the only reason I stopped Dimos.”
“Of course it was. If Dimos had sex with me, a woman supposedly under the protection of the Antoniou family, he would have been stuck marrying me instead of the heiress of your choice.” She paused, not sure if she should say anything more. “Do you even know why we were down in the wine cellar that night? We were going to break into the good stuff while everyone was out of the house.”
“It didn’t look that way when I tore you two apart.”
Jodie glared at him. When Stergios had intervened, Dimos had her in a tight hold and had been sticking his tongue down her throat. She hadn’t been trying to get closer to Dimos—she had been pushing him away! “I was never interested in him. There was no way we were going to have sex!”
Stergios lifted an eyebrow. “Then how do you explain what happened between us?”
She felt her face turn bright red. It had been different with Stergios. When Jodie had returned from her last finishing school fiasco, she had become violently aware of her stepbrother’s sexual allure. It didn’t matter that he was eight years older or that he was too intense for someone like her.
But Jodie didn’t want anyone to notice how much power Stergios had over her. She had some pride! The man hated her and yet she wanted to get closer to him. She had become an expert at hiding her attraction. Or so she thought. Now she knew why she’d always bickered with Stergios. Why they’d always seemed to get under each other’s skin.
When Stergios had shoved Dimos up the stairs that night, she had launched into an argument with her stepbrother that felt as though it had been simmering for weeks. Vicious words had been exchanged and nothing had been held back.
To this day Jodie wasn’t sure what had happened next. What had been the trigger? Had she made the first move or had he? All she knew was that her mouth had slammed against his. His kiss, his touch, had set her free. It was as if they had exploded out of their cages. She’d clawed and bit as he ruthlessly made his claim. She’d encouraged him to give her everything he had. Their coupling had been fast and feral.
She hadn’t experienced anything like it since. Even now her heart pumped hard and her skin felt scorched as she remembered the way he took her against the wall.
“I looked for you after that night,” Stergios confessed.
She jerked back as the memories splintered. “No, you didn’t,” she said softly. “You left like a bat out of hell. Where did you go?”
He speared his hands in his long hair and gave a guttural sigh. “It doesn’t matter.”
It had mattered to her. She had felt rejected and abandoned. Used.
“You’d left Greece by the time I returned,” Stergios said, staring blindly at the garden. “I went to America to find you. I assumed you went to your mother’s but you had already left by the time I arrived in New York. Your mother wasn’t helpful in how to contact you.”
She gave an awkward nod. Carla Little had not been a motherly, nurturing kind of woman who needed to know what her daughter was doing. “Mom was in the middle of a business deal that would have determined her legacy,” she mumbled. “She couldn’t afford any distraction.”
“I kept looking for you,” he admitted with great reluctance before he returned his piercing gaze on her. “No one seemed to know where you were.”
Her parents hadn’t been interested in finding out. While her friends were envious of her independence, the lack of parental concern had always embarrassed Jodie. “I knew how to take care of myself,” she said. “Why was it so urgent to find me?”
“I wanted to check on you.”
Jodie drew her head back. She wasn’t sure what to say. Of all the people who had been part of that night, he had been the only one who tried to contact her. Even though he had made it clear how much he didn’t like her, how little she meant to him.
Stergios watched her with an intensity that pinned her to the spot. “You were a virgin and I was...rough.”
Jodie frowned when she saw his stony expression. Stergios had been beating himself up about that night when she’d savored the primal and naked responses. It had been everything she had hoped for with the man who had starred in her secret fantasies.
And why did he have to bring up her inexperience? Her eyes widened with surprise. “Wait...were you going to insist on marriage?” she asked. She knew how the Antoniou males thought. They had very old-fashioned views. The men married the virgins and had affairs with experienced women.
“I didn’t use protection that night,” he said stiffly, as if the oversight went against his personal code of honor. “I needed to know if there were consequences.”
Oh. He wasn’t worried about her as much as he was concerned about an illegitimate child. Disappointment crashed through her. She wanted to hunch her shoulders and curl into herself as if she could contain the pain. “There weren’t,” she said in a whisper.
Stergios gave a sharp nod. “I knew I had to seek you out because you wouldn’t have volunteered that information with me.”
Not necessarily. He always assumed the worst in her. “If you thought that, why did you give up looking for me? We’re talking about your child, the Antoniou heir,” she said grandly as she spread her hands up high in the air. “You would have searched the world if you thought that was a possibility.”
“I stopped looking a few months later.” His features hardened as he gave her an unforgiving look. “There was a picture of you online and you were definitely not pregnant.”
She frowned. “What picture?”
Stergios sneered from the memory. “You were on a yacht in the Caribbean with that royal playboy.” He spat out the last word as if it was a curse.
Jodie wanted to cringe. The prince had been a mistake. She had been looking for love. She had been desperate to be loved and found a playboy instead. Unfortunately, she had found a few playboys on her search for love before she wised up.
“I see,” she said calmly as she watched Stergios’s lip curl with disgust. “And suddenly it no longer mattered that I was a virgin or eighteen.”
He shrugged. “I might have been your first, but then you threw yourself at the next man who showed any interest,” he declared as he turned away. “You were no longer my problem.”
No longer my problem. The words echoed in her mind as she dazedly watched Stergios stride into the house. Once he’d decided that she “belonged” to another man, she had no longer existed.
Jodie hissed air between her clenched teeth as the pain ricocheted. He had ruthlessly cleaved her out of his life. He had moved on without missing a step. It was a fear she struggled with constantly. The fear of becoming invisible. Forgotten.
But she had no idea it was that easy.
She needed to work harder to become unforgettable to those who mattered. It was an impossible task, Jodie decided as she took the steps back to the garden, intent on getting away from the house, from Stergios. As she marched along the path she gradually realized what she had to do. She was going to use her wealth to become an indispensible member of the
