Page 29 of Dirty Deals

“This is my cousin Angelo; his wife, Vanessa; and their daughters,” Nik forced out, trying to mask his anger. Jules had quickly picked up on the tension, her wide eyes and a small nod of her head telling him she recognized Vanessa’s name.Dammit. This was not how he wanted Jules to find out that Vanessa had cheated on him with his own cousin. Her immediate understanding of the situation didn’t make him feel any better. Jules didn’t need to wind up in the middle of his family drama.

“Yaya, can we have some baklava?” The little girl holding Vanessa’s hand broke the tension.

Plates of baklava were set in front of the girls, and Nik watched as the children giggled and ate their sweet treat, winding up with sticky honey all over their hands and faces. In the past, this scene would have left him hollow and sad. Now he pictured Ava sitting in their place, giggling. Yaya would adore Ava. He needed to bring her out here soon.

Jules was talking to Vanessa about schools and day cares, and juggling work and motherhood. Even though she had recognized who Vanessa was to him, Jules was being polite and friendly, trying to defuse the tension.

Angelo sat next to him, staring across the table at Vanessa and Jules. The brooding look he wore was bad news. Angelo was known for having no filter.

“Looks like you’ll have your hands full with that one.”

Anger burned in his belly, but Nik didn’t take the bait. Maybe if he ignored Angelo, he could avoid a scene.

“I mean, she’s got a kid, right? So already you have to share her attention. And I heard her telling Vanessa she’s some high-powered executive? Runs a corporation in Vancouver? That takes a lot of time. Course, you know that already. How many days a year do you spend away from home? Two hundred and fifty? More? That’s no way to make a relationship work, is it?”

Angelo’s words wormed their way under his skin, picking at the unhealed wounds. Nik curled and uncurled his fingers into fists under the table. He would not lose his temper. He prided himself on his control. He’d grown up watching his father fly off the handle at any little annoyance, and Nik worked hard to be the polar opposite of that. Losing his temper would tell Angelo that Vanessa’s betrayal still haunted Nik.

“All relationships take work.”

“How do you think it’s going to work when you live here, and she lives in Vancouver? You couldn’t even keep your wife happy when she lived in the same apartment as you. Half a country apart? You don’t stand a chance. Especially not with a woman as beautiful as she is,” Angelo taunted.

The slow crawl of Angelo’s eyes over Jules made Nik’s chest tight and his face burn. He wanted nothing more than to throw Angelo out of Yaya’s house and get him as far away from Jules as possible. But he would not upset his grandmother by physically fighting with his cousin. “It helps that my deceptive dog of a cousin who has his own wife is on the other side of the country. I know you have an affinity for things that don’t belong to you, but you’ll never add Jules to your collection.”

Nik pitched his voice low, not wanting anyone to overhear him. This was between him and Angelo, no one else.

“Is that a dare, cousin? Because that would make victory so much sweeter,” Angelo taunted. “Every woman has a weakness. Loneliness, low self-esteem, insecurities. Once I find out what they are, it’s so easy to make them mine.”

Vanessa and Yaya had taken the girls to another room to clean up, and Nik was about to unleash his anger when a small hand settled on his shoulder, moving to stroke the hair on the back of his neck. “I would say I’m flattered, but I’m really not,” Jules said from behind him. Her voice was strong. “Your cousin is twice the man you appear to be. Smart and successful, but more important to me? He respects me and does everything in his power to show how much he values me. So I’ll be with him until he tells me he’s done with me, and even after that, you don’t have anything to offer me that I want. You have a wife and two beautiful daughters. You need to focus your attention on them.”

A red flush covered Angelo’s face by the time Jules was finished speaking, and Nik’s own heart rate was still elevated. Jules had defended him, aligned herself with him without hesitation. Even though their relationship was far from where he wanted it to be, her words gave him hope that they could build a life together. Maybe she saw him as more than Ava’s father.

“Keep your nose out of my relationship with my wife,” Angelo growled.

“Gladly,” Jules said promptly. “As long as you do us the same courtesy.”

Angelo pushed away from the table. “I think we should leave. Nikos, I wish I could say it was good to see you again, but I’d be lying. Vanessa! Get the girls. We’re leaving.”

Vanessa’s mouth was pinched tight as she dressed the girls to leave, and Nik wondered how difficult living with Angelo was. He would never forgive Vanessa for what she had done, but after today, he had some sympathy for her.

“He has always been jealous of you, Nikos,” Yaya said once the door had closed behind them. “You were better at everything: sports, school, making money. He always wanted what you had, and Vanessa fell for his flattery. She was weak, and foolish, and now she’s paying for it. But none of it was your fault.”

The words were a small balm on the wound that Vanessa had left in his heart. The wound he thought had healed, until Angelo set his sights on Jules too. Her unexpected defence of him made him more determined to make Jules his.

CHAPTER20

Jules cheered as Vancouver chased the puck down the ice towards the Toronto net. They were in the middle of the second period, and the score was tied 2–2. Surrounded by a sea of Toronto jerseys, she was conspicuous in her Vancouver gear. Nik’s presence had prevented any of the fans nearby from making many remarks other than to tease her about her terrible choice in teams.

The Dream Date package had included dinner and tickets in the visiting team’s suite, but Nik had pulled a few strings and got them tickets behind the away team bench. Instead of dining on exclusive appetizers and fine wine in the club suite, Nik had treated her to hot dogs and poutine, washed down with draft beer. Jules loved every minute of it. Michael had always insisted on attending games in the company suite, but Jules preferred the energy of being in the stands with other fans.

Their position behind the Vancouver bench meant that the players would wave or nod at her between shifts, acknowledging her cheering for them. Between the fast action on the ice and the crowd surrounding them, Jules had little time to obsess over the events of the afternoon.

The appearance of Vanessa and Angelo could have thrown a bucket of cold water on Nik’s visit with his grandmother, but Yaya had refused to let either of them give in to the negative energy Angelo had brought with his actions. She had dragged Nik and Jules back into her living room and dug out old photo albums to show Jules pictures of Nik growing up. Even just knowing the name of Nik’s ex-wife, Nik’s actions and Yaya’s remarks had provided enough information for her to figure out who Vanessa had been to Nik. Nik had said his wife was unfaithful, but to have cheated on him with his own cousin? That level of betrayal was beyond her ability to understand. It had made standing up for Nik instinctual. Family meant everything to her, and because of Ava, Nik was now family. Even if their own relationship was still uncertain.

His actions today had her seeing another side of him, her awareness of Nik a constant buzz in the back of her mind. It had been a long time since she’d had any interest in a man, and it was getting harder to ignore. And although Nik hadn’t said anything to her, everything he’d done since they’d left Yaya’s house had demonstrated how much he appreciated her actions.

Yaya had been happy to satisfy Jules’s desire to learn more about what Nik had been like as a child. They had spent most of the afternoon going through Nik’s past, from when he was an adorable toddler with curly dark hair to when he had played junior hockey as a teenager.

The younger pictures of Nik bore a striking resemblance to pictures of Ava. She was her father’s daughter, without a doubt.

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