vacuum. His parents had moved to New York from the Peloponnese right after he was born, bringing his father’s widowed mother with them. Then five years later, his mother’s two brothers and a female cousin had come over, as well. His grandmother, right up until she had died a couple years ago, had never learned to communicate in English. And almost all of his uncle’s shoe repair business was conducted in Greek.
Of course, he and his younger sister, Athena, were the only ones in the family to dare venture beyond the borough boundaries, Alex to work in a precinct in lower Manhattan, Athena to work in a restaurant in Little Italy, committing the worst of all crimes by not only rejecting her own heritage, but seeming to adopt that of another country.
What went unsaid was that they were already living under the flag of yet another country.
Strangely, though, his family was proud of their Greek-American heritage and dedicatedly displayed both flags outside both their house and at their corner supermarket in Astoria.
Nicole cleared her throat. “You know, I’ve always wondered…how do you say ‘sex’ in Greek?”
He bet she’d always wondered. More likely, she was looking for a way to throw him off track. And it was working. “Sex.”
She laughed. “No. Seriously.”
“I am serious.”
She considered him for a long moment. “Okay, then. Although it’s not much a part of my vocabulary…what about ‘love’?”
“Agapee,” he said automatically.
He reached for the throw at the foot of the bed and moved it so she could get it if she wanted without risking injury.
“I thought we’d get some sleep first,” he said, glancing at his watch to find it after 2:00 a.m. “Then we can get a fresh start in the morning.”
“I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”
He gestured toward the cuffs. “You will.”
“Confident. I like that in a man.”
Sexy. He liked that in a woman.
Nicole watched him move around the large open area of the loft, taking an extra top sheet from a set of drawers, and a pillow from the other side of the bed, then heading for the couch a good twenty feet away but still with a clear sight of the bed.
The cuffs clanked again. “You, um, wouldn’t have any condoms in those drawers over there, would you?” she asked quietly.
Alex grinned as he made up the couch, then stretched out to lay across it in his newly rented tux slacks and shirt. “Nope.”
Her long-suffering sigh filled the high-ceilinged area. “Some sex life you must have.”
“Who says I don’t go through a case of them a month and that I just ran out last night?” he asked.
He waited for her response, thinking she looked all too tempting there, handcuffed to his bed.
There was a twenty-four-hour convenience store on the corner….
“I say,” she whispered, then scooted down and rolled to her side.
Unfortunately, she was right.
Alex lay staring at the ceiling some twenty-five feet above him, thinking not for the first time that he should paint the black beams white or beige or something. Open the place up a bit.
But the diversionary tactic didn’t work. Because all he could think about was how long the night was going to be without sleep. And the reason he wasn’t going to be able to sleep was that there was a red-hot sexy woman lying in his bed and not only did she appear to want him in it with her, but he wanted more than anything to be in it with her.
Oh, he definitely had not thought this plan through. Because if he had, he would have not only bought a box of condoms, he would have invested in the damn company that made them.
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