by Pippa Roscoe
Dimitri wasn’t a stranger to what alcohol could do to a person and what kind of chemical prison it could be. Some responded to gentle persuasion, but the time for that had passed.
‘I’m going to get you some water, and you’re going to sleep down here on the sofa.’ There was no way he was going to let her upstairs near his child or her daughter. Mary made one last effort to complain, but he saw that off with a raised eyebrow.
‘Do not test me, Mrs Moore. You’ve done enough damage tonight.’
She just hadn’t realised how much yet.
As Mary reluctantly lay down on the sofa, Anna stuck her head over the bannisters. He raised a hand to stop her from coming further down the stairs, knowing that her reappearance would spark another round from the woman on the sofa.
Anna’s eyes were sad as she mouthed the words ‘thank you’ to him and disappeared. And just for a moment he felt sorry for her. Because she had no idea what was about to happen.
He waited until Mary Moore fell into a comfortably drunk sleep and pulled out his mobile. David answered on the second ring.
‘I need you to do a couple of things for me. I need indefinite management cover for the bed and breakfast and a list of rehab clinics as far away from this village as humanly possible, and I need both by ten a.m. tomorrow.’
‘Sure thing. Anything else?’
‘Yes. Tell Flora to get the house prepared for anything a two-year-old might need. And after that, I want you to start working on a watertight prenup.’
CHAPTER THREE
Dear Dimitri,
How could you do such a thing?
ANNA FLIPPED OUT the bed sheet, the whipping sound it made before it settled over the mattress making her wince. She was exhausted, having barely slept the night before. Every time she’d closed her eyes she’d seen Dimitri standing between her and Amalia as if it were a prophecy foretelling how she would, from now on, see her daughter—at a distance and with him separating them. If not that, then she’d been tortured by the memories of her own pleasure as Dimitri had teased orgasm after orgasm from her innocent body.
But when she woke, all she could think of was her mother. It had been years since Mary had turned up at the bed and breakfast that far out of control. A twinge cramped her stomach. This hadn’t been the life she’d wanted. Once she’d dreamed of escaping the small village, whose inhabitants had been hostile towards them from the moment Mary had been forced to raise her child alone. Anna had fantasised about studying art and sculpture, perhaps even at the University of Glasgow. It had been a hope that she’d cherished as she’d worked at the bed and breakfast saving every penny she made to put towards tuition fees. That Anna had somehow managed to follow in her mother’s footsteps—becoming, instead, another single mother—had sealed their fate. Undesirable. Unwanted. The cautionary tale that locals told their children. And what a cautionary tale it was. Only the masochistic would want Dimitri Kyriakou arriving on their doorstep to claim what he felt he was owed.
By the time the sun had peeked around her curtain that morning, she’d realised she needed a plan. She needed to take back the control that was slipping through her fingers like hot sand.
This was the last of the rooms that needed cleaning after the hasty departure of her guests the night before. If she was lucky, she’d be able to pull some new clients from the horse racing meeting in Dublin in a few days’ time.
Thankfully her mother had left before Anna had brought Amalia down for breakfast. It was the one showdown she hadn’t been prepared for. Where her mother was concerned, Anna realised that she no longer had any defences left. How could her mother have done that, knowing Amalia was in the house? Clearly all the talk of rehab—the apparent reason she’d taken the money from Dimitri in the first place—was a... Anna wasn’t ready to call it a lie, more of a thin spider’s web of fiction that broke under the weight of addiction.
Rehab had been a mythical promise she’d heard over and over again throughout the years. A place the woman wearing her mother’s skin would go, and upon her return would be her real mother gifted back to her. The mother who had once been a bright, powerful, creative woman with a deep well of love to give and not enough pools in which to store it. But her mother was one problem. Dimitri was another.
There were a hundred different ways she’d imagined their reunion, and not one of them came remotely close to what had happened the night before. Recalling the night they’d spent together three years before, she realised that she’d been wearing her mother’s shirt—the one with the name Mary Moore sewn onto the pocket. And, with her mother’s record, would she not have stormed in like a Valkyrie, ready to retrieve her child from such a woman? The way that no one had done for her?
She felt, rather than heard, a presence behind her. Siobhan was downstairs with Amalia, so there was only one person it could be. Only one person had ever had that effect on her body. It had been the same way the first time she’d laid eyes on him. A feeling that the world had ever so slightly tilted on its axis, a feeling that nothing would ever be the same again. It started on her forearms, as if she were held there between powerful hands, raising the hairs beneath the imaginary touch. It licked up her spine and across her neck. And then Anna cursed herself for being fanciful.
‘What are you doing?’ Dimitri asked, sounding as sleep-deprived as she.
‘Preparing the rooms. I may get some walk-ins later. The weather is good, and the races are on...’ She trailed off, knowing that she had to address what had happened with her mother. ‘About last night—’
‘Does she live here?’
‘My mother? No.’ Anna shook her head vehemently, instantly understanding his concern. ‘No. It’s been years since she turned up here like that.’
‘Who else do you employ here?’ It wasn’t perhaps the question she’d expected. She’d imagined Dimitri would haul her over the coals for her mother’s appearance. Anna was still trying to gather her thoughts from the breakneck speed of his inquisition. She still hadn’t turned to face him. She needed just a moment more to gather her strength.
‘Siobhan helps out when we’re at capacity. Which we would have been today, had not all my customers been removed to a hotel in Dublin.’ With this she finally turned to take in the broad expanse of the man who had no damn right to look that good after a night in the smallest room she had.
Instantly regretting it, she turned back to the room, picked up the cleaning basket and made her way into the en suite bathroom. She put on the rubber gloves and spread a healthy squirt of bleach on the scrubber as if she could clean away either the sight of him or him completely.
She got onto her knees, realising that this was perhaps the most ridiculous way to have a conversation, but, needing something to do with her hands other than throttle the man behind her, she pushed on.
‘I’ve been thinking, and I would like you to have a relationship with my—our—daughter.’ She told herself it was the smell of the bleach that had her stomach twisting and turning worse than any morning sickness she had experienced. ‘I’d be happy to grant visitation rights, but you must understand that we will be staying here. My life is here and so is my daughter’s. I will not uproot everything she’s ever known.’
There. She had managed to get the words from her mind to her mouth without crying, or sounding weak. She needed him to agree to this.
* * *
For a moment, just as he had done the night before, he felt almost sorry for her. She had no idea that her life was about to change irrevocably. But from the first time he’d heard of his daughter, Dimitri knew that he wouldn’t settle for visitation rights. He wanted his daughter with him. All the time.
He was man enough to admit that the knowledge that he currently didn’t have any legal rights to his child was nothing short of terrifying. The fear that had gripped him in those first moments of this shocking discovery had been nothing like anythi
ng he’d ever experienced. Nothing. Even when he’d arrived at his father’s house at the age of seven for the first time, not knowing if he’d take him in. Even before that, when the police filling the tiny apartment he’d shared with his mother were saying unintelligible things that he struggled to make sense of years after they had left his life. None of it scratched the surface of the deep well that opened up when he realised that there was a tiny life out there, his flesh and blood...
‘I don’t want you to miss out on things,’ Anna was saying as she furiously scrubbed at the toilet, before picking herself up off the floor and turning—still with her back to him—to the sink.
‘You don’t want me missing...’ His sentence trailed off as incredulity hit him hard. ‘What, like the first sonogram? The first sound of my daughter’s heartbeat? Tell me, Anna,’ he said, reaching out to pull her around to him, so that he could look her in the eyes, so he could see the truth written there in them when she answered his next question. ‘Does my daughter even know the word Daddy?’
He regretted touching her the moment his fingers hit the bare skin of her arm beneath her short T-shirt. He tried to ignore the flames that licked out at him from just one touch; he tried to ignore the rush of memories he’d held at bay for the last two days. He had to. Instead, he focused on the mounting horror in Anna’s eyes.
‘What? Did you think I wouldn’t have wanted to be part of those things? Christe mou, Anna, did you even think of me at all?’
Dimitri cursed again, but this time silently. He hadn’t want to reveal that much. He needed to get this back on to an unemotional level if he had any hope of persuading her to his cause. But the more and more he thought of all the things he had missed out on, all of the things Amalia would have grown up with, the stigma of being illegitimate in a sternly familial culture...and at how he hadn’t been able to protect her from that... He knew how much damage could be done to a child when they were unwelcome, unwanted...
So, no. No. He’d never put his daughter through that. He would do what he had to do. Because that was what Dimitri did. He put aside anything that would prevent the required outcome. He cut off the thoughts of the past, his mother, his half-brother’s betrayal, thoughts of the time he had spent wrongfully incarcerated in prison. They had no place here. Here was his daughter. And the mother of his child. And he needed them in Greece.
‘This is getting us nowhere,’ he said, looking around the small bathroom. ‘Can we... Do you have coffee? Can we sit and have a proper conversation, when you’re not...?’ He gestured towards the cleaning products and the hideous yellow gloves Anna was wearing.
* * *
The smell of coffee seemed to have a calming effect on his nerves, but the moment the insipid, thin liquid hit his tongue he regretted it. Dimitri kept his eyes trained on Anna, who had yet to stop moving, either around the small bathroom she’d been cleaning or the impressive, sleek chrome kitchen he’d been surprised to find tucked away from the main part of the old cottage.
He supposed the small staff area could pass as cosy and compact. But while he sat pressed up against the wall, his long legs barely fitting beneath the wooden table, his patience finally wore thin.
‘Sit down,’ he demanded.
Anna stilled, freezing against the command, but finally she slipped—easily—into the seat opposite him. Though her body had finally stopped moving, her eyes seemed to take everything in but him.
‘I want you to come to Greece.’
Ah. That did it. Anna’s gaze zeroed in on his.
‘No.’
‘No?’ he asked, his eyebrow raised.
She let out an incredulous laugh. ‘How can I go to Greece? I have a business here, my mother, my...life is here, Dimitri. I can’t.’
This was nothing he hadn’t expected, but the email he’d received from David that morning had confirmed that everything was in place. In fact, in just five short minutes Anna would see how pointless her arguments would be. He didn’t want to use her mother’s behaviour from the night before against her. But even if Mary didn’t live under the same roof she was still an influence on his daughter’s life, she could still put his daughter at risk. So he would use it if Anna forced him to. First he’d try a softer approach. And if that didn’t work...
‘Anna. The situation you’re in can’t be easy. The bank is about to take all this away from you.’ He ignored the small gasp of shock that fell from her mouth.
‘How do you—?’
‘And between Amalia and your mother, dealing with all that alone—’
‘I haven’t been alone—’
‘—must have been incredibly trying. All the work that you have to do here... You must be exhausted. It certainly can’t allow you the time you’d like to dedicate to our daughter.’ That there was no interruption this time told him all he needed to know. ‘I want to pay off the mortgage—in your name. I will also pay for your mother to go to a rehab clinic. Anna, your mother needs help. Proper help. And I can provide that.
‘A lovely couple is ready and willing to run the bed and breakfast in your absence, just for a short time, whilst you come to Greece. There, Amalia can get to know me, get to know her Greek heritage, her family.’ Forestalling her objections, he pressed on. ‘Anna, it’s something that you deserve—time away from this place, to relax and to spend time with your daughter without having to worry about keeping the roof together over your heads.’
Anna’s head spun. In her wildest dreams she had wanted this. She had wanted someone to sweep in, take care of everything, to resolve all her financial worries, to help with her mother, to allow her to focus solely on her daughter. In her deepest heart, she’d even wanted that person to be Dimitri. Like the fairy-tale prince and the happy-ever-after that she had never thought was possible. But, just like in all good fairy tales, Dimitri’s offer was surely too good to be true. Like the poisoned apple, or the spindle needle’s prick, there was always a price to pay. And, just like the miller’s daughter, there was no way she would hand over her child.
But for a moment Dimitri’s eyes had softened, and she’d seen glimpses of the man she’d met that night three years before. The man she’d written secret letters to in the dead of night. The man who three years ago had looked at her as if she was the one thing that could save him. And that night, she’d felt the same of him. That night, she’d needed him. Was it possible that she needed him now too?
‘I also want to apologise,’ he pressed on. ‘Last night, I thought the worst. It was a combination of shock to discover that I was a father, and fear of just how much I had missed. Anna,’ he said, reaching out to take her hand in his, the rough, tanned skin caressing hers with surprising softness, ‘please, give me the chance to make up for my actions. I want the chance to make things right, to get to know my daughter—to get to know Amalia.’
Of all the things he’d said, it was this that truly undid Anna. The small crack in her heart that had appeared the day she’d held her daughter in her arms, alone in the hospital room without anyone to share that moment with, opened just a little wider. Because it was the one thing that her father had never wanted of her.
Could she do it? Could she hand over everything to Dimitri and just walk away? Years of having to be the responsible one, having to make the decisions and do what needed to be done, cried, begged and pleaded for her to say yes. But the sensible part of her, the cautionary part of her, feared that it would come at too high a price.
Anna thought of her mother. Of how she had been the night before. Of how many times Mary had promised, sobbed and agonised over her own demons. Anna could never afford to send her mother to a rehab clinic—certainly not the kind that Dimitri’s money could afford. If it had just been about her and Amalia, perhaps she might have found the strength to say no. But she knew that she’d never forgive herself for not allowing her mother one more chance.
‘How long would it be for?’
Anna asked, hating the sound of hope in her own voice.
‘Not long. A week; two if needed.’ If she thought it odd that he hadn’t met her eyes as he spoke, it was buried beneath a layer of hope, and a feeling of exhaustion so deep that she clung to his offer like a drowning man clung to the shore.
And when she said yes she ignored the little voice in her head that told her that she’d just signed her life away.
* * *
The next few days passed in a blur. Anna had met with the couple that David—Dimitri’s lawyer—had found. They seemed kind and were understanding of the situation. They’d had a small hotel themselves but had passed it on to the next generation in their family and were now travelling around Ireland. Anna, to her surprise, liked them. She’d imagined she would feel resentful, but their care and passion for her own business eased the way considerably.
Dimitri had arranged for a car to take Anna and Mary to the rehabilitation clinic. And, once again, Anna had felt that odd sense of surprise. Through the four-hour journey her mind had built up images of a cold, locked-down concrete facility, but instead she discovered a place that rivalled some of the most expensive hotels in Dublin. Being reunited with her mother after that fateful night had seen her mother spiral into the guilty cycle that Anna was familiar with. But there was something else in her mother’s eyes now—hope. A hope that Anna tried so hard not to nourish in her breast, but the air of change was upon them and it was contagious.
The clinician they met at the entrance explained that she and Mary were not to have contact for at least a month. Explained why and how this helped with Mary’s recovery process and that it was vital for Mary to have the time to focus on herself. Anna would be allowed to call the centre to find out how her mother was doing and was assured that Mary would be in very good hands. Her mother hadn’t even looked back as she passed through the glorious white doors to the centre.
