“Let’s get them on their way,” he said. “Then we can have a quiet dinner and talk.”
It didn’t work out that way. They had just said their goodbyes when Leon’s mother texted. “I have to call her, prepare her for what to expect. You should touch base with your family. Let them know you’ll be staying for the near future.”
Before she could decide whether she wanted to protest his decree, Leon asked Kyle to fetch her a phone. Ten minutes later, she had unwrapped a brand-new smartphone, logged into her account and had her father on a video chat. It was so good to see him!
She didn’t see Leon until she had put Illi down for the evening and was in the jet tub outside Leon’s stateroom. He came out with a distracted, irritable look on his face.
“I hope you don’t mind. Kyle found me a bathing suit.” She self-consciously touched the halter strap of the neon pink bikini she wore, then pointed at the little device on the ledge. “And a baby monitor. He’s like a genie. Why are you paying Georgiou to sort out our problems? Just ask Kyle to twitch his nose.”
“Kyle’s powers do not extend beyond the yacht.” He began stripping down.
“What are you doing?” She snapped her head to the side, shielding her gaze.
“This tub is completely private. You don’t need a suit. And it’s been a long few days. I need to relax.” His belt hit the deck with a faint, jangling thud. The rest of his clothes must have followed because he sank into the tub with a sigh of contentment. “Your Victorian aunt called. She wants her delicate sensibilities back.”
“Ha-ha.” Tanja couldn’t tell if he was naked beneath the churning bubbles as she faced him across the small pool, but she would bet any money he was. The side of his foot grazed her thigh when he propped his heels next to her hip and splayed out his long arms.
“What did your mother say?” she asked, trying not to be a prude by shifting away. She was actually the opposite—some kind of libertine who reacted to the brush of a foot like it was the most erotically provoking caress imaginable.
“You know how to kill a buzz, don’t you?” His face hardened and his shoulders regained all their tension.
“Is that what she said?” she joked lamely.
He snorted, but there was little humor in it. “She wants us to come to dinner when we get to Athens. What did your father say?”
“That he wants me home,” she said with a wrench of homesickness she couldn’t keep from her voice. “He understands, though. He’s ridiculously proud to have two grandchildren.” She smiled as she recalled her father’s button-busting enthusiasm. He was also worried that Leon would hurt her or let her down again. So was she, but she kept that to herself.
“My mother didn’t say any of that,” Leon said flatly, cheekbones like calved glaciers they were so sharp and ghostly blue in the glow from beneath the surface of the water.
Tanja started to point out that Illi wasn’t his so why would his mother welcome her as a grandchild, but the mood he was radiating didn’t seem receptive to hearing excuses for his mother’s behavior.
“When you said your parents’ marriage was horrific, what did you mean?”
His breath left him in a disparaging exhale. “Name it. They both cheated. Used me against one another. Had ugly fights where they threw things and humiliated each other in public.”
“That’s awful. Were there drug or alcohol issues?”
“They didn’t admit to it or seek help, so is that a valid excuse?” His arm bent and he used his thumbnail to scratch his eyebrow. “My father was a terrible person. Profoundly selfish and manipulative. My mother brought her own father’s money into the marriage and would have divorced him if he would have given it back, but he refused. In fact, he hired a man to seduce her and take intimate photos, then held them as blackmail over her. I think I’ve got all the copies destroyed by now, but who knows? He could still haunt her with them.”
“That’s horrible!”
“It is. She was pretty horrible sometimes, too. I’ve had three DNA tests to prove I’m his. Frankly, I was hoping every time I wouldn’t be. When I was eight, he sent me to boarding school purely to punish her. Sometimes I think I should have tried harder to refuse.”
“You were eight. How much choice did you have?”
“None, but I knew she was upset. We had a decent relationship until then. It was damaged beyond repair after I left, and a lot of that is on me. She quit showing affection for me, though, so he wouldn’t keep using me against her. It made it hard to tell if she wanted me to... I don’t know. Fight to see her? I was just happy to be away from all of it so I took every excuse to avoid going home. That’s how I got into racing. I crewed through school breaks and bought my first sailboat by saving up my allowance.” His mouth twisted with self-mockery. He knew how spoon-fed that sounded.
“Did your mother know your father wasn’t always operating within the law?”
“She had suspicions,” he said with weariness. “She was afraid to ask too many questions.” He was deep in thought, absently working his thumb against his bent finger. “When I came home for the funeral and we began to realize how bad things were, she cried for the first time I’d seen in years. She said, ‘I hung on through all of that so you would inherit, and now there’s nothing?’ It was a kick in the gut to realize she thought she had been helping me by staying with him.”
“So you rebuilt your father’s fortune for her?”
His gaze flickered to hers, eyes flinty slits. “And the thousands of people around the globe who needed their jobs.”
Right.
“Does she feel threatened by me? Not me specifically, but the fact you have a wife?”
He let his head drop back against the edge of the tub again. “She’s angry I never told her I was married.”
“Ever?”
“We aren’t close,” he said flatly.
Tanja slouched deeper into the water to absorb that, absently bringing her feet up to the edge of the bench across from her. She jerked away when her foot touched Leon’s firm thigh.
His hand slid beneath the surface and caught her ankle, bringing it back, holding her gaze as he set her foot in place on the bench next to his hip before his arm returned to the edge of the tub.
The heat and churn and burble of the water filled the air. It was a manifestation of the conflicting energy between them. Of the clear head she was trying to keep while, below the surface, her body was roiling with sensations. Her heart was doing somersaults, trying to take in how Leon’s childhood had turned him into a man who had been charming, yet withdrawn. One who inspired confidence, then ultimately let her down.