by Olivia Gates
Caliope nodded. “Knowing what I know about Naomi, this sounds like it was the last straw.”
“What last straw?” Andreas barked, his nerves snapping. “Everything was perfect. Up till...”
He suddenly remembered that nightmare she’d had. Those terrible moments she’d writhed in his arms in her sleep, and wept in such agony and desperation.
He related the incident, which had shaken him to his core, and which had only been eclipsed by the much bigger blow of what had happened a few hours later.
“But that was a nightmare! It couldn’t have anything to do with what happened.”
Caliope pursed her lips. “Maybe it wasn’t a nightmare but a manifestation of all her fears and doubts and uncertainties from the past. They might have never been resolved, and they got the best of her while she slept.”
“You mean her past with me? But the past has nothing to do with the present. I was a different man then. Or...do you mean that whatever emotional injury I caused her in the past has never healed, and it’s why she couldn’t love me now?”
Aristedes shook his head. “From what she told me, and from what I observed of her with you, I believe the past is to blame, but not in the way you think. It’s actually because you didn’t really change your ways in the present.”
“What are you talking about? She was just telling me how I’ve changed from one extreme to the other.”
“You have, where reaching out and taking what you need from others is concerned. But what about reaching out with your emotions? Have you told her how you feel about her? Do you feel anything for her, Naomi herself, beyond her being the third piece in this family unit you’ve become so dependent on and believe you can’t live without?”
“So you think I turned from being passively self-centered and self-serving to actively, aggressively so?” Andreas seethed. “I had feelings for only her, even when I thought I had none. I always loved her, and now I do more than I thought possible. I worship her and I certainly can’t live without her. As her and her alone.”
Aristedes and Caliope exchanged a patient glance that had him on the verge of tearing the place down.
Before he did, Aristedes turned to him. “Have you told her that?”
“Of course I—”
He stopped abruptly, the breath knocked out of him at the enormity of the realization.
He hadn’t.
His head spinning, he choked out, “I kept showing her...” He stopped, his protest clogging in his throat.
“You mean you never made a declaration like the one you just made to us?” Caliope prodded.
He squeezed his eyes shut. “No.”
“Not once? Nothing close? In the past or now?”
He could only shake his head, feeling as if he was suffocating.
Caliope squared her shoulders. “Okay then, here’s what I think she thinks, what led to what she did today. She always loved you, but you never reciprocated, beyond physically. Then you came back, but the only emotional involvement you exhibited was with Dora. Naomi thinks that you married her to provide Dora with a family. From her viewpoint, you never loved her, and whatever you think you’ve been doing to demonstrate your love hasn’t shown her you love her for herself. The longer you made no emotional declaration to her personally, the more it left her feeling unvalued and unloved, and worst of all, convenient. With the blow of finding out she had no claim to Dora, she must be feeling unneeded, too, totally cut adrift. Once she believed her main value to you is convenience, it was only one step further to think it would one day end. By walking away now, she’s saving herself more pain later on, and saving Dora an eventual injury, too.”
This all sounded plausible, if only because every word cut him down to his recesses. He’d been so involved in his plans, in showing Naomi his feelings in his own way, he hadn’t stopped to think if it was a way she’d understand.
But there was one reality he had to face now. Why he hadn’t made an unequivocal confession of his feelings.
He’d felt it would be the ultimate vulnerability. That after he’d said the words, he’d lose his power totally, expose his every weakness. Life had taught him never to do that. And because he’d withheld that last bit of trust from her, he’d lost her.
He grabbed his hair in vicious hands, his groan wrenched from his gut. “I can’t lose her. I can’t.”
Caliope rushed to put her arm around him. “You don’t have to. Just go tell her what you just told us.”
“The time for words is past, Caliope.” Aristedes shook his head, his eyes solemn as he met his. “Naomi loves you with every fiber of her being, Andreas. It killed her, being with you in the past while she thought you didn’t share that same depth of involvement. It remains her doubt and heartache now. It was why she left you once, and why she left you again. All she ever wanted was your love. If you can’t prove that she has it, has always had it, that you would love her forever, no matter what, and above everything and everyone...then you will lose her.”
* * *
Next morning, Andreas was standing in front of Naomi’s apartment, bracing for another struggle.
She made it all unnecessary when she opened the door.
The moment he saw her he knew that every word Aristedes and Caliope had said was true. Naomi loved him with everything in her. It was why she looked as if everything in her had been extinguished.
Instead of such love being in his favor, it might be why he wouldn’t be able to win her back. This time, she had to have absolute certainty of the depth of his equal emotions. If the evidence he’d brought wasn’t enough...
No. He wouldn’t consider that possibility.
Though everything in him clamored for her, he had to give her all he had first, before he could hope she’d reclaim him.
Brushing past her, he closed the door behind him, then turned to her. “Do you believe that I love Dorothea, Naomi?”
After a moment of apparent surprise, she nodded. “I do. I think your feelings are even more intense because they came after a lifetime of holding back.”
“You already believe I’d do anything for her. But do you realize I’d rather die than give her up?”
Her face seized, her throat worked. She nodded again.
And he presented her with the papers. “This revokes any right I have to Dorothea in your favor. You can now apply to become her sole parent.”
Silence. Nothing but silence as she stared at the papers in her hands, then up at him.
“This is my proof to you, agápi mou, that Dorothea has nothing to do with us, with why I wanted to marry you. You know I wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you, but what you don’t know, what I never told you, is that I loved you just as long. I have never been able to articulate my emotions, have even been scared to. I thought it was safer for me to show you, and I’ve been trying to since I came back. I have so much to learn about how to express my love for you, since it’s so huge, so encompassing, I get lost inside it. Though I suspect nothing I could do would ever convey the magnitude of what I feel for you. You are everything to me, Naomi, and I have no life without you.”
When she continued to stare at him, her astonishment total, a terrible doubt hit him. “Wasn’t that why you left? Because you suspected my motives for being with you? Or did you leave because you no longer love me? Have I killed your feelings for me? Or did you never love me...?”
He suddenly found himself wrapped in her arms so tight his choking breath left him completely. His agitated lips were stilled beneath her trembling ones, tears wetting them, though he didn’t know whether they came from his eyes or hers or both.
She studded his face with kisses as she clung harder and harder to him. “I’ve always, always loved you and will always, always love you. Oh, Andreas, my darling, s’agapo...”
Before
tension could turn to elation, it resurged on one more paramount dread. “What about Dorothea?”
Naomi withdrew, her face gripped in remembered pain as tears rained down her cheeks. “It almost killed me to walk away from her. But I thought I’d have to give her up one day, and it was better for her if I did it now rather than later.”
Andreas crushed Naomi in arms that trembled with too much love, relief and gratitude. “And now, agápi mou? Will you take us both back? Will you let me worship you for the rest of my days? Will you be my wife and my lover, the owner of my heart and life? Will you be Dorothea’s mother and the pillar of her existence? This precious baby who was made by Petros and Nadine’s love, and given life by yours, and will now grow up among us, and among our family, and be treasured for the rest of our lives?”
And he received her answering pledge, which she gave with the whole of her body and soul, giving him all of herself for his safekeeping.
He wallowed in her kisses and confessions, feeling blessed beyond measure. “Naomi, s’agapo, I love you, love you so...”
Her phone rang somewhere deep in her apartment. They ignored it. For the first three times. Then, suddenly, they were both running for it, struck by the same fear at once. It could be Hannah...Dora...
It wasn’t. From what Naomi said as she answered, Andreas realized it was a doctor. The one she’d gone to see yesterday?
As she listened to the person on the other end, Naomi’s face went slack, then she swayed.
Cursing, his fright soaring, Andreas swept her up in his arms as she ended the call, took her to the couch and knelt on the floor before her, grasping her hands. “What is it, agápi mou?”
“I—I went in for an exam, and...and...” She drew in a huge breath. “I’m pregnant.”
It was his turn to stare. And stare.
Then he exclaimed, “But you had your period!”
She was almost panting now. “It’s a false period. It happens. Especially since I have an IUD. The doctor missed it because it is so early, no more than two weeks, but the blood work was conclusive.”
Naomi gulped down a breath as she stopped, looking stunned, and something else. Worried?
He squeezed her hands as they shook in his. “Are you worried? About having another baby so soon?”
She shook her head. “Actually, it’s about you. You love Dora so much, I was wondering if you could want another—”
His lips stopped her trembling words in a feverish kiss. “I want, Naomi, I want. I want another baby made of our love. I want two or three or as many as you want and can have. I want anything and everything...with you.”
Withdrawing to read the absolute truth of his words in his eyes, she cried a sound of such relief and delight as she surged to bury her streaming face in his chest.
Then she raised adoring, tear-filled eyes to his. “And I want anything and everything with you, my love, for the rest of my life.”
As tears he’d never known surged from his soul, he pledged to her, “Never again will I let you feel alone, or be without me or without my love. I will spend my life showing you how you reanimated my heart and gave me everything worth living for, how you blessed my life, and saved it.”
* * * * *
If you liked Andreas’s story, pick up Aristedes’s and Caliope’s novels from USA TODAY bestselling author Olivia Gates!
THE SARANTOS SECRET BABY
CLAIMING HIS OWN
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One
In twenty-three years, nine months and sixteen days, Lucy Bates had made her fair share of questionable choices. Due to her impulsive nature, her guileless curiosity—and an occasional lack of basic common sense—she’d found herself in more than a few...complicated situations. But her current predicament topped them all.
Note to self: The next time you have the bright idea to leave a man and move across country in the hopes that he’ll follow you, don’t bother.
Not only had Tony not followed her, he’d gone out and found someone new. After nearly a year of casually dating Lucy, and not a single mention of taking their relationship to the next level, he was marrying a virtual stranger.
Not only had he been dating this new woman a measly two months, she wasn’t pregnant with his baby.
Lucy was.
She was a stereotype.
The poor girl who fell for the rich guy and got knocked up. And though there was a whole lot more to it than that, she knew that was all anyone would see. Including Tony.
“This is it,” the cab driver announced as he pulled up to the house. Lucy peered out the window. Located in one of the oldest and most prestigious neighborhoods in Chicago, the Caroselli mansion put the neighboring homes to shame. It was old, and a little gaudy for her taste. But very grand.
The street was lined with luxury cars and SUVs, and children were playing in the park directly across the street. Tony once told her that his grandfather, the founder of Caroselli chocolate, liked to sit in his study, in his favorite chair, and watch the kids play. He said it reminded him of home. Home being Italy.
She handed the driver the last of her cash and climbed out of the cab. The sun was shining, but there was a chill in the air.
She’d blown her entire savings account on a roundtrip plane ticket from Florida to Chicago, paying the exorbitant Sunday rates, so from here on in she would have to rely on her credit card. If she maxed that out...well, she would think of something. She always did.
But it wasn’t just about her anymore. She needed to start thinking like a mother, putting the baby first.
She laid a hand on her swollen belly, felt the thump thump of itty bitty feet against her palm, never so confused, or terrified, or content in her whole life.
She promised herself right then that if she could just figure this mess out, she would never do another impulsive thing for as long as she lived.
And this time she meant it.
“You’ve got him right where you want him,” her mom had told her on the way to the airport that morning in her clunker of a car that always seemed to be one repair away from the junkyard. “Whatever he offers you to keep this quiet, you ask for double.”
And that was her mom in a nutshell.
“I’m not looking for hush money,” Lucy said. “I don’t want anything from him. I just think he should know about the baby before he gets married.”
“That’s what the phone is for.”
“I need to do this face-to-face.” She owed him that much after the way she’d behaved. He didn’t want Lucy, that much was obvious, but this was his baby, too. She had no right to keep this from him.
“By crashing his engagement party?”
“I am not crashing anything. I’m going to talk to him before the party.”
What she hadn’t counted on was h
er flight being two hours late, which gave her only about two hours to get to Tony then get back to the airport for her return flight. Now she had no choice but to talk to him at the party. But she had no intention of making a scene. With any luck, people would just assume that she was another guest. A friend of the bride perhaps.
All she needed was five minutes of his time, and then they could both get on with their lives. If he wanted to be a part of the baby’s life, that would be wonderful. If he tossed a dollar or two her way every so often to help with expenses, she would be eternally grateful. If he didn’t, if he wanted nothing to do with her and the baby, she would be disappointed, but she would understand. After all, hadn’t she been the one to insist that they keep it casual? No obligations, no expectations. How could she then turn around and expect him to take responsibility for a child he never wanted?
Nope, nothing suspicious about that.
“Even if he wasn’t engaged, baby or no baby, that man would never marry you,” her mom had told her. “Men like that only keep women like us around for one reason.”
A fact she loved to remind Lucy of every chance she got. And she was right. Lucy had told herself a million times that Tony was too good for her, that even if he did want to settle down someday, it would be with someone from his own side of the street. And that’s exactly what he’d done.
She and Tony were from two very different worlds, and she had been a fool to ever believe that he would follow her to Florida and beg her to come back, to hope that he would miss her. All she could do now was try to pick up the pieces of the mess she had created. Which meant shelving her pride and accepting his financial help if he offered it.
Well, she thought, the mansion looming ahead of her, it’s now or never.
Heart in her throat, and before she lost her nerve, Lucy rushed up to the front porch and knocked on the door. Her knees felt squishy and her heart was pounding, but after a minute or so no one answered, so she knocked again.