“That sucks.”
Better and better.
“Yes, it does suck,” said Gemma, a little tartly.
“Well, is she okay?”
“No. Her face looks like a punching bag and she’s pretty shaky. And I know they’re not telling me everything that happened. I think the man may have tried to rape her or something.” She shivered.
“Wow,” Chris said again. “That’s…heavy.”
Heavy?
“But, I mean, you didn’t know the note was from the crazy guy, right?”
She shook her head.
“Then why are you beating yourself up?” he asked. “It’s not your fault at all.”
“I know I’m not responsible for what he did, but I should have thought about the fact that it was strange that someone would give me a note for her. I actually did think about it, but I shrugged it off. And now I know that the guy targeted me because I was the only one probably dumb enough to actually give it to her and not to security.” She hunched her shoulders, feeling sick.
Chris rubbed her back. It felt good for a moment, until his hand dropped so low that it was almost on her bottom. She sidestepped.
He grinned, looking a little sheepish.
Nice.
“Sorry.”
She nodded indifferently.
“Want a beer?” Chris pulled two cans of Heineken out of the pockets of his baggy shorts.
“No, thanks.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He popped one of the cans open and guzzled about half of it. “You sure you don’t want one? It might relax you. You seem kind of tense.”
No, really? “Well, how would you feel if one of your favorite relatives just got brutalized?”
He didn’t seem to have a reply to that. But he did have a suggestion.
“So, I thought maybe we could go to your cabin and…you know. Mess around.”
You have got to be kidding me. That’s subtle. Suddenly she didn’t find Chris nearly as good-looking as she had just a few days ago.
Had she really been thinking about sleeping with this insensitive jerk? Aunt Helena’s words came back to her. It’s your body. But I’d urge you not to do anything just because of peer pressure or a feeling of not belonging to some “club.” All right? And try to wait until it’s someone you truly love.
Gemma made her decision and pushed away from the rail. Instead of feeling embarrassed that she might be the only seventeen-year-old virgin in all the world, she felt just fine. When the right person came along, then maybe she’d consider sex. But Chris was definitely not a man worthy of being her first.
“C’mon, what d’ you say, Gemma?” He grinned down at her, looking supremely confident that she’d jump at the chance to “mess around” with him.
She shook her head. “You know what, Chris? I’m really not in the mood.”
“But—”
She patted his arm much as she would pat a dog. “You finish those beers and go party with your buddies. I’m going to check on my aunt.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
NICK STARED AT the telephone for several long moments before he actually dialed a number.
“Argosy Cruises,” a woman answered. “May I help you?”
“I’d like to speak with Elias Stamos,” Nick said.
“And may I ask who is calling?”
“Captain Nikolas Pappas of Alexandra’s Dream.”
“One moment, sir.”
It was closer to five, but finally a gruff male voice came on the line. “Good morning, Pappas. To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”
“Good morning, sir. I’m contacting you for several reasons. One, to let you know that your daughter Helena is safe, despite an unfortunate incident on board Alexandra’s Dream.”
Elias drew in a sharp breath. “What unfortunate incident?”
Bracing himself for an inevitable explosion, Nick relayed the events of the past few days. “I feel responsible, sir, because of my role in antagonizing Kostas Manolis.”
“Nonsense,” growled Stamos.
“I—”
“You did the right thing at Blue Aegean, Pappas. Word got to me about the incident. Why do you think I hired you to command Alexandra’s Dream when no other company would put you in charge of a Jet Ski?”
Nick almost choked.
“The world needs more men like you, Captain. Men of honor and integrity.”
“Thank you, sir. And yet, I offer you my sincere apologies that your daughter was endangered.”
“I just thank God that she’s all right.”
“Yes, sir.” Nick’s response was heartfelt.
A pause ensued. Then Elias got straight to the point. “You say that this man targeted Helena because of your feelings for her?”
Nick didn’t hesitate. “Yes, he did. And while I cannot apologize for loving her, I deeply regret that my love made her a target for a madman.”
“Does my daughter return your feelings, Pappas?”
Nick took a deep breath. “I hope so, sir.” He was gearing up for his next question when Elias preempted him.
“She could do worse.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.”
“Sir, I want to ask your daughter to marry me. I’ve been in love with her for fifteen years.”
“Yes,” Elias said, “I know.”
“You know?” Nick gripped the receiver tightly.
“Very little escapes me, where my daughters are concerned. I will admit that I was not pleased when she chose a deckhand on a freighter as her first love.”
Nick fell silent, his jaw working.
“I felt sure that I knew what was best for her,” Stamos continued after a pause. “I…arranged to have a word of warning put into the boy’s ear.”
Nick sat, breathing heavily as anger overtook him.
“He felt unworthy. He broke things off. My daughter was devastated.”
Speechless, Nick almost hung up on the man.
“I was sure she’d recover in no time and find a more suitable man.” Elias sighed. “But my wife was livid with me. It was Alexandra’s dream that both of our children should find a love as magical, as powerful as ours. And I had interfered. What right did I have, when my own ancestors were hardly aristocrats?”
“My letters,” Nick said. “You saw to it that they never reached Helena.”
“Guilty as charged.”
A strained silence hung between them.
“So it is I who owe you an apology. And I ask your forgiveness.” Elias’s irascible voice was uncharacteristically humble.
Nick exhaled harshly. “What you did was wrong, Stamos.”
“Yes, well. Just you wait until you’re a father one day, Nikolas. You may make a few mistakes of your own in trying to protect your children.”
“Sir, I’d like your permission to marry your daughter.”
“Well, then. If she’ll have you, nothing would make me happier, Pappas. And perhaps my angel wife will forgive me today. For as I told you, in more ways than one, you are truly the captain of Alexandra’s Dream.”
THE SHIP HAD BEGUN its last leg of the cruise, sailing for Civitavecchia and Rome. It was evening, and Helena was at a loss. Nick had invited her to dinner—really dinner this time—in his private dining room, but she winced every time she looked into the mirror.
Her eye was less swollen, but still sported lovely shades ranging from yellow to purple. She could open it, but only partially. It gave her a sleepy, half-witted look.
The cut on her cheek and the bruise on her jaw she covered with makeup, but she didn’t know what to do about the eye. Wear a patch over it? Cover her head with a towel?
No, what she needed was some sort of hat that she could tilt so that it dipped low over one eye. A veil wouldn’t hurt, either.
She had a straw hat that protected her face from the sun, but it was hardly evening attire. Helena frowned at it. Then she opened her closet and quickly flipped through the hangers. She pulled
out one of her gauzy blouses and draped it over the hat. Hmm. Better.
She wasn’t a costume designer for nothing. If she’d created a princess costume out of a trash bag for little Angela, then she could certainly come up with something for herself.
It took her about twenty minutes with nail scissors and a few pins. When she’d finished, Helena had transformed the straw beach hat into an elegant confection that coquettishly hid her right eye and complemented the little black dress she wore over her broken rib. She added lipstick to her mouth and swiped the lashes of her left eye with mascara.
She decided against a necklace, because of the hat, but added Tahitian black pearl earrings and slipped the matching bracelet onto her wrist. Her hands she left bare.
She looked down at the welts on her legs. Nothing she could do about those. They would eventually fade.
Helena slid her feet into high-heeled black satin sling-backs with peep toes and checked her reflection in the mirror. Not bad. She looked a bit like a fifties film star attending the Kentucky Derby, but she’d do.
She nodded to passengers and staff she passed in the corridors as she made her way to Nick’s quarters.
When he opened the door of his stateroom, her heart jumped into her mouth because he was so handsome. He held out a single red rose, and she saw that he wore a black dinner jacket and trousers, and a wry expression.
“You look stunning, Helena,” he said as she accepted the rose.
“I look like a Cyclops attending a garden party, Nikolas. But you’re sweet.”
He touched the brim of the hat with a sad smile of comprehension. “A very lovely Cyclops.”
He drew her inside and closed the door, and she took a good look at him and had to smile.
Like her, he’d had to get creative with his attire because the bandage around his arm wouldn’t fit into the jacket sleeve. So he’d removed the sleeve entirely and messy little threads hung down over his shirt.
“You are not supposed to laugh at your knight in tarnished armor,” he said with mock severity.
“I can’t help it,” she gasped. “Between the two of us, we look very, very odd.”
“We’re well matched.” He smiled, took her hand and led her to sit on the sofa. “Pinot Grigio?” He handed her a chilled glass of wine. She was touched, again, that he remembered her favorite.
Behind them, the table was set with a white cloth, silver and china. Her eyes went to a spray of orchids in a crystal vase. And classical music played softly in the background.
Nick poured a glass of wine for himself and sat next to her. He took her hand and clinked her glass before he brought his own to his lips. “To you being safe.” His hand shook slightly in hers and he squeezed her fingers.
“To us being safe,” she said.
He nodded. “Are you…still in any discomfort?” He had shadows under his gray eyes, and he looked as if he were bracing himself to hear the answer.
“No, not really,” she lied. “The doctor gave me salves and a painkiller. And besides, I’m tougher than I look.” She set down her wineglass and laid her hand on his cheek, trying to comfort him.
He closed his eyes at her touch. “I’ll never forgive myself,” Nick said. But he set his glass down, too, took the hand against his cheek and brought her palm to his lips.
“Nick, I don’t want to hear you say that.”
“It’s true. I allowed it to happen, and then—” He got up and paced to the balcony. “Then I couldn’t protect you.”
“You did protect me, love. When will you get that through your head?”
“But you acted first—I was helpless. God, do you know what that did to me?”
“I saw an opportunity and I took it. But if you hadn’t been there and hadn’t reacted so fast, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Nick took a deep breath then walked back to her. “I know, Helena, that I’m not good at expressing my emotions. I’ve been accused by more than one person of having ice water running through my veins. But I don’t want to be like that with you.”
He took another breath, struggling for words. “Seeing you in his power, your life in his hands, I felt true fear as I have never felt it before. So many things rushed through my head that I couldn’t make sense of. Mostly I just reacted. But if I focused on anything at all besides wanting to kill Manolis, it was my own stupidity at walking away from you all those years ago. Without a word.”
“Oh, Nikolas…”
“Wait. Let me finish. You didn’t deserve that. I should have confronted you, talked with you. I wasn’t fair. You may have omitted to tell me who your father was, but what I did was worse. And I’m sorry. You said several nights ago that you’ve waited fifteen years for an apology. I want to offer that apology to you now.”
Tears came to her eyes. “It’s all right. It’s done. Let’s move on from there.”
“I want you to know why, though. I was pulled aside by my supervisor on the freighter. He told me who you were, warned me off. I was devastated.”
“My father,” she said, and sighed. “Tell me that my father didn’t have something to do with it.”
Nick stayed utterly expressionless. “I don’t know.”
Helena looked up into his eyes and knew immediately that he was lying. If she hadn’t fallen in love with him again already, she would have done so right then and there. Nick, who held integrity above all things and who had probably never told a fib in his life, was flat-out lying to her so that she wouldn’t be furious with her father.
She felt so tender toward Nick in that moment that she couldn’t speak.
“Do you know how much I love you, Helena Stamos?”
The words warmed her like no others. “It can’t be more than I love you, Nikolas.”
His face lit up as if he hadn’t been sure, the sweet, silly man. “I would argue the point, but I don’t want to waste any more time than we already have. Fifteen years, Helena. Fifteen times three hundred and sixty-five. That’s thousands upon thousands of days. And tens of thousands of hours. We have missed so much time together.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t wasted. Perhaps we needed that time to be certain…”
“I like the way you’re thinking, agape mou.” He smiled at her. “Do you think, Helena, that you could end up with a man like me? Someone who makes his home on the water and only keeps an apartment on dry land because he has to?”
“Do you think you could end up with a Gypsy woman who travels constantly for work and for pleasure? Someone who sometimes paints like a madwoman in the middle of the night and isn’t always logical? Someone who has a meddlesome father but who won’t allow him to run her life anymore?”
Nick nodded. He dropped down to one knee. “I had meant to do this after dinner, with champagne. But I can’t wait any longer. Fifteen years is enough.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a tiny blue-velvet pouch. Inside it was a gold ring with a tiny round diamond in a Tiffany setting.
Wordlessly she stared at it. Could it be…?
“I’ve kept it all these years,” Nick said quietly. “I never knew why.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks. “Oh, Nikolas.”
“Will you marry me, Helena? Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
In spite of all her past convictions about marriage, she didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Nikolas, I will.”
Then she frowned. “Wait.”
His face fell almost comically. In fact, he looked stricken.
“I will marry you if you promise me that you will stop assuming the blame for both the incident with Manolis and Carolina’s death.”
Nick stared at her.
“I mean it,” she said sternly.
He blinked. Then slowly he nodded. “If those are your terms, I will do my best. But then I have one of my own. You, Helena, will stop feeling guilty about your marriage to Ari. It’s time for you to move past that.”
She nodded. “I’ll try.”
�
��So you’ll be my wife?”
“Yes. Nothing could make me happier, Nikolas.”
His always steady hands trembled as he slid the ring onto the fourth finger of her left hand, then stood, pulling her up with him. “Maybe another baby?”
Swallowing a sob, she slipped into his arms.
“I can live part of the year with you in London,” he said. “And maybe you can live on Alexandra’s Dream for the other part, between projects?”
“Yes. We’ll work it out.”
He opened his mouth to continue, but she laid a finger across his lips. “Shh, Nick. Just kiss me, love. We can figure out all the details later.”
So he did. He touched his mouth to hers and she opened to him gladly. He slid his arms around her waist and she slid her hands down his shoulders.
“Ouch,” they said in unison. And ruefully, they laughed together. Intimacy was going to be a challenge with her battered rib and his injured arm. But somehow she thought they would manage. They had the rest of their lives, after all.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0710-7
AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER
Copyright © 2007 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Karen A. Moser is acknowledged as the author of this work.
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