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She did not care for that, Nikos could tell. He was learning to read her now, and though her facial expression remained remote, almost bored, he could feel her tense beneath his hand. She did not look up at him, though that defiant chin inched upward. She kept her eyes trained on the snake before her, her brother, who could not keep the vicious glee from his own gaze.
Nikos had expected Peter’s presence—it was why they had come to Florence in the first place—but he had not anticipated the hard kick of anger that had spiked through his gut when he’d seen the vicious look on Peter’s face, and Tristanne’s carefully blank expression. It had taken him by surprise. He told himself it was because Barbery believed that he’d won, that he’d planted Tristanne with Nikos and Nikos was none the wiser. He told himself that it had nothing to do with his protective urges toward this woman, urges he could not permit himself to indulge unless they aided him in his revenge against the swine of a man before him.
“But you have spent time with her now,” Peter said, with a shrug. “I do not need to tell you how difficult it is to keep her in line, do I?”
Nikos wanted to destroy Peter. He told himself that was the way he would feel no matter what the man had said, simply because of who he was, but he knew better. He knew exactly why he wanted to wrap his hands around Peter Barbery’s throat.
It made an alarm sound deep within him. But, defying all logic, he ignored it.
“I do not find it difficult at all,” he said quietly.
“Then you must have abilities that I do not,” Peter said, in a sneering voice that Nikos did not much care for. “I confess that our father found her so tiresome that he washed his hands of her years ago.”
“I am, in fact, standing right here,” Tristanne said crisply, her brown eyes snapping with temper—and something far darker. “I can hear you.”
Peter smirked, but continued to gaze at Nikos. “Or perhaps your definition of keeping her in line and mine differ,” he said with a sniff. “She is too insolent by half. A trait she gets, no doubt, from her mother.”
“My mother is many things,” Tristanne said with marked calm. Nikos admired her smile, so pointed and bright, and her seeming ease. He believed neither. “But insolent is not one of them. Come now, Peter. Must we air our family laundry in public? I am certain Nikos must be bored to tears.”
“And by all means,” Peter said in that oily voice, “you must keep Katrakis happy.”
Nikos felt her tense again next to him, as if she was contemplating hurling herself at her brother and pummeling him into a pulp with her fists. Or perhaps that was only his own desire, projected upon her. Either way, the conversation had served its purpose. Nikos wanted to waste no more time on Peter Barbery than strictly necessary.
“You will excuse us,” he said abruptly to Peter, dismissing him with an offhanded arrogance he knew would enrage the other man. “I must circulate.”
“Of course,” Peter said, with an icy nod. He turned his gaze on his sister. She smiled at him, if something that frigid could pass for a smile. And then Peter moved off into the crowd without a backward glance.
Giving into an urge he could not name, and did not want to admit, Nikos slid his arm around her bare shoulders, pulling her closer to the expanse of his chest.
Tristanne looked up at him then, her eyes dark and stormy. He could not sort through the emotion he saw there. But he could see that same fire banked in her that he knew was in him, even now. She was too responsive. Too aware of his every move. How was he to resist that? Why was he bothering to try?
This is all part of your revenge, he reminded himself. Even this. Especially this. But he was not certain, suddenly, if he believed it.
Nikos handed her the drink he had procured for her, having foregone his own when he’d seen her brother approach her, and noted that her hand was trembling slightly as she took the wineglass from him. It was the only outward sign he could see that her brother had affected her.
“You and your brother do not get along,” he observed in a low voice. It was an absurd understatement, and her mouth curved into something near a smile.
“In our family, emotions were viewed as the enemy,” she said. “Woe betide the person who showed them, no matter the circumstances. We were expected to be perfect little automatons, smiling on command, and attending to my father’s wishes without so much as an altered expression.” She shrugged, and stepped away, out from under his arm. He let her go, reluctantly. “So you see, I am not certain Peter gets along with anyone. But he would never show it either way.” She did not look at him, and Nikos could not understand why he wanted her to. Badly. She took a careful sip from her glass instead.
