Page 25 of Penniless Cinderella for the Greek
She gave him a wry look. ‘Do you have any deep feelings?’
‘How about my guilt, and self-loathing. Are they enoughfeelingsfor you?’ He raked his hand through his hair. His jaw was clenched, and his eyes were almost black with fury and something else.Pain, Savannah realised with a jolt of shock.
‘Dimitris...you don’t have to...’ Too late, she realised she had opened Pandora’s Box and she was desperate to close it again so that he would not look like he did right now...wrecked. He wasn’t made of granite, he was a flesh and blood man, and he was hurting.
‘You started this,’ he told her harshly. ‘You might as well hear all of it.’
‘I killed my parents.’ Dimitris heard Savannah’s swift intake of breath and reminded himself that he deserved the look of shock and horror that flared in her hazel-green eyes. ‘Not directly,’ he said grimly, ‘but I caused the accident in which they died, and my sister was so badly injured that it seemed impossible she would walk again.’
Do you have any deep feelings?
Savannah’s question had opened the floodgates and he could not hold back the tidal wave of self-recrimination from pouring out. He had more emotions than he could handle, and a long time ago he’d stopped trying and had locked his feelings away in a box labelledDo Not Open.
He had meaningless affairs with women who were too self-absorbed to wonder who he was beneath his public façade of a careless playboy. He was aware that his success was in part due to his sex appeal. Women wanted the Hot Chef, the Greek god in the kitchen, and no one had ever tried to discover the man he really was—except for Savannah.
She was looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and concern in those incredible eyes of hers. ‘How could you have caused the accident? You were what? Fourteen or fifteen? You can’t have been driving the car.’
Memories—pain—surged through him. ‘My parents were taking Eleni to her ballet class,’ he said heavily. ‘I was supposed to have ridden my bike to football training, but I’d overslept and persuaded my mother to drop me at the sports centre.’
If only he’d woken earlier, his parents would not have died. The seeds of the accident had been sown when he’d forgotten to set his alarm. Dimitris could never forgive himself for his stupid mistake that had such tragic consequences.
‘My mother was driving.’ His voice rasped in a throat that felt like he’d swallowed broken glass. There was almost a sense of relief in opening up to Savannah, even though he was sure she would despise him once she knew the truth. He’d spent almost two decades fooling other people, fooling himself that he was fine. But he wasn’t fine, and he was fairly certain that Savannah saw through him.
‘I’d got in with a bad crowd at school, but that’s no excuse. I was a brat.’ His jaw clenched. ‘An argument started about my attitude. I was unkind to my sister and Eleni started crying. My father turned around and told me to apologise, but I was rude to him. My mother took her eyes off the road and looked over her shoulder at me, in the back of the car.’
Dimitris tasted bile in his throat as he relived the moments before the crash. ‘For those few seconds while my mother’s attention was distracted, the car veered out of the lane. A lorry was travelling in the opposite direction. In the split second when I realised we were going to hit the lorry, I shouted a warning. I think my father grabbed the steering wheel. But it was too late, and it was a head-on collision.’
‘Oh, God. It must have been horrific.’ Savannah’s voice was gentle. Dimitris did not understand why she hadn’t recoiled from him in disgust. ‘But you were not responsible for what happened.’
‘Of course I was responsible,’ he said savagely. ‘I’ve explained how I had distracted my mother.’
The police had taken a statement from him as part of their investigation into the cause of the crash, and he’d told them that his mother had momentarily lost concentration. He’d later heard that the lorry driver had survived. For months afterwards Dimitris had expected to be arrested for causing the crash. But just because no one else blamed him did not mean that he was blameless. He knew what he had done, and now Savannah knew.
‘The last words my mother spoke to me were that my family were concerned about me...and they loved me.’
‘Oh, Dimitris. It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.’ Savannah’s eyes were fiercely bright, and tears clung to her lashes. With a jolt of shock he realised that she felt sympathy—for him.
‘Don’t you dare suggest that I wasn’t to blame,’ he said savagely. Heknewit was his fault, and he couldn’t understand why Savannah was not convinced of his guilt. ‘Eleni spent years confined to a wheelchair because of my stupidity. How do you think she’d react if I told her how the accident happened?’
‘I think you should talk to her about the crash. She told me she has tried to discuss it, but you clam up.’
‘If I admitted to my sister what I had done she would have every right to hate me.’ He turned away from Savannah while he struggled to bring himself under control. There was a hollowness in his chest as if his heart had been ripped out.Thiswas why he avoided emotions. It was easier not to care about anything.
‘Eleni was all I had left of my family. Of course I had my grandparents, but they were heartbroken to lose their only son and their grief added to my guilt. I couldn’t bear that Eleni would blame me because she was an orphan and couldn’t walk. I vowed to take care of her and work hard to provide for her and give her the best life I could.’
Savannah came to stand in front of him. ‘I’m certain that Eleni wouldn’t blame you. She adores you, and she would want you to stop blaming yourself.’
He shook his head. He’d carried his guilt for so long and despite what Savannah had said he knew there could be no absolution for him. He was furious with her for suggesting there could be. She put her hand on his arm and he flinched even as his damnable desire for her sparked into flame. His emotions—Theós!he hated that word—felt raw, and he couldn’t handle the understanding in her eyes, he couldn’t handleherwhen he felt a stupid urge to cry like a child.
‘I need a drink.’ He shrugged off her hand and strode towards the poolside bar. Her heels clipped against the tiled floor as she followed him, and he cursed and swung round to face her. ‘Go to bed, Savannah.’
His control felt dangerously close to snapping. He wanted to take her right there on the tiled floor, shove her dress up to her waist and free his aching erection from his trousers to sink into her slick heat. He longed to make love to her until there was nothing in his head but her softness and heat and the scent of her perfume that he did not doubt would haunt him for as long as he lived.
‘Go!’ he bit out. ‘You were right, I can’t give you what you want.’ He didn’t wait for her to respond, and when he walked away and she did not follow he told himself he was glad.
CHAPTER NINE
SAVANNAHSTOODBYher bedroom window and watched Dimitris in the pool. He swam length after length without pausing, as if he wanted to push himself to his limits, or as if he was punishing himself. She sensed it was the latter.
