The Secret Behind the Greek's Return

by Michelle Smart

  ‘Everything. But we can start with your parents and why your grandfather took custody of you.’

  He wanted to rip his gaze from her stare. Instead, he straightened his spine and met it head on. ‘My parents were drug addicts.’

  There was a flickering in her eyes.

  ‘You sure you want to hear this? It isn’t pretty.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  He shrugged. So be it. Maybe giving the memories the oxygen they wanted and Marisa wanted would be enough to silence them for ever.

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me—I don’t want you to imagine a scene of squalor like the junkies that are portrayed in films. I mean, they were junkies, but they were high functioning. They were both clever, high maintenance individuals who needed a steady fix of narcotics to help them function.’

  ‘You keep saying were? Are they both dead?’

  ‘My father’s alive but I haven’t seen him in a long time. Fifteen years, maybe. My mother died ten years ago. She came from a wealthy family...’ he waved his hand around to indicate the villa he’d inherited from her ‘...and was what in today’s terms would be a socialite. My father was a musician. I’m told he was once an excellent one. They were both mild drug users when they got together but their influence on each other was destructive. They supposedly loved each other once but all I remember is them hating each other. They had many all-night parties here and would just erupt in front of everyone.’ He laughed grimly. ‘Everyone acted as if it was normal, two grown people throwing ornaments and threatening each other with knives...’

  ‘What?’ She interrupted, her set face suddenly cracking with horror. ‘You saw this?’

  ‘I witnessed a lot of violence and drug taking. I was put in my grandfather’s custody when my mother smashed a glass over my father’s head. He wasn’t seriously injured but there was enough blood that one of their friends called for a doctor.’

  He blinked away the memories of the blood pouring over his father’s shocked face that moments before had been twisted in a goading snarl. Nikos had been playing with his stuffed elephant, making it ride his toy truck, and he remembered the sickening thuds of his heart as he’d pretended not to see or hear, just kept the elephant and truck circling and circling.

  ‘The doctor saw me playing on the floor surrounded by vast quantities of drugs and felt duty-bound to call the authorities. They took me away and gave me to my grandfather.’

  ‘And you were six?’ she asked faintly. Her face had turned ashen.

  ‘Yes. It was agreed my parents’ lifestyle wasn’t conducive to raising a child and my grandfather agreed. I didn’t know it then but he’d been fighting for custody of me for years. He’d never approved of what he thought of as their champagne lifestyle but his suspicions of drug use had been just that—suspicions. He had no hard evidence and my mother had the wealth and contacts to ban him from their home and put a stop to his interfering. Those were the days I presume she had some form of maternal feelings for me.’ Those maternal feelings hadn’t lasted long enough for Nikos to remember any sign of them.

  ‘So overnight you were taken from your parents and given to your grandfather?’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t even begin to understand how that must have felt.’

  ‘You know what you just said about everyone’s normal being different? Drug addicted parents who hated the sight of each other was my normal. It took a long time for me to understand and accept I would never live with them again.’

  Months and months of nightmares.

  His parents had been his world and he’d loved them. His life had centred round pleasing them. A smile from his mother or an absent pat on the head from his father had been enough to fill his childish heart with joy that would last for days.

  His mute terror at the violence he’d witnessed between them and the ache in his heart when another night would roll around without a goodnight kiss had been nothing to his terror at being taken from them.

  Marisa brought her knees up to her chin and tried to take it all in as dispassionately as Nikos had narrated it. It was impossible. All she could see in her mind’s eye was a little dark-haired boy playing on the floor surrounded by stoned adults, drugs and blood. She saw faceless authority figures swooping in and leading him out of the only home he’d known by his hand, the little boy not knowing his world was on the cusp of changing for ever. Or that he was on the cusp of changing for ever.

  ‘And when you did accept it...how did you find living with your grandfather?’

  He pulled a face. ‘Difficult. We both did. I’d had no discipline at all and was used to fending for myself. We clashed very badly, especially as I got older. He sent me to boarding school in England when I was fourteen. English boarding schools have a reputation for strictness. My mother paid for it.’ His face twisted bitterly. ‘She could have used her wealth to fight to keep me, paid others to care for me, all kinds of things she could have done to keep me under her roof, but she chose not to—turns out she found it preferable to live without the bother of a child. But she was more than happy to pay for me to move countries.’

  Nausea churned in her belly. Nikos’s observation that Marisa’s childhood had been idyllic was true and something she’d always been aware of and thankful for. Compared to what Nikos had been through it had been served to her on a bed of rose petals carried by winged cherubs. Not for a single second had she wondered whether her parents loved her. Their love had been so deeply imbedded in her that there had never been a need to question it.

  Struggling to speak, she whispered, ‘What about your father?’

  ‘Within months of me being taken from them, they split up and he left for the mainland. He’s still there now, in Athens, I think, playing his guitar in restaurants. He snorted and smoked most of the money he got off my mother in the divorce.’ A pulse throbbed on his jawline. ‘You know, I grew to hate them. I mean, really hate them. Especially my mother. She had the money to fight for me. I had a small inheritance of my own from her parents. It was put under my grandfather’s control.

  ‘He gave me a sum of it when I turned sixteen. I lived independently off that money and turned it into a fortune while having the time of my life, and didn’t return to Mykonos until I was twenty-three. I hadn’t seen her in six, seven years and the change I saw in her was enormous. She’d had so much work done to her face that it looked plastic but it didn’t hide the damage from her addictions and lifestyle. I still hated her but seeing her like that...’ His lips tightened. ‘I began to feel a responsibility to her.’

  He laughed morosely. ‘It is strange how we change, isn’t it? I never thought I would feel that. A responsibility for that woman. But I did.’

  ‘Maybe it was seeing her with adult eyes,’ she suggested softly. ‘You could see her vulnerabilities.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘I got into the habit of calling her every few days. One day she didn’t answer. I tried a number of times. I was in London and called the Mykonos authorities. They found her dead on her bedroom floor.’

  Cold horror sliced through her heart.

  ‘She’d overdosed.’

  Marisa rubbed her mouth against her knee and closed her eyes to stop the threatening tears from falling. He didn’t want her sympathy.

  In the end, all she could think to say was the honest, simple truth. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Nikos swung his legs off the bed and opened the door to step onto the balcony.

  He needed air.

  Fingers tight around the balustrade, he rolled the tension from his neck.

  For so many years he’d wished his mother dead. It had been a wish he’d hated himself for but one he’d been unable to block. Not until he’d learned she’d been dead for four days before her body had been found had he recognised the miserable loneliness of her death had been a mirror to the miserable loneliness of her life.

  The grief he’d felt at
her death had knocked him for six. How had Marisa described grief? Like swimming through a black cloud?

  His had been a grief he’d never expected to feel and he’d hated himself for it. She’d never grieved for the loss of him so why should he grieve for the loss of her? He’d smothered the grief quickly and locked it away. Forgotten.

  Until now.

  He waited until the tight knots deep in his guts had loosened before returning to Marisa’s room.

  The knots loosened some more to see his son sitting on the bed, wide awake. A huge beam spread over Niki’s face to see him.

  Nikos met Marisa’s eyes.

  She shrugged ruefully. ‘He’s not used to sleeping in new places. This is only the second time he’s not slept in his own cot. We spent a night in Geneva when the cartel was being taken down—I think he woke up four times.’

  Niki held his arms out for him. Nikos slid under the bedsheets and pulled his son to him. If Marisa still wanted him to leave she’d have to ask again.

  But she didn’t ask. She slipped under the sheets next to him and smiled to see their son bouncing on Nikos’s chest.

  ‘He loves you,’ she observed, her wistful gaze alternating between his face and their son’s.

  ‘I like to think so.’

  ‘He does.’ Lightly—so lightly it felt like a feather brushing against him—she ran a finger over his forehead then turned her attention to their son, whose cheek she kissed. Her shoulders rose before she let out a long sigh and lay down.

  Pulling the covers over her shoulders, she said, ‘If you snore, you go back to your own room.’

  His chest had filled with too much emotion for him to protest at this slight with anything stronger than, ‘I don’t snore.’

  The sad amusement in her eyes filled his chest even more. ‘Don’t let him stay awake too long otherwise we’ll have a grumpy baby tomorrow.’

  He swallowed the boulder lodged in his throat and nodded. ‘Understood.’

  Her eyes held his for the blink of a moment before she turned her back to him and turned the light out.

  Struggling to breathe, Nikos held his son’s wrists to steady him as he merrily bounced away on his chest and watched his happy, babbling face in the starlight.

  ‘Nikos?’ Marisa’s sleepy voice broke quietly through the darkness. ‘We’ll talk more about your suggestion tomorrow. Okay?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  NEVER IN HIS life had Nikos woken with such a weight pressing on his chest. But this was a good weight. An excellent weight. He opened his eyes and found his son straddling his neck, his face hovering over his with the look of an archaeologist examining an important find. The sun had risen but Nikos was quite sure it was earlier than he’d woken since his own childhood.

  Grinning, he lifted Niki into the air and sat up, shushing him as he went so he didn’t wake Marisa, who was curled up like a hedgehog under the sheets beside him.

  He stared at the golden-red curls poking out and felt his heart catch. On the verge of leaning over and capturing one of those curls, he was prevented by a miniature finger being inserted up his nose.

  He held onto his laughter until he’d closed the nursery door. His amusement soon turned to head-scratching as he tasked himself with cleaning and changing his son’s nappy and pyjamas. Just as he was debating whether or not to wake the nanny, a sleepy Marisa entered the room, smothering a yawn. Even with her hair shooting up in all directions and puffy eyed, she looked beautiful, and Nikos felt an immediate stab of longing pierce him.

  He’d hardly slept himself. While his son and son’s mother had slept deeply with him on the huge emperor-sized bed, he’d been alert to every move they’d both made, the few lulls into sleep filled with vivid dreams that had merged into reality when he’d opened his eyes.

  Had his mother ever brought him into her bed when he’d been a baby? Had his father? Had they ever shared the same room? All he’d ever known was that each had had their own room that the other was expressly forbidden from entering. He’d been forbidden from entering either of them too. He remembered mornings, his stomach hurting from hunger, creeping around the vast kitchen in search of food, dragging a stool around to climb on to reach the taller cupboards, too frightened of their anger to go into their rooms to wake either of them for help. Neither had minded him making a mess in the kitchen—his mess only added to theirs—but woe betide him if he woke them up. Those were the only rules in the Manolas household: no entering his parents’ bedrooms and no making a noise that could wake them from their sleep.

  When he’d first been taken from them he’d thought it was because he’d made too much early morning noise. It had taken a long time to realise that, though he’d been forcibly taken, they’d willingly let him go. They’d given him up.

  What had been so wrong with him that they could do that? Give him up? It was a question he’d asked himself many times through the years but it took on an even greater significance now.

  What had been so wrong with him that they’d denied him the affection Marisa lavished on Niki? Look at her now, standing beside him at the changing table, pressing kisses on the face of their naked son, who was making bicycle motions with his legs. He didn’t imagine his mother had ever done that to him.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ she asked.

  ‘When did you last sleep in?’ he challenged.

  ‘What’s sleeping in?’

  ‘See?’ He gave her his sternest look. ‘Go back to bed. I’ve got this.’

  Ignoring his directive, she tickled their son’s belly. ‘You’re changing him?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘If it’s that obvious, where’s his clean clothes?’

  He hadn’t thought of that. From the look on her face, she knew it too. She smiled. ‘I’ll get some for you. Shall I get you a clean nappy too?’

  He hadn’t thought about that either.

  He had a lot to learn. From the look on Marisa’s face she was happy and willing to teach him.

  He just had to hope she was happy and willing to teach him as his wife.

  * * *

  The first full day in Mykonos passed slowly for Marisa. Spent lazing around the pool with the nanny and Stratos, who still seemed to be cold towards her, it gave her plenty of thinking time. All her thoughts were wrapped around Nikos...

  The lovemaking they’d shared. That was something she didn’t so much think about but shimmered in her veins as a constant reminder. Her pride wanted to be angry that his seduction had been planned but she’d waited for him on that balcony. She’d wanted it as much as he had and from the ache in her pelvis, she knew that if he came to her room tonight, she would open the door to him without hesitation.

  Making love had been a physical act she’d abandoned herself to without fear of losing her heart. The feelings that had erupted within her when he’d spoken so dispassionately about his childhood were far more frightening. She’d felt the pieces of her damaged heart knit themselves back together so they could cry with sympathy for the damaged little boy he’d been. The Nikos he was today was not the six-year-old child he’d once been, and it was imperative she separate those two Nikoses, however difficult it would be, especially if she agreed to his proposal.

  That, more than anything, had played on her mind all day, tying all the other issues together and making the strings of her heart play a concerto.

  Terrifyingly, she had slept more soundly with him sharing her bed than she had since the day he’d gone missing from his yacht. Today was the first morning since his return that she hadn’t woken with panicked ice stabbing her heart.

  She genuinely didn’t know what to do for the best. Could she really deny her son the opportunity to have the blessed childhood she’d had for the sake of her pride? And could she deny Nikos that experience? Didn’t he deserve the chance to be a real father, to share in all the joys of watching
their baby reach all those important milestones and all the day-to-day joys she took for granted? The joy of beaming early morning smiles? The joy of feeding him something that wasn’t immediately spat out? The joy of baths and getting drenched by manically kicking legs connecting to water?

  She had to wait until mid-afternoon before the opportunity came to ask Nikos the questions that had been steadily forming in her jumbled mind as the day had gone on. His grandfather had gone to his chess club and the nanny had taken Niki to the nursery for his nap.

  Nikos joined her on the terrace, a smile on his gorgeous face and two glasses of fruity cocktails in his hands.

  ‘Here,’ he said, handing her one. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not too strong.’

  The strings of her heart were plucked again. How well he was getting to know her as a mother, anticipating her thoughts and worries.

  There was something incredible in how he could make the separation of her as a mother and her as a woman and cater for the needs of both. More incredible still that it had taken his return for her needs as a woman to reawaken.

  He’d roused so many buried feelings and impulses. Feelings and impulses he’d been the one to bring to life in the first place...

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. This was the first time they’d been alone together all day and, from the safety of her shades, she let her greedy eyes soak in the glory of his body, only a pair of brief black swim shorts covering any flesh. She’d always loved his body. Its muscular leanness. The olive hue of his skin. The dark hair that covered his chest and made a tapering line down to his groin. The snake hips. The tight buttocks. The long, toned legs. The whole package.

  From the smirk on his face and the way he brushed his fingers against hers as he released the cocktail glass, Nikos knew exactly what she was doing. She didn’t care that she’d been caught ogling him. After the night they’d shared and the confidences he’d entrusted to her, she was beyond denying her desire for him. It was too late for denial. Much too late.