“I have drawn a bath for you, Despinis Tyler. Dinner will be served in the garden room at nine.”

Clearly daily protocol in the Leonidas residence was as elegantly formal as the villa itself, and the sandwich in her room, which Emily had been about to request, clearly wasn’t on the menu.

The main floor was deserted when she made her way downstairs just a few minutes past nine, but the faint sound of music and a sliver of golden light spilling from an open door halfway down the central hall indicated where she might find the garden room.

What she didn’t expect when she stepped over the threshold was to find that she wouldn’t be dining alone.

A round glass-topped table, tastefully set for two, stood in the middle of the floor. A silver ice bucket and two cut-crystal champagne flutes glinted in the almost ethereal glow of dozens, if not hundreds, of miniature white lights laced among the potted shrubs lining the perimeter of the area.

And the final touch? Niko Leonidas, disgracefully gorgeous in pale gray trousers and matching shirt, which together probably cost more than six months’ mortgage payments on her town house, leaned against an ornately carved credenza.

She was sadly out of her element, and surely looked it. She supposed she should be grateful her dinner companion wasn’t decked out in black tie.

“I wasn’t aware you were joining me for dinner,” she blurted out, the inner turmoil she thought she’d conquered raging all over again at the sight of him.

He plucked an open bottle of champagne from the ice bucket, filled the crystal flutes and handed one to her. “I wasn’t aware I needed an invitation to sit at my father’s table.”

“I’m not suggesting you do. You have every right—”

“How kind of you to say so.”

He’d perfected the art of withering pleasantries, she decided, desperately trying to rein in her swimming senses. The smile accompanying his reply hovered somewhere between derision and scorn, and left her feeling as gauche as she no doubt sounded. “I didn’t mean to be rude, Mr. Leonidas,” she said, her discomfiture increasing in direct proportion to his suave assurance. “I’m surprised, that’s all. I assumed you’d left the house. I understand you have your own place in downtown Athens.”

“I do—and we Greeks, by the way, aren’t big on honorifics. Call me Niko. Everyone else does.”

She didn’t care what everyone else did. Finding herself alone with him left her barely able to string two words together without putting her foot in her mouth. Resort to calling him Niko, and she’d probably manage to stuff the other one in next to it.

“At a loss for words, Emily?” he inquired, evil laughter shimmering in his beautiful green eyes. “Or is it the prospect of sharing a meal with me that has you so perturbed?”

“I’m not perturbed,” she said with as much dignity as she could bring to bear. “Just curious about why you’d choose to be here, instead of in your own home. From all accounts, you and Pavlos don’t usually spend much time together.”

“Nevertheless, I am his son, and the last I heard, my choosing to spend an evening under his roof doesn’t amount to trespassing. Indeed, given the present circumstances, I consider it my duty to make myself more available. Do you have a problem with that?”

Hardly about to admit that she found him a distraction she wasn’t sure she could handle, she said, “Not at all, as long as you don’t interfere with my reasons for being here.”

“And exactly what are those reasons?”

She stared at him. His eyes weren’t glimmering with laughter now; they were as cold and hard as bottle-green glass. “What kind of question is that? You know why I’m here.”

“I know that my father has become extremely dependent on you. I know, too, that he’s a very vulnerable old man who happens also to be very rich.”

She sucked in an outraged breath at the implication in his words. “Are you suggesting I’m after his money?”

“Are you?”

“Certainly not,” she snapped. “But that’s why you’re hanging around here, isn’t it? Not because you’re worried about your father, but to keep an eye on me and make sure I don’t get my hooks into him or his bank account.”

“Not quite. I’m ‘hanging around’ as you so delicately put it, to look out for my father because, in his present condition, he’s in no shape to look out for himself. If you find my concern offensive—”

“I do!”

“Then that’s a pity,” he replied, with a singular lack of remorse. “But try looking at it from my point of view. My father arrives home with a very beautiful woman who happens to be a complete stranger and whom he appears to trust with his life. Not only that, she’s come from half a world away and signed on to see him through what promises to be a long and arduous convalescence, even though there’s no shortage of nurses here in Athens well qualified to undertake the job. So tell me this: if our situation was reversed, wouldn’t you be a little suspicious?”

“No,” she shot back heatedly. “Before I leaped to unwarranted conclusions or cast aspersions on her professional integrity, I’d ask to see the stranger’s references, and if they didn’t satisfy me, I’d contact her previous employers directly to verify that she’s everything she purports to be.”

“Well, no need to foam at the mouth, sweet thing. Your point is well taken and that being the case, I’m prepared to shelve my suspicions and propose we call a truce and enjoy this very fine champagne I filched from my father’s cellar. It’d be a shame to waste it.”

She plunked her glass on the table so abruptly that its contents surged over the rim with an indignation that almost matched her own. “If you think I’m about to share a drink with you, let alone a meal, think again! I’d rather starve.”

She spun on her heel, bent on making as rapid an exit as possible, but had taken no more than two or three steps toward the door before he caught up with her and slammed it closed with the flat of his hand. “I regret that, in looking out for my father’s best interests, I have offended you,” he said smoothly. “Trust me, I take no pleasure in having done so.”

“Really?” She flung him a glare designed to strip paint off a wall. “You could have fooled me. I’m not used to being treated like a petty criminal.”

He shrugged. “If I’ve insulted you, I apologize, but better I err on the side of caution.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“That my father’s been targeted before by people interested only in taking advantage of him.”

“He might not be quite so susceptible to outsiders if he felt more secure in his relationship with you.”

“Possibly not, but ours has never been a typical father-son relationship.”

“So I’ve been given to understand, but I suggest the time’s come for you to bury your differences and stop butting heads. He needs to know you care.”

“I wouldn’t be here now, if I didn’t care.”

“Would it kill you to tell him that?”

He gave a snort of subdued laughter. “No, but the shock of hearing me say so might kill him.”

What was it about the two of them, that they held each other at such a distance, she wondered. “Do either of you have the first idea of the pain that comes from waiting until it’s too late to say ‘I love you?’ Because I do. More often than I care to remember, I’ve witnessed the grief and regret that tears families apart because time ran out on them before they said the things that needed to be said.”

He paced to the windows at the other end of the aptly named garden room whose exotic flowering plants set in Chinese jardinieres must give it the feel of high summer even in the depths of winter. “We’re not other people,” he said.

“You’re not immortal, either.” She hesitated, conflicted once again by how much she could say, then decided to plunge in and disclose what she knew, because she wasn’t sure she could live with herself if she didn’t. “Look, Niko, he’ll probably have my head for telling you this, but your father’s not just battling a broken hip. His heart’s not in very good shape, either.”