Xenakis's Convenient Bride(23)

It was a damned sledgehammer to the chest. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Calli, listen-"

"No! Damn it, I know I was only seventeen." She pushed the heels of her  hands into her eye sockets. "I know he might be better off where he is.  He's probably with some rich, married couple who can give him a much  better life than I ever could. I know I didn't deserve him." She dropped  her hands to reveal the suffering in her eyes. "But I didn't give him  up, Stavros. He was taken. I have to know he's safe."

He felt her pain in that moment. He felt it like knives in his chest and  belly, like a tortuous ache that made his entire being throb. He felt  pulled and anchored down at the same time, feet heavy as he went around  to her and closed her cold fists in his bigger hands.

"I didn't say you didn't deserve him. Who said that to you?"

She pulled her hands from his and tucked them under her elbows, turning her face away as she fought to hang on to her composure.

He drew her into his arms, but she was as stiff and cold as marble. He  set his lips against her temple. "Of course you deserved to keep your  own son."

She flinched, pulling back in a way that clawed at him. He wanted to  crush her, press reassurance into her so tightly she couldn't doubt it,  but she was like spun glass in his arms. Not nearly as strong as she was  trying to be, fighting back tears with that jagged, hissing breath. Her  whole body was quivering like an animal run to ground.

"I have more resources than Takis," he said in a gentle, yet gross  understatement. "The lawyers I hire will hire their own investigators.  Good ones. Most important, contrary to what you just said, I am not  afraid to use the press as a weapon."

"But what if Dorian doesn't even know he's adopted? It would be horrible  to learn something like that on the schoolyard. What if-"

"Don't worry, koukla mou. I don't expect it would progress beyond a  threat. The Underwoods do not subscribe to any publicity being good  publicity. That's why they hushed up their son's mishap in the first  place. That and they wouldn't want an heir to show up inconveniently in  the future, seeking a piece of the Underwood pie. No. Better to place  him in a suitable home where they can give him a measured slice, the way  aristocracy has done for generations when they have a blue-blooded  bastard to contend with."

"Don't call him that!"

"Apología." He drew her in, pressed his mouth to her hair, still trying  to assimilate that she was the mother of a child. A fresh wave of  jealousy overcame him as he absorbed that she would always have this  connection to Brandon, her first lover. It was far more profound than  losing her virginity to some man he'd never met. Brandon would always be  a peripheral figure in her life and Stavros couldn't do a damned thing  about it except loathe the piece of filth.         

     



 

"Do you think he's with a family member? Because I've searched and  searched online. I can't find a sibling or cousin or any other relative  with a boy of the right age."

"Let me put my mothers and sisters on the job," Stavros said drily.  "They'll have a list of possibilities in an hour. They know every  top-tier familial connection in the country."

"I don't want them to know this."

"I don't have to tell them why." He glanced at the clock on the microwave. "But I'd like a starting point for our meeting."

"What meeting?"

"Lawyers, koukla mou. They'll be here soon."

"How-? It's the weekend!"

"Yes, they'll ding me for that, along with the fee for the house call, but..." He shrugged it off. "I wanted to let you sleep."

She drew back, brows pulled into a knot of worry. "Why are you doing this?"

"We have a deal, do we not?" Now it was quid pro quo and he grasped at  the opportunity to justify their arrangement. Keep it going exactly as  it was. "As you pointed out last night, I have not upheld my side of the  bargain. You could have been more forthright in your reasons, but I am  honor bound to give you what you sought when you agreed to marry me."

"No, you aren't," she mumbled, hair falling in a curtain down her cheek as she dipped her head.

"Oh, I am." He smoothed that wisp of hair behind her ear, mostly as an  excuse to touch her. "You made a rather harsh comparison last night,  glykia mou. I am not just like your faithless Brandon. I like being  called that even less than Steven."

Her mouth quirked in a hint of leavening, but quickly skewed again with  emotion. Her brow grew heavy. "I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything. Sit. Eat. It's going cold and you missed dinner last night."

She went onto tiptoe and grazed her mouth against his cheek, filling his  head with the scent of her freshly washed skin. Her voice rasped with  emotion. "Thank you, Stavros."

She sat down and his tension bled out of him on a quiet breath of relief.





CHAPTER EIGHT

CALLI COULDN'T SEEM to move, barely able to lift her head as Stavros  came back from seeing out the lawyers. She was emotionally exhausted.  Hollowed out and raw.

But hopeful.

Which terrified her.

"I realize that wasn't easy for you," he said, lowering to sit on the  ottoman in front of the armchair where she had huddled and cried,  pouring out her soul along with the sordid details of her teenage  affair.

"Which part?" She had covered everything, drawn out by the kind,  soft-spoken Ingrid while she avoided the drilling glare from Norma  unless the older woman interjected with a sharp-voiced question.

Oddly, it was that tag team of hard and soft, compassionate and  ruthless, that had reassured her. Takis's lawyer had been at turns  overwhelmed, distracted and impatient. Norma, Ingrid had informed her,  was a champion of justice. Ingrid believed in her, which was why she  worked with her-despite Norma's lack of bedside manner.

That gentle humor and candor had allowed Calli to open up to Ingrid, but  shame had colored every word. Shame for how she'd got herself pregnant  and how shame had kept her hiding it as long as she could, waiting for  Brandon to come back and marry her. Shame that she'd been stupid enough  to believe he would and deep, deep shame instilled by her parents when  they'd learned. Shame that they hadn't loved her enough to overcome  their own embarrassment, rejecting her and refusing to keep Dorian, then  shame that she had trusted them. Shame that she hadn't suspected her  father could go to the lengths he had. Shame that she had lost her son.  Mothers were supposed to protect their babies at all costs, right?

The shame had continued well after she had offered herself to Takis.  Askance looks around the island had kept it going as rumors swirled of  her giving birth out of wedlock and losing the baby to crib death, then  living with Takis as his presumed mistress. She was ashamed that she had  taken so long to tell him, to fight for her son, only to lose.

"The part where they asked you for time." Stavros set his elbows on his  thighs, hands linked between his splayed knees. "You've already waited  too long."

She twitched a shoulder. What did a couple more weeks matter after six years?

"Can I ask-You said that you didn't tell Takis right away because you  didn't think you would stay with him that long, and that you were  embarrassed, but what made you finally tell him after keeping it secret  for two years?"         

     



 

She sighed and gathered up the balled tissues that had collected in her lap and around her legs. "He asked me to marry him."

"Ah." His hands closed a little more tightly together.

"He knew he was too old for me, but he wanted a brother or sister for  Ophelia. We gelled as a family in a lot of ways. For the first time in  my life, I felt...wanted. Ophelia was a brat, but she loved me. Does."

She smiled with affection, missing her girl. Feeling the distance, especially today, when her emotions were so spent and heavy.

"She helped me so much and doesn't even know it. On my worst days, when I  felt like an utter failure for not having my son, she would cuddle up  to me, or give me something she'd made at school, and I would realize I  was the only mother she had. It made me want to..." She cleared her  throat. "I always thought... Somewhere out there, someone is looking  after my child. Ophelia's mother would want to know her child was being  loved and looked after well. I couldn't rob Ophelia just because I was  missing my son. I had to give her my best and hope my son was getting  the same from the woman he was calling mama."

She grabbed a fresh tissue and swept it across her damp lashes, impatient with this unending leak. Her eyes were beyond raw.

"I made it clear to Takis that I was saving my wages to go to America,  but little things kept happening with Ophelia that made it hard to  leave. Every time I brought it up, Takis would offer me more money. I  would sock it away, thinking I was buying more time in America, more  time to plan my attack, more money for lawyers."