by Lucy Monroe
And Ellie had no intention of hurting the very sweet older woman’s feelings. “I’d love to. What time would you like me to arrive?”
“I will pick you up at six.”
“I’d rather drive myself.”
“I prefer to see to your comfort.”
“You know I’m followed by a security team. I’ll be perfectly safe driving myself to your house and home again.”
“Nevertheless, I would rather drive you. It is the male prerogative.”
“In a former decade maybe.”
“Some traditions are best not left behind. Besides, it has not escaped my notice that you do not like to drive.”
He was speaking the truth. She didn’t. She hated negotiating city traffic and would prefer to ride public transport to work, but with her “secret” security detail following her every move, that wasn’t an option. She could accept her dad’s offer of a car and chauffer, but something seemed wrong about showing up for a public service job that way. And she wasn’t a wimp.
She could drive, she just didn’t like to. And Sandor had noticed.
“You’re going to be stubborn about this, aren’t you?” she asked, but there was no ire in her voice.
She was too busy feeling cherished. She should probably tell him thank you, but she didn’t want to feed his already overly certain belief that he always knew what was best.
“Can you doubt it?”
She laughed softly. “Not when stubborn is the thing you do best.”
“I would say after last night that you would consider I had at least one or two other attributes.”
Despite the fact that no one else could hear his words, she blushed a hot crimson. “Sandor!”
He laughed, the sound low and sexy, affecting her in ways she tried to ignore. The fiend.
She waited for him to stop laughing and then said by way of dismissal, “I’ll see you at six.”
“I shall look forward to it.”
She hung up the phone feeling just slightly outmaneuvered, but she didn’t really mind. One of the problems she’d had dating was that after growing up around her father and having to push so hard against him for any sort of independence, most other men seemed a little too easily led in comparison. At first, she’d thought that was what she wanted.
She didn’t want to be used again and she didn’t want to be dominated, so she very selectively dated men that were from her world and weren’t looking for her father’s millions to support them, but who were also patently non-aggressive. Men who spouted feminist ideals better than she did and who were sensitive. Men who did not have Sandor’s vibrancy or personal power.
She’d grown weary of the dating scene quickly and it wasn’t until Sandor bulldozed into her life that she realized what was missing. She wanted a man of integrity, but not one she could lead around by a ring through his nose. She wouldn’t tolerate being dominated, and if he didn’t already know that, he would learn, but she was glad he was so strong.
She’d learned that a man could be aggressive and powerful and sensitive to her feelings. At least some of them. Which was more than she’d ever had, but not the same as having his love. However, Sandor was always careful to look after her. His recognition of her dislike of driving was not an isolated incident. He watched her. He paid attention.
And that was very different from her father. Which considering how many similarities she saw between the two of them was a very good thing.
Added to that, she didn’t live in fear of denting his fragile male ego because he wasn’toverly sensitive. The fact her father approved was a double-edged sword. His lack of emotional connection to her had resulted in a sense of rebellion toward all that he stood for. But there was a tiny part of her that still wanted his approval. That still hoped deep inside that if she could please him enough, he would love her like a daddy was supposed to love his little girl.
Marrying Sandor would definitely please her father, but his similarity to the man who had lacerated Ellie’s heart time and again with twenty-four years of almost complete indifference gave her pause. How could it do anything else?
She couldn’t live the rest of her life in that same emotional wasteland with a husband. Even ifshe lovedhim.
Her disturbing thoughts were interrupted by a phone call and she didn’t have another second to call her own for the rest of the day. She left work late and had to rush through getting ready for dinner at the Christofides home.
Sandor asked about her day when he picked her up and spent the entire drive to his home listening. It was a heady experience, being the central focus of his attention. With pleasure, she ticked a mental mark on his scorecard…on the side that said, “Not a carbon copy of George Wentworth.”
He helped her from the car and she stayed him with a hand, reaching up to kiss him on the corner of his mouth. “Thank you.”
His brows drew together. “For what?”
“For listening. I can’t imagine that my attempts to help my clients better their lives is all that fascinating, but you never tell me to shut up.”
He leaned down and kissed her full on the lips. “You are wrong.”
She was clinging to his biceps for support after the short but devastating kiss. “About what?”
“Everything about you interests me, but your desire to help others is both admirable and yes, fascinating to me.”
“You’re a special man, Sandor.” But was it true? If everything about her interested him, why was he so ignorant about some basic elements to her nature? Most important being her need for an emotional connection with him.
“Remember that.”
“It’s not something I could forget.”
He just smiled and led her into the house.
CHAPTER FIVE
HERACHRISTOFIDES WASevery bit as pleased to see Ellie as Sandor had said she would be and made her welcome with warm effusiveness.
“It is so good you come. Sandor, he is like a caged lion lately, but when you are here…he is better.” She squeezed Ellie’s hand before taking a seat on the large white sofa and indicating Ellie should join her.
“Mama, I do not mind being likened to a lion, but I am far from caged.”
“There are many kinds of cages, my son,” Hera said wisely. “Though I agree, you are very like a lion in the cage or out of it…because you see the world as your prey.” She sighed, her eyes so like Sandor’s filled with concern. “It is always the business with you. You want to win, win, win.”
Sandor shrugged. “Better that than I be a lazy layabout, no?” His speech pattern always took on a more decidedly Greek bent when he was around his mother.
Hera pursed her lips and appealed to Ellie with her eyes. “I cannot imagine this one lazy. Can you?”
Ellie shook her head solemnly, though a smile flirted at the edges of her mouth. “No. I really can’t.”
“There, you see?” Hera said as if making a point.
Though Ellie had to wonder if Sandor knew what it was supposed to be because she wasn’t sure she did. She smiled regardless.
“And what am I supposed to see, Mama?” Sandor asked.
“That to work all the time is its own cage,” the older woman said, as if it should be obvious.
“Better that cage than many others I could name.”
“Perhaps, but it would be better not to be caged at all. Do you not agree, Eleanor?”
“Yes. Freedom is a beautiful thing and something we often have to sacrifice other things to attain.”
“Ah, this one, she is smart. You hold on to her, son.” Hera patted Ellie’s arm.
Sandor smiled. “I intend to, believe me.”
Hera nodded. “Good.”
Thankfully that was all she and Sandor said on the subject and Ellie had to be grateful that he had not told his mother he had asked Ellie to marry him. She had a feeling Hera wouldn’t be above trying to convince Ellie she should say yes.
So, why hadn’t Sandor pulled his mother in to argue his case? It seemed
like a tactic he would use.
On the other hand, she’d asked for time to think and apparently Sandor intended to respect that. Which was a pretty darn effective argument in his favor, if he but knew it.
Since she wasn’t pressuring Ellie to accept her beloved son’s proposal, having Hera there as a buffer made the evening more relaxing. But nothing could mitigate the fact that Ellie’s mind insisted on playing the events of the night before over and over in her head. Being slammed at work had helped to keep her thoughts under control, but being in his company made it impossible to keep the memories at bay.
She would catch Sandor looking at her like a shark ready to gobble her up and she would stammer and blush and in general react without her usual aplomb. His mother would take him to task for embarrassing her and Sandor would just grin, pleading innocence if not ignorance.
An important call came in during dessert and Sandor excused himself to take it in his study.
Hera shook her head after he left. “He puts too much importance on business, that one. I thought bringing him to America would give him a better life. It is not so easy to be a child without a father in a small village like the one we came from, but now I wonder if I made the right choice. Had we stayed there, he would not be so driven by business maybe.”
“I don’t believe Sandor is the kind of man to be defined by his surroundings. He is who he is and would be that man, no matter where he’d spent the last years of his childhood. It wouldn’t have mattered if he started in a small town in Greece instead of Boston, your son would have climbed his way to the top no matter what. I think if you’d stayed there, though, that it would have taken longer and been harder for him. He might not be where he is right now, but never doubt he would have achieved what he set out to achieve.”
“Thank you, Eleanor. You are a kind and very perceptive young woman.”
The praise filled Ellie with a sense of well-being, of belonging. She grinned. “And just think, if he had to work harder to get where he is, he would have taken longer to begin considering matters besides business.”
She wasn’t about to spill the beans about his proposal, but she figured Hera was savvy enough to realize her son’s thoughts had turned to domestic matters.
The older woman’s expression turned-horror struck. “You think he might have made me wait even longer to get grandbabies?”
Ellie laughed. She knew the other woman was intuitive where her son was concerned. “I’m afraid so.”
Hera shook her head again. “I still worry about him. He never stops achieving. When is it enough?”
“He seems to have things to prove to himself,” Ellie said carefully.
This time Hera’s sigh carried a wealth of sadness. “Yes. He wishes to prove he got nothing bad from his father. My papa, he was a good man, but he was hard. He made Sandor to think he was responsible for things that he had no control over. Papa said nothing good about the young boy I loved, but he was good. Too young to be as strong as he needed to be maybe, but hewas good.”
“Do you ever tell Sandor that?”
“I tried, but while Papa lived, it would have been disrespectful to say his words were not all truth. By the time he died, his beliefs were settled so deeply inside Sandor, I could not sway them. And part of me…I blamed Jimmy for never coming back. There were things I did not know at the time. I now regret never speaking against my father’s words.”
Ellie reached out and touched Hera’s arm. “It must have been hard for you.”
“It was. I was raised to be a good girl…to hold my innocence for marriage, but the love I had with Sandor’s father…it was overwhelming. I have never known anything like it since. You will think me a fool, but he has always been the husband of my heart.”
“I don’t think it is foolish at all. I’ve heard of love like that.” And for the first time, she wondered if she really wanted feelings that deep with a man.
That kind of love had always been her idyll, but now, seeing Hera’s pain, the hurt in those beautiful brown eyes so fresh it could have happened yesterday, Ellie’s own heart twinged with both sympathy and fear. Compassion for the other woman filled her along with a terror that Ellie’s own feelings were already as at risk as Hera’s had been.
She was no naïve sixteen-year-old with her first lover, but she had a suspicion that the kind of love Hera was talking about transcended age and even experience.
Hera’s smile wiped the pain from her eyes as they glowed with a remembered feeling so powerful it could still bring her joy as well as hurt. “To feel it is beyond any other riches this world has to offer. To have it returned, a gift of unimaginable pleasure. We both felt it. He loved me as much as I loved him.”
“Yet he left.” Ellie didn’t say it because she doubted Hera, but because she could not understand walking away from something so special. Still, belatedly, she realized, she should not have said the words aloud. “I’m sorry. I should not have said that.”
“Why not? It is the truth. But only part of the truth. Papa caught us together and he beat my love until he could not get up.” Tears filled Hera’s eyes. “I tried to stop him, but Papa slapped me hard and Jimmy told me to leave. He could not stand for me to be hurt. I would not listen to my papa, but I listened to Jimmy. It wounded his pride for me to see him beaten like that also, I could tell. He would not raise his hand to my father, so he had no defense. Papa thought it was his right to do what he did, but he drove Jimmy off the island.”
“So, he didn’t leave you voluntarily?”
“No. He had no way of knowing I had become pregnant. He was only a teenager himself. A young boy on holiday with his friends. He tried to see me once after that.”
Ellie’s insides clenched. Did Sandor know that?
“I did not know he had done so until after Papa’s death. I found the letter in his bureau. At first, I did not tell Sandor because he was already grieving the loss of his grandfather, but later…I did not know what purpose it would serve. It had been so long and I had convinced myself Jimmy had married and had more children. Sandor already struggled with so much, to expose him to such a situation would have hurt him even more I thought. And he was bitter toward his father. I thought to wait would be best.”
“You were probably right.”
Hera’s eyes filled with doubt. “I wonder. I never married. I had opportunity, but I had no desire. Was it the same for my Jimmy? I had to choose between using the money I got from selling my family home and possessions for Sandor’s schooling or to search out his father. I made my choice, but I often wonder if it was the right one.”
“But now that you have the money, you could find him.”
“I broached the subject with Sandor once. I learned to regret it. Had I not asked, I could have done so without repercussion, but because I told him what I wanted to do, he asked me not to use money from his hard work to find a man who had abandoned us both. I could not change his mind.”
“Did you tell him that his father wrote?”
“It did not matter to him.”
“Sandor is very stubborn.”
“Yes.”
Said stubborn man returned soon thereafter, but Ellie could not get her discussion with Hera out of her mind.
When he took her home, he once again parked in the visitor parking garage and asked to come up. She knew what was coming, but she wanted to talk to him about what Hera had told her and if she was honest with herself (and she had a policy of being scrupulously so) she wanted what he wanted. Very much.
This time, she went directly to the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea.
“I am not thirsty,” he said from behind her.
“I want tea.”And time to talk , she added silently.
His dark brow rose, but he bowed slightly. “Then we shall have tea.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“I am humoring you. It is not the same.”
“I see. Why are you humoring me?”
“For obvious male rea
sons. I hope to sweeten your temperament toward me so that I may have my wicked way with you.”
She laughed. “I think you know you can seduce me without a pot of tea first.”
“But I prefer not to seduce.”
“You want me to offer myself?”
“Is that so bad?”
She shrugged. She didn’t suppose it was, but she frowned anyway. “You think indulging before bed will make me more inclined to invite you to share mine?”