“Anything I can help with?”
“No,” Leonidas dismissed. “But I had no intention of leaving you to manage our mother on your own. I’ll get back home as soon as I can.”
“Okay. Leonidas?”
“Yeah?”
“Take care of yourself. This is a hard time—for all of us—in different ways. Don’t—,”
But Leonidas understood, even without Thanasi saying it. “I won’t. Old habits are exactly that. I have no intention of falling back into that lifestyle. Don’t worry about me.”
Leonidas disconnected the call,his eyes locked to Mila’s, so the air between them seemed to crackle with an electrical awareness, as though a localized storm brewed between them.
“You have to leave?” She asked softly.
“No.” He dismissed the idea immediately, even as his brother’s plea, his mother’s grief, were drawing on him, pulling him towards their home on an isolated archipelago in Greece. “Not yet.”
“But soon?”
“At some point,” he said quietly, placing his phone on his desk. Her eyes followed the gesture, then snapped back to his face, a worry line between her brows.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I don’t want to be the reason you’re not with your family.”
His gut tightened. “You’re not. I wanted to be alone.”
“You’re not alone.”
“I’m not with family though, there’s a difference.”
“It sounds as though they wish you were; that they want you now,” she said with a soft twist of her lips, moving into the room and looking around quickly, taking stock of the surroundings. He kept his eyes firmly locked to her as she drew nearer.
“So do you.”
Her eyes widened. “You barely know me.”
That was true. How could he split his loyalty like this?
“I know Benji,” he said. “I made a promise to him that I would protect you.”
Her eyes fluttered shut. “But your family—,”
“Let me worry about them,” he said, with a hint of finality. He knew he had responsibilities there. He would honour them. Of course he would. But for now, Thanasi was with their mother, he was taking care of her. Leonidas would go, as soon as he could, but that time would not come until Mila’s stalker was found. With Grieg—his chief of security—on the case, he didn’t doubt the time would come soon enough.
And that thought brought with it a strange weight, a crushing sense of the impending end, even when he knew that emotion made very little sense.
“Were you looking for me?”
Her large, round eyes lifted to his, her lips tugging downwards. “Yes.”
“And?”
Her throat shifted as she swallowed; his eyes fell to the gesture of their own accord. She was beautiful and graceful, and so gently ethereal, like a creature from the other world. He lifted a hand, tucking hair behind her ear, then allowing his fingers to glance the skin at the base of her throat.
Anguish stormed inside her eyes. They were both fighting a battle—against each other, and within themselves.
“I—wanted my phone. Or to use yours,” she tacked on, shivering a little, as if remembering his concerns about the possibility of her phone being tracked.
“Why?”