. ‘I’m sensing this hotel isn’t the one?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’ She gave him her earlier assessment, then carried on with her thought. ‘Besides, I don’t intend to leave Angelos and go back to work for the better part of a year, so I have time.’
The gleam of approval shouldn’t have warmed her the way it did. She didn’t need it. And yet, when he lifted his cup to drain it, she followed the movement, then waited for him to speak.
‘Then should we reschedule the tour and go to Apeiron tomorrow?’
As far as she could decipher, there was something in his voice close to a…yearning that made her heart leap. That made her readily agree, because she sensed it would give her more insight into this enigmatic man. ‘Sure.’
With their meal finished, she rose, but when she walked past him he caught her wrist in a loose grip.
A little startled, both by the gesture and the way her blood rushed that little bit faster through her veins, she stumbled to a halt. ‘Is there something…?’
‘There was nothing wrong with you. He had a duty of care to you as his child and he failed. The flaws were all his. You know that,ne?’ he said, a kind of deep insistence in his voice, as if he needed her to believe that.
Or maybe it was in her imagination. Because why would Nelios care what scars she’d been left with? Unless he just…cared about her?
Lightly buoyed by that thought, she bit her inner lip and blurted, ‘If I do consider that, would you at least consider that your mother may have had her own flawed reasons, beyond what you believe, and hear her—?’
‘Vayle…’ His warning was taut. But he didn’t release her or freeze her out the way he’d done in the past.
‘Just keep an open mind, please?’
A lance of jagged emotion crossed his face, and something else that ludicrously resembled…jealousy? ‘Why is this so important to you? Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t think I want to know.’
‘Nelios, I…’ She paused, wanting to reassure him but not quite knowing how. Or why helping him lift the burden of his past mattered so much to her.
Don’t you know—really?
The tangle of shaking her head free of that thought and hoping he would release her culminated in a comical wobbling of her head. Because her yearning for the opposite, for him to pull her closer—preferably into his lap, to touch her, kiss her or domore—was chomping like ravenous pack of wolves through her. He accurately read her mind and used the connection to pull her closer until she could count the light flecks in his eyes, the fine hairs that would form his five o’clock shadow soon enough andbreathe in his spicy scent. Her breath stalled in her lungs as she took another step closer.
