When Christakos Meets His Match

by Abby Green

  This information made Sidonie literally reel. She had to put her hands behind her on the railing just to hold onto something or she was afraid she’d fall down.

  ‘You had me investigated?’ she whispered incredulously, looking at him, at this complete stranger.

  Alexio lifted one shoulder minutely and didn’t look remotely ashamed or sheepish. ‘I can’t be too careful... Someone, a complete stranger, comes into my life... I got suspicious.’

  ‘My God,’ Sidonie breathed, horrified. ‘Who are you?’

  She felt sick. And then angry. It was a huge surge of emotion, rising up within her. She stood up straight, let go of the railing. She was shaking.

  ‘And how dare you pry into my private life? What my mother did has got absolutely nothing to do with you.’

  Sidonie had lived with that shame all her life but had finally come to terms with what her mother had done—not least because she understood a little of why she’d acted the way she had. Something that she could never explain to this cold stranger. She hadn’t even let her guard down enough with him to tell him of her deep private secrets. He’d gone looking for them.

  Sidonie was aware of parts of herself breaking off inside, shattering. She knew she had to hold it together.

  Alexio spoke again, his voice as cutting as a knife. ‘But it wasn’t just that, was it? She put your aunt into severe debt, to fund her own expensive tastes.’

  Shame heaped on top of shame. Sidonie felt horribly exposed. From somewhere deep inside, and far too late, she reached for and pulled up an icy shield.

  ‘That is none of your concern.’ Because she’d never intended to tell him about it. It was part of the real world, which wasn’t part of this fantasy world.

  Alexio’s mouth twisted. ‘But it would have been, wouldn’t it? You were waiting for the right moment, when enough intimacy had been established, and then you were going to make your move. I just wonder if you were going to ask only for enough to cover the debts or more...based on how many nights we’d spent together? Based on how duped you thought I was by then?’

  ‘Theos.’ He was lashing out now, making Sidonie flinch. He narrowed wild-looking eyes on her.

  ‘You were good. I’ll give you that. But there were a few signs... The way you were so blasé with the clothes, as if you had expected nothing less. That little wistful moment outside the jewellery shop... Were you hoping to wake up and find a diamond bracelet winking at you on the pillow?’

  Sidonie desperately tried not to let the awful insidious insecurity take hold, telling her that despite everything she was her mother’s daughter. Had something about the sheer level of Alexio’s wealth called to her? More than the man himself? Suddenly she doubted herself. She had to take deep breaths to avoid throwing up right there on the terrace.

  The sheer depth and evidence of Alexio’s cynicism was astounding, shocking. The lengths he’d gone to because he hadn’t really trusted her... Because he’d suspected something.

  The things he’d found out... The fact that she had so fatally misread this man. How had she not seen an inkling of this? Only those most fleeting moments when a look would cross his face...hardly enough to make her wonder.

  Nevertheless, a small, tender part of Sidonie not lashed by this terrible revelation was making her say, ‘You have it all wrong. I was only telling my aunt something to reassure her. She was hysterical. I didn’t mean it. You were never meant to hear that and I had no intention of asking you for money.’

  To Sidonie’s own ears it sounded flat. Didn’t sound convincing. She couldn’t seem to drum up the necessary passion to convince him. She was too stunned, too shocked...too wounded.

  Predictably, Alexio didn’t believe her. His eyes were a dead, emotionless void.

  ‘I do not wish to discuss this any further. We’re done here. I am going back to Athens within the hour. If you come with me I will ensure you get a flight home.’

  Sidonie felt devoid of all feeling except one: she hated this man. And she couldn’t believe how gullible she’d been—how naïve not to have assumed that a man as powerful as him would, of course, be suspicious and cynical by nature.

  She said flatly, ‘I would prefer to swim home.’

  Alexio shrugged minutely, as if he couldn’t care less. ‘As you wish. There’s a boat leaving for Piraeus this evening. My housekeeper’s husband will take you to the port.’

  Sidonie welcomed that. Because right now she hated herself for automatically thinking about what it would be like to get on a plane again without this man distracting her from her fear with his charming sexy smile. With that wicked mouth.

  He turned away and then turned back abruptly, his eyes dark. Something in his voice was a bit wild, but Sidonie was too traumatised to notice it.

  ‘Tell me...was it on the plane, when you knew who I was? Did you decide then to try and hook me by making me believe you were different from every other woman I’ve ever met?’

  Sidonie just looked at him. Words of defence were stuck in her throat. She had no defence—not when this man had proved that he had suspected her of something long before he’d even had a reason to. And he still had no reason to. She had trusted him, blindly, right from the start, never suspecting for a moment how dark he was inside. How he could so easily condemn her.

  She never wanted to see him again because he had just proved that she would never be free of the past. He had broken her heart into a million pieces and she’d never forgive herself for that weakness. Or him.

  His condemnation would be her defence, so she said, ‘Yes. On the plane. As soon as I knew who you were.’

  Alexio looked at her for a taut moment and then he turned and strode away, leaving her standing there. As soon as he was out of sight Sidonie blindly made her way into the en suite bathroom of the bedroom where they’d made love too many times to count and was violently ill.

  Afterwards, when Alexio’s helicopter had left and she’d changed into her own clothes and packed her bag, Sidonie sat on a lounger outside with the glorious view unnoticed in front of her. She was still numb. Devoid of any substantial feeling. She knew it was the protection of shock.

  One thing impinged, though: disgust at herself for having indulged in this fantasy. She’d wanted one night and had then grabbed for more... Had she on some level hoped that Alexio would want her for longer? Deeper? Had she ignored her own usually healthy self-protective cautious nature because she’d been blinded by opulence? The thought made her feel sick again.

  Bitterly she surmised that she should have listened to him more closely when he’d told her his reasons for turning his back on his inheritance. He was driven and ruthless—had dashed his own father’s expectations and dreams to fuel his own desires.

  She’d believed his reasons were justified when she’d heard them at first—she’d heard the way his voice had constricted when he’d talked about his father, as if even now he felt the unbearable yoke of expectation. She’d admired him.

  But now she saw him for what he really was: an amoral, ambitious, greedy man who would step over his nearest and dearest to get ahead. She hadn’t stood a chance. He might have heard her damning conversation with her aunt, but he’d already investigated her at that stage and had clearly believed her worthy of judgement because of her mother’s criminal record.

  Those two years of her mother’s incarceration were etched like an invisible tatoo into Sidonie’s skin. A stain of shame that would never be gone, but which had faded over time...until now.

  Sidonie’s well-ingrained sense of responsibility rose up. She should never have indulged herself like this. She had her aunt to worry about now, and clearing the debts.

  She heard a car pull up somewhere nearby. It would be the housekeeper’s husband. She stood up and tried not to let the emotion brewing within her break free. She couldn’t let it. She was afra
id of its awesome power. Of how much it would tell her about a hurt that shouldn’t be so deep—not after just a few days with a man she hadn’t even known.

  A man appeared, old and bent, with a weathered face and black eyes. His dour expression gave Sidonie some sense of relief. If he’d been kind she might have broken apart altogether. He took her bag and at the same time handed her a white envelope with nothing written on it.

  Sidonie opened it and saw a cheque with her name on it inside. It was for an amount of money that took her breath away. Enough to halve her aunt’s debts at least. The signature at the bottom was bold and arrogant. Reeking of condemnation and disgust.

  Fire filled Sidonie’s belly. She stalked straight back into the villa and went to Alexio’s office.

  She took the cheque out of the envelope and ripped it up into tiny pieces. Then she put them back in the envelope and wrote on the outside.

  It was never about the money.

  And then she left.

  Four months later...

  Alexio looked down at the craggy dark island below him with its distinctive white and blue roofs. The helipad on his own villa loomed into view and tension made his gut hard. Alexio grimaced as his solicitor’s words came back to him. ‘You’re heading for burnout, man. I’ve never seen you like this before.’

  Alexio couldn’t remember being like this before either—not even in the days when he’d been struggling and working night and day to make a success of his business. But for the last four months he’d barely stopped to breathe. On automatic pilot.

  His fortune had doubled. His acquisitions had extended to North America, making him the first European budget airline to secure such a lucrative contract. Now he was global, having taken half the time people had predicted.

  But Alexio felt as if an essential fire inside him had been doused. He rejected the thought immediately. Nothing was different. He was still the same—held the same values and ambitions.

  As the small aircraft circled lower and lower he fought her memory. This was precisely why he’d avoided coming back here before now. During daylight hours he had to make a concerted effort not to think of her; that was where work came in. But in the nights she haunted him. Stopped him from sleeping. Made his body ache so badly that he had to ease it like a horny teenager.

  He wouldn’t mind if he could alleviate his frustration with another woman, but he could barely look at a woman these days without feeling a measure of disgust. And a disturbingly flatlining libido.

  He told himself it was because he’d come so close to being burnt. A vivid memory came into his mind as the glittering sun-kissed sea below the villa came into view—Sidonie launching herself onto his back as they’d walked up the steps from the sea, kissing his neck, joking, laughing. And all the time plotting to feather her nest.

  Alexio felt sick, and he almost told the pilot to keep going...but they were landing now and Alexio refused to let a memory override his intellect.

  He’d finally agreed to go somewhere for a few days’ R&R after he and his brother had almost come to blows for the first time in years. Alexio had been closing a deal with Rafaele to create a joint company which would invest in research for future technologies in cars and aircraft. They’d been in Rafaele’s palazzo outside Milan, where he was spending the summer with his family.

  Alexio had been keen to keep working one day and Rafaele had looked at him incredulously. ‘Are you crazy? We’ve been working all day—Sam is making dinner tonight and Milo’s back from summer school in Milan. I haven’t seen him since this morning. I have a family now, Alexio...things are different.’

  Alexio had felt a completely irrational anger erupt at his brother’s very valid reasons not to keep working. Since he’d arrived he’d found the domestic idyll of Rafaele’s family almost too much to bear. The openly loving looks between him and his wife. His precocious and gorgeous nephew, who bathed everyone in his sunny charming nature. The way he was doted on by both Sam and Rafaele. The way Rafaele’s relationship with his own father had clearly undergone a transformation for the better.

  It had brought Alexio back to that dark place when he’d believed such things existed, only to find out that they didn’t. It had brought back the resentment that he’d felt because he’d witnessed something ugly in his own family that Rafaele had never had to witness simply because he’d been free to get on with his own life, leaving Alexio behind in a toxic atmosphere.

  He’d been caught in the grip of that darkness, emotions swirling in his gut, and he’d sneered, ‘You’re losing your touch, Rafaele, ever since you let that woman get to you—’

  His brother had stepped right up to him, chest to chest, and Alexio had felt the heat of his anger.

  Rafaele had blistered at him, ‘Do not ever call Sam that woman again. Whatever is going on with you, Alexio, sort it out.’

  Sam had come into the study then, smiling widely, oblivious to the tension at first. And then her grey eyes had grown wide and concerned as she’d immediately looked to her husband. Something in that look, something that had seemed so naked and dangerous to Alexio, had made him push past his brother.

  He’d found the wherewithal to stop and say tightly, ‘I’m sorry, Sam. I have to leave. Something’s come up...’ and then he’d left the palazzo as if hounds were at his heels. Running from that picture of domestic bliss which he wanted to believe was a sham...but which he knew deep down wasn’t.

  He’d avoided the repeated phone calls from his brother since then.

  He was here now, so he’d get it together if it killed him. And maybe tonight he’d go to that nightclub and his libido wouldn’t flatline in the presence of other women. Maybe it would surge back to life and he would finally be able to erase her image from his mind once and for all, claw back some sense of equilibrium.

  * * *

  Sidonie gave a groan of satisfaction as she slid into the steaming water of the cracked and discoloured bath. Tante Josephine had squirted in enough bubbles to hide Sidonie’s body from view completely, but she didn’t need it to be hidden to know what she’d see without the bubbles: a small bump protruding over the waterline, as it had started to do over the last week.

  It seemed to be getting bigger by the day now as she became more noticeably pregnant.

  Her boss at the café had pulled her aside earlier and said bluntly, ‘I have five children. You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’

  Sidonie had blanched, too shocked to deny it, and nodded her head.

  Her boss had sighed. ‘Okay, you can stay for a couple of months, but as soon as you start to get big you’re gone—this is not work for a pregnant woman.’

  Sidonie had gasped, but he’d walked away. She’d realised the irony of her boss being a chauvinistic Greek man but hadn’t felt like laughing.

  She bit her lip now with worry. So far she and Tante Josephine were doing okay. When Sidonie had got back to Paris and moved in with her aunt she’d gone to see a financial advisor who had helped them consolidate their debts to a monthly total. Now all Sidonie had to do was earn enough to make that payment. Every month. For a long, long time into the future.

  They were just about managing, with Tante Josephine’s job and Sidonie’s two and sometimes three jobs. But now that a baby was in the mix...

  Sidonie bit down on her lip hard and put her hand over the small swell. Since the moment she’d seen the first pregnancy test turn positive, and then the next and the next—five tests in all—she’d forged an indelible bond with the clump of cells growing inside her. She’d never consciously thought about having a baby—it was something she’d put off into the distant future, not really wanting to consider the huge responsibility, especially after her own damaging experiences—but crazily, in spite of everything, somehow it felt right. And Sidonie couldn’t explain why, when she had every reason to feel the opposite.

 
Sometimes, though, panic gripped her so hard she had to stop and breathe. She fought it. She would get through this somehow.

  It didn’t help that Tante Josephine kept asking Sidonie, ‘But where is your boyfriend? The one you told me about? Won’t he want to take care of you? I thought he was going to make everything okay?’

  Sidonie would take her aunt’s face in her hands and say firmly, but lovingly, ‘We don’t need him, Jojo, we have each other. We’re a team and we’re invincible. I won’t let anything happen to us, okay?’

  Her aunt would sigh and then quickly get distracted by something—usually talk of the baby. She’d already decided that if it was a boy it would be called Sebastian and if it was a girl Belle, after a favourite cartoon character.

  As Sidonie lay in the bath now, after a punishing day of work, she felt helpless tears spring into her eyes. Immediately she cut off the emotion ruthlessly, as she’d been doing for four months. Anger rose and she welcomed it. She cultivated it. It was the only thing that kept her sane, kept her going. And now the baby.

  She would never contact him and she had to stop thinking about him. For a man who had accused her of being a gold-digger on the basis of conducting an investigation into her private life and overhearing an admittedly unfortunate conversation, news of a baby would consign her to the hell of his condemnation for good—and she would not give him the satisfaction.

  Her anger rose, swift and bright, washing away those dangerous tender feelings that hovered on the periphery and had no place after what he’d done to her.

  * * *

  Alexio returned to the villa feeling more disgruntled than ever. After sleeping for almost eight hours on a lounger on the terrace he’d gone to the club.

  Elettra, encouraged by the fact that he was alone, had twined herself around him like a clinging vine, making him feel nothing but claustrophobia.

  In a fit of darkness he’d taken the same booth as last time and had been bombarded with images and memories: Sidonie’s dress, the way the silk had clung and moved with her body. How it had felt to dance close to her, sliding his hand under her dress to touch her naked back. The insistent throb of the music, with the same beat as the desire rushing through his blood. The way she’d looked at him, hungry and innocent.