2017 Christmas Coda: The Greek Tycoons

by Lucy Monroe

  Christofides Enterprises and Wentworth Shipping had consolidated a couple of years after her father had married Amber's adoptive mother. Her dad's doctor had been adamant that he not go back to working insane hours and Ellie had been the one to suggest the merger, once she was confident in Sandor's love and commitment to her on a personal level that had nothing to do with her dad's business, or Sandor's.

  And while any of his grandchildren could have taken over George Wentworth's interest in the company, it was his first wife's namesake who showed the keenest interest and an amazing business acumen.

  "Bite your tongue, daughter. Your mother is never going to grow out of responding to my kisses," Sandor said with a mock growl.

  Ellie laughed, but snuggled in closer to her tycoon husband while their daughter rolled her eyes.

  "Yes, I'm pretty sure everyone got the memo on that one, dad." The warm smile in Cynthia's blue eyes so like her mother's belied any true mocking intent behind her words.

  "You just wait, one day you will fall in love and even Christofides Enterprises will not hold all your attention in the face of that powerful emotion."

  Cynthia's lips twisted in patent disbelief, or maybe even distaste. "Not going to happen, Dad. I'm pretty sure I'm one of those people that naff emotion leaves utterly cold."

  "You are your mother's daughter, but more telling, you are my daughter. Just because you have never fallen doesn't mean you never will."

  "I know, I know, I know…and when I do. It's going to knock me on my butt." Cynthia shook her head. "You're going to have to look for grandchildren from Christo."

  "Your brother falls in and out of love with too much regularity to commit to any one woman enough to have children with her."

  "Blame yourself and Mom. Christo wants something like you two have and as soon as he realizes whatever relationship he's in isn't that, he goes looking for it with someone else."

  "You kids know how rocky your dad and my start was," Ellie said. "You don't start with a relationship like the one we have. We've been building it for over twenty years."

  "Twenty-seven this year, but who's counting?" Cynthia cheeked. "Anyway, it's not the same to hear how rough it was in the beginning. All we've ever seen is how much you two love each other, how close you are. Even I know if I ever do get married, I'm not settling for anything less."

  Cynthia looked around the new facility for Agape Resource Center and smiled with satisfaction. "Any man I marry will support the things that are important to me, like Dad supports you."

  "And you? Will you support him as firmly and lovingly as your mother has always stood at my side and in my corner?" Sandor asked of their pragmatically anti-romance daughter.

  A strange look came over their daughter's face, a frown mixed with a vulnerability that Ellie did not understand. "I'm not sure I have it in me to offer the kind of unconditional love Mom does. You have to know she's something special, Dad."

  "Oh, I do, but then so are you, my very precious and highly intelligent daughter."

  Cynthia smiled. "You're a great dad, you know that?"

  "And you are an amazing daughter any father would be proud to call his own, but you are so much like me, I cannot help feeling an extra dose of that pride."

  Tension Ellie had just realized was holding her daughter's body taut drained out of Cynthia as her smile reached her eyes. "Thanks. I think I needed to hear that."

  "I will say it whenever you need, but remember, spoken aloud, or not, I always feel it," Sandor replied with the intensity and sincerity of feeling Ellie had learned to rely on.

  Ellie reached out and hugged her daughter. "Me too. I love you, so much. Don't worry about finding that right person. When he finds you, you'll know and until then? You're doing an incredible job of dominating the shipping industry and beyond."

  Cynthia laughed as Ellie had meant her to, her beautiful features showing no signs of tension any longer. "I'll remember that."

  "See that you do." Sandor was not joking, even a little. "I'm so very proud of the women in my family."

  Ellie knew her husband meant it. He told her of his love and how much he admired the way she'd dedicated her life to helping others frequently.

  Billionaire tycoon Sandor Christofides had turned out to be the best sort of husband and lover for a woman like her and she'd never regretted forgiving him his early duplicity, or letting her love for him guide her heart and head when she agreed to marry him. Not once in nearly twenty-seven years, as her daughter reminded them.

  Neo & Cass Stamos

  from The Shy Bride (2010)

  Zephyr & Piper Nikos

  from The Greek's Pregnant Lover (2010)

  Eight years after the epilogue from "The Greek's Pregnant Lover"

  Fairy lights turned the leafless branches of trees downtown into holiday glitter. The soft strains of Christmas music sounded from inside the shops along the street whenever a door got opened to let a customer in or out. Shoppers rushed by, bundled for the cold Seattle winter, with splashes of bright red and green on the more festive lot.

  This was why Neo's wife always asked to come back to Seattle in December. Cassandra loved living in the sunny climate of their Greek island, but she'd said she actually missed the cold and uniquely festive atmosphere of Seattle at this time of year.

  Unable to deny his brilliant pianist and composer anything, Neo made yearly plans to bring her Christmas shopping in Seattle. Not to be outdone, Zephyr had asked Piper if she wanted to come and they'd been making it a group family trip ever since, something they frequently did for their travels.

  And Neo did not mind one bit.

  Zephyr was the brother he had chosen and Piper as dear as any blood sister could be.

  "Have you decided what to get Cass for Christmas this year?" Zee stood beside him, as they waited for their wives and children to meet them outside one of the many downtown coffee shops that served utterly decadent hot cocoa for the children and equally over the top sweet coffees for the adults.

  Neo had never developed a taste for syrups, whipped cream, or even sugar in his coffee, but Cassandra was addicted.

  Neo pulled on buttery soft leather gloves his daughter had gotten him for Christmas last year, on a trip similar to this one and during the "no papas allowed" shopping portion. Eight-year-old Alethea had explained in that serious way she had sometimes that Neo didn't spend all his time in Greece and he needed to be prepared. Which was true, but Neo did not do even one quarter of the traveling he once had.

  He had a family to spend time with, an incredible wife and two wonderful children who fascinated, delighted and challenged him by turn.

  "I'm taking her on a trip to Hawaii," Neo said in answer to Zee's question.

  "Isn't that kind of redundant, considering where we live?" Zee asked condescendingly. "She has a paradise of sunshine, perfect beaches and the quiet she needs to compose every day of the year on our island."

  Neo shrugged, unperturbed by Zee's teasing. "She told me once that she loved her only trip to Hawaii and thought she'd never be able to return."

  "Because of her agoraphobia?" Zee asked, no judgment in his voice for the woman he loved like a sister.

  "Ne. She's doing a lot better, but she'll never be comfortable with crowded planes or tourist beaches." And though they'd been many places since discovering her issues with traveling stemmed from flying in commercial planes filled with strangers and staying at busy hotels, Neo and Cassandra had not yet made it to the island paradise she remembered so fondly.

  "Which means you rented suitable accommodation."

  "For a group of six, yes."

  "You want us to come too?"

  "What do you think?" Neo looked at Zee sardonically. "It is worth more than my fortune to try to take your son away from my daughter for two weeks of bliss in the sun."

  "They are as close as we ever were."

  "Perhaps one day they will be closer." It was his and Zee's fondest wish, that his sweet, quiet little daughter would
grow up to love and be loved by the already very protective Erastes, who was not quite a year older.

  "You'd better not say that where Piper or Cass can hear you," Zee warned seriously.

  Neo grimaced. "I am not stupid."

  Both women had made it abundantly clear that no one would be pushing their child into anything resembling an arranged marriage. Right now, the two children were dear friends, as addicted to one another's company as anyone Neo had ever seen. Luckily for everyone involved, as in-tune as they were with each other, they did not leave out Cassandra and Neo's second child, Sofia, instead doting on the three-year-old in equal measure.

  Alethea had gone right over to Erastes the day his baby sister died in her father's arms while their mother wept silently and without stopping. Neo's sensitive daughter had offered to share the baby sister she barely acknowledged belonged to her parents, she was so possessive of tiny Sofia, with Erastes.

  The devastated little boy had accepted and the family bonds had been cemented more deeply than ever between the Stamos and Nikos clans.

  It had been a bleak time for all of them, though the experience had drawn the two families into an intimacy of friendship few could understand. Cassandra was one of the only people that Piper would even speak to for months after the devastating event.

  Their tiny daughter's death had been their second pregnancy that had ended in tragedy. Piper had miscarried when Erastes was two. They'd waited to try again until Neo and Cass decided it was time. The women had been pregnant together, though once again, Cassandra had gotten pregnant first. Neo had teased Zee incessantly about that, right up to when Piper went into early labor only a few days after Sofia had been born. Nothing the doctors did could stop the baby from coming two weeks later and nearly three months early.

  Tiny Adara had been born too early to sustain life. Both Piper and Zee had struggled to cope with their grief while continuing to parent Erastes with an abundance of love and concern.

  Four years later, grief was still a part of all their lives and always would be.

  "So, what you are saying is that you've used your wife's desire to see Hawaii as a way to finish your Christmas shopping for the rest of us early," Zee teased, unaware of where Neo's thoughts had gone.

  Neo laughed. "Not a chance. Casssandra would never let me get away with it."

  "Too true, that woman has you wrapped around her little finger with a double knot."

  "And you're not as firmly wrapped around Piper's, filio mio?" Neo accused.

  But Zee's complacent demeanor said he found nothing bad about that state of events at all. "I'm not ashamed to admit it."

  "Yet, the prospect once filled you with a dread I wasn't sure you were going to overcome in time to keep the wonderful Piper in your life."

  "Right back atcha, Neo."

  They both contemplated their near misses in silence for a minute, before Neo spoke again. "What about you? What are you getting Piper?"

  "I have no clue. What do you get a woman who doesn't want anything?"

  "Something intangible?" Neo suggested, not at all sure what that intangible gift could be.

  "Great idea," Zee said with heavy sarcasm. "Now as to the what? I cannot give her the one thing that might finally dispel the lingering shadows from her beautiful eyes."

  "She wants another child?"

  "No, that would be too easy." Zee sighed, his body rigid with a sudden tension. "She wants a guarantee the pregnancy would go well."

  "The doctor said both the miscarriage and the early labor were unlinked and unlikely to be repeated as they had no root in her health." Neo let his voice say what he thought of such empty assurances. "So then, how can you guarantee against something for which they could not find a cause?"

  "Exactly." Zee sighed more heavily this time, a new grief overlaying the old in his eyes. "I do not think we'll be trying for another child."

  Neo nodded his understanding, unsurprised, but hurting for his friend and the woman he would consider his true sister for the rest of his days.

  Once Zephyr Nikos had bought into the concept of wife and children, having his own family, he'd done it completely and had once shared with Neo that he wanted a houseful of children. But Neo knew that Zee was as reluctant for Piper to get pregnant again as she was. He would be surprised if his dearest friend had not already looked into ways to permanently insure Piper didn't have to face another tragedy on that front.

  "Have you two talked about adopting?" Neo asked, as that seemed the most natural answer to the desire his friend had for a big family, a desire Neo had heard Piper claim to share more than once.

  "She's never brought it up." And clearly Zee thought that such a suggestion should come from the wife he still considered fragile.

  Neo wasn't so sure he would agree with the assessment. Yes, Piper had been unutterably wounded. Yes, the talented designer and loving mom had grieved, but she was strong inside.

  Like his Cassandra. Both women had spines of steel. Perhaps it was time Zee came to remember that fact about his lovely wife.

  "But you want to," Neo guessed.

  "You remember what life in the orphanage was like, Neo. We could make a real difference in the life of a child, or children, that society has thrown away."

  "Do you want me to ask Cassandra to feel her out about the idea?" Neo offered.

  Zee's expression turned resolute. "Ohi," he denied in Greek. "But thank you for the offer. She is my wife, I must broach this subject with her myself."

  #

  As it turned out, Zephyr didn't have to open that conversation because Neo just couldn't keep his oar out of Zephyr's pond. However, in this instance, he might have to thank the brother he'd chosen.

  Later that night, while the security specialist they hired because of his training in early childhood development, stayed behind in the suite with three worn out and sleeping children, Zephyr, Neo and their wives went out to dinner at one of the restaurants that Cass reveled in being able to go to, now that she'd gotten better at coping with her agoraphobia.

  It was the revolving room at the top of the Space Needle, a thoroughly touristy spot to share dinner, but the food was good, the company better and the view magnificent.

  Zephyr had been forced to step away from the table to accept a critical call about one of their new properties in Hvar, a property that catered to the elite of the elite. After handling the problem, Zephyr came back to the table to find Neo talking about their years in the orphanage and what a difference it would have made if someone who cared, who understood what it meant to be a parent, had stepped in to adopt some of those children.

  "But not you and Zee?" Piper asked, a speculative look Zephyr couldn't quite interpret in her pretty eyes.

  Neo shook his head decisively. "We had each other, if one of us had been adopted, we would have lost that."

  He didn't say what Zephyr knew he meant though, that it wouldn't have been worth it to have parents but not the brother of their hearts. Zephyr agreed.

  "Who needs parents when you have a true brother?" he affirmed as he sat down.

  Thoroughly annoyed with that brother at the moment, he glared at Neo, willing him to let it drop.

  Neo shook his head slightly and smiled at Piper. "Have you ever considered adoption?"

  His beautiful, emotionally fragile wife looked startled, then thoughtful. But maybe not so shatterable. Hmmm.

  "No. I…" She stared at Zephyr, hope burning in her blue gaze like it hadn't since Adara's premature birth and death hours after. "You want your own children, you're building a dynasty."

  "A dynasty founded by two men who decided to adopt each other as family. Why would I feel the need to have my genes in all my children?" he asked, not understanding her reasoning at all. "There is no dream I would rather realize than to adopt a child, or children, from the orphanage that was my home when I met Neo."

  "A dream? That's your dream? Why didn't I know this?" Now she was looking cranky, like she always got if she thought th
ere was some part of himself he'd hidden from her.

  Piper had made the transition from obliging, no-commitment lover, to a fully demanding wife who expected to share every aspect of his life. And Zephyr loved it. Loved her.

  "I should have, but we were already pregnant when we married, then you had the miscarriage. I put my dream aside to grieve, to help you through your grief. Then we lost Adara and it simply did not feel right to tell you that I want to fill our island mansion with orphans that will never again have to wonder if they are loved by a parent."

  "Fill it?" Piper practically screeched. "There are twelve bedrooms in that mansion!"

  "Neo and Cass already use three of them. Really, we can only reasonably lay claim to half of them. It wouldn't be fair otherwise, since we share the mansion."

  Each family had their own private family communal area and small kitchen, but the large kitchen was staffed on all their behalves by maids, a cook and housekeeper that served everyone living in the large villa.

  He smiled winningly at his wife. "And I supposed we must keep one as a guest room for when family visits."

  "We can put family up at the resort," Neo offered helpfully as Zephyr's wife paled with shock, but that hope that had sparked, now burning brightly in her cerulean gaze.

  "That's four more children for us," she said faintly.

  "If they all have their own rooms, but you know, some children prefer to share. Living in the orphanage sends a person one direction, or another."

  "What do you mean?" Cass asked, then recognition dawned in her compassionate amber gaze. "Oh, some children need the security of another person in the room after living dorm-style life and some desperately need their own space."

  "Exactly."

  "You want five more children?" Piper asked, obvious shock making her voice high.

  This should not be news to her. There was a reason they'd gotten pregnant when Erastes was two. "I told you I wanted a houseful."

  "But I, you…we both have careers."

  "I've already cut my hours drastically. I can cut them again, if it means being the parent on the spot more regularly."