by Dani Collins
“It takes one to know one?” Calli guessed.
His mother laughed with great enjoyment. “You’ve met my son! If he only knew the number of times Edward begged me to take him back to Greece and leave him there.” She smiled, but it wobbled. “We used to laugh and cry then, both of us missing my Stavros so badly.”
Calli squeezed her arm and tilted her head against the woman’s shoulder in a show of compassion.
Stavros returned to their table, brows raised in query as he saw the affection between them.
“We’re bonding,” his mother said, catching at Calli’s face and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Your grandfather isn’t the only one who is pleased with at least one of your decisions.”
He made some dry remark and the evening continued, but he brought it up when they came into the penthouse after midnight.
“What were you and my mother talking about?”
“Your father. And that she didn’t regret bringing you here because she thought you needed your grandfather’s influence growing up.”
He made a face, one that suggested he might have to reluctantly concede that.
“I’m going to bed,” she said, and halted when he said, “Where?”
She turned back, not saying anything. She’d been sleeping in the guest room.
He sighed. “I can wear a condom.”
“I won’t relax until I know.”
The restless look he gave her made her skin tighten. He was thinking about seducing her.
“Don’t.” It was more plea than order and made him look away.
He hissed out another breath. “Go to bed, then.”
* * *
Stavros had mountains of work ahead of him, now that he had achieved the pinnacle position in the company. He ought to be immersing himself in it, but found himself with palms flat on his desk, staring discontentedly at the email from Norma.
A letter was forwarded a week ago to the family we believe adopted Dorian. No response yet.
A letter. What kind of letter? To whom exactly? If he was this impatient for answers, he could only imagine how Calli felt.
Calli. He hit Forward on the email, sent it to her, then sat down, prickling with tension. Along with due process, Mother Nature was also taking her time providing news.
Did he want her to be pregnant? It meant they could take up where they’d been and he could keep her longer than a few months.
Not that she was as warm to the idea.
Do you love me?
He had shied away from answering when she had thrown the question at him and still wasn’t ready to explore what he felt toward her. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t ask for her heart either way.
His phone buzzed, snapping him out of his introspection.
He started to set the device to Ignore, but saw it was an unfamiliar number. A premonition made him swipe to answer. “Yes?”
“Mr. Xenakis? It’s Ian. The weekday doorman at your building. I see there’s a notation on your account that you’d like to be notified if—”
“Underwood is there?” Stavros nearly leaped out of his skin.
“No, sir. But a woman was here in the lobby just now. Wanda Abbott. She asked me to ring your wife, but Mrs. Xenakis came down before I could reach her. She was going out, but I overheard Mrs. Abbott say she and your wife shared a connection through Mr. Underwood. Your wife took her upstairs. I wasn’t sure if that was something you wanted to be informed about?”
“Definitely,” Stavros said, already on his feet and striding for the door.
* * *
Calli was grateful when Wanda Abbott refused coffee or tea. She was shaking too much to pour so much as a glass of water without soaking herself in the process.
Wanda wasn’t doing much better. She wore a tailored pencil skirt with a classic sweater set, looking very much an Underwood, even though she explained that she was only a second cousin by a half sister who had married into the Underwood family. She had at least fifteen years on Calli and even though she was perfectly made up and obviously took very good care of herself, she looked every one of those additional years. Her lipstick stood out on her pale features and her eyes were not only weary but tortured.
“I had no idea there was anything about the process that wasn’t completely aboveboard,” she said after dropping the bombshell that her son, James, had been adopted shortly after his birth six years ago. “I knew Brandon had fathered him, but we were told the mother had given him up because she was too young. Brandon was only nineteen. I understood why he wasn’t ready to be a parent. I had had surgery in my teens that left me sterile and we wanted children so badly...” Her eyes filled.
“My signature was forged,” Calli blurted, needing to impress that into the woman.
“So the letter said. It didn’t even occur to me such a thing could happen. I was just too happy to have a baby.” Wanda’s gaze pleaded with Calli for understanding. “We had already been on wait lists with agencies for several years. I didn’t take him because the Underwoods set up a trust for him. I wanted him. He was such a gift.”
Calli searched Wanda’s expression, seeing again that plea for understanding. That vulnerability that a baby created in his mother. She probably wore the same expression. Don’t take him from me.
“Brandon had his whole life ahead of him, they said. A career in politics. That’s why they wanted us to keep James’s paternity confidential. Brandon’s mother comes to see him a few times a year, but not even my sister knows.” She dug in her handbag for a tissue, pushed it up against her nose. “When the letter from your lawyers arrived, I was beyond stunned. Devastated.”
“I tried once before—”
“So my husband admitted, once I showed him the letter. He said the Underwoods would make it all go away, that they had before. He was furious I opened it. I thought it was about whether we could access James’s trust for our daughter’s hospital bills. I haven’t been myself since she was diagnosed.”
“I—What? What do you mean?” Calli pinched her clammy fingers between her knees.
“Our youngest has leukemia. We’re not... Well, we’re trying everything. It’s been difficult.” Her eyes filled. “And then to get this news, that we might have to fight to keep James—” She choked and jammed her fist against her mouth.
Calli felt as though she stared down a train, but she was paralyzed. Couldn’t move. It was going to flatten her and leave her in pieces, but she was tied to the tracks, unable to avoid it.
“My husband is going to kill me for coming here, but I had to. I had to tell you that I didn’t know. I would never do that to someone. And I came to beg you, Calli. Beg you. You have every right to want to see James, but now is such a bad time. I’m trying so hard to keep things normal for him. He’s usually such a happy boy, but lately he’s been acting out and he’s not sleeping... He’s worried about his sister.”
The train whistle filled her ears. The clatter of its wheels grew deafening.
“He knows he’s adopted. I’ve braced myself for this sort of thing, always imagining I would graciously welcome his birth mother into our lives...” Her tears overflowed and her shoulders began to shake. “I knew people’s feelings could change. But I just can’t do this right now. And if you started picking apart the adoption, tore him from the only home he knows... It could do lasting damage. I’m begging you not to do that to him, Calli.”
And there it was. At least now she knew he was loved. He had a mother who would do anything to spare her son pain.
“Could...” Calli had to clear her throat. “Could I see a photo of him, at least?”
* * *
Stavros was damn near propelled up the elevator by fury alone. It coursed through him like rocket fuel. The door opened and he charged into the penthouse to the anticlimactic sight of Calli curled up in the armchair, looking at her phone.
“Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Underwood’s minion.”
She was inordinat
ely pale. Her eyes were rimmed in red, but there was a strange acceptance in her. She looked sober and grave, but resolved. Like one of those religious icons who accepted life’s brutality with grace and humility.
“He did go to a loving family.” She held out her phone. “She gave me some photos. He looks really happy.”
Stavros took it and glanced at a boy with a cheeky grin, his eyes endearingly familiar with their brown-gold color. He swiped to the next one and saw the boy with his arm looped around the neck of a fuzzy-headed, brown-skinned toddler.
“That’s his sister. She’s sick. Really sick.” She took back the phone, swept to another photo, adding in a small voice, “I hope he doesn’t lose her. It sounds like they’re really close.”
“She might be lying,” he warned, still battle ready.
“She’s not.” She swiped for another photo, gaze greedily eating up the image of her son. “She said she would send me updates. That she would try to find a way for me to meet him, but that it probably wouldn’t be until they knew what was happening with her daughter.”
“You’re going to accept that?”
Her gaze came up. “She begged me, Stavros. She doesn’t have any pride where his well-being is concerned. Mothers sacrifice themselves for their children. The most loving thing I could do for him, as his mother, is not pursue my own interests over his. He’s in good hands. At least I know that now.” She swiped the inside of her wrist against her cheek, clenched her eyes hard then opened them wide, trying to clear the wetness so she could see the screen.
“Calli.” He sat on the ottoman and reached to circle her ankle with a comforting grip.
She clicked off the phone and tucked it against her breast. The sound was oddly loud. Significant.
“I’m not pregnant.”
A wash of something went over him, far more profound than disappointment. Dread. Portent of pain.
“I see.” He didn’t know what else to say. He felt sick.
“It’s for the best,” she said without inflection.
His hand was still on her ankle, but he felt as though he was waving his hand through smoke, trying to catch at her. She was nothing but vapor.
“I think...” Her brow flinched and she cleared her throat. “I think it would also be for the best if we ended things here. Now.” Her gaze came back to focus on him, but it held an emptiness that made a protest rise in his throat.
“You agreed to six months.” His voice had to push past gravel in his chest.
“I don’t care about the money. I don’t want it. We both have what we really wanted from this marriage.” She clicked her phone and gazed at it again. The yearning in her face was too acute to bear.
She didn’t have what she wanted. Not really.
“Calli—”
“I have to leave before I get hurt, Stavros. Before I start believing I belong here and that you and I have more than sexual attraction. Before I fall in love with you.”
He flinched at the word again, part of him thinking, Do it. Fall. But he couldn’t say it aloud. Couldn’t ask that of her. Couldn’t accept it, even if she offered it.
“Take pity on me,” she begged softly, touching his hand in a caress that made all the hairs on his body stand up. “I’m not as strong as you are.”
Was that what he was? Strong? He felt weak as a kitten. Utterly helpless.
Very slowly, very reluctantly, he released his hold on her and let his empty hands hang between his knees.
“Whatever you want,” he said in a rasp.
An hour later, she had packed a single bag and the apartment was empty. She was gone.
CHAPTER TEN
“WHAT THE HELL do you mean, she’s gone?” Edward Michaels demanded a week later, when he called Stavros to the town house, apparently planning to hand over this mansion to his grandson as a belated wedding gift.
“I mean she left. Went back to Greece.” Stavros stuffed his hands into his pockets and rocked his heels on the carpet where he had taken more stinging lectures from this old man than either of them could possibly recount.
“What the hell did you do?”
“Nothing.” Stavros looked to the reds and golds he knew so well, bit the bullet and came clean. “I only married her to get the company.”
“Yes, I know that,” his grandfather said scathingly. “But why did you let her go?”
Of course his grandfather had seen clear through it. He was sharp as a tack.
“There’s this thing called ‘unlawful confinement.’ Even I have my limits.”
“Steven—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Damn you, what does it matter what I call you?” Edward’s hand slapped the antique desk that was pure decoration now. No longer used by that man, and would remain unused because Stavros couldn’t stomach moving into this mansion and living here alone. He would rather be in the penthouse, where he could still see her rising to greet him, or walking up the stairs with a flash of her legs, or inviting him with a glance over her shoulder into the bed they had shared.
“Imbecile. All I have ever wanted was for you to quit throwing away your life like it doesn’t matter and you do this?”
“I didn’t throw her away. She left.”
“Because you didn’t hold on to her!”
“I couldn’t! She deserves better. You think I don’t know what matters? I was thinking of her.”
“The hell you were. Are you feeling good, wallowing in the misery you created for yourself? I thought it was bad when you kept trying to kill yourself as punishment. Now you’re going to carve out your heart and let her take it back to Greece?”
“It’s where I left it,” Stavros ground out.
“Your father would have wanted—”
“Don’t tell me what he wanted. I know what he wanted.” Swim. I’ll be right behind you.
“He would have wanted you to live, Stavros. Properly. Not with a death wish. He would want you to love and have a family. Children. That’s what I wanted for him. It’s what I have always wanted for you.”
“You wanted him to come back here and grow the company,” Stavros reminded hotly. “You fought all the time about his staying in Greece.”
“I wanted my son in my life. I wanted him back here to work with me, yes. I was creating a legacy and wanted him to be part of it. But I was...” Edward made a noise and waved a dismissive hand. “I was jealous. All right? Of your mother’s hold on him. Your grandmother was a good woman, but I didn’t love her the way your father loved your mother. I grew up a son of immigrants. We had nothing when we started. Money and success were always more important to me than love. I thought he should feel the same.”
Stavros thought back to the latent anger in his father’s voice, his mother’s mollifying tone as they talked about the power struggle between the two generations. The conflict of loyalties.
“I regret that I was so hard on him for putting his wife and children ahead of me. I resented his buying a home in Greece and spending so much time with you there. I will always be sorry that he died before we resolved that. It was worse when you came to live here. I learned what a truly generous and loving person your mother is. They should have had more time together.”
Stavros winced.
“I’m not blaming you for that! I’m telling you I blame myself. I shouldn’t have made him feel as if he had to choose. You don’t own the patent on being hardheaded, Stavros. We’re all guilty of it. If I had asked him, rather than ordered, you might have been on an airplane to come here, rather than on the sea that day.”
Stavros shook his head. “I’m the one who wanted to go fishing. It was my fault we were out there.”
“And he indulged you because he wanted a better relationship with his son than he’d had with his father. It took me a long time to see that. To recognize the mistakes I had made with him and continued to make with you.”
“You had every right to be hard on me. I was a little bastard.”
“You we
re,” Edward agreed without compunction. “And when you showed up with Calli the way you did, I saw myself in that cutthroat tactic. I realized I had raised you to be exactly like me, and I was not proud of myself. Then I got to know her and she doesn’t give a damn about our money. The way she looked at you... Even I could recognize it as the furthest thing from avarice. She loves you. And, damn it, as much as you wanted the directorship, you left by five every night. You wanted to get back to her. I thought you were finding the kind of happiness I denied your father.”
Stavros pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking about how he had watched the clock, eager to get home to his wife. Since she had left, time crawled. He worked late and woke early in an empty bed. It was a meaningless way to start a day.
Do you love me?
He had never felt he deserved such a thing. He had certainly done his best to make his grandfather reject him. Only his mother and sisters were allowed to love him, and then only because he couldn’t bear to hurt them by cutting them from his life.
Calli wasn’t allowed to love him.
But when she had said her little speech about showing her love for her son by bowing out of his life, Stavros had known he had to let her go. He had been so certain he was doing right by her. Letting her go because he loved her.
“I am an imbecile.”
“Finally we agree on something.” His grandfather slapped his shoulder. “Go get her, son.”
* * *
The knock at the door had Ophelia sitting up from her slouch on the sofa. “Pizza!” She clicked to pause the movie.
“You did not order pizza,” Calli protested. She was going to gain three hundred pounds before this girl left for school.
Ophelia’s expression blanked. “I thought you did.”
“No. I said we’re not charging anything more to your father’s card.”
“He’s fine with it.” Ophelia groaned, pushing to her feet and sending Calli a scowl of impatience. It turned to a frown of curiosity. “If not pizza, who’s at the door?” She moved to go on tiptoe, peering through the peephole. “Oh, my God!” she hissed. “It’s your husband.”