by Olivia Gates
Kassandra shook her head. “That’s business.”
“And personally he cares nothing for me,” she said, trying to strip her voice of any emotional charge. “Or for Alex. Whatever he’s offering, he’s doing it for sterile reasons with no human factor involved. One of my father’s biggest objections to him was the way he treated his family. Six younger brothers and sisters he plied with checks in lieu of affection and services instead of having an actual role in their lives. Even when his youngest brother died, he didn’t stay with his family to console them for a single night. And I won’t let what happened to his siblings happen to Alex. It’s better for him not to know his father than to have a father who’ll make him feel alienated and worse than fatherless.”
Kassandra chewed her lips. “Hmm, I didn’t know it was that bad. But, cut the guy some slack. A man who built an empire without a formal education after the age of twelve, starting with a fishing boat at the age of fourteen, must be real busy. As I said, normal rules don’t apply to him. Maybe there are things about him that would make up for what a normal man would provide.”
Kassandra’s efforts to make her look at the bright side spread more darkness inside her. “Not according to his siblings, there aren’t.” Before Kassandra could bounce back with another sales pitch on Aristedes’s behalf, Selene pressed on. “There’s also the catastrophe currently brewing between him and my family. He might say he’ll do anything to stop it, but he’ll probably take one look at the new terms I’ll lay out and tell me to go to hell, then open fire on all of us. Plus, my brothers have been seething ever since they found out about my pregnancy. If their testosterone-driven collective finds out Alex is his, I have two predictions. Either they’ll gang up on him and tear him limb from limb, or they’ll gang up on him and me and force us into a shotgun wedding.”
“But the guy won’t need to be forced into a wedding! He already offered.”
“Sure. And when I refused he must have felt so relieved, and probably righteous to boot. Now he can go back to his hard business and fast women with a clear conscience. If he has one.”
Kassandra looked at her, her green eyes filled with the need to shake her, and the need to hug her, console her.
Kassandra finally let her shoulders slump. “At least give yourself some time to think about it. For me? I’d love to design your wedding dress. I’ll design you a whole trousseau!”
Selene hugged her friend, loving her more for persisting in trying to talk her out of what she evidently thought a terrible mistake.
But Selene knew the biggest mistake would be to let an emotionally stunted and unavailable man like Aristedes—no matter how much she craved him, no matter that he was her son’s father—into her life.
Selene woke up after a harrowing night of wrestling with tentacles trying to drag her into a bottomless abyss.
The worst part had been when she’d wanted with everything in her to succumb to their pull.
Though Alex was still asleep, evidenced by his tranquil breathing on the baby monitor at her bedside table, she rushed to his nursery. She always needed to see him first thing in the morning, but today, the need was a gnawing urgency.
On her way to Alex’s room, the bell rang.
She stopped in the hallway, squinted up at the wall clock. Eight a.m. Eleni’s usual arrival time.
Then Selene remembered. Today was Saturday. Eleni wasn’t coming. Selene gave her weekends off since she didn’t let Alex out of her sight, making up for the time she spent away from him during the workdays.
So who could it be, this early?
She rushed to the door with terrible scenarios chasing each other through her head. She snatched it open, and…
Aristedes was standing there, in the first casual outfit she’d ever seen him in, immaculate in light blue denim, overpowering in influence. He was brooding down at her, his eyes simmering like steaming ice in the dim golden lights illuminating the spacious, ultrachic corridor leading to her apartment door.
She stared up at him.
Nothing had changed, or would ever change.
Yet all she wanted was to drag him inside, devour him and tell him she’d take whatever he had to offer.
Everything she’d held at bay flooded over her. The longing she’d suppressed. The loneliness and depression she’d suffered during her pregnancy and Alex’s early months. The resignation that she’d be a mother, a businesswoman, a sister, a friend, but never a woman, never like she’d been with him, for as long as she lived.
And she knew she had to do it. Make him an offer of herself without a safety net, just to end this alienation, just to experience that level of intimacy, that state of acute… living she could only attain with him…
She started, “If you’re here to see if I changed my mind, I—”
He cut off her wobbling offer. “I’m here to say I changed mine. I want you to forget everything I proposed to you.”
Five
Selene stared up at Aristedes and understood at last.
Why he was generally known as the devil.
Aristedes Sarantos was an insidious, maddening, heart-stealing, soul-stripping tormentor. He kept coming at those he wanted to control or conquer like said devil, persistent, tireless, endlessly persuasive one moment, overwhelmingly seductive the next. Then when he had his victims in too deep, he churned them dry of everything that made them themselves with all the mercilessness of a capricious, indifferent ocean. Everyone invariably buckled before him, their stamina depleted, their wills eroded.
Aristedes had told her that her father had died after he’d ranted at him. She hadn’t been able to imagine what had driven her father to such a fit of frustration with his longtime sparring partner. Aristedes’s latest terms hadn’t been any more exasperating or restrictive than any he’d made in the past. She’d thought that her father’s approaching death had brought on that uncharacteristic outburst, not the other way around.
But right now, she could see how wrong she could have been. How Aristedes could have chipped away at her father’s endurance, until he’d snapped, at a seemingly unrelated moment.
He’d done the same to her. He’d submerged her under his spell, addicted her to ecstasies only he could provide before casting her out. He’d crossed her path again just to repeat the sadistic game.
In the past two days he’d reignited the dormant sickness inside her, watched her struggle against it, pretended to let her escape only to pursue her again, until she wanted nothing but the reprieve of plummeting into his trap. Then he told her that he wasn’t even going to catch her in it, would let her fall to her fate, whatever it was….
No. She wouldn’t let him destroy her like he had her father, like he had so many others. He’d damaged her enough already, but solely because she’d let him. She’d protect herself at whatever cost. She no longer possessed the luxury of risking injury. She didn’t belong just to herself any longer. She must do whatever it took to keep her mind intact and her soul whole. For Alex.
She couldn’t translate her resolutions into action. He still held her in his inescapable thrall. And she wondered whether he would start laughing like a devil from an old melodrama.
But he merely exhaled. “You were right to turn me down. And when you said I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”
It wasn’t what he said that had the steel of rage infusing her bones, the magma of outrage replacing her blood. It was that expression on his rugged face, that amalgam of earnestness and self-deprecation.
She found her voice at last, found the words that would not betray the blow he’d dealt her. “Thanks for letting me know. You didn’t have to come all the way here, though. You could have just let it go. I did leave you yesterday with the understanding that this case is closed.”
Before the hot needles behind her eyes dissolved into an unforgivable manifestation of stupidity and weakness, she began to close the door she found she’d been clutching with a force that was almost damaging her fingers.
The door stopped against an immovable object. His flat palm.
“I can’t just accept that,” he said, his voice low, leashed.
What did her tormentor mean now? Was he ending one game to start another?
She raised eyes as bruised as her self-respect to his, found them void of anything but solemnity and determination.
Before she could cry out her confusion and chagrin, he elaborated on his statement. “I never let anything go unless I’m certain it’s unworkable. I now realize I made you two unworkable offers, and that’s why I’m withdrawing them. But I’m here to offer something else. A workability study.”
Feeling her legs wobble, she leaned against the door, thankful for its support and partial shield. “Alex and I are not a business venture you can test for feasibility.”
His gaze grew darker, deeper, made her feel he was trying to delve into her mind, take control of it. “It’s actually the other way around. It is I who would be tested.”
She shook her head, her bewilderment growing. “Why bother? I know, and you know, that you’re not…workable.”
His spectacular eyebrows dipped lower over eyes she felt were now emitting silver hypnosis. “You’re right, again. Neither you, nor I, have any reason to believe that isn’t the truth. The only truth. It might be the best thing for both you and Alex to never hear from me again, to forget I exist. But then again, maybe not. I’m asking only for the chance for both of us to find out for certain. You believe I’m…unworkable in any personal relationship. I’ve lived my life based on this same belief about myself. I’ve never had reason to question or test it. I have one now. I have two.”
She stared at him, lost in the tangles of the contradictions he’d bombarded her with.
She struggled to rasp past the heart bobbing in her throat. “But you already admitted you were wrong when you rashly applied for the positions of part-time legal lover and father.”
He was watching her now with an intensity that made her feel he wanted to steer her thoughts and actions. Which she wouldn’t put past him—wanting to do it, or succeeding in doing it.
He finally nodded. “I agree that being a biological father to Alex doesn’t mean I’m entitled, or qualified, to be his father for real, part-time or otherwise. And being your two-night lover doesn’t mean I can be…any more than that. But I want to find out what I can be, for both of you.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, before blurting out, “Why would you want to be anything at all for either of us?”
His sculpted lips twisted. “I think that is self-explanatory.”
“Not to me. You don’t do relationships of any sort, remember?”
“I never forget. But this isn’t about the past, it’s here and now and we’re both in a situation we’ve never been in before. I think we owe it to ourselves—and to Alex—to find out what we can, or can’t, be to each other.”
“How exactly would we find that out?” Her voice was almost inaudible in her own ears now.
His voice was just as soft, as hushed when he simply said, “Give me today.”
She gaped at him.
After moments when neither had even breathed, he inhaled. “If I’m to be tested for…workability, I have to be put to the test in your everyday reality with Alex. If today works without major objections on both your parts, we’ll take it from there.”
She took two involuntary steps back, as if from the precipice of an active volcano. “I—I don’t think that’s a good idea. And don’t ask me to give you reasons why I think it isn’t.”
He compensated for the steps she’d pulled back, taking him over her threshold and inside her condo.
And all she could think as she watched his intimidating perfection fill her foyer was that he was really here. She’d been resigned that she’d never see him here. In her inner world, in the sanctum she’d created for herself and Alex.
But she’d imagined it, against her better judgment, so many times, in so many scenarios.
Reality was nothing like her fantasies. More vivid, overwhelming, messing with her mind. She felt breached, exposed, invaded. And he’d just taken one step inside her condo, hadn’t even touched her.
“I don’t think it’s too much to ask.” Just the touch of his eyes, the caress of his voice shook her to her core. She started to shake her head again and he went on, “In the world out there, I’d be entitled to far more, if I were to enforce my rights.”
This made her malfunctioning resistance rev from zero to one hundred. She bristled. “Are you threatening me?”
“No.” His level gaze told her he meant it. And fool that she was, she believed him. “I’m just pointing out that I do have rights to Alex.”
Her heart wrenched as his words snapped open an image of an abyss beneath her feet.
She struggled not to let the dread bursting inside her show, camouflaged it in defiance. “But not to me.”
He blinked, slowly, an unequivocal consent. His tone was as weighed down and profound. “I’m not demanding any, to either of you. I’m asking for a…gift. A day. Give it to me, Selene.”
She felt as if the building had been hit with an earthquake.
The floor beneath her feet rocked, a crash of thunder detonating, drowning all thoughts, traversing her being.
It was the first time he’d ever uttered her name.
And on his lips, it was no longer a name. It was an invocation, a spell.
Before she could succumb to either, or deal with the aftershocks of his employing the weapon he’d been reserving until drastic measures were needed, he released her from his influence.
He raised his eyes, cast his gaze above her head, his whole body tensing, reminding her of a great cat priming for an all-out run.
Then his voice dipped an octave lower. “He’s awake.”
She stared at him in incomprehension for a moment, before she heard it, too. Alex’s usual wake-up babble.
He lowered his eyes to her, and time seemed to warp. Her senses, too, since she couldn’t really be seeing this on Aristedes’s face, sensing it blasting off of him. Amazement, vulnerability, transforming his hard, unyielding beauty into a mask of pliable wonder.
As insane as it seemed to her, she thought he was experiencing the same thing she felt every time she heard her son’s self-entertaining noises. Pure and instant heart-melt.
Suddenly the noises stopped. Then a wail went off, severing her nerves wholesale.
Panic exploded inside her, propelling her around, sending her streaking with all senses zooming ahead of her to the nursery. She barely heard her condo door slam shut, reverberating the sitting area’s windows, or the masculine footsteps almost overlapping with hers in a staccato of urgency on her polished hardwood floors.
She burst into the nursery. It was cloaked in darkness. But she knew the unobstructed path to Alex’s crib by heart, hurtled there, even as she realized his wails had died down to be replaced by noises of exertion.
“I’m here, sweetie,” she gasped as the blackout curtains were drawn open, flooding the room in the cool sunlight of New York City’s early April morning.
She realized it was Aristedes’s doing as she anxiously surveyed Alex and came to a stop beside his crib. It seemed he’d again tried to climb out of it and failed, bringing on that explosive fit of frustration before he’d picked himself up and had been trying again when they’d burst into the nursery.
Alex blinked, adapting to the sudden light, before focusing on her and gifting her with that single-dimpled, soul-possessing smile of his. He reached out his chubby arms to her, part delighted to see her, part finding her a solution to his dilemma. She reached down to him as eagerly, her fright draining.
She picked him up, hugged his warm, resilient body to her heart, inhaled his beloved scent as she kissed his downy cheeks, cooing good-morning to him and soft chastisements about being in too much of a hurry to leave his infancy behind. He burrowed his face into her bosom like a delighted kitten, gurgling his contentme
nt. Then he stilled, snapped up his head, his eyes rounding as he gazed over her shoulder, his flushed lips, the miniature of Aristedes’s, forming an adorable O of astonishment.
She swung around, found Aristedes standing a pace away, dwarfing them, making her feel as if he could contain them both inside his great body. He was looking at Alex, a stunned expression in his eyes, the rest of his face frozen.
She heard the sharpness of his indrawn breath when Alex pitched from her arms, lunging toward him, arms wide-open in an imperative demand to be held.
Alex had never reached out to anyone like that. Not even his uncles, who’d been around since he was born—he’d let them hold him only after she’d encouraged him, hugged them and showed him they were safe and dear to her.
She’d thought the first time he’d done this with Aristedes had been a fluke. That he’d been upset with Eleni and had been seeking to escape her hold by commanding the only other adult around to remove him from her grasp.
But there was no denying what she saw. This was for Aristedes. Alex wanted his father to hold him.
She reeled. Could it be Alex had recognized Aristedes, his blood calling to his? And what about Aristedes?
The first time Alex had done that, even when Aristedes had begun to succumb to Alex’s tearful, heart-tugging demand, and even from afar, she’d seen how…unsettled he’d been. Her eyes clung to him now, feverishly trying to read his reaction. She could sense worry still. But it was of a different kind, something she’d never thought she’d see on Aristedes’s face. Almost…trepidation.
He turned bemused eyes to her, letting her decide whether he could hold Alex or not, explaining his own worry. “I’ve never held a baby.”
“Not even your brothers and sisters?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “No. I never had pets, either.”