A wave of nausea rolled through him. He’d broken her. In his selfishness, he’d taken her beautiful, positive spirit and crushed it like a bug under his boot.
“We should tear you apart for how you’ve treated her.” One of the other brothers, who looked younger, spoke with a clenched jaw. “Who knows how much all this stress is hurting the baby.”
God, if anything happened, he would never forgive himself. “I want to see her.” His voice broke on the last word.
“You’re not setting foot in this house,” Daniel said, grabbing Nico by the front of his shirt, but he didn’t take a swing. Instead, he stared long and hard into the other man’s eyes, fire glowing in their depths. “I could kill you for making her cry.”
“Believe me,” Nico said. “I will fall on my sword now if it makes her feel better.”
A familiar face came into view. Julian. “A bit too late for that, isn’t it?”
There was no point directing his anger at Marianna’s friend. Ultimately, where she chose to put her love was her decision. He couldn’t move forward if he was going to continue to act like an overprotective family member, rather than her husband. She’d asked him to trust her, and he would do exactly that.
“Possibly. But that’s a choice for Marianna to make,” he said.
Julian raised a brow. “You think she’ll choose you?”
“I honestly have no idea. But I’m here because I love her, and because I was stupid not to fight for her in the first place.” Talking about something so raw and so real made him deeply uncomfortable. But that was a place he’d need to go frequently now, beyond his comfort zone. Far beyond. Because soon he would be a father, something he knew nothing about. “Whatever hoop you think I need to jump through, whatever test I need to take…tell me. I will do whatever is necessary to have her back in my life.”
“You talk a big game,” Julian said. “But it sounds like a whole lot of hot air to me. What do you even know about her?”
“I know she’s fascinated with travel. She loves ice cream and swimming. I know her brain operates on a level most people couldn’t even comprehend when it comes to language, and she speaks five fluently. She’s learning Greek, too.” His throat tightened at the memory of her saying she loved him in his native language. “I know she has an endless list of language facts that fly out of her without warning. I know she loves shopping at the market and stirring me up by moving my things around. I know she’s smart and she’s beautiful and she’s going to be an amazing mother.”
“But do you love her?” Daniel asked. The question seemed genuine. “You need to give her something real instead of an empty promise.”
Nico reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the crumpled envelope containing the DNA test. The seal was perfectly unbroken, though the once-crisp edges of the envelope were now worn and folded.
“I asked her to take a test because I didn’t believe I could trust her.” He’d never been so ashamed of an action in all his life. “And I’m here now to prove that I’m a changed man. That’s her influence, her power.”
The men were silent for a moment, looking uncertainly between one another.
“Nico?” Marianna stood in the doorway, her face ashen. “What on earth are you doing here?”
In the week since she’d gone, Marianna’s stomach had grown. Their baby had grown. The sight made him want to drop to his knees, right in front of the whole family, and beg forgiveness.
But Marianna wasn’t having any of his small talk. “Why did you come, Nico? How did you even find me? You didn’t call.”
“I couldn’t risk you telling me to stay away.” He hung his head. “I had to do this in person.”
“Do what?” She wrung her hands in front of her belly.
He held up the envelope, and her eyes widened when she saw the logo.
“Is that my test?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to open it,” he said. “I know it’s my baby. I know you’re not a liar. I also know that the way I treated you is something I’ll regret for the rest of my life.”
In his pocket, he’d also packed a lighter that he’d purchased on the way over. Not usually one with a flair for the dramatic, Nico knew the only way to prove to Marianna that he trusted her—now and forever—was to get rid of the test for good. He took the lighter in one hand and ran his thumb over the spark wheel. Once, twice, three times. A single flame flickered to life.
“What are you doing?” She brought her hands to her face.
“I love you, Marianna. S’ agapo.” He repeated the words she’d spoken to him in her most vulnerable moment—the moment she bared herself to him. “You are mine and you mean everything to me. You’re my world, and so is our baby.”
The flame caught on the envelope, and the fire gathered pace, consuming the paper and sending smoke billowing into the air. He held on until it was almost burning his fingertips. Then he dropped the last piece to the ground and put it out with his boot.
“I never needed a test,” he said. “It was my way of trying to prove that I was too broken to love you, to convince you to leave before I could get hurt. But I want to hurt, I want to feel everything that goes along with a real marriage. And I want to apologize.”
Nico tried to run through all the things he’d rehearsed on the way over, but his mind was a jumbled mess of fear and sleep deprivation. All he did remember was that he wanted to do things properly this time.
“For what?” she whispered.
“For being a blind, stupid, and stubborn asshole.” He chose his words slowly, carefully. “You came into my life at a point where I didn’t know myself anymore. So I twisted you in my head, gave you ulterior motives so that I could protect myself from falling in love with you. I turned you into a monster so I could stop myself from seeing what I had become.”
Marianna watched him closely, her expression guarded. Her arms wrapped protectively around herself.
“The day that we met and went swimming was the first day I felt like myself in years,” he continued. “Because of you. And the more time I spent with you, I stopped grieving for all the things I’d lost, for all I’d missed out on. And when I saw our baby on that monitor, it was the happiest I have ever felt. Since the day I was born, people have rejected me. After a while, I caused them to reject me because I believed it was inevitable. You were the only person who even in the face of my terrible behavior didn’t push me away.”
Slowly, he dropped down to one knee. Marianna’s eyes widened, and the rest of the family—her brothers, a woman he assumed was her sister-in-law, and Jules—all watched.
“Marianna, I want you to be my wife. My real wife. I want you to share my home and my bed. I want us to raise our child together as partners. I want us to be the example you want us to be, to show this child, and hopefully more to come, what it looks like to be truly, overwhelmingly in love with someone.” He sucked in a breath. The words were an avalanche; everything he’d kept long-buried was roaring out of him now like a stopper had been yanked. “I want to show our little girl every day that we love her and each other without fear or reservation. I want us to be a family.”
In his pocket was the porcelain cat. When her eyes landed on the figurine, she laughed. Tears glimmered in her eyes, pooling until they dripped down onto her cheeks. “That damn cat.”
“You mean everything to me,” he said. “This baby means everything to me. I want to meet our little Katherine so badly.”
“You remembered the name.” Her eyes shined, and she interlaced her fingers with his.
“Of course I did. It’s been haunting me ever since you left that I’d thrown away not one important relationship, but possibly two.” He stood and pulled her hand to his chest. “You’ve changed me, Marianna. Fundamentally and irrevocably.”
“Come on, guys,” the other woman said. “Let’s give these lovebirds some peace.”
Marianna reached out and pressed her palm to his cheek as the others filtered into the house. The
sweet gesture brought him back to life, erasing the hollowed-out feeling in his chest and easing the pressure on his heart. She traced the line of his jaw. “You’ve got a beard, now.”
“It’s not a beard. It’s just what happens if a Greek guy doesn’t shave for a couple of days.”
She smiled. “I like it.”
“Then I’ll never shave again.” He wrapped his arms around her softly, and she stepped closer, letting her rounded belly press against his. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“I walked away, Nico. Maybe it was selfish, but it was the action I chose because I couldn’t stand to be passive in my own life anymore.” She let out a little sigh. “But with that comes responsibility. We were apart as much because of me as because of you.”
He wasn’t sure how much to tell her, but he felt that this was the moment to share something real with Marianna. Because if he couldn’t do it now, then this whole gesture would be for nothing. “Alethea came to see me.”
“She did?” Marianna looked up at him with wide, curious eyes.
“I wish I could say it was because I went to her, but in reality she barged into my office and demanded I speak to her.”
Marianna smirked. “I like her.”
“I’m trying to forgive her for what happened,” he said. “And to forgive Kosta for kicking me out. And to forgive myself for being heartbroken.”
“That’s wonderful, Nico.”
“I didn’t want to bring my little girl into this world while I had a heart full of hatred and resentment.” He pressed his forehead down to hers. “You helped me to see that.”
“So that’s it? We’re married for real now?”
“If you’ll have me.”
She stared into his eyes, holding his gaze in such a way that it felt more intimate than anything he’d ever done before. But that was Marianna in a nutshell—she busted down his walls and forced him to see things in a new light.
He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her as gently as though she was made of crystal. But Marianna fisted her hands in his hair and demanded more. She opened her mouth and let her tongue slide against his, her hips desperately rubbing against him.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered.
“I’ve missed you too.” He brushed a thumb over her kiss-swollen lips. “But I really don’t want to do anything with your brothers in the house.”
“We don’t have to go into the house,” she said cheekily.
“I don’t care if we have to wait. I’m just happy I didn’t lose you.” He kissed her again, long and searching, until he wanted to explode from how right it felt. “We’ve got years ahead of us. Plenty of time to make love.”
“Plenty of rooms in our house, too,” she said with a smirk. “I want to have you in every single one.”
“My wife, the siren.”
“Your wife.” She grinned. “I’ll never grow tired of hearing that.”
Epilogue
Five months later…
“Are you ready?” Nico asked as he walked into the nursery. The walls were painted pink and yellow, with one covered in wallpaper featuring a pattern of tiny koalas and gum leaves. Katherine was painted in scrolling letters across the side of a crib.
Marianna looked up, her hands bracing her back. “Not even a little bit. I packed up all my materials at the language center yesterday, but it’s surreal. I can’t believe it’s almost time.”
Her stomach pressed against the soft, black fabric of her maxi dress. Her due date was a mere forty-eight hours away, and they were both on pins and needles, jumping at any slight twinge in her belly. Anxiety and excitement and anticipation filled the Gallinas household, and it would not dissipate until the baby arrived. Probably not even after that.
“I thought we should add one more thing to the room.” He placed the porcelain cat on the chest of drawers, where a photo of the two of them sat. They’d taken it in Paris on their “babymoon,” their smiles so wide they looked like kids in a candy store.
“If you think that’s going to stop me hiding it around the house, you’re sorely mistaken.” Her lip quirked into a cheeky smile. “I haven’t run out of spots yet!”
“It’s the only thing I have to hand down to her,” he said.
Marianna’s smile slipped. She’d known that Nico’s mind was stuck on his lack of family as the due date neared. Some days he opened up, and other days he retreated into his shell…and Marianna let him. It would take years to heal his wounds, and sometimes that meant he needed to be alone with his memories.
“Sister Iva gave it to me.” His eyes were somewhere else, fixed on the past trapped in his head. “Another family had been and gone, and they’d chosen another kid. Like always. She found me crying in one of the cupboards, and I told her that I thought I would never have a family.”
Hearing Nico’s stories always hurt like hell. Marianna walked over to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek to his chest. He smelled like lemons and oregano leaves, fresh from their trip to the market earlier that day.
“She told me that one day I would leave the orphanage and that I might be on my own for a while. But that eventually I would find the people who were meant to share my life and, in the meantime, the cat would be my family.” He rested his cheek against her hair. “I carried that damn thing everywhere.”
“And now you’ve found your family.” She blinked back her tears, squeezing him as tight as she could. Every day she told him that she loved him, hoping that with enough repetition he would start to let go of the past. “Not just me and Katherine, but my brothers and Felicity. And Dion and Jules.”
That had been the biggest surprise of all. After their rocky start, Jules had taken the time to get to know Nico, and they had much in common. And her brothers had eventually been won over too. Matthew now worked for Precision Investments as an innovation consultant, putting his tech skills and wild business ideas to profitable use. It was good to have one of her brothers in Corfu year-round.
As for the others, well, they were all on the island now, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the first in the next generation of the Halsey-Gallinas family.
“We’re all your family,” she said. “Not because we’re connected by blood, but because you chose us. Because you let us love you.”
“I wouldn’t be here without you,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“I do.” She grinned up at him. “I’m pretty awesome.”
He chuckled. “Yes, you are.”
At that moment, a cramp seized her belly, gripping like a fist and squeezing her hard. “Oh my god,” she gasped, clamping her eyes shut for a second until the feeling passed. “I think it’s happening.”
“Are you ready now?” he teased, excitement dancing in his dark eyes.
“Not even a little bit.” She pressed her hands to her belly. “But I’ve got you and I’ve got our family. That’s all that matters. I love you so much.”
“I love you, too, Marianna. I can’t wait to meet our little girl.”
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Acknowledgments
Every book is a team effort, but this one was even more so. I must thank my husband for taking me on my first overseas trip back in 2005 and for igniting my desire to travel. Though our travel styles are not exactly compatible, there’s no one else I’d rather have by my side as I see the world. All the wonder we’ve shared on our trips was poured into this book.
Huge thanks to Liz Pelletier for helping me to bring this story to life. Your editorial input and the push you gave me to keep digging into these characters is what made me love this book so much. Thanks for your encouragement and support of my writing.
Thank you to the team at Entangled for always being a great group of people to work with. Thanks to Hannah for your incredible attention to detail during copy edits (and for teachin
g me about octopodes!). Thanks to Jessica, Riki, Katie, and Debbie for continuing to support my books, for answering my questions, and always being super friendly and responsive.
Thank you to my incredible agent, Jill Marsal, for everything. I could write an entire book on all the ways you help keep me on track. Thanks for your words of wisdom, most of all.
Thank you to all my writer friends, especially to Jen Hayward for saying “of course you can write an accidental pregnancy/marriage of convenience story.” And thanks to Denise for being my conference buddy and dragging me out of my introvert shell at regular intervals. Thank you to Demetra for agreeing to provide input at the last minute with such short timelines! I really appreciate it.
Lastly, thank you to my coffee machine. Without you, I would not function.
About the Author
Stefanie London is the USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romances and romantic comedies.
Stefanie’s books have been called “genuinely entertaining and memorable” by Booklist, and her writing praised as “Elegant, descriptive and delectable” by RT magazine. Her stories have earned accolades such as the RT Top Pick and have achieved bestseller status with USA Today and iBooks.
Growing up, Stefanie came from a family of women who loved to read. After sneaking several literature subjects into her ‘very practical’ business degree, she worked in HR and Communications. But writing emails for executives didn’t fulfil her creative urges, so she turned to fiction and was finally able to write the stories that kept her mind busy at night.
Originally from Australia, she now lives in Toronto with her very own hero and is currently in the process of doing her best to travel the world. She frequently indulges in her passions for good coffee, lipstick, romance novels and anything zombie-related.
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