by Lexie James
Michael’s eyes swung to hers.
“She wouldn’t mind. She’s always hurting herself. A bit of blood wouldn’t bother her.” He informed her proudly.
Maria allowed a smile to race across her face before she answered him. “Indeed? So a broken leg probably won’t bother her too much either.”
Having watched and listened carefully, Patrick was happy to leave Maria to deal with Michael, she seemed to know exactly the right things to say to bolster him up and keep his shock at bay. He walked towards the door to collect the first aid kit from the bar.
Adrienne smiled at him tentatively. “Do you need some help?”
He motioned to her to follow him.
Once outside she stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Patrick, I’m so sorry the way everything has turned out. I’m sure you must be heartbroken at the disruption to the weekend.”
“Indeed?” He queried lazily, his eyes sliding up to her eyes, as he recognised the look of guilt washing over her beautiful features.
She raised her chin defiantly. “I know this has all been my fault, but you see the thing is that I’ve been looking for her for so long and then I finally found her. I mean I knew it was going to be difficult for them to meet again, what with the children but, I suppose I am such a romantic that I was convinced that their eyes would meet and they would fall back into each other’s arms and everything would be just perfect. I never dreamed it could all go so horribly wrong.”
He smiled tenderly at her. “But that’s because you dreamed the dream for them. You’ve reminded me of the words of a song from my most favourite film. ‘When you see your true love across a crowded room, then rush to her side and make her own, or all through your life you will live all alone. Once you have found her, never let her go. ”
She sighed deeply but stayed silent, he understood what she had done and why and because he understood he wasn’t angry with her.
He took one of her hands in his; gently he began to trace lazy circles across the palm.
“Do you think you, no let me put this another way, do you think life is for living? So that when we find someone we like, someone we have feelings for, that we’d be foolish not to act on those feelings?”
She looked at his fingers, felt their heat, and felt the warm feeling that was beginning to travel up her arm. Slowly she raised her eyes to his and saw in them a glimmer of a promise of what might be if she grasped the chance.
Smiling she took a firmer hold of his hand.
“It would be foolish indeed.”
Holding hands they basked in the promise that was to come for a brief moment, before the door opened interrupting them and Sophia stepped out.
“Oh for goodness sake Patrick, is this as far as you have got? Maria wants to dress Michael’s war wounds, and then we can take him to the hospital. Hopefully we can release Christos and Emme, and give them some time to sort out their disagreements.”
Her eyes went between Adrienne and Patrick’s faces, and as she deciphered the looks on them, her face broke into a grin.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt, do you need a little more time alone?” She turned to go back into Emme’s office but Patrick stopped her.
“Steady on not so fast if you please Sophia. We do need more time, lots of it, but now is not the time. I want to ask you a question. Your friend seems to have taken over looking after Michael and I do believe that Christos told her to do that. So, before we go back into that room I want you to tell me exactly who Maria really is. Apart, that is, from being an old friend of yours.”
Sophia and Adrienne exchanged glances.
“She’s Christos’s mother. I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell you that I am also his godmother.”
There finally she could relax, she had told him.
“I see.” Patrick looked at each of them. “That explains her behaviour then, I did wonder. I suppose she does have a right seeing as how she is his grandmother. Right so that’s that mystery solved, shall we get on?”
Sophia looked at him quizzically.
“Remember? I’m meant to be finding you a first aid kit? Then you can repair Michael’s war wounds? After that you can both get down to the hospital and send Christos and Emme away to settle their differences.”
He turned to Adrienne. “In the circumstances I will expect you to stay here and help me in Emme’s place to deal with the guests that still here. After all if it hadn’t been for your actions none of this would be happening and this would just have been an ordinary weekend.”
Adrienne smiled sheepishly. “Of course, whatever I can do to help.”
Maria opened the door of Emme’s office and glared at all three of them.
“Is there any chance that I might have a first aid kit sometime in the near future?
Patrick walked over to the bar and reached down for the first aid kit before returning and handing it over to Maria with a grin. “I’ll leave this to you then.”
He walked away dragging Adrienne along with him.
Maria watched him for a second, puzzled, then looked at Sophia, who grinned at her.
“He knows who you are.”
“Oh dear, this is all such a muddle.”
She carried the first aid kit over to the desk and decided to concentrate on finding what she needed to patch up Michael, all the while thinking what Christos would want her to do.
She turned to Michael to find him looking warily at her.
With the bluntness of youth he finally asked her the question at the foremost of his mind.
“Why is it that you are looking after me and not Granddad or Aunt Sophia?”
“Well because that is what grandparents do, they look after their grandchildren. Now your grandfather has a hotel full of guests who need to be looked after and fed before they leave, which leaves me to look after you.”
Michael stared. “But you’re not one of my grandparents. I had a grandmother once upon a time her name was Hannah but then she died.”
“Well I am your other grandmother, your father’s mother.”
There was absolute silence in the room as Michael processed her comment. Sophia looked pointedly at Maria but she shrugged her shoulders, Christos had left her to deal with this situation in the way she thought best.
Honesty felt the best way forward to her.
Michael stared hard as if he was trying to find out the truth before he spoke. “But we don’t have a father; he left our Mum before we were even born. Does that mean you know who he is? Sorry that’s stupid, of course you know who he is. So are you going to tell me who he is?”
“Christos is your father, and I am Christos’s mother, which makes me your other grandmother.”
“Is that why he bossed me around and then told me he’d teach us to climb properly?”
Maria smiled. “I do believe that is so, your father is an excellent mountaineer.”
“Right, thanks for that information.” Michael stood up. “Shall we go and pack Chrissie’s bag now?”
“Michael.” Sophia looked at him puzzled. “Do you understand everything that Maria has told you?”
“Yep, I guess so.”
“Well don’t you want to ask her anything or maybe ask me something?”
“Nope, I don’t think so, it all seems quite plain and simple to me. Besides I can’t wait to tell Mum that our dad is going to teach us to climb safely, she hates us climbing, but she won’t be able to stop us now will she? Not if our father is going to teach us to climb safely. This just so awesome! Chrissie is going to be way excited.”
Michael strode past them both of them with a huge grin on his face.
CHAPTER TWENTYFOUR
Christos strode up to the reception desk of the accident and emergency department and stood waiting his turn, impatiently.
“Yes?” the busy receptionist asked him politely, as she looked up from her computer with her finger poised ready to start entering information.
“Could you tell me
where my daughter is? She was brought in by ambulance a few minutes ago.”
“Name?” the receptionist was checking the computer screen.
“Chrissie.” His heart sank, as he realised he was not sure what surname she used; inwardly he cursed himself for not checking with Patrick before he left. “Please just tell me where she is? She was unconscious when they were putting her and her mother into the ambulance.”
With a look of sympathy for the fear she could hear in his voice, the receptionist told him. “Now don’t worry yourself, she’s in good hands, she’s been taken straight through to majors. Go through that door and down the corridor on the left hand side. There is a desk there and one of the nurses will tell you where she is.”
“Thank you.” Christos followed her directions, considering as he did how Emme would react once she laid her eyes upon him. The nurse directed him to where they were and taking a deep breath he walked into the curtained area. Chrissie was lying very still on her side on the trolley and Emme was stroking her head, worry etched on every line on her face.
He pulled up a chair and sat so close to her that they were nearly touching just so he could look at his daughter.
“Has she woken up yet?” He asked quietly.
Emme turned her head at the sound of his voice, and for a fleeting second he thought she looked confused then he saw a hint of anger touch her eyes before she made a visible effort to repress her feelings. Finally she turned her shoulder to him and looked back at her daughter.
“She did in the ambulance briefly; now we’re waiting for the doctor. She’s had her x-rays and she’s been sleeping on and of ever since then.”
Frostily her eyes swivelled to focus on his face. “Why are you here? What do you think you are doing coming in here and sitting beside me? I don’t want you here nor do we need you and I told you categorically not to come.”
As calmly as he could, he spoke to her. “You know why I’m here; I have every right to be here.”
Her face went chalky white and her voice shook. “I don’t know what you’re talking about; I don’t understand why you are here. I don’t want you to be here with us. I want you to go away right now.”
He looked at her and understood that her attempts to deny him the truth were her misguided attempt to protect their children from the pain she thought he would inflict on them. She would just have to realise now that she couldn’t hide the truth anymore, he knew he was their father, and that changed everything.
He was determined to remain calm, no matter how much she tried to provoke him, remembering all that her father had told him. He knew how angry she had been with him, but he was determined that she would hear him out and then tell him the reasons why she had never attempted to contact him and tell him about her pregnancy.
“Please stop this now, stop trying to pretend they are not my children too, I’m here because I know she’s my daughter and that gives me every right to be here.”
She stared at him coldly.
“No it actually doesn’t, we were never married, were we? So you don’t have any rights, not in the eyes of the law, courts always side with the mother. You never wanted me did you? So what possible interest could you have in my children?”
“Our children, not just yours, they are mine too, my flesh and blood and I’ve always wanted you.” He told her firmly.
She hissed at him, trying to keep her voice low, so no-one else could hear.
“Well that isn’t what you thought on Friday night was it? And let me remind you that you were only there at their conception for a moment or two, I’ve spent the last twelve years looking after their every need.”
“Eleven years, they are eleven years old; you’ve only been their mother for as long as they have been born.” He corrected her.
“Is that what you think? Well believe you me; being pregnant is just the start of being a mother and pregnant with twins, even more so!”
She indignantly jabbing him in the chest for good measure.
He moved back from her finger rubbing his chest as he did so.
“Okay, I’m sorry, twelve years then. But if, as you say, you’ve catered for their every need, why haven’t you taught them to climb safely?”
She glared at him. “For goodness sake you know I don’t like heights. They’re not meant to go climbing; I told them they were never to do it.”
Sitting back more comfortably in the chair he crossed his arms before smiling smugly at her.
“Well then you should have involved me, because I’d have been able to tell that in my genes runs the heart of a climber. That is all Mikolas and I ever did when we were children, we climbed anything and everything. If I’d been around I would have been expecting them to do just this sort of thing. Therefore I would have taught them how to climb safely.”
She sniffed loudly, but refused to rise to the bait and have a row with him, right in the middle of the hospital.
Glancing at her Christos realised this and turned his attention to Chrissie who was still lying unmoving and silent on the trolley.
“I still can’t believe that they exist; I look at her and she’s so beautiful, she reminds me so much of you. How could just one night create something so wonderful?”
Chrissie was lying as quietly as possible, listening to the fragments of their conversation, hoping that if she pretended she was still asleep she might find out even more. She was still trying to come to terms with Christos’s comment that he was their father.
Her mother’s next comment made her very glad that she had been pretending to be asleep.
Emme had sat very still listening to the wonderment and reverence in Christos’s voice and underneath it all the raw emotion that she could hear simmering away.
“One night, three times.” She whispered.
Oh no! Chrissie cringed, way too much information, I really did not need to know that about my mother.
Christos was taken aback, not so much because of what she had said, though the fact that she had remembered what had happened rather than erasing the memory was in itself encouraging, no, it was more the tone in which she had spoken, as if that night had also had a profound impact upon her being.
It made him feel doubly wretched for the way he had appeared to betray her afterwards.
“Emme, I’m so sorry, I don’t know how many times I will need to say this and I don’t know how I will ever make it up to you for the pain I’ve caused you. My biggest regret of my life is not running to your side the moment you walked into the canteen, I should never have let you run away, and I should have tried harder to find you. I know I let you down but, damn it, I’m still trying to come to terms with why you didn’t tell me you were pregnant as soon as you knew. Did it never occur to you that I would want to know?”
He paused; he knew he was being foolish to push so soon for an answer. He finally registered the importance of what she had said, smiling tenderly at the back of her head, he lent forward to whisper in her ear.
“Was it three times? I know I never wanted that night to end.”
He looked at her head bowed beside him so she wouldn’t have to look at him, her blond curls had fallen forward to curtain her face but he saw a tell-tale blush creep slowly up her cheek.
He stifled the impulse to lift up a hand and tuck her hair behind her ear.
They were interrupted as the curtain was opened with a flourish and a doctor strode into the cubicle. He paused, looking uncertainly at Christos who was sitting there, so close to Emme.
Emme waved her hand.
“Meet Christos, her father.” Turning to Christos she informed him. “This is Mark, we’ve been friends since primary school. He’s the paediatric consultant here.”
Mark looked curiously at Christos before looking at Emme. “Shall I tell you what I’ve found?”
Emme nodded curtly.
“Well Chrissie’s been very lucky, the x-rays have shown us that she’s only broken her leg, her heads is fine, no fractures. Obviously with
a lump that size, she’s going to have a headache. We can’t see anything on the x-ray that is concerning us at this moment, but we will keep her in overnight to monitor her. If she’s fine by tomorrow lunchtime you can take her home. Now before we move her up to the ward we’ll plaster her leg, it will be a temporary back slab tonight in case there is any swelling and then we’ll put the proper one on in a few days.”
Emme heard the sigh of relief that was expelled by Christos, as he heard Mark’s words. Her thoughts flashed back to the revelations Sophia had told her, how Christos and his brother had been out climbing when there had been a freak accident and his brother had fallen and died. She realised that must have been why he had been so worried when he saw them creeping out with the rope, he knew that they were going to climbing somewhere.
She looked at him curiously, trying to reconcile what she had just heard in his voice, the anger that he had shown to her the other night and the fact that she had been so utterly convinced that he would have no interest in them whatsoever.
She was having difficulty putting it all together to make a whole picture.
“Thank you for that information.” Christos told him sincerely. “But I’m concerned, that since I’ve been here Chrissie hasn’t woken up, you’re sure you haven’t missed anything aren’t you?”
Christos eyes were fixed on Chrissie’s face, intently looking for some sign that she was conscious.
Mark was rather taken aback by the concern that he saw there, considering he was very aware that, up until this moment, Christos had never been anywhere near the children. He was very sure that there was nothing wrong with Chrissie, bar the injuries he had already catalogued, but he moved past them, to look down at the child lying still and silent on the hospital trolley.