Chapter Eight
Ari
I stalk out of the conference room. The silence behind me is short, ended by raised voices spouting off in English and Greek as I walk away. Anger pulses through me, molten lava burning me from the inside out.
After the gala last night, I was fool enough to think the deal with Hellas Shipping might go through.
Xenakis saw AuraGeothermal as a profit-focused organization, not a company committed to green energy and providing for both its employees and its country.
Our tour of the geothermal facility and last night’s reception had been steps forward.
Small steps, but after the monumental backsliding of the past year, it was still a victory.
Until this morning. Until the bastard showed up thirty minutes late to the review of the new proposal with a scowl on his face and reddened eyes. I didn’t see him drink a lot last night. But then again, I had been away for a good thirty minutes chasing after—
Nei. Right now I need to focus, to think about what’s going to happen next. To examine and plan for the very real possibility that this deal just suffered a catastrophic blow it may never recover from.
Xenakis had settled in. Diana had cordially passed him a copy of the proposal, but he’d barely glanced at her.
I highlighted the recent changes, kept my tone polite despite my irritation.
Xenakis had said nothing until the end when he’d leaned back in his chair, rubbed at the bridge of his nose, and said he needed time to think.
My hands curl into fists as I stride past a wide-eyed Malla and into my office, slamming the door behind me.
I’d asked Xenakis how long. I’d caught Diana’s warning look, but I’d ignored it.
I don’t tolerate disrespect from anyone, including guests.
My team worked damn hard on that proposal, and they deserved an answer.
So when Xenakis had snapped he’d get back to me on his own time, I’d coolly pointed out that not only had my team expedited their work to accommodate his visit to Iceland, but that AuraGeothermal had capitulated on several points.
And then Xenakis had sat up, looked me straight in the eye, and nearly spat out the words that set a match to my simmering anger.
Your so-called concessions are worthless to me.
Everyone had frozen. Even Xenakis’s own eyes had widened, as if he’d realized he’d gone too far. He’d started to speak, but I’d stood and leaned across the table, palms flat on the surface to keep myself grounded.
We’re done here.
And then I’d left.
I need to get out. Get away from my office, the building, the city. I punch a button on my desk phone.
“Malla, put me down as unavailable the rest of the afternoon. Reschedule any meetings. Only contact me in case of emergencies.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have my car brought around front.”
“Yes, sir.”
I turn and look out the window at the harbor, at the snow-capped peak of Mount Esja. There are other companies I can review, other ports that can still provide the services and land we need to expand. This is a roadblock, not a death sentence.
Just business. Nothing more.
This, I think irritably as I press the button for the lobby, is what comes from allowing personal feelings to enter into a business deal. To let Xenakis see not just the professional but the intimate aspects of what we do.
The doors are halfway shut when an arm stabs between them. The doors open back up. Diana slips inside.
Case in point.
Her subtle scent of jasmine wraps around me, teases me. Has my anger shifting to a new target: me. I’ve never been tempted to this extreme by any woman before. Now, when my mind should be anywhere but sex, anywhere but on my brother’s ex-fiancée, she dominates my thoughts.
She’s wearing a velvet green dress with long sleeves and a slim-fitting skirt down to her knees, an ivory coat draped over one arm.
With the tie around her waist and the little bow just above her hip, she looks like a Christmas present.
One I want to unwrap slowly and savor every inch of skin I unveil as she murmurs my name.
Until her eyes meet mine and I’m yanked back to last night on the terrace of the hotel. To that moment when my fingers slid over thin raised lines. Scars, I’d realized a split-second before Diana had gone rigid in my arms and stepped back.
The scars could be from anything. Falling out of a tree.
A bike crash. But it hadn’t been hard to figure out from the way her fingers had gripped the railing like it was a lifeline, the way her eyes had gone wide and unseeing, her breath coming in shallow pants as she’d flinched, to know the scars had been inflicted by someone else.
My jaw tightens. Someone who had better be dead or in prison. Those are the only two ways I won’t kill them myself.
Diana waits a beat. I say nothing, simply return her stare. She steps inside, keeping several feet of space between us as the doors close and the car descends.
I glance down at her out of the corner of my eye. She’s staring straight ahead, her face smooth, her dark cloud of hair caught back in a clip that shows off the elegant curves and angles of her face. No hint of the fear or pain I glimpsed last night.
It had been a few minutes after she’d gone back downstairs when the realization had hit me—why she kept the camisole on when we’d had sex in my hotel.
She’d told me she was keeping it on with such casual confidence that I hadn’t paid much attention.
Would I have liked to see her naked? Hell, yes.
But I’d been so intoxicated with the feel of her body, the taste of her skin, that I hadn’t asked why.
I’d just assumed she felt more comfortable and left it at that, especially when she’d pulled down the bodice and I’d filled my hands with her bare breasts.
Knowing the secret she was protecting, that even as we made love she was hiding something so painful, makes me want to pull her to me and shield her from the world.
Except, I think with the faintest hint of a smile, Diana doesn’t need protecting.
“Here to critique me?”
She shakes her head. “Not right now.”
Her voice is quiet. Soft, soothing.
“Taking the afternoon off?”
“I saw your eyes—”
I glance down at her with an arched brow. “And?”
“—when Xenakis said the concessions were worthless.”
The back of my neck tightens. Like someone’s reaching beneath my skin and twisting the muscles into tight knots.
“And?”
She looks up at me then, rich brown eyes as soft as her voice. Glowing with compassion. The stiffness inches down from my neck into my spine. I don’t want her pity.
“You looked like you could use company.”
We ride the rest of the way in silence. I’ve never let a deal get under my skin. Not even when I challenged my father for ownership. All I saw then was a battle to be won.
But, as I glance at Diana out of the corner of my eye, I know at least part of the reason. Her existence strains my usual reserve, pulls emotions I usually don’t feel to the surface. She’s pushing me to share, be vulnerable once more.
Before last night, just thinking about how she’s been encouraging me to share would have made me furious.
But now, as I think back to the brush of her scars beneath my fingers, remember the frantic gasps of her breath creating puffs of white in the cold evening air, I accept that she has deeper secrets than me.
The doors slide open. I step out. My SUV is parked outside the doors, a combination of luxury and strength that can handle Iceland’s roughest highland roads. A vehicle that lets me escape the city when I need to drive, to get away.
Except now as I look over the gleaming exterior and polished windows, I can’t picture driving away without Diana in the passenger seat.
I don’t look back as I start forward.
“Coming?”
A moment later her flats tap against the marble floor behind me. We walk outside. The wind tears at my coat, my hair. I walk around to the passenger door and open it for her. Catch another whiff of jasmine tangled with the ice-cold crispness of Arctic air.
Neither of us speak as I navigate the city. It’s not until the towers of Reykjavik are behind us and snow-covered hills before us that I speak.
“When people think of the company, they think of my father or me. No one thinks of my mother.” I see a flash of blue eyes, a brilliant white smile, a soft laugh that wraps around me like a comforting embrace.
“She was the one who kept my father leashed in the first few years after my grandfather’s death.
She’s the one who encouraged him to lead the company the way my grandfather would have wanted. ”
“I didn’t know she was involved.”
My smile is quick, bitter. “Most don’t. She grew up in ísafjoreur, over five hours north of Reykjavik.
She finished her degree in northern Iceland and moved here.
She interviewed with my grandfather and got a job with AuraGeothermal.
My father was the chief operating officer at the time. They met on the job.”
It should have been a fairy tale. A love story. Handsome executive meets beautiful environmental specialist when she stands up to him over an alteration to one of the geothermal fields. Instead, it turned into a loveless marriage that turned my mother into a shadow of herself.
“My mother came from a fishing village of just under three thousand people. She understood the value of investing in the people, in the country. She was the one who pushed my father to pursue initiatives that bolstered Iceland, local economies. Scholarships, small businesses, research.”
“Losing her must have been hard on both of you.”
“No. My father was a bastard before her death. He was just smarter then. Before he got greedy.” I remember my mother navigating her car down this very road, the echo of one of her and my father’s arguments ringing in my ears.
“From what little she said, the man before the vows was completely different than the man who appeared after their honeymoon.”
“Why did she stay?”