by Connie Cox
Reality. Annalise reached over and checked the time. “I’ve got to go.”
“Go?”
“I’ve got to dine at the captain’s table tonight.”
Naked, he stood behind her and turned her to the mirror. He ran his hands over her shoulders. “What can I say...” he gave her a sultry look “...or do to convince you not to go?”
What could he say? I love you would work. But he’d given no indication of that.
Lust. Tenderness. Gallantry. Niko had given her all that in spades. But love? There was a good reason for the rule against shipboard romances.
“Say no to the captain. Tell him you have plans with me.” He flashed her his best practiced smile.
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t get all plastic playboy on me because I can’t stay and play. Respect me more than that.” She had put in too many years of loyal service to want to leave on a bad note. And she needed a clean recommendation.
Plus—and it was a big plus—Niko had taught her to expect respect. Before she’d met him, before she’d seen how much he and his brothers respected all women, including her, she wouldn’t have demanded it.
Niko blinked, as if he had been caught looking through her instead of at her. He backed off, leaving her to face the mirror alone. “Sorry. I’ve started thinking I have you all to myself. Forgive me?”
She turned to look at him, to read his expression. His face was like an open book. No smooth artifice. No practiced smile. Simply sincerity.
He could put more emotion into those tiger eyes of his than anyone she’d ever met. And she had to admit, his possessiveness was on the flattering side.
“Forgiven.”
“Thanks.” He dropped a chaste kiss on her head that left her wishing for more despite her resolve to put distance between them.
“Tomorrow in port?”
She shook her head. “It’s my P.A.’s turn for shore leave. I’ve got to stay on board and handle the medical suite.”
He blew out a breath, looking like a little boy who’d dropped his popsicle in the dirt. “Is it something I did?”
“I’m not on vacation, remember?”
“We’re having a private birthday party for Yiayia tomorrow evening. I want you to come.” His eyes sharpened, daring her to say no.
Annalise felt honored to be invited but, “It’s for family. I don’t want to intrude.”
“Are you kidding? My family loves you.” He looked into the mirror to shave off his five o’clock shadow. Annalise had suspected that with those dark looks he was a twice a day man.
He kept his attention focused on her reflection as she watched his. Seeing those eyes in the mirror gave her no reprieve.
She swallowed, determined to treat this lightly. “You’ve got a great family. Everyone meshes so well together, brothers and sisters-in-law and all the children.”
He lifted his chin to shave but still didn’t break eye contact as if he wanted to judge her reaction. “They’re a handful. Especially the nieces and nephews. But being the favorite uncle is the perfect deal. I get to cuddle and spoil them when I’m around, then leave them to their parents when one of us gets cranky.”
Annalise had resigned herself to never having babies of her own, but being around the Christopoulos children made her wonder what her life might have been like if she could have been stronger and said no when her mother had marched her up to that filthy back room above the stripper bar and ordered the greasy haired woman there to “get rid of it”. But at sixteen, with no means of support and her mother threatening to throw her out of her home, she’d been better at hysterical crying than rational action.
When she saw herself in the mirror, she looked incredibly sad. “They’ll expect you to have babies one day.”
“They have great expectations.” Niko broke eye contact, looking at himself instead of her. That same expression he’d had the first day they’d met, the day he’d called himself the black sheep of the family, resurfaced. “They are destined to be disappointed.”
“When you tell them about Doctors Without Borders? How can they be?” She reached out to touch him then dropped her hand as if the barriers going up around him were razor sharp. “Niko, you’re a hero. A man to be proud of. The work you do is so important to so many.”
She thought about telling him how he inspired her and that she was sending in her own application, but this moment wasn’t about her.
He pulled a pair of linen pants from his closet. “The price of these pants would feed a family of five for several months in some of the places I’ve been.”
Annalise waited, knowing there was more.
“Sadly, improving lives isn’t all about money. There’s a lot of generous people out there. If all it took was throwing money at the problem, poverty would have been stamped out a long time ago. Education, health and developing strong leadership skills in the right people is the answer.”
“And that takes time.” Wrapped in a towel, Annalise inspected her clothes, wincing at the dirt and sweat from a day of bicycling.
He nodded. His time, his skills, his determination to make a difference were the most valuable contributions he had to give. “The cycle of poverty is so entrenched it all seems hopeless sometimes.”
“I’ve read that burnout among the health-care specialists is a big problem.”
He’d seen those who had given their all. War and disease took their toll on the workers, but burnout was a huge hazard, too. That’s why trips like this were so important.
“Yes. Burnout is a big deal. I’ve given a lot of thought on how to deal with it. Vacations like this help.”
He needed to remember the joys in life so he could deal with the tragedies. And right now one of those joys was joining his family, listening to the prattle of the little ones, seeing the hope for the future in his older nephews’ eyes and knowing that love held the universe together as he watched his brothers and their wives make the world a better place just by being their happy selves and raising their happy families.
What didn’t work for him was having a wife and kids at home who waited for the infrequent visits of a husband and father too involved in his work to give enough attention to his family.
Which was why there could never be anything between Annalise and himself beyond what they had now.
“What’s wrong? Are you in pain?” Annalise scanned him, making him wish he was still naked. Making him wish for things he could never have, for the woman he could never have.
“I’m fine.”
“You groaned and pushed your fist into your stomach.”
He used his distracting smile. “It must have been that green stuff you made me eat.”
Annalise narrowed her eyes. “If you don’t want to tell me what’s wrong, that’s your business.” Then her face went blank. “You’re entitled to your privacy.”
After being so intimate, the concept of keeping anything from each other seemed to make a mockery of their time together.
But how could he tell her his gut clenched at the idea of leaving her when he left the ship?
Niko turned away to give himself a moment.
Where he had been, what he had done, he had learned to live with loss, only it had never been so personal. And personal made the pain of loss excruciating.
He took another shaky breath, careful to keep his face hidden from Annalise. She could read him like no other.
When he had gathered his composure, he dug through his clothes and handed her one of his T-shirts and a pair of gym shorts. The T-shirt fit her like a dress. The shorts bunched around her waist when she tightened the drawstring enough to keep them from falling off her hips.
“You like?” She held out her hands and turned to model.
Niko caught his breath as he saw the hint of unfettered breasts under the shirt. The woman was breathtaking. “I like—and it has nothing to do with the unique style.”
Her laugh brightened his world better than sunshine. “They’ll get me back to my room.”
“See you at the party tomorrow night?” He saw the hesitation in her eyes. “Please?”
She reached up and ran a finger over his lips. “Has anyone ever said no to you?”
“I’ve heard no on occasion and survived. But from you, it would be devastating.”
“What would you say if I said the same thing to you?”
“Please, Annalise. It will be our last night on the ship.” The implication laid heavy between them.
What could he do? What could he say? The reality of the moment ripped into him. “We can’t leave it like this between us.”
“Like this?”
“Unfinished.” He refused to meet her eyes, afraid of what he might read in them. Which would hurt worse? Resignation or loss?
She nodded. “Closure is a good thing.”
No. Closure meant the end. Inside, he screamed it, but he couldn’t seem to say it. “Annalise...”
She reached up and cupped his cheek. “I won’t go without saying goodbye.”
She slipped away before he could answer.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ONCE THE DOOR closed behind her, Annalise had to run before all the pent-up emotion made her explode. With tears streaming down her face, she ran down the stairs to her floor. It wasn’t that she didn’t care who might see her, it was that she couldn’t help herself. Running was the only way to keep the pain from overwhelming her. So she ran until her side ached and her lungs burned, her vision so blurry she could barely see.
But, no matter how fast she ran, she couldn’t outrun the pain of knowing this had to end.
Then she had to stop. Standing before the door of her room, Annalise had to stop and face herself. Like too many times before, she had nowhere else to go.
She hugged herself, feeling Niko’s encompassing shirt around her, smelling his scent rise from her own warm body. Remembering the depth of his eyes when he’d looked at her.
She’d been running away from looking inside herself ever since she’d knocked on Niko’s door the first time. But now she’d run into a dead end and the nights spent together had caught up with her.
She had thought making love to Niko would change her inside. And it had, but not the way she had expected.
She had expected to feel braver, more secure, free from her past. Instead, she felt invisible ties binding her to Niko—a man who lived his life without boundaries. What did ties mean to him? She only had to look at his brothers to know.
While she couldn’t have children, maybe she could try to be a mother, for Niko’s sake?
But what kind of a mother would she be when she really didn’t want to be one? The kind of mother her mother was, she was afraid.
As much as she wanted it to work, she couldn’t be the little woman, barefoot and pregnant, waiting for her man to return.
She couldn’t be the woman for him. She couldn’t give him what he needed. Family, children, stability to anchor him between missions, to refresh him and send him out again.
Annalise couldn’t be that stability for him. Her restlessness was the equal of his. She had her own limits to push. As much as she wanted to be, she was not the home-and-hearth kind.
Niko, with his big heart, would forgo his own needs and accept what she could give, trying to make it work.
But she would know that she couldn’t give him what he needed. Niko would always have a place in his heart for children to carry on his legacy, a hole only his perfect partner could fill. With her, that place would always be empty. She could never do that to the man she loved.
Tomorrow they would dock in Barcelona. While half the passengers would disembark then, the other half, including the Christopoulos family, would continue their trip for another week, touring the Greek isles before flying back home.
For the reduced passenger list, the cruise line didn’t need both her and the P.A., though the captain and the cruise line had offered to let her stay on for the extra week without duties as a bonus for her long service. She had thought about staying, but now...
Now she thought about going. She had no future with Niko. More time together would only make leaving harder.
The only thing she knew for sure was that she would survive this. She would put her life back together, learn from the experience and go forward. That’s what she did.
She was a survivor.
* * *
After a long hard night dining and then sleeping without Annalise, Niko had endured a long, hard day without her, too. If he couldn’t get through eighteen hours without her, how could he live the rest of his life without her?
He now understood what his brothers meant. Love for the right woman made a man feel whole. Without it, he had an aloneness that not even his family could fill. In Barcelona, he had accompanied his family to a cooking school presented by one of the area’s famous restaurants, had chaperoned the youngest nieces and nephews through the children’s museum and had people-watched with the twins, which was usually one of his favorite pastimes but today felt boring beyond measure.
Niko knew the problem wasn’t with his activities but with his lack of a partner. If Annalise had been with him, it could have been one of his favorite days of all time. That’s what being with Annalise did. It made every day his favorite day.
Niko kept glancing at the door to the party suite, even when he willed himself not to.
Marcus elbowed him. “Looking for someone, Uncle Niko? Someone special?”
He elbowed Marcus back. “Always.”
Marcus cocked an eyebrow. “That’s a different Niko Christopoulos than the one I’ve known all my life.”
“Just wait, nephew. Your time will come, sooner or later.”
“In your case later.”
Niko guessed he did seem old to a seventeen-year-old. “Better late than never.”
That’s what he’d tell Annalise when she finally arrived at Yiayia’s party. And what he’d tell his family when he announced she was the one.
He glanced toward the door for the thousandth time in a minute. Where was she?
Niko hadn’t caught a glimpse of her since last night at the late dinner seating when he’d sat with the family and she’d sat at the captain’s table next to a computer nerd, smiling and nodding as if the twenty-five-year-old millionaire was the smartest man on the ship. Niko had to admit the kid probably was. Not that he had a right to be jealous, but...
If he only had that right...
Soon. Soon he would ask for that right.
Not that he would be the jealous type.
Had she really made a special effort to avoid looking at him, or had that been his ego aching, wanting her attention as she’d chatted the evening away with the computer nerd?
He would make sure Annalise never felt lonely enough to even want to talk to another guy in that special way a woman talked to a man.
But he couldn’t be there for her, couldn’t watch sunsets with her, if he was in some field operation with no way to communicate except by short-wave radio carried to the highest local mountaintop. Could he ask her to wait for him?
That’s why he’d never intended to fall in love. But life didn’t always turn out the way a man planned it, did it?
She wasn’t going to show. Despair followed on the heels of the devastating thought he kept trying to push away. What if it was one-sided? What if this was only a shipboard romance? And if it was more—it had to be more—where did they go with it from here?
What if she didn’t show? What if she didn’t care? She did, though, didn’t she? Had
n’t he seen it in her eyes? Felt it in her touch?
Niko caught himself staring at the door as he remembered how her eyes had flashed then squeezed tight in ecstasy the first time they’d come together.
It wasn’t only sex. Not for him. Not for her either. All those times together, all those sunsets had to mean more than a vacation fling. He was as certain of that as he was that he was going to take another breath.
As he desperately tried to keep his attention on his excited six-year-old niece telling her rambling version of feeding a talking parrot, Niko felt a tingle in the back of his neck. Without turning, he knew she was there.
Suddenly, all the pieces fit into place inside him.
Yiayia confirmed it when she called out, “Dr. Annalise, welcome to my party. Let me get you some cake.”
Her sundress with oversized orange and pink and purple flowers fit her better than his T-shirt but he missed seeing her wrapped in something that belonged to him.
Yiayia gave her one of the prized corner pieces of cake topped with an icing rose.
“For our special friend.” Yiayia added a hug with the cake.
Over Yiayia’s shoulder Annalise caught his glance. Shadows colored her eyes the same shade of sadness he was feeling.
“Thanks.” Annalise’s smile, even clouded, lit the darkest corners of his soul.
Before she could take a bite, Sophie demanded her attention. “Dr. Annalise, look at my picture. I’m feeding a parrot.”
Niko watched her with Sophie, giving the child a lot more focused attention than he’d been able to. Annalise blended into his family as if she’d always been a part of them.
She was so good with children. He’d seen that at the refugee camp as well as with his own nieces and nephews.
She deserved a husband who could give her a house full of them.
Something very ugly inside him cringed at the thought of Annalise with another man. But it didn’t have to be that way.
He could be that man who gave her babies.
He hadn’t finalized the papers to sell his part of the practice. He could give her whatever she wanted.
