The Millionaire's Marriage Proposal

by Joanne Walsh

  “Is that what I’m doing? Stamping on her dream?”

  Sergei nodded again. “And your own too.” He smiled ruefully. “You’ve always craved a family you can call your own, and Sally’s giving you that chance. Don’t blow it. Think of the child that needs both its parents.” He pulled out his phone. “Okay, time to stop feeling sorry for yourself,” he said briskly. “Go get yourself cleaned up. I’m calling Nik. We’ll catch a cab down to Artemis and drink and eat the night away. You can turn this around.”

  *

  After a night of tossing and turning, Dimitri rose just before dawn and made his way down to the olive grove. Sitting on the ground, he leaned his head—which was a little tender after last night’s Metaxas—against the gnarled trunk of a tree, watching the misty purple-and-gold sunrise and letting himself be soothed by the first birdsong.

  A wry smile curved his lips. Wise old owl Sergei had touched his heart with his common sense, and then, at the bar, Nik had steered him into a corner and urged him to sort himself out in pretty much the same way. Sergei had been right about having his own family, blood ties that would give him a sense of belonging. But that was not to say he didn’t cherish his other family—his adoptive brothers. They were his very best friends, had always been there for him, ready to catch him when he fell, and knock some sense into him when he needed it—last night included.

  He stared up to the leafy canopy above him, where chinks of soft morning light peeped through. Both Sergei and Nik had urged him to walk out of the shadow cast by his mama. It would be hard. Although he couldn’t remember her or the way she died, he knew what had happened to her and the details had wormed their way inside his soul. His mouth twisted. It was weird. The pain he felt about her was the only thing he actually had left of her; there were no memories or actual keepsakes.

  A falling olive bounced off his forearm onto the ground next to him, startling him. He reached out to pick it up, studying its green plumpness between his fingers. It’d fallen from a tree most likely planted by one of his ancestors, who’d been tenant workers on this estate for over a century before he was born. That was why he’d strived to buy this land, piece by piece, and reclaim it; his DNA was in this soil…and Calliope’s…

  Lobbing the olive away, he burrowed his fingers into the dry, rocky earth next to him. Why the hell hadn’t he realized that before? Her essence was right here, flowering through the years in every bush and vine; he had no need to cling to the darkness that had surrounded her. He pushed himself to his feet. “Mama,” he whispered into the breeze, “somehow, I’ll find a way. I’ll figure out how to bring Sally and your grandchild home to you. To where we all belong.”

  And was startled by the flutter of wings against his cheek as a tiny bird flashed past him…

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “McTavish! Here, boy! Walkies!”

  Clasping his leash, Sally looked around the comfortable sitting room, filled with furniture that bore the signs of years of animal attention; a chewed leg here, and a chair arm there, with stuffing spilling from rips delivered by claws. There was no sign of her pet.

  “He’s in here with me.” Alison’s voice floated along the hall.

  She made her way to the kitchen, where she found Alison surrounded as usual by the cats, and by McTavish, who rushed over, yapping his pleasure.

  “Fancy a cup of tea before your walk?” Alison asked as Sally knelt to rub the dog’s ears. “I’ve just brewed a pot. Open up the French window for me, will you? We can sit outside, and McTavish has the garden if he needs to do his business urgently.”

  Settling herself down on the patio, Sally stared at her phone. There were a dozen or more calls from Dimitri, although he’d not left a voice message with any of them. She blew out a breath. She was angry, but she loved him and missed him like crazy too. Or at least, she loved and missed the man she used to know. She grimaced. That man would never have got spooked or ordered her around. Where had that Dimitri disappeared to?

  Now there was a new text message from him.

  Please can we talk? I have something to tell you.

  Frowning, she bit her lip.

  “You’re going to have to speak with him sometime,” Alison observed, pouring the tea.

  “I know.” Placing the handset screen-down on the table, she picked up her mug, cradling her hands around it. “He says he has something to tell me. Ali, I don’t know what to do for the best. I refuse to be pushed around anymore, but then I think about the baby, and how terribly I miss him. Or at least, I miss how he used to be. That’s the bit I really don’t understand, why he’s being like this.” She shook her head. “In my darkest moments, I wonder if I’ve been taken for a fool again. That this was his plan all along to get me pregnant then keep me barefoot in the kitchen.”

  Alison snorted. “That sounds rather dramatic, don’t you think?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time I wasn’t proposed to for love.”

  “Sweetheart, Dimitri’s not Manos. For a start, you actually love him, and personally, I don’t believe for a minute he’s deceiving you. This has to do with the incident at the store. It’s really rattled him.”

  “I guess. But that’s what really doesn’t make sense. The old Dimitri would’ve taken it in his stride, I’m sure of it, not started babbling about strangers. Or let Selene do his dirty work.”

  Alison surveyed her thoughtfully. “I’ve always felt he is the most complex of Drusilla’s boys.”

  Raising her chin, she glanced at her friend. “Complex? What do you mean?”

  “He wasn’t always the confident, dynamic person you see now. I remember when Drusilla and Ian first adopted him as a toddler. He was this little scrap who was terrified of strangers.”

  “He did say he was painfully shy as a young kid, until Manos befriended him at school.” She fiddled with her engagement ring. “Hang on, when he asked me to marry him, I distinctly recall him saying about our little family…what was it?” She screwed up her eyes as she tried to remember. “It had to do with his birth mother. Ali, do you know anything about her?”

  “Drusilla never shared, but there were people in the village who remembered her. Of course, things were far more conservative in those days,” Alison grimaced, “and Calliope was known locally as a bad girl.”

  “Really?” Sally’s eyebrows shot up. “By ‘bad,’ you mean, Calliope got herself pregnant out of wedlock?”

  “Something like that.”

  She eyed her friend. “And you think it may have something to do with how he’s acting now?”

  Alison shrugged. “I think you need to talk to him.”

  “Can’t you give me more?”

  Giving an inscrutable smile, Alison leaned down to stroke Persephone, who was slinking around her chair leg. “It’s just a hunch I have.”

  Sally gazed at her phone once more. She knew very well Ali was dropping hints to encourage her to contact him, but what if there actually was something in his past that held the key to why he’d turned into somebody she barely recognized? She glanced up. “Ali, would you excuse me? I need to go make that call.”

  *

  Her phone beeped. Hopefully, it was a message from Dimitri; he should have been here twenty minutes ago. She huffed out a sigh and checked her screen: the text was from the guy who owned a smallholding just outside Trapazakia, confirming he could supply Sally’s with goat’s cheese and milk. She huffed again. Her nerves were twanging like violin strings, but she needed to calm down.

  Where was he? She’d replied to his request yesterday, suggesting they meet at the store because she felt stronger being here, where she intended to be from now on. Scowling, she peered out of the window; a storm was forecast to finally break the heat, and the sky was beginning to look quite dark and threatening. Maybe he’d stayed up at the estate, wasn’t going to turn up. I’ll give him a few minutes more. Distracting herself by banging out a reply to Goat Guy, she’d just pressed send when the antique bell that she’d had Hecto
r install above the door to herald new customers tinkled.

  “Hey,” Dimitri said, his rich voice resonating around the space. “Sorry I’m late. I got held up.”

  “Hi!” She forced a breezy greeting, despite her pulse immediately starting up a rapid tattoo. Dressed very casually in a shirt and jeans, with a few days’ growth of beard darkening his jaw, he looked tired—but so damn hot. No, no, no! What was wrong with her? That was not the way she needed their meeting to go…

  He took a couple of paces forward. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.” Then, a diffident smile playing across his lips, he surprised her by bringing out a blue and pink striped gift bag filled with blush-coloured tissue paper from behind his back. “I had an early meeting in Paragolis today, and while I was there, this caught my eye. I could not resist.”

  “What is it?” After wiping her damp palms on her jeans, frowning, she took the bag from him. Pushing the tissue aside, she peeped in. She could see two long, brown and white ears. She lifted out a soft toy. “It’s a rabbit! Oh my, he’s so cute,” she said, breaking into a smile.

  “You like him? The toyshop owner advised he is ideal for a newborn.”

  “I love him,” she confirmed huskily, emotion almost closing up her throat, “and our baby will too. Thank you.”

  “You are welcome.” His gaze raked silently over her.

  A stupid urge to fling herself into his arms almost overwhelmed her, but she willed herself to stay strong and rooted to her spot. This was another pants moment, and they had serious things to discuss.

  “How are you?” he asked eventually. “You look well.”

  “I’m fine. Still tired in the evenings.”

  He nodded, and another awkward silence followed before he said, “So, Hector and his guys are just doing the finishing touches.” He glanced around him. “It is looking good. Are you pleased with their work?”

  “Very,” she replied, her fingers playing nervously with the bunny’s furry ears.

  “Has Hector told you that the security firm will be in next week to fit the new system?”

  “Yes. Oh!” A sudden, violent flash of lightning made her jump and the toy dropped to the floor. Bending over to pick it up, she nearly collided with him, her heart hammering as he grabbed hold of her elbows.

  He opened his mouth, but his words were drowned out by a near-deafening clap of thunder. Another blinding flash followed, and she swivelled her gaze towards the window as the heavens opened outside, hitting the ground that was too parched to absorb it, creating torrents that flowed and bubbled. Dimitri reached out to put his fingers under her chin and turned her back to face him. Even in the flickering light, she could see the pain in his eyes.

  “Pethi mou,” he said in a soft, low voice, stroking her cheek, “I know how badly I messed up. All I intended was to keep you safe, but I didn’t think hard enough about what you wanted. Will you forgive me?”

  *

  For long minutes, she didn’t answer, and the only sound was the rain as it smashed against the cobbles outside. Finally, she whispered, “Why, Dimitri? I’ve been round and round in my head trying to work out why you—”

  Impulsively, he captured her lips with his.

  For seconds, she stayed frozen, but then her fingers crept up to thread into his hair, and her mouth began moving against his until she was kissing him hungrily. How good and right it felt to be melded together again with her like this.

  Forcing himself to pull back, he rested his forehead against hers, murmuring, “Let’s find a place to sit and I’ll tell you why.”

  They settled on the floor over by the rain-streaked window, Sally retrieving the rabbit and hugging it to her. As he shifted into a comfortable position, he thought about how he’d not opened up to anyone since Drusilla told him what she knew about Calliope. He’d been a teenager then, and the pain of finally hearing the truth of what had happened to his real mother had been immense. He bent his head. Drusilla herself had passed away only a few months later after a cardiac arrest. Ian always said she’d died of a broken heart after losing Marco. So, his own heart had been doubly broken.

  “Sally, look at me.” Pulling himself together, he touched her arm, and she met his sober gaze. “I realize now my insistence that you stay home until the baby is born was harsh and unfair. But after what that thug did—” He paused. “It’s hard to explain what was going through my mind, but now I’ve had time to reflect, talk with my brothers, I think that my reaction had to do with something in my earliest life.”

  “Calliope?”

  He stared at her. “You know about her?”

  “Only a tiny bit from what Alison said yesterday. She told me to talk to you.”

  He took in a ragged breath. “So you never heard the gossip? Manos never said anything?”

  She shrugged. “Manos and I never really discussed anything much.”

  “I guess not. And, by the time you came to the island, the rumour-mill had pretty much stopped grinding on about it.” He smiled bitterly. “So, you never got to know that I am the son of a prostitute?”

  Chapter Thirty

  “Oh, Dimitri!” Her eyes wide, Sally hugged the bunny tighter. “Ali said that Calliope had a reputation as the local bad girl, which I assumed meant she got pregnant without being married.”

  “The truth is sadder. My grandparents were tenant workers at Skalos—”

  “Was that why you bought the estate?” she put in. “Because it’s where your birth family farmed and lived?”

  He nodded. “When I turned eighteen, Ian gave me money to buy a parcel of its land as he hoped it would help me come to terms with my history, discover myself. Skalos was being sold off after its previous owner passed away, so, I bought that piece to begin with, then another and another, until I had acquired it all, including the farmhouse and outbuildings. Then I owned the land generations of my ancestors had worked.”

  “Wow,” she breathed, “that’s amazing. But what happened to Calliope?”

  He took a deep breath. “You need to know that this doesn’t have a happy ending.” When she nodded, he continued, “She wanted more than the hard life on the land Skalos had to offer and left as soon as she could for Paragolis. But it seems she didn’t find what she was looking for in the city and, too proud to go home, sold her body to survive. Drusilla always said my father may have been an Italian sailor.” He swallowed. “She was found strangled in the room she rented near the docks, probably by one of her clients. I was discovered clinging to her body, crying and hungry. I was two years old, and she’d been deceased for three days. She was pregnant with another child, which also died.”

  “Oh my God,” Sally choked, instantly putting the rabbit down and reaching to curl her hand around his, holding it tight. “You-you don’t remember her being killed, do you?”

  He shook his head, fighting back his own tears now. “I don’t remember anything at all,” he replied thickly. “When I was fifteen, and she thought I was old enough to understand, Drusilla told me the details. The likelihood was, I was around when Calliope entertained her johns, so maybe I witnessed it but was too young to process it.”

  “What happened then?” Sally asked, using her other hand to wipe her eyes.

  “Calliope’s family didn’t want me, so I spent time in an orphanage and then the local priest arranged my adoption through the church. But it wasn’t easy for Ian and Drusilla because I did not learn to speak for over a year after they took me on. Later, when I got to school, there was more trouble.”

  “Trouble?”

  He nodded. “The village was rife with rumours about Calliope. Back then, who she was and how she died was considered shameful. I was the prostitute’s son, and the other kids bullied me for it, although at the time, I didn’t quite understand why.” He winced. “I just knew I didn’t have a real mama anymore, but they said she was bad. Thank God for my brothers and Manos. Without them, I wouldn’t have survived.”

  “I had absolutely no idea.” She leaned
her head back against the window. “I’m kind of surprised I didn’t because I got to know quite a few other scandalous things through serving the villagers in the shop.”

  “Rumour central, eh? The gossip was at its worst when I was a kid. It actually drove most of Calliope’s relatives out of Agia Kalamaros. There’s only one aunt, her older sister, Konstantina, who remains, but she’s never acknowledged me.” He shook his head. “Ian always said that when Marco disappeared, it gave them something else to talk about.”

  “Now I understand why the incident here distressed you so much.” She gazed around at her surroundings. “Why you spoke about a stranger taking your world. You were thinking of Calliope and her baby.”

  “I guess I was,” he sighed. “There was something inside me, like an echo. I felt intense fear, and my instinct was to wrap you up and hide you, so you and our child wouldn’t be taken from me too.” He squeezed her hand. “But since you went to Alison’s, I talked with my brothers, spent time out on the estate thinking. I had to find a way to banish her ghost yet keep her memory alive.”

  “And have you?” She sat up straighter.

  He shrugged. “The solution has been there all along. I’m embracing her spirit instead, which is all around me at Skalos, where she was born. Every time we pick an olive or a grape, I will remember that Calliope’s essence is in each one, along with my ancestors’.”

  “Dimitri, that’s so lovely,” she replied huskily. Then she pursed her lips thoughtfully. “But do you think that’s enough? I mean, you experienced trauma, and perhaps, you need to seek some kind of support too. Therapy or something.”

  Smiling, he shook his head. “I don’t think so. I have my family and friends and my work. They’re therapy enough.”

  “Okay. Well, now, I shall toast Calliope’s essence too every time I sip some Skalos red.”