Free Katrakis's Last Mistress by Caitlin Crews Page B

feeling crushed or flattened. Everything comes at a price.”
    He expected a storm of emotion—tears, perhaps; a repeat of what had occurred in the piazza. But Tristanne only held his gaze, her own surprisingly clear, if narrowed.
    “I do not disagree,” she said after a moment. “I am not, I think, the hypocrite you would prefer me to be. I chose not to accept any financial support whatsoever from my father once I moved to Canada.”
    Something he could not identify moved through him. He called it anger. Distaste. And yet he knew it was not that simple—or, perhaps, it was not directed across the table.
    “You chose ?” he echoed. “Or were you disowned?”
    “Who can say who disowned who?” Tristanne replied in a light tone he did not quite believe. “Either way, I never took another cent from him.” Her chin tilted up; with pride, he thought. He felt a stab of recognition, and ruthlessly suppressed it. “I may have to wait tables or tend a bar, but it’s honest work. I don’t have much in Vancouver, but everything I do have is mine.”
    He could not have said what he felt then, staring at her, but he told himself it was a simmering rage. They were not at all similar, despite her words. Her pride. For what was she really but one more spoiled heiress who made the usual noises about her independence, but only so far as it suited her? She had come running back to Europe quickly enough after Gustave had died, hadn’t she? Did she hope to get into her brother’s good graces now that he controlled the purse strings? What did she know about real struggle, about truly fighting for something, anything, to call one’s own because the alternative was unthinkable?
    Not a damn thing.
    “How noble of you to abandon your considerable fortune and fight for your preferred existence by choice rather than necessity,” Nikos drawled, and had the satisfaction of watching her pale. His smile could have drawn blood. He wished it did. “The desperate residents of the slums where I grew up salute you, I am sure. Or would, if they could afford to have your exalted standards.”
    He had the pleasure of watching her flush red, though she did not otherwise change expression. She met his gaze steadily, as if she was not afraid of him, when he knew better. He had seen to it that she was. Or should be. And he knew that she should be.
    “And, of course, those standards no longer apply,” he said smoothly, daring her to continue defying him. “Since you are here. My brand-new mistress, who has such high hopes for my generosity. Did the charms of honest work pale, Tristanne? Did you remember that you need not work for your money after all?”
    “Something like that,” she bit off.
    Her gaze dropped then, and her hands trembled slightly, and he told himself he was glad. Because this was how it had to be between them, no matter how much he desired her,and how he planned to indulge that desire. She was payback, nothing more.
    He was certain of it.
    Tristanne was still smarting from that conversation and the unpleasant emotions it had stirred up within her the following afternoon, some two hundred kilometers to the south and east in Florence.
    Their strained evening in Portofino had led to a long, sleepless night aboard the yacht. For her, in any event. Tristanne had tossed from side to side in her stateroom’s large, unfamiliar bed as the hours ticked by, growing increasingly more frustrated as the night wore on into morning. Had part of her been waiting, wondering if Nikos would come to her as she’d thought he might—to assert whatever “rights” he believed he had over her? She was supposed to be his mistress, after all, and he had made it clear he intended that relationship to be sexual upon his command—which, she told herself firmly, made her despise him. That , clearly, was the source of the burning restlessness that had her nerves stretched thin, her skin too sensitive to the touch.
    Or had she simply been too agitated