He jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Never mind," he muttered.
Just then the sound of running footsteps approached them. "Mari! Time for sup—" Alex stopped dead at the sight of his brother. "Nikos?"
"Hi, Alex."
The little boy looked from Mari to Nikos and back again, confusion and wariness in his face. Nikos didn't want to see it. He didn't want to see the flicker of hope there, either. It reminded him too forcibly of his own continually thwarted hopes as a child. But that was about his father, he reminded himself. Fathers were far more consequential than brothers—and half-brothers, at that.
But Alex's father was half a world away, and unlikely to be of much use even if he'd been there.
Damn it.
Nikos turned to the little boy. "Listen, Alex," he said quietly, "I came to get you. Your mother needs you. She had to go to the hospital."
"Hospital?" Alex looked at Mari.
"She's been having a few contractions," Mari said. "You know? Remember when she'd let you put your hand on her tummy to feel it get all hard and tight?"
Alex nodded. "How come she has to go to the hospital for that?"
"Well, if it starts happening regularly it might mean she's going to have the baby. It was sort of a surprise, having them now, so she wants you to come see her, just in case she has to stay and have the baby."
"Now?"
"Now," Mari said.
"What about supper?"
"Aunt Em can put our supper in some dishes and we can bring it along. We can eat back at your house after we see your mommy. We'll have a picnic."
Alex's eyes lit up. "Really?"
Mari smiled. "Yes. Run on up and tell Aunt Em we have to go."
Nikos listened to the whole exchange with awe. She seemed to know exactly what to say, the right note to strike. She didn't make Alex promises she couldn't—or wouldn't—keep. She didn't play down any fears he might have, but she offered him support, friendship.
"Where were you when / was growing up?" Nikos muttered.
"Too young to be any use at all," Mari said. She started toward the house after Alex. Nikos followed, curious still to see these aunts of hers.
When he'd met them, he had a good idea how Mari came to be the way she was. They were warm and welcoming, caring and kind. They told him what a handsome fellow he was, and how much Alex resembled him, and wasn't it funny that his name was Nikos.
"You know," Aunt Em confided, "Mari thought she was supposed to be nanny to a Nikos!" She smiled gleefully. "Imagine, being nanny to you."
"Imagine," Nikos echoed faintly. Mari pretended not to hear. He could see that her cheeks were red, though, as she gathered up the containers as Aunt Bett filled them.
"We really need to be going," she said, herding Alex toward the door. "Say thank you, Alex."
"Thank you," he parroted. But then he turned and gave each of her aunts a big hug. "Thank you for the cookies 'n' for playin' cards 'n' for letting me go in your sailboat. C'n I come again?"
"Of course, darling," Aunt Em said.
"By all means. A born sailor like you should have lots of sailboat rides," Aunt Bett said, then slanted a glance at Nikos. "And bring your brother with you next time."
Mari bustled in, gave them each a kiss, then grabbed Alex's hand, and with the containers in the other arm, hurried out to the car.
Nikos started toward the Jag.
"I'll follow you," Mari said. "And don't expect me to keep up if you drive fast." She turned to Alex. "You'll make sure he drives slow enough for me, won't you?"
The little boy looked at her, speechless.
So did the big one. "Now wait a minute," Nikos began.
But Mari nailed him with a look. "I'm sure Alex would prefer a ride in a great car like yours to an old clunker like mine." She went around and opened the passenger door of the Jag. "Come on, Alex."
"Just a damn—"
"A-hem!"
Nikos scowled at her, but he shut his mouth.
The frost in her glare turned to a sweet smile. "It's the best idea," she said lightly, but Nikos heard the underlying firmness in her voice.
"Fine," he muttered. "See you there." The Jag had always seemed just right for two. When one of them was a pretty woman it almost seemed too big. When one of them was Alex, it wasn't nearly large enough. The child seemed to be sitting right on top of him!
Nikos drove fast, but not too fast, through the narrow back roads between the north and south forks of Long Island. Behind him he could see Mari's headlights in his rearview mirror.
Next to him, Alex sat unmoving, neck craned to see out the windshield. Only when the hospital came in sight did Nikos hear a sound out of him, and it wasn't a word so much as a tiny desperate gasp for air.
Instinctively Nikos reached over and put his large hand over one of Alex's small ones. Little fingers curled around his, tight. They hung on.
Nikos glanced down. Alex was still staring straight ahead, teeth biting down on his lower Up. Nikos pulled into a parking place and cut the engine, then gave Alex's hand a squeeze.
The boy turned his head and looked at Nikos with big worried eyes. "I want my daddy," he whispered.
Nikos's throat tightened. His teeth clenched. He had consciously to ease the muscles in his jaw. "I know," he said hoarsely. "But your dad isn't here right now. Man and I are, though. We'll come with you if you want."
He didn't know why he was saying that! Well, yes, actually he did. He was saying it because they were words he'd needed to hear when he was a child when his own mother had been taken to the hospital and—
He couldn't remember. Until this moment he hadn't even remembered that his mother had gone to the hospital. Now he did. He remembered the long corridors. The odd metallic sounds. The hushed voices. He remembered sitting there alone, with people walking past him, talking around him, over him. Forgetting him.
It was as if he wasn't even there.
But he was. It was his father who hadn't been.
Just the way he wasn't here now. Nikos got out of the car and went around, taking Alex's hand in his. "Come on," he said. No one was going to do to Alex what they'd done to him.
Mari didn't know what had happened between Nikos and Alex on the trip from her aunts' to the hospital. All she knew was that, when she got out of her car in the lot and went to meet them, something had changed.
Nikos wasn't completely different. He wasn't embracing the whole notion of being involved with Stavros and his family, but something had happened. It was obvious in the way he stood next to Alex, almost protectively. She heard it in the firm voice with which he spoke to the hospital staff, and in the gentle reassurance with which he took the boy down the hall to see his mother.
This was the Nikos that Stavros had always wanted and feared didn't exist. This was a responsible, capable, caring man taking charge.
Mari didn't say a word. She just stood back and watched. She went with them down to see Julietta because Nikos's expression included her when he said, "We want to see Mrs. Costanides." She did talk to Julietta, calmly and optimistically, because in his stepmother's hospital room, Nikos didn't say much.
But he was there. He held Alex's hand while Mari talked to Julietta. He stood back next to Mari and waited while Alex went up to his mother's bed. Julietta touched her son's face and kissed him. She talked in a low, soft voice to him, explaining that the baby might be coming early and she had to wait here and see.
"Can I stay, too?" Alex wanted to know.
Julietta smiled. "There's only one bed in here. And Mari says she'll spend the night with you at home. That will be better than staying here. And then tomorrow we'll know if the baby is coming or not. If not, I can come home. Okay?"
Alex nibbled on his lip for a minute, then nodded. "I guess," he said, then looked back over his shoulder. "Is Nikos coming, too?"
Standing beside him, Mari could almost feel Nikos stiffen at the little boy's words. A fierce tension seemed almost to emanate from him. Bu
t it wasn't an angry tension. It was more like an intense very personal vibration. A sort of force field. Magnetic. Almost without realizing it, Mari drew closer.
Their arms brushed against each other. She felt Nikos's fingers grip hers. His hand was cold and damp, the clasp of his hand hard. She rubbed her thumb across his knuckle.
"Are you, Nikos?" Alex persisted.
"If you want me to." The words seemed dragged up from Nikos's toes.
Alex nodded solemnly. "I do."
It shouldn't have reminded Mari of a wedding. It was a four year old boy and his much older brother. But there was a sense of something sacramental about it. A vow. A promise.
She gave Nikos's hand a gentle squeeze and got a death grip in return.
"Nikos?" Julietta raised her voice, and Nikos's gaze jerked up to meet hers. His stepmother smiled mistily at him. "Thank you."
He was out of his flaming mind.
He shouldn't be here! Couldn't be here. Never in a million years would have believed he was here in his father's house, waiting while Alex put on his pajamas and got ready for bed.
But even as he thought it, he knew there was nowhere else he could possibly be.
And Mari knew it, too.
She watched him as carefully as she'd been watching Alex—as if she really was his nanny, concerned for his welfare above all else.
After they'd talked to Julietta, whom they left resting, Nikos had taken Alex back out to the car, while Mari stayed on a few minutes longer at Julietta's request, getting an earful of the things Alex didn't need to hear. But only a few minutes later she hurried to meet them by the car, cheerful smile in place as she said, "All set for that picnic, you two?"
Alex, who had been yawning and holding Nikos's hand silently, brightened at once and answered for both of them. "Yep. I'm starved."
Mari didn't even bother to warm the dinner, just served it cold to the three of them as they sat on a cloth spread on the deck overlooking the pool. Nikos looked at it doubtfully, but didn't say anything. Mari seemed to know what she was doing. And she proved it again because by serving it cold she got at least half a meal down Alex before he fell fast asleep on a chaise by the pool.
" You knew he was fading," Nikos said.
"There are signs. He's had a hard day. You have, too," she added. "How's your head? And your leg? I haven't even had time to ask."
Nikos shrugged. "They're all right." He picked up his jacket and put it over the sleeping boy.
"It was...kind of you to stay."
His mouth twisted wryly. "That's me, kind."
"Don't disparage yourself," Mari said sharply. "I know how hard it was for you."
No, you don't, he wanted to say. But, oddly, he felt as if she really did know. As if she had been there with him all day, feeling what he felt, sharing his pain, halving it. "Yeah," he said, his voice low. He stared out across the pool, a turquoise gem, glowing from its underwater light.
He didn't let himself look at her. If he did, he would see her mouth and remember her kisses. He would see her hair and remember its softness. He would see her body and remember its response.
His own was responding even now.
He shoved himself awkwardly to his feet and bent to pick up the sleeping child. "I'll carry Alex in. Get his bed ready, will you?"
Mari scrambled up as well and hurried into the house ahead of him. He gave her a good head start. He stood there on the deck by the pool, the warm weight of his small brother in his arms, and tried to divorce himself from the moment.
Think about Cornwall, he told himself. Think about Brian and Claudia, about Carruthers, about the life you want.
But tonight he wanted something else. Something he couldn't have. Something he wouldn't let himself have.
And tomorrow? He prayed he wouldn't want it tomorrow. And if he did? He wouldn't let himself think about that.
"She wants me to what?"
"Don't shout. You'll wake Alex," Mari warned him. They were in the living room of the main house. Nikos had just put Alex in his bed and stood there looking down at his little brother for a long moment Then, resolutely, he'd turned away, heading back for the living room, determined to get out now, before he did something he'd regret.
And now here Mari was, telling him to do the one thing in the world he'd regret even more!
"Call Stavros? You're crazy!" He fumed. He paced. He glared. "You don't mean it?"
"Julietta means it. She asked me to ask you."
"She didn't ask me herself!"
"Because she felt awkward."
"This is awkward!"
"I know that. But it has to be done. Someone has to call him."
Nikos would have liked to have called his father every name in the book! How the hell could the old man go off and leave his wife when she was this close to having his child?
"You call him," he suggested.
Mari shook her head. "I don't think anyone would pay any attention to me. They'd pay attention to you."
"Pay attention to Nikos, his no-good playboy son?" Nikos sneered.
"Maybe not. But they'd pay attention to Nikos, the responsible man I saw take over at the hospital."
Nikos growled. He muttered. Mari didn't say anything else. He wished she would! It was easier to argue with someone than to argue with himself—especially when he was losing!
"He deserves not to be here," he snapped at her. "If he doesn't have the sense to stay when she needs him, he deserves to miss it."
"But does Julietta deserve not to have his support?"
Damn her! Damn her gentle logic! Damn her quiet confidence that he would come around and do the right thing!
He didn't want to do the right thing! He wanted Stavros to suffer.
But he didn't want Julietta to suffer. It wasn't her fault. And it wasn't Alex's fault. And the last thing Alex had murmured as Nikos had put him in bed was, "Night, Da..."
"Oh, hell! All right."
Nikos snatched the phone off the hook and stalked out of the room. He'd find the old man if he had to fly to Athens and knock down the Parthenon to get to him.
It just about came to that.
It was early morning in Athens and very late that night in New York when Nikos finally bullied his way through enough flunkies to get to Adrianos, one of his father's top aides.
"What's your business with him?" they all asked.
"None of yours," Nikos snapped over and over.
He wasn't telling any of them. No one but the old man. He didn't care if it took forever. The blistering he gave Adrianos brought his father, at last, to the phone.
Stavros was indignant. "Ah, Nikos, to what do I owe the pleasure of your phone call?" His tone was acidic. "Is the nanny being too hard on you?"
Nikos let his sarcasm pass. "Your wife's in the hospital," he said flatly. "Get your ass home."
There.
He'd done everything they'd asked of him. He'd taken Julietta to the hospital. He'd brought Alex to see her. He'd eaten a picnic with his brother. He'd put him to bed. He'd gritted his teeth and spent three hours tracking down his father. The old man was on his way home.
Nikos was out of here.
What more could anyone ask?
"What do you mean, I have to pick him up?" He stared at Mari, horrified. Furious. "I'm not going to get him! Let Thomas go get him."
"It's Thomas's day off," she reminded him gently.
"Then he can take a cab."
"He can't take a cab."
"He can afford it!"
"It's not a matter of affording it. It's that he needs someone to meet him."
"Not me!"
"He sounded shattered when he called from London. He—"
"He damned well ought to be!" Nikos was giving no quarter.
"I agree. But even he needs support," Mari went on firmly. "He needs his family there now." She looked at him. "You."
They glared at each other. Nikos raked his fingers through his hair. "You go get him then."
"I
'm not family. And—" she forestalled his protest "—I need to stay with Alex. He didn't sleep well. He came to me in the middle of the night. He was tired from excitement after yesterday. Now he's tired from stress. He needs routine."
Nikos opened his mouth to argue with that, then shut it again. He couldn't argue because he knew it was true. He jammed his hands in the pockets of his trousers and scowled out the window at the sea. He didn't want to go get his father! Not for anything—or anyone—on earth.
"Mari?" a small voice came from the hallway. Alex stood there with a stranglehold on his rabbit.
Mari smiled. "Ah, there you are! Good morning, Alex."
"Morning," he said, then his gaze went straight to Nikos. He smiled shyly. "Hi," he said softly.
Nikos raked his fingers through his hair. "Hi," he said to his brother, his voice ragged even though he managed to give Alex a smile. Then he let out a harsh breath and looked at Mari. "All right," he said. "You win."
CHAPTER EIGHT
The man who got off the airplane that afternoon didn't even look like his father.
If the gray-faced old man making his way into the terminal hadn't said, "Nikos?" in a shocked tone, Nikos might have let him walk on by.
Stavros seemed to have aged twenty years in the space of the week since he'd left. And he was clearly astonished to see Nikos there waiting for him.
"Believe me, I wouldn't be here," Nikos said before his father could comment, "if there had been anybody else."
"Is she...?" Stavros couldn't even get the words out. He groped for something to hang onto, and Nikos, without thinking, caught his father's arm to support him.
"She's holding her own," he said gruffly. "The contractions have stopped. I called the hospital before I came this morning."
"Thank God." The faintest color reappeared in Stavros's complexion. He swallowed and a tremor seemed to run through him. But then he straightened and pulled himself together.
Nikos let go of his arm. "Come on. Let's get going."
The drive to East Hampton took two and a half hours. They made it in silence except for his father's questions about Alex right after they left JFK.
"How is he? Is he all right?"
The Playboy and the Nanny Page 11
