He put down his half-empty glass and sat forward. “Just so there’s no question, I’ve developed feelings for you, too. In time I intend to act on them, but not yet. That’s what I was anxious to tell you before you left for Venice.”
Her heart could hardly take it.
“Since you’ve come back to Patras and we’ve established détente, would you be willing to tell me your plans now?”
She moistened her lips nervously. “Abby and Raoul have invited me to spend some time at their vineyard until I need to return to America.”
“Could you put that off for a while? I was hoping you’d consider flying to Athens with me the day after tomorrow. It’s my time for visitation. I’d like you to meet Ari. If you went with me, you could give him that gift yourself.”
A tiny gasp escaped. She was incredulous over what he’d just proposed. He wanted her to meet his son? Her heart thudded from anxiety and excitement all at once.
Abby had urged her to return to Patras and hear what Andreas had to say, but this was the last thing she’d expected. Before she could answer, the waiter returned to pour them some white wine. This was followed by plates of sizzling salmon filets and a side dish of mouthwatering fried mashed potatoes stuffed with anthotyro cheese and spinach.
“Does your silence mean you’d rather not postpone your plans to stay with your friends?” he asked after the waiter walked away.
She’d probably offended him again when it was the last thing she ever wanted to do. “It isn’t that, Andreas. If I didn’t say anything, it’s because I’m so surprised at your suggestion.”
He cocked his dark head. “I’ve wanted to take you before now, but I didn’t want my plans to interfere with your work while you were finishing up your research. That’s why it was a shock to me when you left Patras so abruptly. I hadn’t realized that day had come and you were ready to move on.”
Abby had been right about everything.
“Now you know why I left the way I did.” She took a drink of wine. “Don’t you think it might upset Ari if I’m with you?”
“If you’ll come with me, we’ll find out.”
Andreas...
They both started to eat. “I’ll arrange a room in the same hotel for you where I stay. There’s a garden and a pond where he plays, not to mention the children’s zoo and Happy Train.”
“Is that the red one I saw on the streets of Athens?”
“Yes. It visits all the important places. Ari loves to ride on it. We’ll be gone two days and nights. Is that something you’d like to do? If not, I’ll be disappointed, but I’ll understand.”
When she’d finished all she could eat, she eyed him directly. “If you don’t think Ari will be upset that you brought a visitor with you, then I’d be very happy to meet him.”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I’m glad you said that because there’s something else I’d like to ask you. Tomorrow I must fly to Lakithra for the grand opening of our latest hotel. I won’t have to be there long. How would you like to come with me? We’ll have lunch at the hotel and test out the menu before we return to Patras.”
She blinked. “You’re talking about the village on Kefalonia?” He nodded. “Where I went to see the Rock of Byron?”
“The very one. The property for the hotel was in our family.”
“You’re kidding—”
“It’s all true.” His faint smile set her pulse racing. “The family decided to erect a hotel to honor Lord Byron and three of our ancestors living there who fought in the war for independence against the Turks.”
“That’s the reason you know so much about him. Do you have any old records?”
“If you’re referring to diaries, no, otherwise I would have shown them to you. But our ancestors were part of the group funded by Lord Byron, who sold his estate in Scotland and raised twenty thousand pounds sterling toward that effort. We’ve named it Gavras House, Lakithra—Lord Byron.”
She sat back. “What an absolutely fantastic thing for you to do!”
Andreas finished his wine. “When were you there?”
“In March.”
“It would barely have been under construction then.”
“You never mentioned a thing about it!”
One black brow lifted. “Knowing why you’d come to Greece, I’d hoped to surprise you when it was finished.”
But she’d left Patras before he could tell her what he’d been hiding...
She shook her head. “You’ve surprised me, Andreas Gavras! I’d love to go!” Her cry coincided with the arrival of their white chocolate panna cotta dessert.
Before the waiter walked away, she said, “When you’re ready to bring us the bill, please give it to me.”
He darted Andreas a glance before glancing back at her. “Very good, kyria.”
“The waiter knows who you are,” she said after he’d walked away.
“If that’s true, then he’s thinking what a lucky man I am to be wined and dined by the most beautiful woman in Greece.”
Zoe smiled. “Quoting Charlotte Bronte from the pen of Jane Eyre. ‘Decidedly, you, sir, have had too much wine.’” She’d taken liberties with the quote. “But I’d be a fool not to enjoy the flattery. In the words of Lord Byron, ‘Sermons and soda can come later.’”
His eyes lingered on her mouth, sending shivers through her. “Do your college students know how lucky they are to have you for their teacher?”
Everything Andreas said and did was getting to her. Thank goodness the waiter came back so she could pay him in cash and leave a big tip. “The dinner was excellent.”
“Efkaristo, kyria.”
Andreas stood up and collected her. “Shall we go get our feet wet?”
“That’s a good idea. Maybe we won’t need the sermons and soda after all to clear our heads.”
He walked her back to the car, where she put her bag on the floor and they removed their shoes. After locking it, he reached for her hand and held it as they headed toward the water. Could there be a more romantic spot anywhere on earth? The sun had slipped below the horizon of this magical evening. To her mind, Greece was a land for lovers and Andreas was the most gorgeous man alive.
“You’re not still frightened of me, are you?”
The unexpected question in that deep sensuous voice slowed her steps. His hand still held hers as she looked up at him. The blood pounded in her ears. “Not of you,” she answered honestly, “but our relationship. It can’t go anywhere.”
His hands lifted to cradle her face. “It already has and we both know it. Maybe this will help clarify how I’ve felt about you from the beginning.”
He lowered his dark head and gave her a slow, passionate kiss, the kind she’d been dreaming about since the moment they’d met. The hungry response she wasn’t able to hold back had to leave him in no doubt why she’d returned to Patras.
A moan escaped her throat as she reeled from the intensity of long-suppressed emotions. But his kiss didn’t go on and on. Instead he relinquished her mouth and lifted his head.
“I would have done this sooner, but you were too important to me to make a wrong move.” She couldn’t believe that’s what had been in his mind. “When you said goodbye on the phone, I feared my instincts were wrong and you hadn’t developed genuine feelings for me.”
Zoe backed away from him, struggling for breath. “You’re still not divorced.”
He tipped his head, forcing her to look at him. “I thought maybe your own divorce had put you off men. Off me. I couldn’t imagine any man letting you go. In time I hoped you’d open up.”
She folded her arms to her waist. “I didn’t ask you about your marriage for the same reason. Though a friendship had grown between us that I trusted and enjoyed, it didn’t change the fact that we’ve both been careful not to pry beneath the surface of each other’s
personal lives.”
“Yet you came back. Thank heaven.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ZOE’S HEARTBEAT DOUBLED. She lowered her head.
“I confided in Abby. It was the first time she’d heard that I spent the month of June getting to know you while I was working. She sensed my relationship with you was important to me.
“When I told her you’d asked me not to leave because you had things to tell me, she put me on the spot about it. That’s because she knew how paranoid I’d been since my divorce from Nate.”
Andreas sucked in his breath. “That’s the first time you’ve mentioned his name.”
Zoe nodded. “Nate Owens.”
He put a hand on her arm. “While we walk back to the car, I want to hear everything. It’s growing dark.”
“You’re right.” They’d been so deep in conversation, she hadn’t noticed. To be this close to him was heavenly.
“How long since your divorce?”
“I married him at eighteen. He was twenty-five, a year younger than I am now. It lasted exactly a year and a half. Being a career pilot in the air force, he was handsome as blazes in his uniform. We met at the beach that summer while he was in Santa Monica on leave. I fell hard for him and we got married at a justice of the peace. My adoptive parents didn’t approve. Neither did his family.”
He stopped walking. “Adoptive parents?”
“Yes. Nancy and Bob Perkins, who are now divorced. He moved to his brother’s place in Oregon. She still lives by the beach. I keep in touch with both of them, but they never knew anything about my own birth parents. To this day I don’t have a clue about them.”
“I’m sorry, Zoe.” He sounded devastated for her.
“Don’t be. Apparently, after I was born, I had a first set of foster parents who called me Zoe. When I was four, I was put in the Perkinses’ foster home. They eventually adopted me and gave me my last name. They also adopted two other foster children.”
“Are you in touch with your siblings?”
“No. The boys were older and left at eighteen. The Perkins did their best and I owe them my life. Because of them I excelled in school and went to college. In that regard I was very blessed.
“But where my boyfriends were concerned, I thought they were too strict. When I told them that Nate wanted to marry me, Nancy said I was too young and warned me that my whirlwind romance might not work out. Bob urged me to wait and give it more time. But I didn’t listen.”
Andreas sat there listening.
“They were right, of course. After the wedding I fought with Nate because he wasn’t ready to start a family. I caught him in half a dozen lies about other women and soon realized he wasn’t ready for responsibility. His infidelity caused everything to unravel from there.
“I told him I wanted a divorce and he agreed. With no attorney involved, it didn’t cost a lot to end the marriage. The experience left me wary of getting involved with another man again. You could say my stab at marriage caused me to grow up in a hurry.”
“No wonder you ran from me.”
By now they’d reached the car. He clicked the remote and opened the back door. Reaching for a towel he’d put on the back seat, he turned to her. “If you’ll sit sideways, we’ll get the sand off your feet.”
Before she could say a word, he hunkered down and wiped them off. The feel of his fingers against her skin made the gesture so intimate, it sent darts of awareness through her body. Then he reached for her sandals and slipped them on for her.
“There you go.”
He moved out of her way so she could stand up. While she went around to the front of the car, he used the towel on himself and put his shoes back on. When he slid behind the wheel, she reached over to squeeze his bronzed forearm.
“No one has ever treated me the way you’ve done. I’ll never forget how you came to my rescue after that accident in the taxi. Thank you for being you.” The throb in her voice seemed to reverberate in the car’s elegant interior before she removed her hand.
Andreas turned on the ignition and they started back to her apartment. “Did your adoptive parents support you financially after the divorce?”
“No. They didn’t have much money and I wouldn’t have expected it. He worked for the post office and she ran a preschool in their modest home. They couldn’t have children, so they took us all in, but I’m afraid the stress was too much for their marriage in the end.”
“What amazing people.”
“They were. I babysat to earn money. Later on I won some financial awards at school and received a four-year scholarship to undergraduate school at UCLA. It took care of my tuition and books.’
“Your name is Greek. It means life. That’s one thing you’re full of.”
She smiled.
“You had to have been a brilliant student.”
“No, just hardworking. The alimony Nate had to pay for a short period, plus my salary from working at the college bookstore, kept me afloat. I shared an old house near the campus with five other female college students so the rent was minimal. We took turns cooking.”
“Who’s the human dynamo of industry now?”
She laughed. “You have to understand that I became a bookworm at a very early age and I had a teacher in fourth grade who told me to study hard so I could go to college. My English teachers in junior high and high school believed I could go all the way scholastically if I didn’t let anything distract me. I determined to be the top student in my field, and doors opened for me.”
“That must be why you were picked to do research for the film being made.”
“I guess that’s true. The dean of the graduate department gave Magda Collier my name. He knew how much I’d revered Lord Byron’s writings from an early age.”
“He realized you were the expert, Zoe.”
“In that case let’s hope the film does well.”
“When will it be out?”
“I don’t know yet. Magda said there’d be bonuses for the girls and me. I would love to able to give some of that money to my adoptive parents. They weren’t demonstrative in their affection, but the three of us knew what good people Bob and Nancy were to offer us a home during those years.”
Andreas inhaled deeply. “They enabled you to become the woman you were meant to be and must feel incredibly proud of you. As for your birth parents, they would be in awe of their daughter.”
She blinked hard. “If it was your intention to make me cry, you’ve done an excellent job of it.”
* * *
Andreas drove them the rest of the way in silence. Emotion for the many struggles she’d had to overcome in this life had welled up inside him. When he found a parking spot near her flat and shut off the engine, he slid his arm along the back of the seat to face her.
In profile, her classic features had an appeal for him he never tired of studying. But now that he knew about her true parentage, he realized they had to have been exceptionally attractive people to have produced a beauty like her. They’d also endowed her with many gifts, among them unflagging perseverance and a fine mind.
“After what you’ve confided, I’ve been thinking back on my life. Under circumstances like yours, I can’t imagine how I would have handled not knowing about my birth parents.”
“We do what we have to. In my case I told myself not to think about it, but that wasn’t possible. My siblings had a hard time, too. We had incessant conversations about it and how unfair that there were court documents that could give us answers, but they were sealed.”
His dark brows lifted. “With enough money, you could probably prevail on a judge to unseal them.”
“I thought about that, too, believe me. But besides the absence of that kind of money, Bob reminded me I might find out things and wish I didn’t know anything.”
“Do you believe that, Zoe?”
“No. I’d rather know the truth no matter what. To me, birth is a miracle. I don’t care if the earth has almost eight billion people. Each person’s birth is unique, mine most of all!”
He flashed her a tender smile. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Thank you for that.” She smiled back. “Even if I was a mistake, unplanned for and unwanted, or even if I was wanted but they couldn’t take care of me, I would like an explanation.
“Was my dad a bookworm? Did I get my ears from my dad’s mother, or my height from my mom’s father? Which one had blue eyes? Did either one of them love chocolate the way I do? I guess they both had good teeth because I only have one cavity. It saved a lot of dental bills.”
A chuckle escaped his throat. Her white smile was one of her extraordinary assets. Then he sobered. “Are you still tortured about it?”
“Tortured is too strong a word, but I admit it never left my mind growing up. It was hard to go to a girlfriend’s house and see her with her real mom and dad. I never got used to that. But when I was married, Nancy gave me some advice that has stayed with me ever since.”
“What was that?”
“She told me to look at it that I was given life, so make the best of it! That was Nancy. Practical and sensible. I’ve tried to apply it, but from time to time certain situations arise that put me in the who-am-I? mood again.”
“Give me an example of what you mean. I want to understand you better.”
She angled her head toward him. “From the time we met, I’ve wondered what it would be like to have been born a Gavras, sure of your place in life and society, secure in your family’s love. Just think. Tomorrow we’ll be visiting a place where your ancestors were born. Ancestors from your family line you can name and gave you identity. What greater privilege.”
“I can think of one,” he whispered. “Being with the woman who has brought me to a new awareness of what this life is really all about. Thank you for tonight. Your honesty has meant more to me than you know. In fact it has fortified my resolve to deal with an upcoming issue. Since it’s getting late and I have to be at the office early in the morning, I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”
Wedding The Greek Billionaire (Holiday With A Billionaire Book 3) Page 5
