Chapter 23

Lauren hugged her purse to her side, almost like a shield. She felt awkward, uneasy, and she never felt that. She and Dimitri had had sex—but that was all it was. People had sex all the time. That was what two consenting, uncommitted adults did when they were attracted to each other. They got naked, and they had sex.

And my God, getting naked with Dimitri had been so much more everything than she’d expected it would be. Even now, with him walking beside her so confidently, so casually, she was pretty sure he was drawing all the wrong conclusions about why she was reacting so lamely to his presence. He undoubtedly thought he’d blown her away sexually, and he wasn’t completely wrong there. It had taken her a full twenty minutes in the shower before she’d stopped shaking, and his entire house had seemed lighter—brighter—the ocean practically chattering with excitement by the time they’d stepped back out onto the porch. Island sex was undoubtedly the best sex, but that wasn’t all that was going on here.

Dimitri presented a danger to her that no guy had in far longer than she cared to consider. He was strong, stubborn, competent, capable…

And maybe a demigod.

The earth hadn’t moved when they’d climaxed, not exactly—no storms had broken loose, and the sea didn’t rush up the sand. But it had been the very best sex of her life, bar none. And if that didn’t make Dimitri a god, she didn’t know what did.

She could almost see him holding his own against Henry. Almost. The possibility of that was heady stuff, filling her with ideas of a life of freedom, of normalcy. A life she knew she couldn’t have. Not until she’d solved the Henry puzzle once and for all.

Until then, there would be nothing normal about her life.

But still…

“Lauren! You’re here, finally. Dimitri, go help your sister. Lauren and I must talk.”

Dimitri’s grandmother Calista took her by the arm and hustled her around the villa to where a clearing opened out onto a bold promontory. The view was spectacular. Had it been daylight, she would have been able to see for miles out to sea. Now, with the sun fully set, a canopy of stars twinkled in the sky, an awesome counterpoint to the few winking lights of yachts far out in the water. It was breathtaking.

“He’s treating you well? He’s being good to you?”

“What?” Lauren looked down, surprised, at the old woman who was now poking her in the arm. What had Alexi said her name was? “Oh. Yes, yes, of course. Dimitri is very good to me.”

She realized a second later what the woman truly meant and tempered her smile. Did she know about Dimitri? She had to know. But if she didn’t, Lauren couldn’t let on about Dimitri, right? That would be bad.

“We’re not dating, by the way,” she finally said, a little lamely. “You should know that.”

“Oh, he says the same thing,” Calista said. “You both are tiresome with your youth and your words.” She waved her hands. “He’s a good man, but he needs a strong woman. I get the feeling, that’s what you are.”

Lauren smiled too widely, not her typical practiced expression at all. She didn’t care. Man, Calista had said. Not demigod, but man. “Well, thank you, but we’ve only recently met. I’m in O?ros on vacation.”

“Then you must come back when you are ready to live here. You see this house? Dimitri built it. With his hands, and his father’s hands, and his grandfather’s hands. It’s a good house, and it will be his one day. He needs something to remember us by when we all are...well.” She huffed and flapped her hands at the building. “It’s a good house.”

The woman’s affection for Dimitri was fierce, and Lauren was suddenly at a loss for words. She looked up to the sturdy whitewashed house, lit up with torches and laughter, and tried for a moment to picture herself there, instead of in her apartment in New York City or her flat in London, or her cute little pied-à-terre in Paris.

She couldn’t.

Dimitri was a gorgeous hunk of man, but, demigod or not, he wasn’t her “forever after.” He wasn’t even her “for very long.” He was a distraction at a time when she needed it, nothing more.

Right?

“Ah, ah, ah! You are thinking about it. Thinking is good.” The woman squeezed her arm and grinned at her. “But don’t think too much, okay? Too much thinking is useless when action would do.”

“Grandma, you’re scaring her.” Alexi appeared beside them with two familiar drinks in her hand. She gave one to the old woman, the other to Lauren. “I’ll be right back,” she winked, then steered her grandmother around. “Your friend Mina is here. Don’t you want to say hello?”

Their laughter dwindled into the background as Lauren took a sip of her drink, allowing the tsipouro to burn down her throat. She glanced at the glass in surprise. She was now becoming somewhat of a connoisseur of the drink, but this seemed—stronger. Smoother too.

“You like it, I can tell. Which means mostly that you have good taste. But then, we already knew that.”

Dimitri’s rich voice rolled over her, triggering a response she could no more ignore than mask. Luckily, she didn’t have to hide it—the deepening night around them did that for her.

“It’s my family’s recipe,” he continued. They should bottle and sell it, but they don’t have the time with the work they do fishing.” He sighed ruefully. “And I have neither the time nor the head for business it requires.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Uh-huh. Humility isn’t your strong suit.”

“It’s not a question of humility.” He shrugged. “It’s more a strategic pursuit. If I know what I am good at, which is many things, I’m happier to let go what I’m not good at, so as to spend more time on the things that I enjoy. You see?”

She couldn’t gainsay his logic, and instead turned to look at the ocean. The sounds of the party seemed too far away, with him this close. As if he could blot out the world with his presence, creating a tiny circle of calm in the middle of a brewing storm. She could get used to that illusion, she realized. So she went on the offensive again.

“That promontory, with the beacon.” She pointed to the west with the hand that held the tsipouro. “Your sister was telling me about it today.”

As she’d planned, Dimitri’s manner immediately sobered. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for that, but she barreled on anyway. “She said that wreckage washes up on shore there sometimes.”

“My sister, she talks too much,” Dimitri said. But he was looking out at the promontory now as well. “She told you, I’m sure, of the wreckage in particular I’m searching for?”

“From Ari’s plane.” She tried to pick out his expression in the darkness, couldn’t. “Have you ever found anything?”

“Not enough to matter. The royal plane had many distinguishing characteristics and many identifying marks against such a tragedy. But when a plane crashes, it doesn’t always fall into the ocean in one piece. An explosion could have disintegrated it. The engine could have kept working for a short while even if other systems failed, dropping in a different location from the rest of the plane. There are too many possibilities to fathom.”

“Yet you keep looking.”

He nodded. “I keep looking.”

“What will you do if you find something, though—a scrap of metal that, what—tells you that Ari crashed near here and not near Thassos? How will that help you?”

Dimitri took another long pull of his drink. “It’s a good question. Perhaps I’ll convince myself that he has died, once and for all. Perhaps I’ll have the closure that the few bits and scraps of metal that have turned up haven’t given me. Perhaps I’ll have someone—or something—to blame, finally. When you have no answers, you have too many possibilities. I’d prefer those possibilities to be fewer.” He shrugged. “I suppose I won’t know until I see it, yeah?”

“Could we go down there?” Sensing immediately that she’d asked the wrong thing, Lauren hastened on. “If we’ll be here that long. We may not be, which is fine. Never mind. We don’t have to go.” Shut up, shut up! She blushed hard as she tried to quiet her unruly tongue. Beside her, Dimitri had fallen silent. Not the silence of someone who was angry, either.

The silence of someone who was curious.

A curious Dimitri was not a good thing.

He verified that with his next words. “Why do you want to see the cove? I intrigue you this much, princess?”

She gave him her haughtiest look, pretty sure the effect was lost in the gloom. “I’m stuck on this rock for, what, another day—day and a half? We have to do something.”

He didn’t hesitate. “It seems that we found a worthwhile distraction already.”

“Well, we’ve done that already, so it’s time for something new.”

Laughter rumbled deep in his voice. “And you don’t think you would be interested in a second opportunity?” he asked quietly. “I could change your mind.”

Her scoffing reply sounded impressively derisive, at least. “Doubtful.” She turned away from him so he couldn’t read anything in her expression. “I’d be far more interested in learning more about this cove that has fascinated you so. You’ve certainly found a few things, yes? Do you keep them in your house?”

He shifted beside her. “The ones that seemed relevant, sure. The others I left along the shoreline or gave to the local bar owner down there. There’s a secondary dock near the promontory, where the boats bring in their weekly hauls—more frequently if they are overloaded, but they are rarely overloaded early. It is not an easy life, fishing. But it’s a good one.”

“Well, it can’t be all that great. You left it for the military.”

He shrugged. “Again, I know what I excel at. Or maybe you’ve forgotten that already.”