A Fling with the Greek Billionaire (13 page)

An entreating smile touched her lips. “Please stop worrying, Danny boy.”

“Then start listening to me,” he said curtly. “You’re tempting fate and all for what?
Your ego?
He’s already chosen you. He’s
yours.
”

Miranda wanted to cover her ears. If it had been anyone else, she could have easily laughed the words off. But this was Danny – the only one who knew the real her, the old Miranda before life as a mistress had hardened her.

Was it ego
, she wondered. Maybe. But was it wrong that, just this once, she wanted to be the one who had the right to carry a man’s name? Did she always have to be the one to step aside for another woman?

“I don’t want to keep being the mistress, Danny,” she whispered. “I never thought Nik would agree to marry me—”

“And he agreed, didn’t he?” Danny argued hotly. “So why do you have to get that other woman—”

“Because even if we marry, I’d still be the mistress! He’s still thinking of her, and I don’t want to be second best anymore, Danny. I never wanted to be second best, but you know we would have died in that hellhole if I hadn’t…” She swallowed. “I don’t regret my choices, but my past will always be shameful. Can’t I have the opposite in my future?”
 

She looked at her friend pleadingly. “I
need
your support on this, Danny. Please.”

The vulnerability underlining his friend’s voice was too much for him to ignore, and he said heavily, “You have it. You
know
you do, but—”

A tinkling sound coming from the laptop cut him off, announcing the arrival of a new email in Miranda’s inbox.

The message was from Daria Everest.

Chapter Two

Alyx observed Daria’s bedroom with a frown. It was the same room she had visited over the years. Same lavender-colored ceiling, same Japanese-styled shutters, same artwork-turned-wallpaper covering the walls, but with one notable difference: the room was explicitly neat and clutter-free. No pens and nibs on Daria’s drawing table, no magazines left lying on the carpeted floor, no coats tossed over the mirror.

Alyx’s gaze returned to the owner of the room. She was curled up in bed reading, her teeth sinking into her lower lip as she flipped to the next page. Her hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in ages, her eyes looked puffy with tiredness, and her body was thin to the point of frailness.

She glanced at Yanna, who stood quietly next to Daria’s drawing table.
This is not the Daria I know.

A miserable expression flitted over Yanna’s face.
I know.

Alyx looked back at Daria. She squinted at the book her friend was reading, grimacing when she realized what was written on the cover.
 

It’s Okay to Be Pathetic After a Breakup.

Her eyes widened.
What the hell?
She stalked towards the bed. “Time’s up, Daria.” She glared down at her friend, but Daria didn’t even seem to hear her, and Alyx’s resolve strengthened. “I never thought I’d say this,” she muttered. “But you have got to stop reading.” She snatched the book out of her friend’s hands.

Shocked at suddenly finding herself bereft of words of wisdom about handling a breakup, Daria looked up, and her confusion deepened at seeing Alyx. “A-Alyx?” Then she saw Yanna, and she rubbed her eyes. “Yanna?”
When had they arrived? And why were they here?

“Were we supposed to meet today?” She glanced at her calendar – or at least where her calendar was supposed be. It was gone now. She had dumped it in the trash the moment she had returned home. Calendars didn’t remind her of time now. Every time she looked at one, she only remembered Nik’s jeering words about them.

A lost look suddenly entered Daria’s gray eyes, and seeing it made Yanna’s throat constrict. “Oh, Daria,” she sighed sadly.

Daria’s eyes started to sting at Yanna’s tone.
You can’t cry,
she warned herself.
You shouldn’t cry. You don’t deserve to cry.

She felt the bed dip, and she looked up to realize that both Alyx and Yanna had come close, sitting on opposite edges of the bed, identical looks of sadness on their faces.

Her eyes stung more painfully, and she had to drag a deep, shaky breath to control herself. To
punish
herself.

“Dar…you know this can’t continue, right?” Yanna asked quietly.
 

“I don’t know what you mean,” she lied.

“Of course you do,” Alyx snapped. “Look around you. When was the last time you drew? When was the last time you left this room, or took a shower—”

“I don’t stink—”

“That’s not the point,” Alyx burst out, “and you know it!” She threw her hands up in frustration. “You can’t spend the whole time reading stupid books like this!” She waved Daria’s book in her friend’s face. “You know it’s crap, right?”

“It’s not crap,” Daria began.

“But Daria, it says it’s okay to be pathetic,” Yanna interrupted with a troubled frown. “I don’t think that’s a good thing.”

“And take this…” Alyx had the book open to the last page. “Her author bio states she’s never experienced a breakup, that she’s been married since forever.” She scowled at Daria. “
Why
would you take advice from someone like her?”

“Because she knows how to prevent one—”

“Yes, prevent one, but that’s not what you need to do, is it?” Alyx’s arms crossed over her chest. “What you need is to learn how to
move on
past your breakup
.
”

Daria found herself unable to meet Alyx’s gaze. She looked down. Her hands, resting over the covers, were clenched into fists, and she realized belatedly that she had been trembling the entire time she and Alyx were talking.

“Isn’t it, Daria?” Alyx insisted.

No,
she thought.

She didn’t want to move on—

“Daria.” Yanna’s soft voice made Daria bite her lip hard and again, the urge to weep tempted her to just break down and let it all out.

Don’t cry. You can’t cry. You mustn’t cry. You don’t deserve to cry.

“Daria, please,” Yanna whispered. “You have to stop hurting yourself like this. He’s
engaged,
Dar. You can’t wait keep waiting for him to come back—”

“But not married,” Daria said tightly. Nik wasn’t yet married. She could feel it in her bones, and surely that meant—

Alyx quashed all her hopes with four words. “But he will be!”
 

Her chest heaved as the truth was forced on her.
Don’t cry, don’t cry—

“You have to forget him,” Yanna pleaded.

“I can’t.” The words were torn out of her. She raised her head, looked at her friends with eyes that weren’t allowed to cry. “I wish I could…” She groped for words. “
I loved him. And he loved me.
I wish there was a way to explain how right things felt between us, it was so
right.
”

“But he chose someone else over you,” Alyx protested. “It’s over between you—”

She shook her head stubbornly. “No. It’s not.”
It can’t be.
What she and Nik had was special. Every beat of her heart told her so, and she knew it to be true even if everyone thought she was being fanciful or delusional.

“I just need to wait,” Daria whispered. But what she really meant, what she was really doing, she knew she could never tell them.

Ever since she left Teleios, she had punished herself. Every day, she punished herself by not allowing herself to cry, to remember, or to even feel.

She kept punishing herself, believing with all her heart that if she suffered just enough, maybe God would take pity on her and give Daria another chance.

When Alyx and Yanna had left, it was only because Daria had promised to at least take a shower and leave the room so she wouldn’t drive herself crazy with misery.

Fair enough,
she thought. She needed to keep her sanity intact anyway. If she were crazy, how would she know if her punishment had ended and she was given another chance?

Silly, silly thoughts, but Daria embraced each and every one of them. If she had allowed herself to be realistic, she would never have gotten this far without breaking down.

After taking a shower, Daria forced herself to go to her table and open her laptop. While she hadn’t any pending commissions, she did owe people emails. The idea of having to lie about why she hadn’t been able to answer them right away was depressing, almost tempting her to just click
Select All
and
Delete
on all unread messages.

Two clicks, and her inbox would have a fresh new start. The idea became even more tempting, but she managed not to give in.
This was another punishment
, she reminded herself doggedly. This was another way to get her second chance. Or her twenty-ninth. Or thirtieth. She wasn’t really sure how to count it.

Squaring her shoulders, Daria clicked on the first unopened message and started to read. Hours passed, but even when she had to stand up and shake some life back into her limbs, she still had two pages of unopened emails to read.

No quitting,
Daria told herself. If she didn’t want Nik to quit on her, she couldn’t quit on this either.

So she went back to her seat and resumed clicking. When she moved to the last page of unread emails, the first one she clicked on was her reward.

It was a message offering her a job in New York City.

NYC…where Nik and Miranda lived.

Chapter Three

“Please follow me, Ms. Everest.”

Daria hastily stood up and followed the receptionist through a hallway designed to intimidate, with its vaulted ceiling and plush carpet.

It wasn’t like her to be nervous, but she was now, her heart doing its best to smash its way out of her chest.

Up, down, up, down, up, down—

Please God, please, please help me get this job.
Daria wiped clammy hands against the side of her pencil-cut skirt as she prayed.
 

The urge to cry came out of nowhere, taking her by surprise, and Daria hastily averted her gaze to the ceiling.

Don’t
cry. You mustn’t cry. You shouldn’t cry. You don’t deserve to cry.
She inhaled and exhaled several times as she recited the mantra in her mind.
 

She could have come here anytime, but what little pride Daria had left prevented her from doing so. She had played the role of Facebook stalker one too many times in the past. If she wanted her second chance with Nik to start right, then she couldn’t allow herself to make the same mistakes.

She couldn’t let her whole life revolve around love, not even if she wanted to. She could only allow herself to go to NYC if she had a legitimate reason, and
this
job was it.
 

A two-month stay, a styling challenge she hadn’t ever come across, and a bridezilla as a client according to the email.
 

Two months,
Daria thought. She had two months to find Nik and Miranda, whose surnames she didn’t even know. She had tried searching for “Nik and Miranda” on the Internet but came up with nothing. Either those weren’t their real names, or they were rich enough to hide from Google.

“We’re here, Ms. Everest.” Turning towards her with a frosty smile, the receptionist opened a door for Daria.

“Thank you.” She tried to use a sunny smile to melt the other woman’s icy behavior but failed. Stepping past the receptionist with a gulp, Daria went inside the conference, heart thudding harder against her chest as she heard the receptionist pull the door close behind her.

Words from her usual spiel for introducing herself and talking about her work ran through her mind, and she mentally sighed in relief.
Good
. She still remembered what to say.
 

She looked up, smile in place, and the first thing she saw was Nik and his fiancée staring back at her from across the room.

Daria blinked several times. The vision didn’t waver, didn’t change, but her heartbeat did, racing, skipping—

Up, down, up, down—

It was
really
Nik. It was
really
Miranda.
And
, Daria thought dazedly, she was
really
screwed.