His eyes flew to hers, cinnamon clashing with burnt butter. ‘I never speak about him.’
‘I didn’t mean to be invasive.’
He frowned, because, strangely, he hadn’t felt that she was. ‘It’s fine.’ He flipped onto his back, staring at the sky. ‘If we are to convince Kosta that I am a changed and happily married man, it’s important we know each other well. We have no way of knowing what conversations will come up when we are at Kalatheros.’
He didn’t see the small frown that crossed Alice’s face, so couldn’t have guessed the reason for it.
‘I was not afraid of him, but nor did I feel affection for him. I suppose, if anything, I was wary of him.’
‘Wary of your own father?’
Thanos nodded, a muscle jerking in his jaw. ‘He was...erratic, at best. And I think he didn’t like me, so what time we spent together was shaped by that dislike.’
‘That would have been very hard to live with.’
He appreciated that she didn’t try to argue with him. He could have imagined an outsider might have insisted that of course Dion had liked him. But Thanos was no fool, and his father’s sentiments had been made abundantly clear over the years.
‘I didn’t particularly like him either,’ Thanos quipped, in a futile attempt to lighten the mood. ‘Leonidas—my half-brother—is only three months older. When my mother left me on Dion’s doorstep, it heralded the end of my father’s marriage.’
‘Because you were...’
‘Proof he’d cheated,’ Thanos finished for Alice. ‘Though I’m sure Leonidas’s mother must have known even before I showed up. My mother was not the only mistress Dion spent time with.’
He looked at Alice in time to catch the sympathy in her expression. Strangely, he didn’t resent it in the way he usually might. Thanos never welcomed sympathy or pity. Even as a child, he’d pushed back against those emotions.
‘That’s not your fault, though. How could he dislike you, because of it?’
Thanos let out a soft laugh. ‘I was also a pretty unlovable child.’
Alice didn’t laugh in response. ‘How can you say that about yourself?’
‘It’s true. Even my own mother couldn’t bear to be with me.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because it is honest.’ He reached a finger out, tracing the line of her lower lip. ‘The last thing she said to me, before leaving me at Dion’s—a man I didn’t even know existed—was that she couldn’t handle being my mother any more.’
Alice’s sharp intake of breath did something to his gut. The wall of cement he kept locked in place to shield those memories from prying minds and fingers developed a crack. He welded over it, plastering a dismissive smile on his face.
‘I was a handful. I don’t blame her.’
‘Well, I do!’ she snapped. ‘How could she say that to you? At eight years old!’
‘I probably deserved it.’
Alice glared at him. ‘No eight-year-old deserves that.’
‘I was stubborn, sullen, demanding, and difficult.’
‘So are all kids. In different measure, admittedly,’ she said, a little frown forming on her face. ‘But if she really felt like that, then there had to have been other options besides just depositing you with a father you didn’t know you had.’
‘It was a strange reality to find myself in,’ he said truthfully, remembering that first afternoon, walking around the mansion, the servants’ whispers filling his young ears, Leonidas’s mother’s shrieks burning them.
The knowledge, weeks later, that he was responsible for breaking up their family.
He turned away from her, his expression suddenly stony.
‘Do you ever speak to her now?’
‘No.’
‘God.’ Alice reached a hand out and curved her fingers over his forearm. ‘That’s a really awful thing to have gone through.’
He shrugged. ‘I guess so. But you know what?’
‘What?’ Her voice was thick with emotion.
‘It gave me Leonidas.’ He turned to face her. ‘I don’t have much of a mom or a dad, but I have a brother who also happens to be my best friend. And I think sometimes the war zone we grew up in—parents who were always fighting, our dad going through a string of wives who were all destined to be disposed of within a year or two of the marriage—meant we grew even closer. You know?’
‘Sure, like a shared trauma,’ she agreed. ‘I can definitely see that.’
‘So when we realised the extent of his criminal activities, it was sort of easy to just emotionally detach from the mess he’d made. We cut him out of our lives and focussed on what really mattered.’
‘Rebuilding your wealth?’
‘The wealth, sure, but, more importantly, our grandfather’s legacy. We spent a lot of time with him. He was the one who really raised us. We both felt we owed it to him to fix what our father had done.’
There was silence except for the gentle lapping of salt water against the side of the yacht.
‘I think what you did is amazing.’
He jerked his gaze to hers.
‘I mean it,’ she insisted, perhaps intuiting his surprise. ‘To come out of the scandal and shock of what your father did, to put it behind you, to focus on making good from bad—that’s not something everyone has the strength to do.’
‘But you do,’ he said, after a moment, making the connection easily.
‘You think?’
‘Sure. Look at how you’re caring for your mom. You’re a young woman who’s put her mother ahead of everything else, who’s doing all that is good and right because you love her. What’s that if not layering good over bad?’
Alice shook her head softly. ‘What else could I do?’
‘You’ve given up just about everything for her.’
‘She gave up everything for me.’
‘How so?’
Alice gnawed on her lip. He lifted a thumb and padded it over her lip, so she stopped, her eyes huge when they met his. ‘We were really poor.’ Her cheeks flushed with pink as she made the admission and he wondered, for a moment, if she was embarrassed to admit that to him. ‘And Mom was incredibly bright. She should have had a dream career before her, but instead she got pregnant with me and had to work really hard just to keep her head above water.’
‘What about your father?’
Alice closed her book, placing it on the deck beside her. The sunshine bounced off the cover, making it sparkle.
‘I never knew him.’
‘They weren’t married?’
‘No.’
‘And he wasn’t in your life?’
‘Not at all.’
Thanos frowned, wondering if this was why she hadn’t questioned his assertion that Dion simply hadn’t liked him. She understood, apparently better than most, that the bonds of parenthood didn’t necessarily guarantee love and loyalty of the life-laying-down variety. Unless... ‘Is he dead?’
Her smile was genuinely amused. ‘No. You think a guy has to be dead to be a deadbeat dad?’
‘Of course not.’
Alice sighed softly, her breath brushing his temples, so he felt a kick of desire that almost overwhelmed him with an urge to act on it.
‘My mother was only nineteen when she met him. She thought they were in love. He seduced her, promised her the world, slept with her and then vanished into thin air.’ She cleared her throat. ‘It’s part of the reason I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid with Clinton, you know? I was so determined I wouldn’t become my mother and then I walked right into the exact same situation. It’s almost like all her warning me off men somehow tempted fate and led me right to the same kind of douche who’d broken her heart.’
Thanos nodded thoughtfully. ‘There are some men out there who get a kick out of hurting
women.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know if that’s what it was with either of them. Clinton was immature and, yes, he did hurt me. But my father was so much worse. He made a calculated and determined effort to seduce my mom. He really did promise her so much, and he fought for her to fall in love with him. He set out to hurt her, I think.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Sport? A game? Power? I can’t fathom it. But it’s irrefutable that he went out of his way to make her love him and then vanished.’
Thanos frowned. ‘When she discovered she was pregnant, did she contact him?’
‘Yeah.’ Alice’s voice was hoarse. ‘Even then, she wanted to believe it had all been some kind of mistake, that he’d been called away on urgent family business or something. She loved him. She thought it was a dream come true.’
Alice reached her hand out, grabbing the soda that was at her side, and took a sip, replacing it with a little frown on her pink lips. ‘He did everything he could to evade her, and when she finally caught up with him, she discovered he was engaged to someone else. Her world came crashing down around her that afternoon.’
‘And she told you this?’
‘She told me enough. She wanted to warn me off men like my father.’ Alice’s grimace was loaded with grief. ‘And to warn me off men in general, I think. My mother, once bitten, was definitely twice shy. She couldn’t even accept that, while my father had been an out-and-out cheat, there might be a man out there who would love her and accept her and do everything he could not to hurt her.’
Thanos lifted a brow, his eyes skimming Alice’s face thoughtfully.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ He shook his head.
‘I’m serious. What?’
And despite the tone of their conversation, a little laugh escaped him. ‘It’s just...do you think either you or I are in a position to judge her for that?’
Alice regarded him inquisitively.
‘You don’t think you push men away because you’re traumatised by what she went through? And what you then went through with Clinton?’
Alice’s expression tightened. ‘No.’
‘Alice.’ He reached a hand out, lacing his fingers through hers. ‘That’s not a criticism.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No. I happen to think pushing people away is an excellent life choice.’ His voice was layered with light sarcasm. ‘I only mean it’s understandable that your mother didn’t feel like she wanted to jump back into dating someone after all of that.’
Alice was quiet, but the column of her throat shifted as she swallowed. ‘She also worked. A lot. We were pretty broke, so she had to work long hours and I don’t think a love life really fit into that.’ She expelled a soft, impatient breath. ‘The thing is, when you said you hated your dad, I understood. I understand. Because I hate mine, even though I’ve never met him.’ She fixed him with a steady stare, her eyes swirling with ice. ‘I’ve made my peace with the fact he didn’t want to be a parent. That he never wanted to know me.’ The husk of her voice, though, betrayed her—she hadn’t really made her peace with it.
Who could?
‘But he’s a wealthy man, Thanos. I know because I looked into him, when I was old enough to do a search on the Internet. He’s wealthy and married with other children. I have no idea how many women he treated as he did my mother, but I do know he was in a position to help us and he never did.’
Thanos’s eyes glittered in his handsome face and he was, temporarily, at a loss for words.
‘She wrote to him, begging for some kind of financial assistance. When I was eleven, I earned a place at a prestigious selection school. It was a scholarship but didn’t cover the cost of boarding and uniforms—which were out of Mom’s reach. She wrote to him. He flat out refused.’
Anger shot through Thanos. ‘How could he refuse? Surely there was some legal obligation, setting aside his obvious moral obligation.’
Her eyes were awash with memory, as though she’d been sucked back in time. ‘No. He’s British, and the American courts couldn’t enforce anything. Despite the fact he’s incredibly wealthy, he had no interest in helping my mom with frivolities such as, you know, food, let alone a private education for me. Besides, she couldn’t really afford a good lawyer, so...’ Her voice trailed off.
‘She did try to get him to at least contribute something.’ Alice shrugged as though it hadn’t mattered. ‘But he sent nothing except lawyer’s letters, all of which took more money to respond to.’
Thanos stared at her, no idea what he could say to make this better.
‘I hate him,’ she said simply.
Thanos’s eyes showed his own feelings quite clearly. ‘So do I.’
And at that Alice laughed, and it was as if the sun were bursting out from behind a storm cloud. Everything tilted a little, shifting and reshaping, and Thanos’s breath burned in his lungs as he stared at her and wondered how the hell he hadn’t noticed how beautiful she was the first moment he saw her. How come it had taken him days to recognise the danger here? To see not only that she was attractive, but also that he was obsessively attracted to her?
He’d already spent more time with her than he ever had with a woman he was sleeping with. Shared more of himself. Cared more for her stories.
But he didn’t panic—too much. Because he was controlling this; he had rules and boundaries, and every intention of abiding by them.
‘Tell me about this bikini,’ he said, his tone completely different, lighter, teasing, a relief from the emotional heaviness of their previous conversation.
‘What would you like to know about it?’
‘A great many things, Kyria Stathakis,’ he drawled slowly.
Did you buy it with me in mind?
The question was on the tip of his tongue but it created an impression of dependence he didn’t wish to encourage, so he pushed it aside.
Alice, though, shifted her attention to her body, her cheeks heating pink, as though she was just realising that she was practically naked beside him.
‘I had no idea what I would need for this...job,’ she said quietly.
‘Job?’
‘Our marriage.’ She lifted her fingers to mime inverted commas, which shouldn’t have bothered Thanos at all. It certainly shouldn’t have made him feel a rolling of nausea in his gut.
‘I mean, this is so far outside of my wheelhouse,’ she said with a self-deprecating laugh, gesturing around the boat. ‘I live in suits at work and yoga pants at home.’ Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘And I wanted to fit in. To make this seem realistic.’
‘You do fit in.’
She pulled a face. ‘Only because I did my research.’
‘Research?’
‘Uh-huh. And Kosta was right about one thing, Thanos. There are a lot of pictures of you on the Internet.’
Something inside Thanos tightened painfully over his chest, like a metal arm being pressed hard to his sides.
‘So?’ The word came out harsher than he’d intended.
Alice didn’t appear to notice. ‘I needed to see how your usual, um, friends...’ her cheeks heated pink and he wondered how he hadn’t realised her degree of inexperience earlier ‘...dressed. The kinds of clothes they wore. This bikini seemed pretty standard.’
Thanos stared at her, unable to pinpoint why he was so annoyed at that revelation, unable to explain why he felt frustrated and...something else. Only that her casually delivered explanation filled him with a sense of being weighted down.
When he didn’t speak, Alice grew quiet and a lift of his eyes to her face showed that she was anxious now. ‘Is it...okay?’
More frustration. It roared through him. He was being a self-obsessed idiot. She’d done the right thing. She’d approached this marriage with professionalism, just as he would have expected. This w
as a marriage conceived of for one purpose, and the better she played her part, the more likely it was to succeed.
‘It’s perfect,’ he assured her, his voice throaty, his eyes clouded with the intensity of his thoughts.
‘So what else were you wondering?’ she prompted, her eyes lightly teasing now.
His body hardened, and he pushed every thought from his mind with great care, acting purely on instinct as he stared at her intently. ‘Just how easy it is to remove.’
She smiled sweetly as she stood, straddling him, her legs on either side of his body, her head blotting out the sun.
‘Pull on the string, and find out for yourself.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘KALIMÉRA, KYRIA STATHAKIS.’
The words, spoken in his native tongue, were like little beads of sunshine rolling over her skin. Alice stretched, muscles that were not used to being so well used flexing in her body. She stifled a yawn, shifting a little in the enormous bed. Beyond the window, the vines of France were a heady, vibrant green. She shifted to face him, wondering at what point they’d decided she’d join him in his room, rather than keeping to the terms of their agreement—that she would have her own space; that they’d hardly see each other. In fact, in the five days since their wedding, they’d barely been apart.
Alice might have found that troublesome, except for the certainty that their essential terms weren’t changing. So they’d blurred the lines a little. So what? That was just wiggle room. Lots of wiggle room.
Neither of them was being silly about this. They both knew there were divorce papers signed in a lawyer’s drawer somewhere, waiting for Thanos to make the call to have them filed.
She shifted a little, her gaze lifting to his handsome face.
‘I like it when you speak Greek.’
He arched a brow. ‘Tóte tha to káno sychná. Then I will do it often.’
She smiled and placed her head flat against his chest once more, her fingertips chasing invisible circles over his taut flesh.
‘I could teach you.’
‘Greek?’
‘Mmm.’ She heard the agreement rumble through his chest.
‘I’m already learning Italian.’
Bride Behind The Billion-Dollar Veil (Crazy Rich Greek Weddings Book 2) Page 10
