by Olivia Gates
So much information, transmitting such heartache and loneliness and hardship, delivered with such conciseness and neutrality. She was dying to learn the specifics of the issues and milestones that had forged him into the man of steel everyone feared, who had no place in his life for anything but takeovers and acquisitions. The man who had acquired a monopoly on her thoughts and desires and was taking over her priorities and future plans.
“Why didn’t you ever become an American citizen?”
He exhaled, still not looking at her. “I saw no reason to.”
“Your siblings are all Americans now.”
Still looking at the horizon as if he could unravel it, he nodded. “I brought them to America when they were young, and they never wanted to be anywhere else. I wanted to be wherever my work was, to owe no allegiance to one place, with nothing to hold me back and no one to consider in any of my actions or the risks I take. Until the past few weeks, I never wanted anything else.”
Then he said no more.
Her heart buzzed inside her chest. With poignancy. With the unbearable crowding of questions. What had he run away from as a boy? Where was his family during those times he’d stayed away from home for nights on end, exposed to the elements, young, vulnerable, alone? Most important, how, just how, had he become the man he was today, with evidently everything against him to begin with?
But he’d told her a lot so far of his own accord. And she would wait for answers until he gifted her with more of his truth.
Until then she’d be thankful for what he’d revealed to her. She wouldn’t be greedy.
Suddenly he gathered her against his steadily beating heart, reenacted with her what he’d just told her he’d done endless times in his youth—watched the sun melt into the sea, leaving star-studded darkness to rush in to fill the dominion it had rescinded.
And she realized. Not being greedy—when he kept giving her such maddening glimpses of who he was and where he’d come from, far more than she’d ever thought there was to him or for her to have of him—would be the hardest thing she’d yet endeavored.
She had a feeling she’d fail.
Selene looked at the magnificent sight before her and expelled the turmoil vibrating through her on a ragged breath.
Aris, stripped down to the waist, his godlike body now gleaming deep bronze, his muscles flexing in sonnets of power and grace, his hair trapping the sun rays in the palette of its hues. And if that wasn’t enough, he was leading an equally, achingly beautiful, perfectly tanned and shrieking-in-delight Alex through his first assisted footsteps on the sand.
She closed her eyes, unable to bear the heart-bursting poignancy. It had been two weeks, and she’d long gotten addicted to Aris. To the sight of him, to his presence, his company. She was becoming dependent on having him transform her and Alex’s duo into a trio.
The more he opened up to her, the more he proved that he wasn’t just the man she respected as a businessman and lusted after as a lover but the man she could love. Did love. With everything in her.
And it was making her insane.
For what if he wanted his son, but not her, too?
She had very good reason to think that might be the case.
She no longer doubted that the bond Aris had formed with Alex was profound and vital, unbreakable and forever. But he hadn’t tried to make love to her again. Maybe he no longer wanted her. Maybe he had never wanted her. They had come together under extremely stressful conditions, after all.
So what if he was doing whatever it took to prove to her that they could share Alex, without having anything else between them? He was an incomparable businessman, and this might all be his comprehensive plan to acquire the son she now knew he wanted with all the single-minded fierceness he was capable of.
She had to know for sure. Or she would go insane.
Hours later, after they put Alex to bed, he took her hand with one of those soul-melting smiles, led her to the kitchen to begin their nightly ritual of preparing their creative dinners.
He was laying out vegetables on the worktop, the spring onions, mushrooms and bell peppers they’d picked from his garden, when she reached critical mass.
She blurted out, “You can give Alex your name.”
He snapped up his head as if she’d shot him.
He stared at her, his eyes widening, his face slackening, shock visibly shaking him, rocking him on his feet.
Just as she was about to scream for him to say something, his eyes shimmered and he choked, “Theos, Selene…you mean it?”
She nodded, her own throat clogging with tears. Of delight for his obvious agonizing joy. Of dreadful anticipation.
“You want Alex to be Alexandros Sarantos?” His voice shook.
She could only nod again. If she had functioning vocal chords left, she would have begged him to put her out of her misery.
Do you want me to be Selene Sarantos, too?
An urgent rap on the door made them both jerk with the force of the intrusion.
Tearing his turbulent gaze from hers, he swung around and rushed to the door. It was Olympia. Though Selene spoke Greek well, she understood only the highlights of Olympia’s outburst. Christos had fallen off a ladder and injured himself.
Aris sent his aunt back to Christos before rushing to Selene.
He towered over her, looming bigger as delight mixed with worry emanated from his every pore. Then he hugged her off the ground.
Next second, he turned and rushed away.
Within fifteen minutes, she heard the chopper taking off.
Shortly thereafter, he called. She picked up immediately, heard his voice raised above the chopper’s din. “Christos broke his shoulder. I’m flying him to a hospital in Heraklion.”
She winced. She hated to think of the lively Christos in pain, incapacitated. “I hope it isn’t too bad. Take care, please. And give him my best wishes.”
“I will. Selene…” He paused. Her heartbeats did, too. He finally exhaled. “When you said you’ll let me give Alex my name, you meant only that?” She closed her eyes, her heart rattling, unable to bear anticipating his next words. “To give him my name but not be his father, fully? I know it’s been only a month since this all started, but… Theos, Selene! Do you still suspect the depth of my commitment? You think I’ll sooner or later consider huge bank deposits and assets in his name a substitute for love and being there for him as I always did? Are you still afraid I’ll eventually disappear from his life?”
“No!” She didn’t doubt his commitment. Not to Alex. But what do I mean to you? She restrained the outburst with a force that shook her. “I’m now sure you won’t be the absentee father I feared you would be. I believe you’ll be the very opposite.”
His ragged exhalation shuddered through her.
When next he spoke, he sounded high with relief and delight. “Thank you, Selene. You will never regret this decision.”
A cry rang out. For moments she thought it had come from her.
His voice receded on a growl. “Theos, don’t move!” He spoke to her this time. “I have to hang up now. Thank you again, kala mou.”
The line went dead.
As dead as the rock that suddenly filled her chest.
He hadn’t brought up anything between them.
He wanted only Alex.
Eight
Aris stayed away all of the next day, making sure his aunt and her husband had the very best care.
It was seven in the morning, after another night in hell, when she heard the front door open. She felt her heart plummet with every heavy footstep taking him to her.
She would tell him now. That she wanted to go home.
Their test had been concluded. And he’d passed it. He would be Alex’s father. It was time to find out how he planned to work that out once they went back to the real world. No need for them to remain here.
He came into the kitchen. He looked grim and haggard—and the zenith of male beauty. Her breath sheared throug
h her lungs as he approached her, his gaze denuding in intensity.
“Is—is Christos okay?”
“He’ll be fine. I flew in the best orthopedic surgeon and his team from Athens.” A pause. His gaze bored into her, as if he could extract every bit of information out of her gray matter. “When you said you’ll let me be Alex’s father, was that it? You don’t want me as your husband?”
Her heart staggered inside her. Was he asking, to be clear? Or was he offering? And if he was, was it for the right reason?
For the first time in his life, Aris would let something sway him, rule him. Alex’s best interests would make him do anything. She owed him the freedom of an unpressured choice. And herself the truth of his feelings, whatever they were.
This was the hardest, scariest thing she ever had to do. Then she did it, breathed, “We don’t come attached in one deal, Aris. Being Alex’s father has nothing to do with being my husband.”
His eyebrows dipped lower, deepening his grimness. “Being his father and your husband was always the deal.”
Her every cell began to churn with hope. But she had to be beyond certain. “Then your negotiating skills are fraying, because that certainly didn’t seem to be what you’re offering.”
His jaw muscles bunched. “What are you talking about? I asked you to marry me that very first day.”
She nodded, still scared that she was reading what she was dying to see in his eyes. “Yeah—for Alex. That’s no reason to get married. I told you back then, when I refused your rash and offhand marriage proposal…”
His eyes flared. “You mean, when you laughed my head off.”
That rankled, huh? Joy began to bubble inside her, came out as unstoppable goading. “After which you promptly followed up with a very detailed withdrawal and admission that you weren’t husband material, followed by a very relieved dropping of the subject.”
He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What do you think the last four weeks were about? All this talk about testing me, finding out what I can be for both of you?”
Her body hummed in anticipation of setting off in fireworks of jubilation. “Being on good terms with the mother of your son?”
He barked an incredulous laugh. “Good terms? And here I thought we were on the best of terms.”
“I don’t think so.”
His gaze wavered. “You don’t?”
She was pushing too hard. But she had to hear him say the words. “We’re not on those kind of terms—the kind that lead to being husband and wife. Though four weeks ago I would have never thought it possible, you do make a great best friend. So don’t think you have to offer me marriage for Alex’s sake. We can go on like we have been. Great friends, and great parents to Alex.”
He glowered down at her for an endless moment.
Just when she thought he’d tell her she was an insecure fool, then snatch her into his arms and devour her as proof that he’d never settle for anything like that, for less than all of her, that he wanted and had always wanted her, for herself, he turned on his heel.
She stared at his receding back.
He was leaving? B-but…he couldn’t be!
She jerked as the front door slammed after him.
She still waited, unable to believe he wouldn’t come back.
He didn’t.
Was it possible that her worst fears hadn’t been paranoia but the truth?
She didn’t know how long she’d stood there, numb, trembling.
She finally moved, dragged herself up to Alex’s room.
She couldn’t let pain take her over. For his sake. She had to remain on the best possible terms with Aris. It was his right to be part of his son’s life without being with her. His right to love his son, without loving her.
Alex was stirring. She picked him up, hugged him, tears slithering down her cheeks to wet his silky hair.
She was happy. For him. He’d now have a father who loved him for life, not just a mother. As for her, she had to regain the self she’d been before she lost her heart to Aris, a man who had no use for it. She had no illusions that she’d reclaim it, or find happiness. All she could hope for was finding refuge from the agony, maybe a measure of peace.
Hours later, she’d packed and was playing with Alex while inwardly reciting what she’d tell Aris to end this amicably, set up their future interaction, when an urgent knock rapped on the front door.
She dragged herself to open it. It was Taki, Aris’s driver.
The stocky, swarthy man blurted out, “Kyrios Sarantos wants you to come with me at once, Kyria Louvardis.”
Alarm detonated inside her. “Is he all right?”
The man looked at her as if she’d said something ludicrous. “He’s waiting for you.”
Dazedly, she turned to Eleni, who’d already taken her place by Alex. Eleni only beamed at her, said to take her time.
Resigned that she’d know what this was about only when she saw Aris, she stumbled to his limo. For the next twenty minutes, she gazed at the Mediterranean, sun-drenched beauty as the smooth, black asphalt road took them deep through the surrounding vegetation-covered hills before undulating back to the emerald shore.
Finally, Taki came to a stop beside Aris’s Porsche. Taki rushed to hand her out of the car. But he and everything else evaporated from her awareness like a drop of water on a hot tin roof.
All she could register was the scene before her.
A hundred feet away, at the end of a deep red carpet, spread with gold dust and white rose petals, lined by flaming torches and a conflagration of lilies, stood a huge white tent flapping gently in the late-afternoon breeze, just feet from the water.
At the end of the path of fire and flowers, there he was. Aris, in white shirt and pants that hugged every slope and bulge of his perfection and offset his glowing tan. The layered waves of the sun-kissed hair that he hadn’t cut since he’d come back into her life flowed around his leonine head and brushed his formidable shoulders, as if beckoning her closer.
Not that she needed enticement. She had to get close, had to see in his eyes the reflection of this gift a woman could live her life dreaming of and never attain a fraction of. If this was what he felt he should do, or what he truly felt.
She teetered toward him on legs powered by his lure, her enthrallment. Her own hair seemed to come alive in the breeze. She was struggling with its intrusion when she stopped a foot from him, the exact second he went down.
She gasped, almost fell over him.
He’d—he was—Aris was…kneeling before her.
Everything inside her seized. She’d never—never—thought he, Aristedes Sarantos, would put himself in such a position of supplication, no matter what.
But he was. Then he was doing more.
He extended a velvet box the color of the sea at its deepest. He opened it and she gasped again.
A sapphire, the most perfect stone she’d ever seen, the exact color of her eyes, caught the deepening gold of the sun rays and the flickering flames and radiated them back at her in a rainbow of hypnosis.
She tore her eyes from the jewel to his own twin diamonds, found them ablaze with what rivaled the heat of both flames and sun.
And he groaned, “Will you marry me, agape mou?”
Aris looked up at Selene, his heart barely pumping any blood, as if it was holding its breath like he was.
The stunned look in her eyes didn’t boost his equilibrium. When no ecstatic “yes” trembled on her lips, a terrible thought detonated inside him.
What if she hadn’t been telling him that his earlier efforts to make her his had been lamentable, but that she didn’t want to be his? That she was content to share Alex with him, but nothing more? Had his hands-off policy only served to make her realize she didn’t want him after all?
Or maybe he was doing this all wrong. Maybe he looked ridiculous to her, the cerebral, cynical lawyer, seeing him, the last person on earth she could imagine being sentimental, d
own on one knee, calling her his love, and looking up at her as if he’d suffocate if she didn’t give him a favorable answer.
He retracted the hand offering the ring she hadn’t reached for, rose slowly to his feet, decided to hope he was guilty of option two, the lesser evil by far here. “I botched up my first proposal. Am I doing it all wrong again?”
The shock seizing her face fractured. Her features trembled for a second then melted and a melodious sound burst from the lush lips he’d been suffering agonies not tasting.
She was laughing.
At him. At his offer. Again.
His shoulders slumped. What had he expected? That he’d exit a life of emotional exile and suddenly develop the complex skills needed to communicate his newfound emotions?
He looked down at the ring in the box dangling from his nerveless hand, exhaled. “It all seemed so right to me…in theory.”
Her laughter ended abruptly. He raised his eyes to hers, again felt the overwhelming sense of rightness, of everything about her slotting into all the empty places inside him, filling them, completing him. How could he live if he didn’t complete her?
He groaned his insecurity, something he’d only ever incurred on her account. “Will you overlook this? I’m suffering from a lifetime of emotional disuse. I want to please you, to honor you, to show you how much I want you to be mine, but I seem unable to get it right….”
Her hand stopped his before he stuffed the box into his pocket. “I can’t begin to think how you could have gotten it more right.” His gaze sharpened on her. Her eyes were growing heavy lidded, her lips dewy and flushed, as if he’d already kissed her senseless as he was burning to. “My wildest fantasies wouldn’t have come up with—” she flung her hands wide, before converging them on him in a sweep as elegant as a ballet dancer’s “—this.”
He shuddered at the things he didn’t dare interpret in her eyes, at the jolt of hope. And confusion. “Then…why?”
“Why did I laugh this time? Because you, the all-knowing Aristedes Sarantos, seem to suffer the same misapprehensions I was suffering from…till a moment ago.”