In Darius’s own opinion, that vengeance had been not only justified, but strategic. The boys at school had never taunted him again.
But this time, his grandmother had been proved right. Because Darius’s vengeance against Letty had hurt him more than he’d ever imagined.
Instead of quenching the flame, that night together had only built his desire for her into a blazing fire.
He wanted her. Every night for the last six months, he’d half expected Letty to contact him. Once her prideful anger had faded, surely she would want him back—if not for his body, then obviously for his money.
But she never had. And when he’d remembered the haunted look on her beautiful heart-shaped face the night she’d told him she loved him, the night he’d taken her virginity and tossed her ruthlessly into the dark, he’d had moments when he’d wondered if he might have been wrong.
But how could he be wrong? The evidence spoke for itself.
Still, in the months since their night together, his continual raw desire for her had made him edgy. He’d intended to remain as his company’s CEO for a year, guiding his team in the transition after the sale. Instead, he’d gotten into an argument with the head of the conglomerate and left within weeks. Darius could no longer endure working for someone else, but he’d signed a noncompete clause, so couldn’t start a new business in the same field.
Bereft of the twenty-hour workdays that had been the entirety of his life for a decade, he hadn’t known how to fill his hours. He tried spending some of his fortune. He’d bought a race car, then ten cars, then a race track. He’d bought four planes, all with interiors done in different colors. No. Next he’d tried extreme sports: skydiving, heli-skiing. Yawn.
Worst of all, he’d been surrounded by beautiful women, all keen to get his attention. And he hadn’t wanted a single one of them.
He’d been bored. Worse. He’d felt frustrated and angry. Because even with the endless freedom of time and money, he couldn’t have what he really wanted.
Letty.
Now, seeing her in the flesh, so beautiful—so pregnant—he hated himself for ever taking his vengeance. No matter how richly she’d deserved it, look where that thrill of hatred and lust had led.
Pregnant. With his baby.
Even wearing an oversize white T-shirt and baggy jeans, Letty was somehow more sensual, more delectable, than any stick-thin model in a skintight cocktail dress. Letty’s pregnancy curves were lush. Her skin glowed. Her breasts had grown enormous. With effort, he forced his gaze down to her belly.
“So it’s true,” he said in a low voice. “You’re pregnant.”
She looked frozen. Then she squared her shoulders, tossing her dark ponytail in a futile gesture of bravado. “So?”
“Is the baby mine?”
“Yours?” Her eyes shot sparks of fire, even though she had dark shadows beneath, as if she hadn’t been sleeping well. “What makes you think the baby’s yours? Maybe I slept with ten men since our night. Maybe I slept with a hundred—”
The thought of her sleeping with other men made Darius sick. “You’re lying.”
“How do you know?”
“Because your father told me.”
The fight went out of her. She went pale. “My...my father?”
“He wanted me to pay for the information, but when I refused, he told me everything. For free.”
“Maybe he was lying,” she said weakly. She looked as if she might faint.
“Sit down,” Darius ordered. “I’ll get you a glass of water. Then we’ll talk.”
She sank into the old pullout sofa, her cheeks pale. It wasn’t hard for him to find the kitchen. The apartment was pathetically small—just a postage-stamp-sized living room, surrounded by an even smaller bedroom, bathroom and kitchen.
He looked around him, amazed that the onetime heiress of Fairholme, born into a forty-room mansion, was now living with her father in an apartment the same size as the room her mother had once used to arrange flowers off the solarium.
Old boxes and mementos were packed everywhere. The leftovers of her family’s former life—items that obviously weren’t valuable enough to be sold, but too precious to be thrown away—were clustered around the old television and piled tightly along the walls. A pillow and folded blanket sat beside the pullout sofa.
Darius walked across the worn carpet to the peeling linoleum of the telephone-booth-sized kitchen. Dust motes floated in the weak gray sunlight. The barred window overlooked an air shaft that faced other apartments, just a few feet away. With the bars across the window, it felt like prison.
It’s better than they deserve, he told himself firmly. And it was still nicer than his childhood home in Heraklios. At least this place had electricity, running water. At least this place had a parent.