"It was a wonderful marriage," Stavros went on, his voice almost dreamy all at once as he stared off into space, seeing, Nikos guessed, the early years of his life with Angelika. "We worked hard together. We played together. We loved each other. And what we had was in two years made better by the arrival of a son." Here he flickered back to the present long enough to look over at that son. "A perfect son." Stavros smiled a little sadly.
His father had thought he was perfect? Well, maybe once he had...a long, long time ago.
"I took you everywhere," he said to Nikos. "To work. To the beach. To sail. You loved to sail."
Nikos didn't remember loving to sail—not with his father anyway. He didn't recall ever sailing with his father. He remembered sitting in the boat, waiting... waiting... He must have been very small.
Yes, he did remember it now. How eager he had been. How much he had waited for the afternoon to come when his father would be back from a trip so they could go sailing again. Again? Something flickered through his mind. Vague displaced memories. The feel of the wind in his face, of the list of the boat, of his father's strong arm around his narrow shoulders. Yes, they had gone sailing... until...
"We were best friends once," Stavros continued. "And all your mother and I could think was how wonderful it would be to have more children like you. So she got pregnant again. And she lost that child. A miscarriage. These things happen, the doctor said. We tried again. And again. More miscarriages. She was in bed a lot. Do you remember? She used to read to you in her bed."
Nikos remembered. He hadn't known why she was in bed. She was "resting," she always told him.
"Come keep me company for a little while," she would say. And she would read to him.
"She needed you there," his father said. "You were the bright spot in her day. So I didn't take you with me so much anymore. Sometimes, though, I took you sailing. I remember the last time. You were five. We had planned it for a week, maybe more. I'd had to go to Athens and I was looking forward to coming home to your mother, who was expecting again, and to you. And when I got there, she was being rushed to the hospital. Another miscarriage. And of course I went with her, not to you. You never forgave me for that." He smiled a little. "You wouldn't listen when I tried to explain. You ran out of the room."
Nikos wanted to deny it. He couldn't He remembered the waiting. He'd been waiting forever for his father to come. "Soon," his mother would say. "Soon he will come." And then, "Tomorrow." And then, "In a few hours." White-faced, she said then, "Nikos, run get Mrs. Agnostopolis next door." He had.
Then he'd gone down to the dock to wait for his father.
But his father had never come.
And he hadn't listened. He'd been angry. Furious. "You promised," he'd yelled. And then he'd run. He remembered it now as if it were yesterday. And he remembered, too, that he'd never gone sailing with his father again.
"I was a child," he said gruffly, looking away, watching as another child went limp as its mother tried to get it to walk toward the gate.
"You were a child," Stavros agreed. "I should have made you listen. I thought you would come around. I had other things on my mind. Your mother. Her health. My business. It was necessary to work very hard just then. I wanted to prove to your mother's father that I was worthy of her, you see."
Nikos wasn't sure he saw at all. But he didn't run this time. He sat still. He wanted to know. He had so many questions.
"If you loved her, why did you leave?" He tried to make his voice sound casual, as if he was inquiring about the weather. But even he could hear the anguish in it. His jaw locked. He looked away.
Stavros sighed. "Because I was a fool. 'One last time,' she said to me. 'I want to try to have a baby one last time.' You were almost eight. She wanted you to have a brother or a sister. She knew how much I wanted more children. She wanted them herself. 'Please,' she begged me. And—" he shook his head "—I said yes. Our miracle, she called it when she not only got pregnant, but stayed pregnant. She was very careful. / was very careful. I didn't go near her for fear of making her miscarry. She was doing very well. So well that I took a chance and went to Athens for a meeting. A weekend, I promised her. It was necessary for a merger. She wasn't due for two months. All was well." His voice faded. He stared at his hands which lay loosely in his lap. His shoulders sagged. He looked like a very old man.
Nikos waited for him to say it, even though he thought he knew. He remembered Julietta's words, Poor Stavros. It'll be just like last time. Only now Nikos understood what she meant.
"She hemorrhaged. There was something wrong with the placenta, a ridge in it or something. The baby was finally big enough and active enough to kick a piece of it loose. She went into labor the night I left. I didn't get back until after the baby was born."
"And died?" Nikos whispered. It shouldn't have been a question. He knew.
His father nodded. "Stillborn. Too small. A breech birth. She almost died. I would never have forgiven myself if she had died!" He looked at his son, and for the first time Nikos saw clearly the anguish in his father's eyes.
For a long time, neither of them spoke. Nikos tried to remember that time. He didn't remember for sure knowing that his mother was even pregnant. Surely he would have realized!
"She told you she was getting chubby, not that she was expecting a baby," Stavros said, answering the question that Nikos didn't ask. "She didn't want you to know in case it didn't happen. Now I think she was wrong. But then I said nothing. After all, she knew you better than I did."
Or thought she did, Nikos realized. His mother would have thought she was doing the right thing, not getting his hopes up, not wanting him to be disappointed. Protecting him.
"I had made plenty of mistakes up until then," Stavros went on, "but after that I made the worst of all." He folded his hands and looked straight at Nikos. His eyes were like burnt holes in his ashen face. "I still loved your mother, but I couldn't make love to her. If I did, I knew she would insist on trying again. So I stayed away from her. From you. I moved out. I thought I was protecting her. I was determined to be a martyr to my love—to do the right thing." He smiled with wry bitterness. And then his gaze dropped. "I didn't realize what I was doing by turning my back on her. I failed her. I failed you."
Beyond the glass a jet engine thrummed. Inside the terminal a loud speaker called for passengers to approach the gate. A baby cried.
And Nikos swallowed hard, blinked rapidly, and fought his own tears. He wouldn't cry. He wouldn't!
And he didn't, until a tear trickled down Stavros's cheek first, and the old man reached out and pulled Nikos into his arms. Then the tears came, pressed into Stavros's shoulder as his father murmured the Greek words that Nikos had long forgotten. "Ah, my son. I love you, my son."
He was gone.
She awakened and, without even opening her eyes, Mari knew he wasn't there. The bed felt cold and empty. She felt lost.
She tried to tell herself it would be all right. Of course it would be all right! She would survive. Other people had survived broken hearts.
But she didn't see how.
She got up, took a shower, washed her hair, put on a fresh sundress, even made an effort with a little makeup. Look happy, you '11 feel happy, Aunt Em always said.
Not this time, Em. Sorry, Man thought.
But she tried. And she told herself she would have made it through the morning without crying if Alex hadn't demanded to know where Nikos was, and when she tried to say nonchalantly that he'd had to leave, Alex had burst into tears.
"He said he'd be here!" the little boy wailed. "He said if I needed him, he'd stay!"
"He was here when you needed him," Mari soothed him, pulling him into her lap and holding him close. But pressing her face against Alex's hair, rocking him in her arms, reminded her too much of Nikos—too much of what she had lost. Her tears fell, too.
And, seeing them, Alex had said fiercely, "I hate him!"
"No, darling, you love him," Mari said. "T
hat's why you're so hurt."
She understood the emotion, though. She felt it herself. Hate and love all mixed up. The Costanides family ought to patent it, she thought wryly. They do it so often and so well. Now they'd done it to her, too.
She made her escape when Julietta and Georgiana came home. She let herself out the sliding door and headed across the grass toward the dunes and the beach.
It was family time, she told herself. She shouldn't intrude. A wise nanny knew when to step in—and when to step out. This was a time to step away, to let Julietta and the children bond. In a few days Stavros would be with them and they would be a family, the family he had always wanted.
Of course he wouldn't have Nikos to run his business. But she thought perhaps he had a better understanding of his older son now—even though she didn't think he knew yet that Nikos was a well-respected naval architect. He knew enough. He'd seen enough of his older son with his younger one.
Mission accomplished. More or less.
So she could leave. Soon. And the sooner the better.
She would stay for a little while because Julietta would need some help for a few weeks to get back on her feet and get her bearings. But it wouldn't be long until the other woman was capable of handling both children easily, the way she wanted to, raising them herself.
And then Mari would go.
She'd accomplished her own mission, too. She would have enough money to save her aunts' house and provide for their future, that was certain. She would get a good set of references. She was sure Stavros would provide that.
And she would have memories. Memories of Nikos.
She dropped down just below the crest of one of the small dunes and sat, arms wrapped around her drawn up legs, and indulged herself in memories of Nikos.
The wicked grin. The plaster cast. The stubborn jaw. The dancing eyes. The faraway look. The menacing scowl. The man who had taught her the meaning of love. The man she would never forget.
The breeze blew her hair around her face. She scraped it back. It kicked up sand dervishes. It trickled down the back of her neck.
She reached up and hand and swiped at it, trying to stop it. It kept trickling. She turned—and saw a pair of bare feet. Looked up into Nikos's dark eyes. The wicked grin flashed for just an instant. Then he dropped the handful of sand he'd been pouring down her neck and squatted on the sand beside her.
She looked at him, wide-eyed, astonished. What was he doing here? He'd left. Gone back to Cornwall.
"The old man made me stay," he said.
She'd thought her eyes couldn't get any wider. Now they almost popped right out of her head. "What are you talking about?"
"The old man," Nikos said impatiently. "My father. Remember him?" He slanted her an ironic smile.
"What do you mean, he made you stay? Your father's in the hospital!"
"No. He tracked me down at JFK."
"What? How could he? He's under doctor's orders to—"
' 'I haven't met a doctor yet who could make my old man do a damn thing he didn't want to do. And in this case he was determined. I thought he was bull-headed before, trying to run my life." Nikos laughed wryly. "I hadn't seen anything yet."
Mari could barely fathom this. "He went after you all the way to the airport? Why? To make you come back?"
"He wanted to tell me a story," Nikos said. The wry grin faded from his face and he settled on the sand next to her. He funneled a handful from one hand to the other, watching the flow, not her. "Wanted to tell me about him—and my mother. About the past. About a lot of things we should have talked about a long time ago."
Mari bit her tongue. She didn't dare say it.
Nikos said it for her. He slanted her a glance and said, "You're entitled. Go ahead. Say / told you so."
Mari shook her head wordlessly. She couldn't seem to say anything at all.
"I understand now," Nikos went on. He was looking at the sand again. "I understand him."
Mari hugged her knees a little bit tighter. The weight she'd felt lifting earlier at the very sight of him began almost imperceptibly to press down again. She tried to fight it. Told herself she ought to be glad. She was glad that Nikos and his father had sorted things out. She was glad he'd come to tell her, to allow her that "I told you so" she wouldn't say. But—
She wanted more. And she wasn't going to get it.
"He's still Stavros, though," Nikos went on. "After he told me why he did what he did, he told me not to do it, too."
Mari didn't speak. She held her breath.
"He said, 'Don't be your father's son, Nikos.'" Nikos managed a passable imitation of his father's raspy voice. '"Don't be a martyr to your love,' he said. 'You're a fool if you do.'"
He looked at her then, and Mari thought she finally understood what it meant to have your heart in your eyes. It was the way Nikos was looking at her. He swallowed.
"I don't want to go back to Cornwall without you. I don't want to go anywhere without you. I love you. I want to marry you. And you can be damned sure," he added with a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, "that I'm not just saying this because my father told me to!"
She said yes.
He wouldn't have blamed her if she hadn't. He wouldn't have blamed her if she'd told him she didn't ever want to see him again.
But he was glad she hadn't.
He'd laughed and rolled her in the sand the minute she said yes, she'd marry him, and that she loved him, too.
She made him laugh a lot over the next months. She made him cry once, too.
It was the day she'd told him she was expecting their child.
"A baby?" Of course he shouldn't have been surprised. They certainly did enough of what was required for her to get in that state.
But somehow, even after taking care of Alex and Georgiana until he was an old pro at this big-brother business, Nikos had never thought of himself as a father. It made him a little nervous and oddly misty-eyed.
"You should not worry," his father said. "You will have plenty of time to worry when this baby is born and making you crazy." The old man's eyes twinkled. His color was better these days. His heart was stronger. "I want to see you be a father," he said to his oldest son.
"He wants to see me make a hash of it," Nikos grumbled to Mari.
She wrapped her arms around him, barely able to link them behind his back because her belly was so round. "I don't believe it."
"I do," Nikos muttered. But he couldn't help smiling when he thought of his father doting on three children. He could see in the old man the young man who had wanted lots of babies. He would have been good with them, Nikos thought.
Mari agreed. Then she pressed her hand to her abdomen. "And it won't be long now."
In the end, she was stronger and braver than he was; Nikos had no doubt. When he saw what Mari went through in her labor, he understood more than ever his father's pain and his mother's love.
"Never again," he told Mari fervently after, when she lay in bed, the tiny blue-swaddled bundle in her arms. "It was awful. You could have died!"
"I was fine," Mari said, holding out her free arm to him. 'Tow were the one who fainted!"
"I knew it," Stavros said, coming into the room with Julietta behind him, smiling as well. Stavros went to Mari and gave her a gentle kiss. He touched the baby's cheek lightly.
Then he turned and embraced Nikos, and the two of them grinned at each other like fools. ' 'What have I been saying? I always knew you were your father's son!"
The Playboy and the Nanny Page 15
