“I can’t protect all of womankind from my brother,” Adara said gently, as if she knew what Natalie was suffering. “If he wants to pick up good-time girls looking for a night of partying, I can’t stop him, but employees are off-limits. He knows that.”
“I know it,” Natalie insisted.
She was being punished for self-indulgence. It wasn’t that she wasn’t allowed to be happy. She just had to be happy with less than what most people got. She’d figured that out a long time ago. Wishing for things that other people took for granted, such as having a dad or a healthy brother or a functioning life partner was futile. But if she kept her expectations low, she could usually have that much.
If she hadn’t stood outside that stupid door, yearning for love and marriage, she could have had the poignant memory she’d wanted from Demitri in the first place.
Adara dug an eyeliner from her bag, then leaned into the mirror to draw fresh lines around her lids.
Natalie opened her own purse and searched out a lipstick, but she really didn’t see the point in fixing makeup she’d cry off as soon as she reached her room.
“It’s not as if I expected anything to come of this. I just wanted...” Her mouth struggled to form words. Her hand was trembling, her whole body still reacting while her mind tried to latch on to logistics so she wouldn’t melt into a complete mess. Dread and guilt mixed with regret and embarrassment. “Getting involved with him was my decision. My mistake. I just...” Time to grovel. And keep her expectations realistic—she hoped. “Will you let me put in a resignation rather than leaving me with a termination on my record?”
“I’m not firing you!” Adara lowered her hand and straightened to face her. “Don’t be ridiculous. And you’re not quitting, either. If you need some time, I’ll arrange for you to go home early—and believe me, I’ll understand. Take paid leave while the gossip dies down if you need to, but I can’t imagine who we could possibly find to replace you. We’ll have to make a statement of some kind, too. I’m sorry about that. Your privacy will be protected as much as I can manage, but as a company we can’t be seen as trying to cover up, especially because he’s family. Legal will have to walk us through exactly how that part should be handled.”
“I didn’t mean any of this to happen,” Natalie blurted, feeling the press of tears rise to brim her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“This is Demitri’s disaster, not yours,” Adara scolded. “I’m upset it happened, but not entirely surprised. I wish he would—” She pressed her lips flat and seemed to deliberately force her despondent expression into something more stoic. “I won’t bore you with our family issues. But tell me, would you prefer to go home for the week or soldier on?”
Natalie desperately wanted to go home and lick her wounds, cuddle her daughter and let maternal love heal the cracks that romantic longings had fissured through her heart. But the fact that she still had a job was a miracle in itself. No way could she walk away from it and jeopardize it further.
“If you really want me to, I’ll stay.”
* * *
Demitri was drunk. Not stinking drunk, but drunk enough not to care how unhappy he was. It was the perfect state to be in as he sat beside the pool of a competitor’s five-star hotel in the south of France. No chance of sitting beside one of his own—his brother had canceled all his key passes along with his company credit cards.
That was after his brother-in-law, Gideon, the real head of the Makricosta organization, had had him escorted off the Lyon property. There’d been a phone call first. He had to give Gideon credit for wanting his side of things, but Demitri had been in no state of mind to be civil. “Adara’s not sure if she’s fired you or you’ve quit,” Gideon had said.
Demitri had told him what he could do with his job, so furious by the way things had gone, he’d cut all ties to Gideon, his siblings and the damned hotel chain.
Do you love her? he could still hear Adara saying. Are you going to marry her?
It was supposed to have been a simple affair, not something that would haunt him. Not something worth quitting his job over.
He didn’t care about his job. Not really. Certainly not about the money. He had a trust fund he rarely touched. He’d only gone into the family business for them. Adara was the one who cared about the hotels. Theo, well, Demitri would never understand why Theo was still there. At least he, Demitri, liked the kind of work he did. He was competitive enough to make sure all his campaigns and strategies were exceptional, even if he was bored out of his skull with the subject matter. Aside from Theo getting on his case about budgets now and again, neither of them had reason to question the quality of his work. They were going to miss him long before he’d miss them.
Which was proved when he saw Theo scanning the crowd from across the pool.
Demitri let a smirk of satisfaction tilt his mouth. He had known they’d break first. Come begging.
Theo spotted him and a twitch of disgust tightened his mouth.
Oh, goodie. A meaty, overcooked lecture, coming right up.
He watched Theo wind his way through the occupied deck chairs and families around tables. Theo paused at one, speaking to a mother with a baby on her lap.
Missing his own baby so much he had to stop and tickle the chin of a stranger’s? God, he was sick of how besotted they all were with their spouses and babies.
Theo handed over a business card to the man at the table, hands were shaken and the baby gathered up by Theo. He walked purposely toward Demitri, the baby beginning to reach back and cry as he realized he was being taken from his mother.
“Is Makricosta’s starting a black market—?” Demitri began.
Theo plopped the bawling kid into his lap, making Demitri scramble to set aside his vodka tonic and hang on to the squirming boy so the tyke wouldn’t pitch himself onto the marble pool deck.
“What the hell?” he said to Theo, raising his voice to be heard over the growing volume of the worked-up kid’s bellow.
“Make him stop,” Theo challenged.
Demitri would have risen and carried the brat back to his mother, but was a little too drunk to trust himself, especially when just keeping the boy in his lap was like wrangling a marlin.
“Make your point, Theo,” he demanded.
“It’s pretty distressing, isn’t it? Is he hungry? Does he need a diaper change?”
“He wants his mother,” Demitri said pointedly. “Take him to her.”
“What if his mother is passed out from drinking and pills?” Theo said, leaning a hand on the arm of Demitri’s chair as he mentioned the unmentionable. “What if you’re a little girl and if you don’t keep him quiet, your father is going to backhand you so hard you hit the wall on the other side of the room?”
“We’re doing this here? Now?” Demitri asked, reminding himself not to crush an innocent baby just because his brother made him see red. Did Theo think he didn’t remember? That he wouldn’t have stopped their father if he could have? That he hadn’t tried in the only way open to him?
“I’m sorry,” a woman said, pushing in to break the men’s intense eye contact. It was the boy’s mother. “I can’t bear hearing him—”
“It’s fine. Perfect,” Theo said, straightening into his hotel-controller role. “I appreciate your loaning him to me. As I said, just call my personal number when you’ve decided where you’d like to stay. Two weeks, any Makricosta resort. Room and meals on me. Thanks.”
“That’s awfully generous for such a penny-pinching bastard,” Demitri said as the woman walked away and the baby quieted.
Theo ignored that and only said, “Adara is worried about you.”
“Really? Weird, because she sounded more worried about the reputation of the hotels when we last talked.”
“She doesn’t deserve the silent treatment. Text her and let her know you’re alive.”
“Take a look, Theo,” Demitri said with a wave at his mostly naked, semireclined form on the lounger. “I’m a grown man. Why don’t you two stick to playing mommy and daddy with your actual children?”
“Why do you always have to make things harder, not easier?” Theo muttered, crossing his arms and shaking his head with disgust.
It might as well have been one of those backhands Theo had been talking about, only for once, it had landed on him. You have to be good, Demitri. Yet being bad had been the only way he’d known to defuse their father’s lashing out.
The guilt that had always sat in Demitri for getting away with so much, setting him apart from his siblings, slithered in him like a venomous snake, sinking fangs behind his heart. He’d always known in the darkest corners of his soul that Theo must blame him. Must secretly hate him. That was why he hadn’t asked all the questions he had about Nic, fearing the answer would be, because you’re not one of us.