A Family for Good : A sweet, small town, second chance romance (Tall Dark and Driven Book 6)

by Barbara Deleo

  Liv touched a weary hand to her face, and he could see she was almost asleep already. “You’ll call me when they cry?”

  “I promise. Now get some sleep, and I’ll wake you when I need to.”

  He closed her door with a soft click. The perfect metaphor for the barriers that sat so firmly between them.

  5

  A hearty cry split the early morning quiet. The clock showed 5:15 a.m. as Liv dragged herself from a dreamless sleep, clawing her way to the surface when she remembered where she was.

  She felt like she’d been awake all night, reliving the moment Markus had asked her to marry him. In the past, she’d fantasized about that moment and the way he’d hold her in his arms and pour out his deep love for her with his words. But his recent proposal left a cavernous hole her heart. Nothing like the way she’d reacted to his fantasy proposal in her dreams.

  He was being practical, logical, and the fact he could ask her and not understand the anguish, the burning sadness it caused inside her, made Liv realize he’d truly moved on. He’d never have suggested it if he still cared.

  What it did show her, though, was the lengths he’d go to provide for the tiny babies in his care, and that knowledge unsettled her.

  He’d admitted he wasn’t their father, and yet he was still prepared to stop her trying to take them away. Well, a marriage wouldn’t solve their problems. His solution would never work. Being near him every day, waiting until he did something dangerous, would bring her a lifetime of heartache. He knew Polly had been her best friend, that it would have been Liv she’d want to care for her babies. Why couldn’t he accept that?

  She threw back the covers, swung her legs out of bed and then pushed her feet into flip-flops. She wasn’t ready to think about how she’d explain all that to him. Last night she’d pretended she was considering it because “are you completely crazy” hadn’t seemed polite in the circumstances. She’d wait until the moment was right to say no.

  “You’re on!” Markus’s tousled head appeared around her door, his eyes hazy with sleep, and on reflex Liv reached for her robe. “They slept eight hours. Must have been exhausted.”

  He disappeared again, and she took a moment to breathe—to banish the thudding in her chest at seeing him in his achingly familiar, mussed-up morning state. She’d never have dreamed this situation—this intimacy—would ever happen again.

  Both babies were crying. She hurried into their room just as Markus picked up a tiny bundle. She lifted the other and felt warm baby breaths against her neck. Immediately, both girls quietened. Markus turned to her and smiled long and slow. “Maybe we’re getting the hang of this.”

  It was that smile, the one she’d carried inside her for so long. The one that had made her feel she was the center of his world.

  She followed him down the hallway, trying to avoid watching the way his T-shirt rode up a little over his cotton pajama pants. Maybe this was some cruel punishment—to have to be in the same house as him, to work together and have all of him within touching distance.

  The living room was cloaked in the golden glow of a rain-washed dawn, and Liv paused in amazement at the clean-up job Petro must have done last night. “How long has Petro been your housekeeper?” she asked, as Markus moved to the kitchen and retrieved bottles from the fridge.

  Since your girlfriend moved out? Since your wife left?

  “Since I’ve been back in Cyprus,” he said. “He’s normally with me in the city house but comes here with me in the summer. He does the gardens too. He worked for my grandparents when they lived here.”

  Liv sat and checked a little toe to confirm she was holding Phoebe, then gave the tiny baby a slow cuddle, the closeness calming her. “Gardening? Yes, I noticed your vanilla orchids out there. Do you harvest them or does someone like the flowers?”

  Markus placed Zoë on his shoulder and patted her back as he waited for the milk to warm. “Did you sleep well?” he asked. She glanced at him. Was he avoiding her questions?

  “Not so well. I was awake for a long time.” She’d try another tack. “What else do you grow apart from orchids?”

  His face was impassive. “Roses, lavender, orange, lemon, lime, pistachio, hazelnut.”

  What? He’d never been interested in gardening. A sudden pall of sadness filled her chest. She didn’t really know him anymore. A person could do so much in two years. A person could completely change.

  The knowledge of what she’d lost with him crept into her thoughts again, as it often did when she was over tired. Things could have been so different if she hadn’t been called away, if he’d been more reliable, if . . .

  She gave herself a mental shake. There was no point thinking like this. The past was the past. Since the news about Polly, Liv had vowed to focus on her future with Phoebe and Zoë, on taking them back to the States as Polly would’ve wished.

  And what about Markus? Can you abandon him again?

  She watched him take the bottle of milk from the hot water.

  If I don’t love him, I can’t abandon him. If he doesn’t love me, there’s nothing to abandon.

  She shook her head to remove the rogue thoughts. “You grow all of those things in your own garden?”

  “The milk’s ready.”

  Okay, so he was avoiding her questions and, perhaps, letting her know he wanted to keep his private life private.

  She looked out at the brightening Mediterranean and sighed as she let the beauty of her surroundings wash over her. “This is such a magical place.”

  When they were once again sitting opposite each other, ready to feed the babies as they’d done the day before, Liv had the sudden image of the next few weeks stretching out in an unchanging routine that would only get more and more familiar. The thought both frightened and thrilled her. If she wanted to make sure she didn’t develop feelings for Markus again, the easiest way would be to make sure she was around him as little as possible.

  “You don’t really need to stay away from work, you know.” She gave Phoebe the bottle, and the baby sucked hungrily, her tiny fists waving in the air. “Once I learn their routine, I’m sure I’ll be fine with the feeding. The book I was reading last night said they should sleep most of the time in the first few weeks anyway.”

  He’d done her a favor in leaving her alone for so long last night. Although it had been stressful, the fact she’d had to go through the process by herself meant she was much more confident in her ability to organize the girls’ feeds alone. And that old fear of having children, and of being responsible for the lives of others, had been dampened a little.

  “It makes sense that I help you out,” he said. “The girls are used to me now. It’s not a chore.” His eyes, which were soft when he gazed at Zoë, shuttered when they swung to look at her.

  Liv tried to sound brighter than she felt. “You could pop home a couple of times a day from your work, and you could do the bathing at night.”

  Every minute she could wrest from him, every second she could negotiate that they spent apart, was necessary for her sanity, and if she were truthful, to protect her fragile hold on her treacherous emotions. If he wasn’t in her line of sight every minute, she might not find her mind running away on itself, creating scenarios as it was now. How they could work together to raise the girls . . .

  He didn’t meet her eyes, focusing instead on Zoë in his arms. “I’ll be staying here. I can work when the girls sleep.”

  He still wanted to watch what she was doing with the girls.

  “What sort of manufacturing can you do from home?” As soon as she’d said it and his gaze snapped up to meet hers, she knew she was pushing him, moving too close, but something in her wanted to know.

  “Loukoumi.”

  The word made no sense to her. “I’m sorry . . .?”

  “We manufacture loukoumi, Turkish delight.”

  The scent of lemon, the smell of hazelnuts in his office. Of course! And then heat spread through her as something else made sense. The van
illa orchids. They were all his.

  “How lovely. Wasn’t that your grandparents’ business? With your sense of taste and smell, you must love it.” She couldn’t help the smile that pressed into her cheeks.

  They’d shared a love of smells and tastes in France—so perfect for her perfume studies. Whether it was a cinnamon stick at a street stall, a ripe piece of cheese at a local market, or the scent of salt spray in Gascony, their lives had been one sensual experience after the other.

  “It’s okay.” He shrugged, and the soft cotton of his T-shirt rippled across his wide shoulders. “I took over when my grandfather died.”

  “It’s the perfect job for you. You love wine, coffee, food and . . . the texture of Turkish delight is so mmmmm . . .”

  She froze. His gaze had grown more distant as she’d listed her intimate knowledge of him. A strong hand of regret tightened around her throat. She’d said too much, become too close, and he was locking her out, making her very aware she was unwelcome in that part of his life.

  A small crease touched his brow and his eyes slowly tracked her face, his midnight pupils growing larger. “I don’t seem to taste things the way I used to or be able to differentiate the subtleties of one smell from another. Things’ve been different in the last two years.” He didn’t look down in shame or anger but held her stare.

  “Maybe it just takes practice.” She dipped her chin and pretended to focus on straightening Phoebe’s blanket.

  She needed to step away from the familiarity of this conversation—avoid this type of connection with Markus—and get back to the impersonal nature of routine.

  But she made the mistake of looking up at him.

  From the lick of dark hair that fell haphazardly across his forehead, to the way his strong hands held the baby in his arms, she took in the whole of him. Her skin tingled at memories of his body under her hands—the way his muscle, rendered hard from skiing, rock climbing, surfing, sat taut like the strings of a fine and familiar instrument.

  And then something snapped deep inside her—maybe the wall she’d erected two years ago, maybe the shield that had existed since she was a lonely little girl, but whatever it was exposed a deep, beating part of her—and made her want to reach out to him. “Maybe you need to believe you can feel those things again and the old sensations might return.”

  As soon as the words were out, with her heart hammering in her chest, Liv knew she hadn’t been talking about taste or smell but rather about something they both knew far more intimately instead.

  “Good morning, Mr. Panos, it’s Ana-Maria Clerides,” a voice said in English, the round vowels of a Canadian accent cushioning the words.

  “This is not Mr. Panos,” Petro replied. “I will fetch him for you.” He pulled the phone receiver from his ear, but a muffled “Oh” made him listen again, and this time she spoke in Greek. “Then you must be Mr. Pantazis, the housekeeper,” the woman said, her tone more serious.

  Petro cast a look through to the living room where Liv was folding washing and continued in English. “I’ve been practicing my English a lot lately.” Two English-speaking women in two days? He hoped the one on the end of the phone wasn’t going to be employed here as well. Markus had asked to speak to him this morning but then he’d been called away suddenly. Liv was pleasant enough, with her soft smile and bright eyes, but she seemed to know very little about baby care. “I’m quite good at giving instructions for things like boiling water and folding washing,” he said.

  The beginnings of a chuckle could be heard before it was stifled.

  “We can speak in Greek if you prefer.”

  “I’m sorry, who is this?” he asked, again in English

  “I’m the social worker in charge of the twin girls.”

  “Ah.”

  Those poor, poor babies. He’d never met their mother. Markus had said she was an old friend from his home town in California, and that he had to take care of her babies after she died. He’d wondered if the girls were Markus’s daughters, but Markus hadn’t brought a woman to either his city house or the house at Aphrodite’s rock in the whole time he’d been back from Paris.

  Petro was old school. He didn’t ask until he was told. And he trusted his employer completely. If Markus wanted him to have more detail about the girls, then he’d tell him. It made sense that he’d employed Liv as the girls’ nanny, though. She spoke English, like their mother, and seemed to have known Markus for some time.

  “I’m coming to see how the babies are doing in a couple of weeks, and I wondered if I could ask you a few questions.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re employed at the house where the girls are staying, aren’t you?” Her tone was gentler.

  “I am. I’m Mr. Panos’s housekeeper at both his residences.” He took the phone into the study and sat down. Why was a social worker interested in him? To find out if he was a suitable person to be around Phoebe and Zoë? “I raised four children on my own when my wife died in her early thirties,” he said. “I cook and clean and can change diapers. I’ve offered to stay and help Markus with the night feeds, but he says both of us shouldn’t be sleep deprived.”

  “Mr. Pantazis—”

  “Petro.”

  “Petro, I’m not questioning your suitability as a member of the household.”

  “Good, because there are some members of this household who should have learned how to do some of those things in nanny school, or at least her mother should have shown her. I made sure all my children knew how to cook and clean before they left home, the girls and the boys. Now, people pay good money for nannies who don’t know the basics.” Only yesterday, Liv had put a red sweater in the wash with all the girls’ clothes that he liked to keep white. He’d been horrified when everything came out pink, but Liv had thought it hilarious.

  There was silence at the end of the line, and Petro tapped a fist against his forehead. Rats. He shouldn’t have said all that. Liv might be the most hopeless example of a nanny he’d ever seen, but he could see she cared deeply about those babies already, and he didn’t want to get her into trouble.

  “There’s a nanny in the house too? I wasn’t aware of that. Could I have her name, please?”

  This conversation was going from bad to worse.

  “Olivia’s only new,” he said quickly. “She’s American, which is good because the girls’ mother was American, so they’ll respond to her accent. She’ll learn how to do everything else. It must be difficult for her being in a new country, too.”

  “By Olivia, do you mean Ms. Bailey? The woman who’s applied to take the girls back to America?”

  Petro’s mouth fell open. “She’s taking them away from Markus? Why would she do that?”

  Questions dipped and dived inside his brain, and Petro could hear Ana-Maria dragging in a breath.

  “I’m sorry, Petro. I shouldn’t have—”

  “There’s no need for you to apologize,” he said gruffly. “Maybe my English isn’t as good as I thought it was because all of this is news to me.”

  “It’s been a very busy time and things have moved very quickly,” Ana-Maria said. “I’m sure Mr. Panos will tell you everything in time. He knows you need to undergo our good character checks also.”

  “How long will you need to interview me?” Petro asked, already planning what he was going to say to Markus about letting him think Liv was the nanny.

  “Thirty minutes should do it.” Ana-Maria’s voice was brighter, but it didn’t sound natural. “I’ll be at the house longer than that, of course—interviewing Mr. Panos and Ms. Bailey.”

  “I hope you’ll have time to stay for some afternoon tea,” Petro said as he moved out of the study and looked toward Markus’s office. “It’s always better to discuss things over a piece of cake.”

  Though she was still tired, a strange feeling of contentment settled over Liv as she enjoyed the routine of looking after the girls. To have uncapped some of the bottled emotion between her and Markus felt good,
but his proposal sat like a heavy weight between them. She hadn’t mentioned it again, and he hadn’t asked for her reply. All she could focus on right now was looking after the girls minute by minute.

  After feeding and changing the girls and putting them back down, Markus had taken an urgent Zoom call in his office, and she was glad of the time apart if only to stop the growing desire to be near him.

  Late morning, the phone rang in the foyer. She heard Petro answer it and forgot about it until, stone-faced, he walked over to where she sat folding washing and handed her the phone.

  “It’s for you,” he said briskly, not meeting her gaze. “Where is Markus? I need to speak to him.”

  Confused and instantly curious why anyone would want to speak with her, Liv nodded in the direction of the office wing. “He said he had an urgent call.” Petro glowered, harrumphed, and marched off.

  “Hello?”

  “Ms. Bailey?” Liv’s gut curled in response to a woman’s voice. Was it his mother? A girlfriend?

  “It’s Ana-Maria Clerides. I’m calling to let you know I’ll be making a home visit next Tuesday. It’s important we see the girls’ needs are being met, and that Mr. Panos and you are managing to care for them appropriately. I’ve also booked the girls in for a medical check with a doctor appointed by the Service for Families and Children. It’s on the fifteenth.”

  “Of course,” Liv said, relieved it was the social worker. She started as Petro marched from the office, flung open the French doors and stormed out, with Markus in hot pursuit.

  “I’ll want to see the girls of course, but I’d like to interview you and Mr. Panos both separately and together. I’ve also spoken to Mr. Panos’s housekeeper, and I’ll want to interview him as well.”

  Liv sat straighter in the chair. Judging by Petro’s reaction to the telephone call and speaking to Markus, Markus had just told him the whole story and he was not happy about being dragged into it. Another thought struck her like a hammer to her chest.