Heiress's Defiance by Lynn Raye Harris Page B

anger did cross his features then. “Of course I did. I was a child, Lucilla, andI made a mistake. Is that supposed to follow me for the rest of my life?”
    “But your father …” She felt many things for her own father, but not the kind of hate that could make her want to kill him. Never that. Disappointment and love and exasperation, yes.
    His jaw was tight. “Just because a man makes a baby with a woman doesn’t mean he’s a father.”
    “It also doesn’t mean he deserves what you did to yours.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. It hurt to say such things to him, and yet she couldn’t understand how he could have done what the detective told her.
    Nikos Stavrou spent four years in a juvenile-detention facility for attacking his father and nearly killing the man. No, the Stavrou home was not a happy one. The father was drunk and disorderly much of the time, and the police were often called out for domestic disturbances. But to attack your own father with a club and beat him so badly he spent two months in the hospital and now lived on disability?
    It made her shudder to think the same man who had done those things had touched her so tenderly last night. He’d stroked her skin like she was a cherished possession, but thosesame hands had wielded a weapon against his own father.
    “I won’t discuss this with you, Lucilla. It’s none of your goddamned business.”
    The lump in her throat was huge. She didn’t understand, and yet she also felt as if she’d crossed some sort of line she shouldn’t by bringing this up. But what choice did she have? He couldn’t stay. She couldn’t allow a man like him to run this company and sit in judgment of her and her family when he had no right to be so judgmental.
    “No, it’s not,” she said. “But the Chatsfield is. And I want you gone. Give your notice, Christos. Call my father and make it happen.”
    His eyes glittered dangerously. For someone who should be intimidated right now, he certainly wasn’t showing any signs of it. “I’m not afraid of you, Lucilla.”
    “I’m giving you until the shareholders’ meeting. If you aren’t gone by then, I’ll have a lot to say when it’s my turn to speak.”
    “What a cold bitch you are,” he said softly, and she felt the blow of those words like he’d stabbed her in the heart. “So superior and morally indignant. But don’t forget when you’re looking down your spoiled nose at me that I know what kind of sounds you makewhen you come. I’ve heard you beg, Lucilla. For me. For
my
touch.”
    She swallowed. “That’s before I knew—”
    “You’d beg me again, right now, right here, if I kissed you. You’d beg me, Lucilla. Don’t ever forget that.”
    She backed up instinctively, her heart thumping in her breast. Because if he came around that desk and took her in his arms, she was afraid he might prove his point. Because part of her ached for him. Part of her remembered that wild, lonely man and the refuge they’d found together in her bed. For a few hours, neither of them had been alone.
    An illusion, she told herself. Christos was never alone because women fell at his feet all the time. She, however, had made their night into something more without intending to. She’d actually started to like him, just a teeny bit. But it was false. He wasn’t even who he said he was, so how much of a stretch was it for him to pretend last night? Pretend that what they’d shared had been important, at least for that bit of time they were together?
    “The meeting, Christos,” she said as she reached the door. “Give your notice and you can address the meeting as if everything is normal. Say you got another offer. I don’t care. But do it or so help me …”
    She couldn’t look at his face a moment longer, couldn’t see the rage and frustration—and regret?—playing across his features without wanting to rush to his side and put her arms around him.
    She reached for the door blindly, found it and