A furrow formed in his brow.
She kissed him lightly and ran her fingers through his hair, then sighed dreamily. ‘You’re the only man I’ve ever wanted, the only man I’ve ever been with and the only man I’ll ever be with.’
Suddenly she was flat on her back, Nikos pinning her to the mattress as he stared into her eyes, the expression on his face unreadable before he suddenly crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss so passionately violent that arousal flared for them both again and soon Marisa was moaning in his arms and clinging to him as he drove their mutual passion to glorious heights.
* * *
The next few days managed to pass both crazily fast and crazily slow. On the one hand was their forthcoming wedding, the reception of which was doubling as a birthday party for their son. Everything had been booked and guests confirmed. Nikos had employed the most efficient wedding planner and given her all the funds needed to grease any palms that needed it. The day seemed to be approaching with the speed of a freight train.
The crazily slow side came from the joy of just being alive. Nikos’s grandfather had gone away on a trip for a few days with his lady friend, which helped Marisa relax around the villa. Many happy hours were spent with Nikos and their son, just the three of them. In the evenings they would put Niki to bed and when Marisa was satisfied he was fast asleep, they would lock the bedroom door and make love until they were so spent that sleep claimed them, whether they wanted it to or not.
After three days of this bliss, Nikos went to his business centre to catch up on neglected work. With her own business being taken care of and nothing of any urgency needing her attention, Marisa left Niki napping under the watchful eye of his nanny and set off with the butler to decide where to house her family and the other guests who would be staying with them for the wedding.
The guest villas, she decided, were the best place for her friends, who could be as loud as they liked without disturbing anyone, and she pointed to their names on Angelos’s clipboard, trying out a little Greek on him. He beamed and congratulated her efforts, which in turn made her beam with pride. She’d asked Seema to speak to her in Greek when they were alone in an effort to speed up her understanding of the language. Soon, she hoped to surprise Nikos by conversing with him in his native tongue.
With the guest villas allocated, they returned to the main villa.
Marisa had never been on the second floor before and she found the rooms as spacious and richly furnished as those on the first floor, all except for one room. That room had only a large, battered ottoman in it.
Once the rest of the guests had been assigned their rooms and Angelos had gone back downstairs, curiosity took her back to the unfurnished room.
It was just an ordinary room with white walls, duck egg blue drapes and a soft grey carpet. All the same, she found herself hesitating before entering it and walking to the ottoman.
She crouched down and lifted the lid. Her nose wrinkled at the stale, musty scent that was released. Within the ottoman’s confines was a jumble of toys.
Her heart lurched. These were the last things she’d expected to find.
Cautiously, she picked up a ragged stuffed elephant and ran her finger over the indentation made by a missing eye. There were more stuffed toys, plastic army figures, children’s jigsaws, plastic trucks and other assorted toys crammed inside. Everything looked old. Faded. Forgotten.
She turned at the sound of approaching footsteps and then Nikos appeared with Niki in his arms.
There was the strangest expression on his face, one that immediately made her think she’d done something wrong.
‘Sorry. I was being curious.’ She dropped the elephant back in the ottoman.
Recognising her sudden wariness, Nikos forced a smile and made himself step over the threshold.
He hadn’t set foot in this room in ten years.
He joined Marisa at the ottoman and peered down at the long-forgotten contents with a chest so tight it was like someone had trapped it in a vice. Niki took one look and started jiggling with excitement and making grabbing motions with his hands.
‘Can he...?’
‘No.’ He curtly cut Marisa’s question off before she could finish it.
She took Niki from him, her wariness more pronounced.
He grimaced and took a deep breath. The tightness and emotions bubbling in his guts were not Marisa’s doing. In a more moderate tone, he said, ‘This was my bedroom. This is the only thing of my childhood my mother kept.’
He’d discovered his childhood ottoman in the days after her death when sentimentality had compelled him to enter his old bedroom for the first time since he’d been taken from his parents. The rest of the room had been stripped bare. The ottoman and its contents had been the only proof in the entire villa that a child had once lived and breathed within its walls.
Nikos remembered the clear instruction he’d given the design team when he’d made the decision to renovate the place. Get rid of every piece of furniture in the villa but keep the ottoman. Keep that exactly where it is. And then he’d closed the door on his childhood bedroom and never opened it again. Not until now.
He picked up the elephant Marisa had been holding when he’d entered the room. ‘This went everywhere with me.’ He gave a sharp laugh and opened the dressing room door. ‘Sometimes we would hide in here together when my parents were trying to kill each other.’
He looked at Marisa, rocking Niki on her hip. He turned away from the empathy shining in her eyes and looked out of the window at the guest villas in the near distance. He’d had them built over the patchwork of land that had once been his daily view.
Within a year of inheriting the place, he’d eradicated every inch of his parents’ presence and his childhood from it. Apart from the ottoman.
As if reading his thoughts, she quietly asked, ‘Why did you move back here?’
A pale blue sports car was approaching. His grandfather returning from his jaunt. Nikos watched it get closer while answering, ‘Why would I not? It’s the perfect location with all the land I could ever need.’
‘But the memories...’
He faced her again and, injecting light into his voice, said, ‘Memories are the past. If we allow the past to hold onto us, we can never move to the future.’ To prove his point, he headed for the door, waiting for Marisa to join him so he could close it and leave the past behind, where it should be.
They walked in silence. When they reached the stairs, he caught one of her curls in his fingers. ‘My grandfather is back. I’m going to talk to him about what you told me the other night. Do you want to join us?’
She shook her head. ‘You go ahead. I’m going to take Niki for a swim.’
‘Okay.’ He cupped her cheek and placed a tender kiss to her lips before kissing their son’s head. ‘I’ll join you when we’re done.’
* * *
Marisa carried Niki to the nursery armchair and sat him on her lap. Rubbing her cheek over his soft head, she tried to swallow the choking lump in her throat.
She didn’t understand why she was close to tears over an ottoman full of Nikos’s old toys. Why should it affect her so deeply when it didn’t matter to him?
But, if it didn’t matter to him, why had he kept it? And why was that room the only unfurnished room in the whole villa?
Every time she thought she’d unlocked the mystery that was Nikos, she found another lock that needed a key.
Niki stood himself up on her lap and bounced, gurgling away happily. Wiping away a stray tear, she laughed.
‘What would I do without you?’ she said, putting her mouth to his cheek and blowing on it, making him laugh manically. She blew another raspberry on his cheek and savoured the musical sound of his laughter.
Had Nikos’s mother ever blown raspberries on his cheek? Had his father ever bounced him on his lap? Surely, surely, they
had given him affection as a baby. Hadn’t Nikos said his mother had used her wealth to stop his grandfather getting custody of him when he was a baby? That had to mean something.
The alternative was just too unbearable to contemplate. That Nikos could have spent his most formative years without any of the love and affection she’d been lucky enough to take for granted.
Niki stopped bouncing and rested his face in the crook of her neck. Stroking his back, she squeezed her eyes shut to stop any more tears from leaking.
Whatever love Nikos had been denied in his life, she would make up for it. Because there was no point in denying any more that she loved him. She had always loved him. And, though he might not recognise it as love and might never say the words, he loved her too. She knew it in her heart.
Sniffing back more tears, she shifted Niki higher. His head drooped. She kissed his sleeping face and gently laid him in his cot. Their swim could wait while he napped.
Making sure the baby monitor was working, Marisa crept out of the nursery and went in search of the man she loved.
* * *
‘They killed her father?’
Nikos swirled the last of his coffee in his mouth before swallowing it and answering his grandfather. They were sitting side by side on the terrace facing the sea, the afternoon sun beaming down on them incongruous against the darkness of their conversation. ‘Yes. They tampered with the brakes of his car.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’
‘I told you her family had suffered at the hands of the cartel.’
‘But not like this.’ Stratos shook his head in disbelief. ‘You didn’t tell me the poor child lost her father while she was pregnant with your child and thinking you were dead.’
The churning and twisting that had plagued Nikos’s guts since he’d walked into his childhood bedroom earlier cranked up. His skin felt as if insects were crawling over it.
That damned ottoman.
Stratos continued shaking his head. ‘For such a good man you have a real problem with empathy.’ And then he sighed. ‘I know, I know, it’s something you can’t help but I worry for you.’
‘Your worry is misplaced,’ Nikos said curtly. ‘So, you will stop pretending she doesn’t exist?’
‘I will apologise to her... Where is she?’
‘Taking Niki for a swim.’ He’d intended to join them but the way he felt he would be better served taking a long swim in the sea his gaze was fixed on. Thrashing his way through the waves would pound all these damned feelings out of him.
That damned ottoman of toys. Opening its lid had been his personal equivalent to opening Pandora’s Box.
After his mother’s death a decade ago, he’d closed both the door to his childhood bedroom and the door in his mind. The past was the past. What purpose did it serve to dwell on something to which he would never get any answers?
But the past had been closing in on him since his isolation and now it filled his head, cramming him with emotions and thoughts that flooded through him as if a tap had been turned on.
Why had his mother kept the ottoman when she’d got rid of all his other possessions?
Had she had latent feelings for him? A small residue of love in her heart for him?
And why had he kept the damn thing?
‘Are you okay?’ Stratos asked.
He breathed heavily and poured himself another coffee. Why was he thinking like this?
His mother and father had allowed him to be taken from them without a fight when they’d had the money and means to get him back. It was that simple. Why feel futile pangs of sentimentality over it? It was the best thing that had happened to him. If they’d wanted him back, he would have returned to a home that had bordered on a drugs den where his only love and companionship had come from a stuffed elephant.
Before his grandfather had saved him and welcomed him into his home, that stuffed elephant had been his best friend. His only friend. Nikos hadn’t played with a single child until he was six years old. Cousins he’d had no idea existed became his playmates. Real playmates.
The stuffed elephant had been left behind and forgotten along with everything else.
So why the hell was he allowing it to be remembered?
The only emotion he would allow himself to feel was love for his son. In two days he would marry Marisa and he’d know that, whatever happened, his son would always have his love and protection.
He had a drink of his coffee. In no mood to hear another lecture about how his parents’ neglect of him was all down to their addictions, he said, ‘I was thinking about the wedding.’
‘Everything is in hand?’
Nikos nodded.
‘Good. I’m glad you came around to my way of thinking. When I remember the battles I had with your mother...’
Battles that had ended when Nikos passed babyhood and lost his cloak of protective cuteness, making him unlovable.
But she had kept his toys...
‘Marriage will protect you and protect your son. Remember that. But take it from a man who knows—a miserable wife makes for a very miserable life.’
‘We won’t be married long enough for me to make her miserable.’ The hackles of his crawling skin rose at the look on his grandfather’s face. ‘A temporary marriage was your idea.’
‘I know.’ Stratos sighed. ‘But that was when I thought selfishness had stopped her telling me about your son. I didn’t know—’
‘The decision has been made,’ he interrupted curtly. An image of Marisa’s beautiful face shining up at him with that softness in her eyes...
He banished it swiftly. Theos, his guts were cramping. His heart felt like it was tearing. ‘A year of marriage is the most I can live with.’
This was what sentimentality did to you. Made you doubt yourself. Made you imagine feelings that didn’t exist.
The cramping in his guts was a form of guilt, and unnecessary guilt at that.
He hadn’t promised Marisa for ever. That was one lie he’d never told her.
‘Time might change your mind,’ Stratos said, his expression sad.
‘No. One year and then I file for divorce.’
If time was going to change anyone’s mind it would be Marisa’s when she’d spent long enough with him to see whatever it was that had turned his parents away from him.
He swallowed the burn of nausea rising up his throat and again banished the image of her beautiful face from his mind...and that softness he so often saw in her eyes that, if he’d been a man who inspired love, he could almost believe was the look of love.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MARISA BACKED SLOWLY to the stairs, covering her mouth tightly to stop the scream from escaping.
When she reached the top of the stairs she flew down the corridor to Seema’s room and rapped loudly on it.
‘Are you okay?’ the nanny asked when she opened the door.
‘What is the word for divorce?’
‘It’s diazýgio.’
She closed her eyes and pulled in a breath. She hadn’t misunderstood. ‘Thank you.’
Checking Niki was still sleeping, she hurried to her bedroom, grabbed her phone and called her sister.
Elsa answered on the third ring. ‘Hi, big sister! How’s Mykonos?’
‘Is Santi there?’
‘Yes... What’s wrong?’
‘Can you put him on, please? It’s important.’
Seconds later, the man she’d grown up thinking of as a big brother figure was on the phone. ‘What do you need?’
She swallowed her relief that he’d got straight to the point. ‘Can you send one of your planes to get me?’ Santi owned a fleet of planes that delivered freight across the world. He also had his own private jet.
‘Are you in Mykonos?’
‘Yes.’
‘When do you want to be collected?’
‘As soon as you can get here.’
‘I will send a plane to you now. Keep your phone on you for instructions... Marisa?’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you okay?’
‘No. But I will be. Please hurry.’
‘Hold on a minute. I have a better idea. Speak to your sister while I make some calls.’
‘Marisa?’ This time there was panic in Elsa’s voice. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing.’ Yet. ‘But the wedding’s off. I can’t marry him.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘I’ll tell you when I get home.’ Her real home. A home filled with people who loved her. ‘Do me a favour and don’t tell Mama. I don’t want her to worry. I’ll tell her when I get back.’
‘You’re scaring me.’
‘I promise it’s nothing to scare you. He’s not hurt me, I swear.’ Not physically.
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘Okay... Santi wants to talk to you again.’
There was no preamble. ‘I’ve spoken to a contact. He’s on Santorini. He’s sending his jet to you now. All being well, it should land in an hour. Shall I send a car to get you to the airport?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Hold tight. I’ll call you when the driver’s ten minutes from you. It won’t be long. Hold tight,’ he repeated, and then the line went dead.
Marisa didn’t waste any time. Forget packing. Clothes were replaceable. Chucking her passport and Niki’s into her handbag, she secured the bag over her shoulder then hurried to the nursery to pack a change-bag for Niki.
Thankfully, the ground floor was empty of people and she was able to carry Niki and their bags to the underground garage without being seen. The keys for Nikos’s showroom of cars were hanging up and she pressed them all until the one with the baby seat in it flashed. She strapped a still-sleeping Niki into it before unclipping and carefully removing the seat. Rather than go back up into the house, she pressed the button to open the garage’s sliding doors and waited for rescue in the shade of the terrace that ran along the side of the villa.
The Secret Behind the Greek's Return Page 14