by Kim Lawrence
Her sarcasm drew a soft expletive from his lips. ‘You are—’ A dark line appeared across the slashing curve of his cheekbones as he swallowed the rest of his furious retort. ‘You can mock as much as you like.’ The fingers encircling her wrists tightened and then, much to her intense relief, fell away completely.
‘Thanks, but I don’t need your permission.’
‘But,’ he continued as though she hadn’t spoken, ‘it doesn’t alter the fact that a child needs both parents.’
‘I can tell you from personal experience that you can get by perfectly well with one.’
‘You have your stepmother.’
Her brows lifted. ‘And who’s to say that at some future date Nicky won’t have a stepfather…?’
There was a short, stark silence, during which the muscles in Angolos’s brown throat rippled convulsively. Then, capturing her defiant eyes, he smiled and lifted his dark head to an imperious angle. ‘I am to say,’ he responded simply.
The scornful retort died on her lips as she encountered the chilling determination in his unblinking eyes.
‘So now you’re going to vet my boyfriends, are you? I’d be interested in how that works.’
‘This isn’t about you. This is about what is best for our son.’
More absurd than him trying to make her feel guilty and selfish was the fact she actually did! ‘I’ve been doing the best for our son for the past three years. What have you been doing for him? On second thoughts, you staying out of his life probably was the biggest favour you could do him.’
He visibly paled in response to her vitriolic attack, but didn’t attempt to defend himself. ‘I can understand your anger.’
‘I doubt that, I really doubt that,’ she gritted. ‘And besides, I don’t want your understanding.’ What did she want from him? Was she going to be happier if he walked away? She fixed him with a resentful glare. ‘I wish you’d never come.’
‘Has it occurred to you that you are denying him his heritage?’
This change of tack increased her growing sense of unease. ‘You’re the one who denied him that. Besides, Nicky is perfectly happy where he is.’
‘He doesn’t even speak his own language.’
‘His language is English.’ She winced to hear both the defensiveness and doubt in her voice.
‘Nicky is half Greek. He will only have to look in the mirror to see that.’
‘I’m not trying to hide his heritage from him.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘No, I’m not. I would never lie to my son.’
‘Our son.’
Gritting her teeth, Georgie refused to respond to the correction.
‘He will know when he goes to school that he does not look like the fair-skinned children in his class. What will you say when he asks you why he is different?’
‘You obviously know very little about the ethnic mix in most schools, if you think that Nicky will stand out. Have you never heard of a multicultural society?’
One dark brow angled. ‘So what will you do when he asks about me?’
‘I…I haven’t thought about it.’
‘Don’t you think it’s about time you did?’
She lifted her resentful eyes to his. ‘Nicky’s happy,’ she contended stubbornly.
Angolos studied her face. ‘You know I’m right, don’t you, Georgette?’ Before she had a chance to deny his assertion he added, ‘And I can see that Nicky is happy.’
Her hopes rose, only to be dashed.
‘However, I will not permit my son to be brought up not knowing who his father is…thinking that he is unwanted…’ He swallowed hard, the muscles of his throat contracting as he visibly struggled to control his feelings. ‘The boy is being brought up surrounded by women…’
‘And what’s wrong with women?’
His face relaxed briefly into a slow smile. ‘I like women…’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’ And they liked him. Everywhere they had gone together women’s eyes had followed him—that he had seemed for the most part oblivious to the fact had been no comfort to her at the time.
‘But a boy needs a male role model?’
Feeling increasingly on the defensive because of his uncomfortable ability to come up with a reply for everything she said, Georgie set her chin on her steepled fingers. ‘There are plenty of men in Nicky’s life.’
The fire in his dark eyes provided a stark contrast to the icy expression of austere disdain that spread across his lean face.
‘I have no wish to be regaled with your romantic adventures. Nicky does not need men in the plural…’
The criticism struck her as the height of hypocrisy. ‘I’m not the one who has trouble forming stable relationships… And who did you have in mind as a role model?’ Her feathery brows lifted. ‘You? Don’t make me laugh,’ she pleaded with contempt.
Angolos’s expression was glacial as he responded. ‘You have someone you consider more suitable in mind?’
Her chin lifted. ‘And if I do?’ she challenged pugnaciously.
‘If you do, Georgette, I would advise you not to pursue that very dangerous course.’
Her chest swelled with outrage. ‘Is that a threat?’
His silky smile sent a shiver down her rigid spine, but it was the fluttery sensation low in her stomach that sent her several steps closer to outright panic.
‘Threats are for wimps.’
A hissing sound of disgust issued from her pursed lips. ‘That is exactly the sort of macho posturing I don’t want my son exposed to.’
‘Our son.’
Their combative stares locked and the seconds ticked by. Georgie was the first to break the lengthening silence.
‘You can’t just walk back into my life this way, Angolos…’ She turned away, her face scrunched up in anguish as the fight drained from her body. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘Only children expect life to be fair.’ The unexpected note of sympathy in his voice brought a lump to her aching throat.
‘It rather depends on their experience.’ Her lips curved upwards, but there was no smile in her eyes as she added, ‘You forget that my mother walked out when I was a baby.’
‘No, I remember.’ He dragged a hand through his hair. ‘Your grandmother will be pleased to see us reunited.’
‘Don’t talk like it’s a done deal, Angolos,’ she warned, managing a weak smile at his irony.
‘But you agree that a stable family environment is the best place to bring up a child.’
‘Of course I do; I’m not stupid.’ Georgie forced her clenched fists to relax. ‘I need time to think. This is just too much…too soon…’
‘We were good together…you must remember…’
Her eyes flew wide open as anger surged through her body—other things surged too, but she concentrated hard on the anger.
‘So good, in fact, that you threw me out.’
Unable to hold her accusing gaze, Angolos brought his dark lashes down in a concealing screen. ‘I am not proud…’
‘I don’t much care about your precious pride or regret or anything else!’ she declared hotly. ‘The fact is you rejected our baby… So you want to be a family now—’ her slender shoulders lifted ‘—big deal! Next year or next week even you’ll probably have changed your mind again. Do you think I’d put my future and that of my son in the hands of someone so…who can’t make up his mind what he wants?’
‘I know exactly what I want.’
His low, throaty declaration sent a jolt of sharp sexual awareness through her body. ‘Yes, you want your own way,’ she contended without looking at him. Looking at him would be a very bad idea just now.
‘I want us to be a family and I think you do too.’
She angled a narrow-eyed look at his face. ‘That was what I thought we were four years ago. Give me one reason why I should ever believe what you say to me? You’ve never even told me why! All I got was a shrug and a sneer and c…coldness.’ She stopped an
d bit her lip to control the quiver in her voice.
‘All I want to know is why…’
‘Well, for starters, I knew that you were sleeping with someone else.’
A long throbbing silence developed.
‘Not that again,’ she said wearily. ‘Not even you are that stupid. Sure…sure I had a string of lovers.’
The expression she saw cross his face suggested this wasn’t the response he had been expecting. ‘I had proof.’
‘That I would really like to see.’
‘You’ve got nerve, I’ll give you that,’ he gritted back. ‘But you were not as careful as you thought.’
‘Come on, Angolos, I’m not listening unless you tell me the real reason you rejected Nicky.’
His beautiful mouth twisted as their eyes touched. ‘I was prepared…I actually thought we might be able to get beyond your infidelity,’ he recalled. ‘I blamed myself for leaving you alone.’
‘You were going to forgive me!’ This got even more implausible. ‘If you seriously thought there was another man you would have torn him limb from limb,’ she contended.
He gave an odd, twisted smile. ‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?’
‘So what’s the real reason?’
Above the sound of the waves crashing softly on the sand she heard his white teeth grating. ‘Be honest,’ she recommended.
‘Me, honest?’
‘A baby didn’t fit in with your life then, did it?’ she claimed, ignoring his raw interjection. ‘I don’t know what’s changed, but now you’ve suddenly decided—’
He pressed his hand to his mouth and shook his dark head. ‘Theos!’ he thundered, eyeing her with frustrated incredulity. His chest rose and fell in tune to his rapid, uneven respirations. ‘I knew I couldn’t have children.’
CHAPTER NINE
THE only sound to disturb the silence that followed Angolos’s driven declaration was the cracking noise as he clenched his long fingers and the audible hiss of his laboured breathing.
‘Not have children…?’ Georgie shot a sideways look at his taut profile. ‘You’re not making any sense.’
‘I was told that I couldn’t have children.’
She just stared at him, hearing, but not able to digest what he had said.
‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’
She pressed her fingers to her temples and shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Evidently I was wrong.’
‘But it’s silly—you couldn’t…’ Angolos was so rampantly male he couldn’t be… She shook her head positively and without thinking her eyes dropped down his body. ‘You’re—’
‘I am functional,’ he cut in. ‘You’re confusing sterility with impotence.’
Flushing to the roots of her hair at his sardonic intervention, she jerked her eyes back to his face.
‘I just didn’t think I was capable of fathering a child.’
‘But we’d only been together a few weeks. You couldn’t know that unless—’ Unless he had already tried to have a baby. With someone else. With Sonia. The colour suddenly leached dramatically from her lightly tanned skin. ‘Oh,’ she said swallowing. ‘I see.’
So now she had the answer to the question that had puzzled many people at the time. Namely, why should a couple so supremely well suited as Sonia and Angolos get divorced? This new revelation provided the answer, and Georgie could see how it could have happened. They had desperately wanted a family, and Sonia hadn’t got pregnant.
It wouldn’t be the first time the strain of that sort of situation had split up a marriage.
She could see it all: Sonia had thrown herself into a mad social whirl, and Angolos had buried himself in his work. They wouldn’t have talked, of course…as she knew to her cost Angolos didn’t talk.
You had only to witness Sonia and Angolos together to see that they still had feelings for one another. And Georgie had witnessed them together. She hadn’t had much choice when the woman had been their house guest barely weeks after they had married.
‘So when I said I was pregnant…some men might have thought it was a miracle, but you thought that I…’
Some men hadn’t had a letter written by their wife’s lover in their possession. Even after all these years the humiliation of that discovery was still with him. ‘I suppose some men might, but that is all in the past, now I know…’
‘And now you know you can have children.’
Right result, wrong mother.
Was that what he had thought when he realised…? Had he wondered why this couldn’t have happened while he was with Sonia?
Georgie pressed the heel of one hand to the centre of her chest where misery had lodged like a solid object behind her breastbone. Would the pain ever go away…?
‘Yes, now I know I have a child. I have Nicky, and I want to be his father.’
A furrow appeared in her smooth brow. ‘No.’ She wouldn’t deprive Nicky of his father, but how could she survive with Angolos as part of her life? If she had ever kidded herself she weren’t as madly in love with him as ever, she recognised now that this convenient self-delusion was no longer an option.
He slid her a burning look of impatience. ‘What do you mean, no?’
‘I mean…I don’t know what I mean.’ She shook her head. ‘No, this can’t be right. We talked about having a family…we planned…’ She stopped and realised that they hadn’t talked; she had talked. Her stomach lurched sickly as the implications of his confession hit her. ‘You knew about this when we got married?’
‘I did.’
‘And you didn’t tell me—you let me think…’
Angolos watched the colour drain from her face; the sprinkling of freckles across her nose stood out against the marble pallor. ‘You can’t love them,’ she had always said when he had told her he loved those freckles.
‘You let me talk about babies when all along…’ A shudder ran through her body as she turned her tearful, accusing eyes to his face. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? You let me carry on thinking…’
‘It was an omission, and I was wrong.’ A man with an ounce of integrity would have given her the opportunity to make an informed decision.
In his own defence he had fully planned to tell her before the wedding. He had lost count of the number of times that he had started to tell her only to pull back at the last moment.
He had rationalised it, of course, told himself that she was marrying him… After all, her inability to give him a child wouldn’t have altered his feelings.
Feelings were the core of the problem…
She had lit up when he’d walked into a room; she had shaken when he’d touched her. Angolos had known full well that she had been infatuated with him. Young and infatuated, but love…? Had he dared put it to the test?
‘I’m sorry, Angolos.’
His startled eyes flew to her face.
Georgie was pale but composed. As he watched she pushed the hair back from her face with her forearm. It was an intensely weary gesture. The urge to reach out and take her in his arms was so strong that for a moment he couldn’t drag air into his lungs.
‘What are you sorry for, yineka mou?’
‘Well, it must have been incredibly hard for someone like you to be told that you couldn’t father children.’
‘Someone like me…?’
She nodded and as she lifted her eyes to his she caught the strangest expression crossing his face. ‘Well, any man, then,’ she moderated, tactfully not touching on his overdeveloped male pride. ‘When they told you…’ Her voice faded as she imagined him sitting in a clinical white office having the shattering news broken to him by an unsympathetic doctor. ‘You must have felt like someone had kicked you in…’ Her glance dropped and dark, fiery colour rose up her neck until her face was glowing. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t—’
‘You’re right, that’s exactly how I felt,’ Angolos cut in, taking pity on her.
‘And I don’t expect you discussed it with anyone.’<
br />
His smile faded. ‘It is not the sort of thing a man discusses.’
His stiff pronouncement was exactly what she had been talking about. ‘Point proven. You’re really into all this macho stuff in a big way. There’s no good denying it,’ she added. ‘And I know you can’t help it. I’m just sorry,’ she admitted with sigh, ‘that you didn’t feel able to confide in me, but then that was always the problem, wasn’t it?
‘You never treated me like an adult capable of making my own decisions. You always kept me out of the loop. Ours was never an equal relationship,’ she reflected, contemplating her neatly trimmed, unpolished nails with a wistful expression that unknown to her had a more dramatic impact on Angolos than the kick she had previously so accurately described.
His expression had grown increasingly shocked as he listened to her matter-of-fact analysis of their relationship. By the time she finished he had the stunned aspect of someone who had just been hit by a runaway truck.
‘I never expected you to take it this way.’
‘Well, I’m not saying I would have been happy about it. I desperately wanted to have your baby.’ She looked up and surprised a stricken expression on his lean face that cut her to the core. ‘But it wouldn’t have changed anything, not essentially,’ she added firmly.
‘You think not?’
His scepticism annoyed her. ‘Yes, I do. We could have adopted…’ Her face brightened. ‘There are a lot of babies out there who need a home,’ she told him earnestly.
‘It would seem,’ he said slowly, ‘that I underestimated you.’
‘When were you going to tell me?’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ he admitted.
Truth be told, he had been willing to ignore every precept of decency that had been instilled in him all his life in order to marry a woman he hadn’t even believed loved him, and now it seemed that woman’s feelings had been deeper and less selfish than his own.
And he had blown it big time.
‘At the moment our feelings for each other are not important,’ he began in a voice totally devoid of emotion.
She pulled herself onto her knees and brushed the sand from her skirt with slow, deliberate strokes. ‘Neither are they any mystery,’ she said dully. To her way of thinking, if he had ever felt a shred of true feeling for her, he would never have sent her away.
