It’s about time you used your assets to our advantage, Peter had said in his cold voice. Tristanne shook the memory away, determined not to react to him any further—even in her own mind. Not when so much was at stake. Her mother’s survival. The independence she had fought so hard to win. Tristanne sucked in a fortifying breath, sent up a little prayer and forced herself to walk right up to Nikos Katrakis himself before she talked herself out of it.
Nikos looked up from his drink at the polished wood and marble-topped bar and their eyes met. Held. His eyes were the color of long-steeped tea, shades lighter than the thick, dark hair on his head and the dark brows that arched above, making them seem to glow like old gold. They seared into her. Tristanne’s breath caught, and a restless heat washed over her, scalding her. The sounds of the high-class partygoers, their clinking glasses and cultured laughter, disappeared. Her anxiety and her purpose fell away as if they had never been. It was as if the whole world—the glittering expanse of the French Riviera, the endless blue-green Mediterranean Sea—faded into his hot, gold gaze. Was consumed by him, enveloped into him—changed by him, that fanciful voice whispered in the back of her mind.
“Miss Barbery,” he said in greeting, his native Greek coloring his words just slightly, adding a rough caress to his voice. It sounded like a command, though he did not alter his careless position, lounging so indolently against the bar, one hand toying with his glass of amber-colored liquor. He watched her with old, intent eyes. The hairs on the back of Tristanne’s neck stood at attention, letting her know that he was not at all what he seemed.
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.
“You must bolster the family fortune,” he had told her matter-of-factly six weeks earlier, as if he was not discussing her future. Her life.
“I don’t understand,” she had said stiffly, still wearing her black dress from their father’s memorial service earlier that day. She had not been in mourning, not even so soon after his death. Not for Gustave Barbery, at any rate—though she would perhaps always grieve for the father Gustave had never been to her. “All I want is access to my trust fund a few years early.”
That bloody trust fund. She’d hated that it existed, hated that her father thought it gave him the right to attempt to control her as he saw fit. Hated more that Peter was its executor now that her father was dead—and that, for her mother’s sake, she had to play along with him in order to access it. She’d wanted nothing to do with the cursed Barbery fortune nor its attendant obligations and expectations. She’d spent years living proudly off of her own money, the money she’d earned with her own hands—but such pride was no longer a luxury she could afford. Her mother’s health had deteriorated rapidly once Gustave fell ill; her debts had mounted at a dizzying rate, especially once Peter had taken control of the Barbery finances eight months ago and had stopped paying Vivienne’s bills. It fell to Tristanne to sort it out, which was impossible on the money she made scraping out the life of an artist in Vancouver. She had no choice but to placate Peter in the hope she could use her trust to save her mother from ruin. It made her want to cry but she did not—could
