‘What else did he have to say?’
‘Again and again that he would deny paternity. That being a sperm donor didn’t make him a father.’
‘Good point. And why would you want him as the father?’
She made a gesture of despair with her hands. ‘I guess he has good genes. He’s handsome. Intelligent. Good at sport. I used to think he was kind.’
‘What does the guy do for a living?’
‘He’s a civil engineer.’
Alex groaned.
‘What was that for?’ Dell asked.
‘You should have added boring to his list of genetic attributes.’
That elicited a watery smile from Dell. ‘I guess I should. He always was a tad on the dull side. But I traded that for security. How did I put up with it for so long?’
‘Because you really wanted a kid and you thought he’d be a safe bet?’
‘Something like that, I guess,’ she said. ‘There I was married and living in the suburbs at age twenty-two while you were building up your fortune.’
‘Partying was a far less boring profession,’ he said. ‘But back then you wouldn’t have looked at me, would you?’
‘Probably not. I was far too prim.’
‘Were you really? I find that very difficult to believe. I suspect you’re a very passionate woman. When I kissed you I—’
‘That’s a no-go zone, Alex,’ she warned. ‘Can we change the subject?’
‘Back to your boring, bad-tempered husband?’
That brought another smile. ‘If you put it that way. Actually, I think I’ll think of him that way from now on—Neil the BBTH.’
‘The Boring Bad-Tempered Ex-Husband, you mean,’ he said.
She giggled. ‘Okay, the BBT Ex-H.’ He was glad he could make her laugh. The phone call must have been traumatic.
‘It’s a mouthful. Why not settle on BX, boring ex, for short?’ he said. He could think of much worse things he could call her odious former husband. ‘Boring is worse than bad-tempered. We all have our bad-tempered moments.’
‘BX he shall be from now on.’ She sobered. ‘Deep down I guess I hoped he might want to have some kind of contact—for the baby’s sake, not mine. Back then he wanted a child as much as I did. But perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps he’s right. Am I being selfish in having this child on my own? Maybe it’s always been about my need to have a baby.’
‘Isn’t that how most people decide to have children? Because they want them?’ he asked. ‘Not that I know a lot about it.’
‘Perhaps. But that’s all beside the point, isn’t it? I’m going to love this baby enough for two parents. There are worse ways to come into the world than being utterly loved, aren’t there?’ She sounded in need of reassurance.
‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘Your baby will be lucky to have a mother like you.’
But a child needed a father. Alex had had his differences with his father, but he’d always been there loving and supporting him. Dell’s child would grow up without that constant male presence. Of course, she might marry again, meet someone like Jesse Morgan who would be a father to her child. He pulled the ‘off’ switch on that train of thought. He couldn’t bear to think of Dell with another man. He’d been called selfish too.
‘One last thing the BX told me was that his new wife was pregnant. Therefore all the problems we had were my fault.’ Her voice broke. ‘There was nothing wrong with him—no, siree—it was me who was the failure. Me who put him through all that. And if I insisted on going ahead with this pregnancy I’d better get myself checked out to see if I was actually capable of carrying a child.’ Her last words came out so choked he could hardly hear them.
Alex could feel a bad-tempered moment of mammoth proportions threatening to erupt. Was there a hitman among all those contacts in Sydney? He ran through all the swear words he knew in both English and Greek. None was strong enough to express his contempt for Dell’s ex-husband.
He gritted his teeth. ‘Lucky he’s not here because if he was I’d—’
‘Whatever you’d do I’d do worse.’
‘Dell, you’re better off without that...that jerk. So is your child.’
‘You’re absolutely right. In some ways the encounter with him is a relief. I don’t have to worry about the BX ever again.’ Dell spat out the initials so they came out sounding like the worst kind of swear words. She took a deep, heaving breath. ‘I was so worried about him, now I won’t have to worry. If he denies paternity, that’s good too. It might make it easier for me to get help if that’s the case.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Back home in Sydney, if I have to apply for a supporting mothers’ benefit, I will have to name the father and try to get support from him—something I never intended to do, by the way. If I put “father unknown” it might not make me look very good but I could get help for a while if needed.’
Anguish that this spirited, warm, intelligent woman should be in that position tore through him. ‘Dell, don’t go back to Sydney. Have the baby here. You’re entitled to maternity leave. Your job would still be waiting for you. You wouldn’t have to beg for help from your parents or the government or anyone else.’
Tears glistened in her green eyes and she scrubbed them away with her finger. It left a smear of black make-up that made her look more woebegone. ‘Thank you, Alex. That’s incredibly kind of you. I love it here but...but I don’t want to give birth to my baby surrounded by strangers. I have to go home, no matter what I might face.’
Alex stared at her for a long moment. A stranger. That was all he was to her. That was all he’d let himself be. The realisation felt like another giant kick to his gut.
He had to pull himself together, not let her know how her words had affected him. ‘The offer is still there,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘I truly appreciate it.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘But we have work to do.’ She didn’t seem to realise she was wringing her hands together. ‘Now that we’ve got personal, it might be time for me to ask you about Mia. I have to know how to spin your story before the media goes off on their own wild tangents. I’m going to fix my face. When I get back I need to talk to you.’
Mia. When would he ever be able to talk about his guilt over what had happened? But if there was anyone he could open up to, it would be Dell.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DELL HAD BEEN trying to bring up the story of Alex’s late fiancée for some time but she’d never quite found the courage to do so. The stricken look on his face told her no time would be the right time.
‘I... I’m sorry if I sounded blunt,’ she said. ‘But you know the launch of the resort will mean you coming back into the spotlight. As soon as that happens all the stories of the siege and...and Mia’s death will be resuscitated. The personal story will always override the business one. I don’t need to remind you that the anniversary of the siege is coming up. Let’s give the media a story before they go burrowing for one.’
Alex slid both hands through his hair to cradle his head with such an abject look it tore at her heart. ‘I knew this was coming,’ he said. ‘I suppose I can’t put it off for longer?’
Dell shook her head. She felt mean forcing him to talk. But this was about helping launch his new venture. ‘If we could give an exclusive interview to, say, one of the weekend newspaper magazines we might be able to control it to some degree.’
Alex looked barely capable of standing. ‘Why don’t we sit over on the chairs so I can take notes?’ she suggested tactfully.
‘Sure,’ he said.
Once they were seated—him opposite her, so close she had to slant her legs to avoid their knees touching—she decided to conduct this as if it were an interview.
‘Alex, I know how difficult this is for you. Well, I don’t really have any idea
but I’m trying to imagine the unimaginable. I’m aware that Mia was the love of your life and what a tremendous blow it must have been to have lost her under such shocking and public circumstances. After she...she died you disappeared from Sydney. What people will want to know is where you went, why you did so, and how it led to the development of Pevezzo Athina. Try to answer me so we can work out what we tell the media.’
He was silent for a long time. Dell became very aware she might be overstepping the mark. But this was her job, why he had brought her to Greece. She wasn’t interviewing Alex her boss, her friend, the man she was in serious danger of falling in love with. This was Alexios Mikhalis, multimillionaire tycoon, ruthless businessman, man who’d led a charmed life until that terrible moment a maniac had walked into his restaurant brandishing a gun and had grabbed Alex’s beautiful fiancée as hostage.
The silence was getting uncomfortable before he finally spoke, his words slow and measured. ‘As far as the media is concerned, I was so devastated by the tragic loss of my fiancée I decided to get as far away from Sydney as possible. It made sense that I went to Greece, to the place my grandfather came from, where I still had extended family and could remain anonymous. I stayed with my relatives, worked with them on their fishing boats and in their olive groves, even waited tables in the family taverna.’
‘Getting your hands dirty? Grounding yourself?’
‘That’s a good way to put it,’ he said. ‘You could say I found peace in the glorious surroundings and wanted to share it with others. I came up with the concept of a holistic resort where our guests could also find peace.’
Dell scribbled on her notepad, not wanting to meet his eyes, too scared of what she might see there. ‘Have you found peace, Alex?’
‘I’m still seeking it. I think you know that.’
She looked up. ‘Can I say guests can come to heal?’ she asked tentatively. ‘Like you healed?’
‘You can say that,’ he said.
Could the scars he bore ever really heal? For the press release she had to take his words at surface value.
‘And you bought a private island? The media will be very interested in that.’
‘That is a matter of public record, so yes, I should certainly talk about Kosmimo. Not, however, about the most recent owner.’
‘What about the island’s link to your family?’
‘Many years ago, Kosmimo was owned by my ancestors. Circumstances conspired to allow me to buy it back. I will never let the island get out of my family’s hands again.’
Dell turned a new page of her notebook. ‘Sounds like the perfect sound bite. That will make an excellent story. Especially back in Sydney with the city’s obsession with real estate.’
He cracked a half-smile at that. She braced herself for the next question, knowing it would vanquish his smile. ‘Alex, I have to ask about your private life.’
As predicted, his smile tightened into a grim line. ‘I have no private life,’ he said. ‘The media will find nothing titillating about me and other women.’
Unless someone recognised him kissing his assistant on the Acropolis, Dell thought.
‘Because you could never find a woman to live up to Mia?’
‘You can tell that to the media,’ he said. ‘But the truth is quite different.’ He leaned forward with his hands on his knees so his face was only inches from her. She breathed in the already familiar scent of him. The scent that made her feel giddy with the hopelessness of her crush on him, made even deeper by those kisses on the Acropolis. Kisses she revisited every night in her dreams.
‘The truth is only for your ears,’ he continued. ‘I meant what I said on the Acropolis that day.’
She held her breath not daring to say anything, realising how important this was to him. And perhaps significant to her.
‘The truth is I feel so damn guilty I sent Mia to her death that I will never be able to commit to another woman.’ His eyes were shadowed with immeasurable sorrow.
Dell gasped. ‘But you didn’t send her to her death. How could you possibly believe that? The gunman chose your restaurant at random. It was sheer bad luck Mia was there at the time. It could have been any of your staff. It could have been you.’
His face darkened in a grimace, his voice was grave and low. ‘You don’t know how many times I wished it had been me...’
Dell swallowed hard. She didn’t know that she was capable of replying the right way to such a statement. But out of compassion—and her regard for him—she would try. ‘Alex, you can’t mean that. You cannot punish yourself for something that was completely out of your hands.’
He spoke through gritted teeth. ‘It was my fault Mia was there that day. It should have been her day off.’
Dell frowned. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘Here’s something you wouldn’t have read in the press. I insisted she go in to work when the head chef was injured in an accident. Mia and I argued about that. One argument led to another. Until it ended up where it always ended up. My tardiness in setting a date for the wedding. We hadn’t resolved it when she stormed out. Mia went to her death worrying that I didn’t really love her. That’s what I can’t live with.’
Dell realised she had been holding her breath. She let it out in a long sigh. ‘Oh, Alex. I’m so sorry.’ She reached out and laid her hand on top of his. ‘But you were engaged to be married. She would have known you loved her.’
He choked out the words. ‘Or suspected that I didn’t love her enough.’
‘I can’t believe that’s true.’
He got up from the chair. Started to pace the room. Dell got up too, stood anchored by the edge of her desk. She had long stopped taking notes. These revelations were strictly off the record.
‘You have to understand the place I was in at the time I met Mia. Settling down with one woman hadn’t been on the agenda. I was growing the business at a relentless pace. One new venture after the other.’
‘To prove you could do it, to prove to your family that you’d made the right choices for yourself.’
He stopped his pacing. ‘That’s perceptive of you. I’d never thought of it that way, but you’re right.’
‘It left no time for dating?’ She knew about the string of glamorous blonde women he had been seen with on any social occasion where a photographer had been present.
‘I made it very clear to the women I dated that I was not interested in commitment. I didn’t have the time, or the inclination.’
‘Then you met Mia.’ Their love story had been rehashed over and over again in the media.
‘Mia...she made me change my mind.’
‘She was beautiful.’ It hurt Dell to talk about the woman who had won his heart and met such a tragic end. But she wanted to understand him. And not just because she needed to for her job. That was the craziness of a crush on a man who wanted nothing to do with you. You wanted to find out everything you could about him. Because that was all you would ever have.
‘Mia was beautiful, fun, a super-talented chef and liked to party hard and work hard like I did. I was smitten. I still didn’t feel ready to settle down. But if I wanted Mia in my life I had to make a commitment or lose her. Those were her terms.’
‘Quite rightly too,’ Dell murmured in sudden solidarity with his late fiancée.
He paused. ‘She would have liked you.’
‘I think I might have liked her.’ Would she have been jealous of Mia? It was a pointless question. Back then she’d been too busy with her marriage and her desire to start a family to even think about another man. No matter how attractive. No matter how unattainable.
‘I can tell myself over and over that it was fate she was in the restaurant at the wrong time. But fate had nothing to do with me beginning to question if Mia was the right person to be my lifetime partner. And not bei
ng honest enough to tell her.’
‘So that’s where the guilt comes from,’ Dell said slowly. ‘But if you don’t forgive yourself you’ll go crazy. Mia loved you. She wouldn’t have wanted you to live your life alone. It’s been nearly three years, Alex. Wouldn’t she have wanted you to move on?’
‘Meeting you showed me I could be attracted to another woman, Dell. I thought that would never happen. You don’t want to talk about that day in Athens. But I meant what I said. That doesn’t mean I intend to commit to another woman ever again.’
‘It’s as well I’m out of bounds because of my pregnancy, then,’ she said, trying to sound as uninterested as if she were discussing someone else.
For her own self-protection she had to do that. Did he realise how hurtful he sounded? Or was he still so caught up in his grief and guilt he didn’t realise that the best thing that could happen to him was to let himself love again? If not with her then with someone else. And when that happened, she wanted to be far, far away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THREE PEOPLE INVITED Dell to the party to celebrate Alex’s Aunt Penelope’s seventy-fifth birthday on the coming Saturday. Aunt Penelope herself. Alex’s cousin Cristos. And then Alex.
Dell had told the first two she would have to check with Alex before she could accept. She hadn’t missed their exchange of sly smiles at her words. She had protested that Alex was her boss and she was accountable to him. Aunt Penelope had replied, with a knowing nod, that in Greece the man was always the boss. Dell had decided not to argue with the older woman on that one.
When Alex invited her to the party she told him about the other two. His eyes narrowed at the mention of the invitation from Cristos. Surely he couldn’t be jealous of his handsome cousin? She quite liked the little flicker of satisfaction she got from that. Cristos was, in fact, extraordinarily good-looking. But the only man Dell had eyes for was Alex. Much good that it did her.
‘The party will be at the original Taverna Athina on Prasinos,’ he said. ‘Of course you will come. I promised to take you there one day, if you recall.’
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