“You never thought about making a call yourself?”
The corner of his mouth twisted. “By the time I realized I could, I’d developed my own way of dealing with it. The old man would be reaching for Adara and I’d spill my milk. Instead of shaking her, he’d tell her to mop it up. Then we all grew into teenagers and Theo was big enough that Dad kept most of his bullying to verbal. Even at that, it never stopped. And they took it! It made me so crazy.” His hand worked hers with hard agitation, but she ignored the discomfort, sensing this was a much-needed bleeding out of poison. “I’d say, ‘Just tell him no,’ and Theo wouldn’t even hear me. He’d just keep doing whatever he’d been told to do. He took accounting! The man should be engineering fighter jets.”
Natalie could hardly take in all she was hearing. She had grown up sad and frustrated with her brother’s illness, but aside from resentment over her father leaving, their house had been loving. So loving.
She didn’t know how anyone could live with something so twisted and painful. No wonder the Makricostas were standoffish and hard to read.
“And they never hated me, no matter how bad it got for them. No matter what I did. I slept with Theo’s fiancée, for God’s sake!” He glared at her, half his face lit by the slant of neon glow from the street, making him look satanic as he practically insisted she revile him for his actions.
“With Jaya?” Her mind started to explode, but he quickly dismissed that.
“No. Long before her. Someone Dad arranged.” His grip on her hand eased. “I knew Theo didn’t want to go through with it and asked him why he didn’t just leave. He was in his twenties. I couldn’t understand why he was still letting Dad run his life, and Theo said, ‘If I don’t get married, Adara will have to.’ We’d seen the kind of Neanderthals Dad was trying to fix her up with. She was trying so hard, even that late in the day, to make us look like a nuclear family, never acknowledging that it was radioactive. I could see why Theo was willing to make the sacrifice, but I couldn’t let him go through with it. So I slept with his fiancée and that broke them up. Then Adara married Gideon and I honestly don’t know why Theo stuck around after that. To make sure Gideon was good to her, maybe.”
“You could try asking him,” she suggested gently.
He snorted. “I told you. They’re not talking to me.”
He rapped a knuckle on the window and the chauffeur opened his door. Demitri reached back to help her out, then hugged her into his side as he walked her into the restaurant.
They were both shivering, and she wasn’t sure how much was cold and how much was reaction. Never in her wildest imaginings had she seen such a history on him. It explained a lot, but raised more questions, most pressingly: Where were they going?
Not for their date, of course. She could see he’d brought her to Old Montreal. They entered a converted industrial building where they were ushered through a trendy lounge to an elevator. It opened into an elegant space of velvet chairs and crystal chandeliers, where a table had been reserved against the windows overlooking the St. Laurence.
But where were they going as a couple?
As they were seated she saw far too many similarities to their first meal. The waiter set her napkin in her lap and Demitri ordered wine and a mixed plate of seafood hors d’oeuvres for them to share.
Of course, she’d told him in Paris that she liked lobster and shellfish, and this place had a reputation for offering the finest of both. Perhaps he was being less high-handed and more thoughtful than she gave him credit for?
Linking her fingers together, she touched her knuckles to her lips, elbows braced on the table, and regarded him through the tangle of her lashes, intrigued by the dance of light and shadow from the candle flame against the carved angles of his handsome face.
“What are you thinking?” he prompted.
“Honestly? I doubt you’ve ever told anyone what you’ve told me tonight. I’m wondering, why me?”
His lip curled in self-contempt. “If you only knew how many times I’ve listened to some rejected pop diva or a humiliated politician going through a divorce. ‘Thanks for listening,’ they always say, while I shake my head at their bizarre desire to share their personal garbage. I have no idea, Natalie. I felt like I could tell you, I suppose.”
She smiled wistfully, not entirely surprised. “I’m easy to talk to because I’m used to having the hard conversations. I never had the luxury of radio silence with my brother.”
He looked up sharply.
“I didn’t mean that to sound superior,” she said with an apologetic quirk of her mouth. “I can see why your family would avoid talking about your childhood, but...” She leaned forward. “What if something happened, Demitri? Do you really want this animosity sitting unresolved between you forever?”
His face spasmed briefly and he looked to the window.
After a long minute, after she’d retreated into her chair and tucked her hands in her lap, he said, “No. Of course not.”
He shifted, gave his jaw a brief skim with his hand.
“That first day we met? Gideon accosted me right after you’d spoken to him. He was pressing me to come to Adara’s birthday party. I was annoyed and took it out on you. I don’t want to go. Nic will be there.” He grimaced. “But I keep thinking I should. It would mean a lot to her.”
“You really don’t remember him? I find that so strange. How is he even...? Did your father have an affair?”
“How sexist of you, Natalie,” Demitri scolded. “My mother had the affair. My parents had broken their engagement and she had a fling with Nic’s dad, from what I’ve been told. Then she got back together with our father and passed off the baby as his. Maybe she even believed it. She was pregnant with me when Dad realized Nic wasn’t his. They sent him to boarding school. I guess we saw him a handful of times after that, but the closest thing I have to a memory of him is asking Dad, ‘Who’s Nic?’ I don’t know why it came up or who else was in the room. I just remember the look on his face and being scared. I was sure I was going to get it. Then he slapped me on the back and laughed.”
“Your father punished them for remembering him,” she said on a wisp of stunned disbelief. “But not you, because you didn’t.”
His face fell in shock. Obviously it hadn’t occurred to him.
“That’s really cruel, Demitri,” she said, numb with incredulity. “You’re entitled to feel confused and angry. All of you are. I can’t believe anyone would act that way toward their own children.”
“I always had a kind of survivor’s guilt, because they suffered and I didn’t.” He frowned at the table. “I always thought I should have been punished the way they were. I looked for the line. I pushed and pushed to find it. And I always figured they should hate me because I wasn’t catching hell the way they were. Now they do hate me, and even though I deserve it—”
The sommelier arrived with their wine, giving them both time to regain their composure.
“You should go to her party,” she told him when they were alone again. “You don’t have to get into all of this, but at least turn up.”
He only gave her a disgruntled look, as though he knew she was right but was reluctant to admit it. Then his attention on her sharpened. He narrowed his eyes, holding her gaze with that willpower of his that was so implacable.
“Come with me.”
“What? No,” she said decisively, and then had to ask, “Why would you even suggest it?”
“Because we’re seeing each other.”
“No, we’re not! We’re having dinner,” she insisted. “Once. Tonight. So I can tell you we’re not doing this again.”
Demitri sat back, face icing into hard angles. “Because you’re afraid I’ll turn out like my old man?”
“What? No!” The protest came out unreservedly. He was as capable as anyone of saying something awful, obviously, and far too used to getting his own way, but the times she’d seen him angry, he’d been tightly controlled, not one to resort to violence.
“I’ve cut way back on my drinking,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “Not that I was ever a mean drunk. I hate losing my temper. I wouldn’t so much as raise my voice to you. Are you afraid for Zoey?”
She could see genuine agony in him. Perhaps the only glimpse anyone would ever get of him with shaken confidence.
Natalie shook her head emphatically. “I don’t think you would ever hurt me or Zoey. But, Demitri, that woman you met in Paris, that’s not me. You won’t find me as fun or accessible as I was. I can’t play pretend again.”
* * *
Demitri was feeling his way on very thin ice. Relief had deflated a lifelong tension in him as he realized that his father hadn’t favored him because he saw something of himself in his son. That black mark on his soul was lifting, thanks to Natalie’s insight, but it didn’t mean he was reformed into the kind of man who would fit into her life. He respected that she’d engineered her personal world so she was self-sufficient. He admired her for it. And God knew he had never measured up to anyone’s expectations unless they were basement level. He didn’t blame her for her lack of willingness to take a chance on him.