by Pippa Roscoe
Only then did the hurt and pain of her own body start to come into focus.
‘I... I didn’t know what you’d done with her, where she was...’ Anna started shaking now, whether with fear for her child or shock from the fall she didn’t know.
Dimitri had come to the table, watching her, and he was saying something that Anna couldn’t quite hear.
‘...okay? Are you okay?’ he demanded. He’d crouched down in front of the chair, bringing him eye level with her, looking at her as if he expected something from her, and Anna resolutely ignored the concern in his eyes.
‘Okay? Seriously?’ An avalanche of adrenaline hit her. There were too many emotions crashing through her body to distinguish—fury, anger, shock, pain, fear. ‘You don’t do that! Ever! You never do that to a woman who has spent the last two years raising a child on her own. What the hell were you thinking?’
Dimitri stood there and she hated him. She weakly struck out at his chest. As her voice became louder and louder Amalia started to cry harder and harder.
‘After the stunt you pulled last night...’ Anna trailed off.
Dimitri turned and said something to the housekeeper, who was looking at Dimitri as if he were the devil. Flora’s furious stream of Greek made Anna feel just a little bit better.
‘I’m going to call the doctor,’ Dimitri announced, reaching out to help her as she picked up Amalia, clearly worried that she wouldn’t be strong enough. One look from Anna stopped his hand mid-air. Anna pulled her daughter onto her lap and hugged her fiercely. He had no idea how strong she could be for her daughter.
‘I’m fine. I don’t need a doctor.’
* * *
His pulse hadn’t even begun to settle yet. When he’d seen Anna fall everything had stopped. Including his heart. It must have hurt, and it would be a miracle if she’d not broken a bone. His daughter’s crying was just beginning to subside and as he looked Anna over he could see a nasty grazed bruise beginning to appear on her calf. Across her slim arms, similar red, angry welts painted her skin and guilt clenched his stomach so tight, worse than anything he’d ever experienced.
Flora came back into the room and gave him a look that could have stopped Hades in his tracks. She placed two bags of frozen vegetables on the table beside Anna, waited for Anna to meet her gaze and cocked her head in the universal body language of are you okay? When Anna finally replied in the affirmative, Flora nodded to herself once, rubbed Anna on the arm gently and held her hands out to take the now silent Amalia.
Dimitri watched, fascinated, as Anna handed over their daughter to his housekeeper in a way she’d never done with him. Flora took Amalia out into the garden, making sure to stay where they could both be seen by Anna.
Shame and guilt hit him hard. He’d wanted to spend some time with his daughter. He’d even wanted Anna to get some proper rest. He knew what she’d been through in the last few days, what he’d put her through. And look what had happened. He wanted to pace, he wanted to run, do something with all the feelings that were coursing through his body in that moment. But he didn’t. Because Anna was at the table, and most likely in considerable pain. Frozen peas weren’t good enough. He needed to call a doctor.
‘I’m truly sorry,’ he said, taking the seat next to her, still fearful that she might break into a thousand pieces.
‘I don’t know you,’ she said as if she were talking to a stranger. ‘We spent one night together nearly three years ago, and after that? You show up out of nowhere, threaten me, bring me to Greece and are presently engaged in forcing me to marry you. What did you expect me to think when I woke to find my daughter gone?’
‘I...’ Dimitri was struggling to find the words. Words that would somehow make her understand. ‘I just wanted to spend some time with my daughter,’ he said, hating the weakness, the vulnerability in his voice. ‘I know you might not credit me with this, but the moment I saw our daughter, that is how I felt. Terrified that you would take her away from me. That I would never have access to her. The reason I want us to marry is so that we have equal rights. Not because I want sole custody. I am not so much of a monster that I would rip my daughter away from her mother.’
‘As you intended when you came to my bed and breakfast and tried to take my daughter from me?’
‘As I intended when I thought that the mother of my child was an alcoholic, willing to use my child to blackmail me for money, a mother who I thought—at that time—was a threat to my daughter’s safety.’ Dimitri ran a hand over his face. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. ‘Please, let me call a doctor for you. That was a really hard fall.’
Anna looked at him accusingly. As if the fall had been his fault. As if this whole sorry mess was his fault. And he had to acknowledge the truth of it. He followed her gaze as she turned her attention to Amalia outside with Flora.
‘I didn’t know what to do when she started crying,’ he confessed. ‘She’d been so quiet and happy until...’
‘She’s good with strangers because of the bed and breakfast. She’s used to seeing different faces.’
Dimitri couldn’t stop the anger that rose within him quickly and eagerly, eating up the space that she had given him.
‘I’m not a stranger, Anna.’
‘Oh,’ she retorted with fake surprise. ‘Have you explained that to our twenty-seven-month-old daughter? She’s bright, but genetics may be a little above her age range.’
He barely restrained the growl that almost choked him.
Anna stood on still shaking legs. ‘I’m going to go and take a shower.’ Dimitri watched her struggle to get to her feet for barely a second before he stood and swept her into his arms. He’d done that the night they’d come together and had forgotten how impossibly light she was.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Am I hurting you?’ he asked, before taking another step.
‘No,’ she said into his chest. Instead of pulling away, as he had expected her to do, she leaned into him just a little, and he ignored the shift that he felt beneath his ribcage, pushing away the swift and sudden arousal that had caught him by surprise. She must have been in considerable pain. He’d seen American football players take less hard hits than she had. That was what he told his mind, but his body seemed to have its own thoughts.
He was only wearing a thin T-shirt, the temperature in Greece considerably hotter than the cold dampness of Ireland that had seeped into his bones and not let go until he’d returned Anna and his—their—daughter to his home on this island. The thin material offered no protection against the feeling of her skin against his. Everything in him screamed at him to take her straight to his bed, but he wasn’t that much of a bastard.
He walked back up the stairs to her room and gently slid her down the full length of his body, torturing himself, punishing himself with what he could not have, and settled her gently on the floor.
His arms were still around her and she looked up at him, the golden flecks in her large green eyes flaring. Their breaths caught at the same time. He was chest-to-chest with her, barely an inch between them. It was the closest they’d been since that night.
As she exhaled, he breathed in deeply, and he was half convinced that he could taste her on his tongue. It would take nothing at all to close the distance, to take her lips as his traitorous body had wanted to do since he’d laid eyes on her just those few days ago in Ireland. Need coursed through his veins with lightning speed, tightening muscles all over his body.
And in her eyes, he could see it too, that need, that want. Anna’s breathing became light little puffs of air against his cheek, ratcheting up his arousal to impossible heights. Begging, pleading almost for him to take her.
His fingers gripped and flexed, trying to find the space where skin met skin and, instead of letting her go as his mind was shouting at him to, he pulled her closer, the inch of air between them became a centimetr
e and...
‘I should have that shower.’
When she looked back at him some of the anger, the pain had returned to her eyes and somehow he forced his body to let her go. He straightened and walked away, out of the room, out of the house, and kept on walking until he had his body under control once more.
* * *
Anna woke for the second time that day, disorientated and—this time—in pain. Her leg throbbed and her shoulder and arm hurt from where she’d tried to break her fall. As she rose to get up from the bed Flora came in, her arms flapping and a string of Greek accompanying the glass of water and painkillers she thrust into her hands.
Anna took them and drank down the water thankfully. Slowly she tried to get up again and this time succeeded. From the time on the clock, she’d hoped that her daughter would have been put down for her nap. As she looked into the room, Amalia’s soft little breaths assured her that she was okay. She made her way back down to the kitchen area, and asked Flora where Dimitri was. The older woman scowled and with a shrugging of her shoulders went back to preparing a feast fit for a king.
She was in Greece, it struck her fully for the first time. After Dimitri had told her that she wouldn’t get their passports back unless she married him, it had short-circuited all thoughts about the incredible place he had brought them to.
Once again she felt adrift. She watched on helplessly as Flora pottered around the kitchen, occasionally bringing delicious things for her to try. And, as much as she wanted to be excited by the lovely food, she longed for the time when, only yesterday, she would have been able to go to her fridge and prepare lunch with the things that she and Amalia were used to eating. And then she felt ungrateful. Not to Dimitri, but to Flora, who was becoming increasingly attentive the more uncomfortable Anna was feeling.
Dimitri came in from the pool area, looking windswept and mouthwateringly handsome. He had changed from the T-shirt he’d been wearing earlier in the day and replaced it with a white linen shirt that hung slightly open at the neck showing swirls of dark hair on his chest. Just a brief foray out into the sunshine had turned his skin a golden brown, and his dark eyes, heavy with concern, poked and prodded at the memory of the moment they had shared just before her shower. His hands were jammed into the pockets of his tan trousers, and bare feet padded their way towards her.
Anna felt a blush rise to her cheeks. She would have kissed him. The man who had brought her to Greece and taken away her freedom. The man who was threatening to keep her daughter here without her permission.
‘Flora, this smells delicious,’ he said in English, clearly for her benefit.
Flora grunted in response, shrugging her shoulders at him, the way she had done when Anna had asked after him earlier. Anna just about raised a smile for the female solidarity in the kitchen.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked her. As stubborn as she had a mind to be, she couldn’t ignore him completely. Even Flora seemed to hold her breath to see if she would answer him.
‘Stiff. Sore. But okay,’ she said eventually and Flora turned her attention back to pulling a tray of roast tomatoes from the oven.
‘Have you been awake long?’
‘Not very. Flora has been taking care of me,’ she said, smiling over at the housekeeper, who had taken to humming along to herself while she cooked. She pressed two glasses of cold white wine in their direction. Anna frowned. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I’ve just taken two painkillers.’
Flora hushed her and said something in Greek, which Dimitri translated. ‘She says it’s fine, you’ve only had ibuprofen. A little wine won’t hurt.’ He paused and smiled as Flora continued. ‘She said you need to relax.’
Anna let out a huff at that. Dimitri picked up the two glasses of wine and gestured for her to follow him outside. Flora caught her casting a worried glance up at her daughter’s room, and with a ‘Nai, nai, nai,’ she shooed her outside after Dimitri.
The view that she walked out to was breathtaking. A pergola spread out from the sides of the house, where beautiful tendrils of pink bougainvillea picked up the last rays of the sun as it sank into the welcome arms of the horizon. To her left an infinity pool stretched out towards the sea. Only the pool tiles gave the water a slightly lighter shade of aquamarine, allowing her to pick out the edge of the patio and the start of the sea beyond it.
Dimitri pressed a glass slick with condensation into her hands. The cool drink would be a welcome relief from the heat of the day. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to take a sip of the light-coloured liquid.
She needed to find the strength to ask the questions that had been crying out in her mind since the night before. Since he’d made that awful demand.
‘I do want you to know your daughter. Really I do. But I don’t understand why I have to marry you in order for that to happen.’ She ignored the darkening of his eyes and pressed on. ‘I’d be happy to amend the birth certificate, I’d be happy to discuss joint custody—’
‘It’s not enough,’ Dimitri ground out, trying to suppress the rage he felt. Knowing that it had as much to do with the present as it did the past. ‘All that legal wrangling...if something happened to me, or if something happened to you, I would not want my child’s future to be dependent on lawyers.’
‘Dimitri, nothing’s going to—’
‘You don’t know that!’ he barked, cursing himself for his loss of control. ‘You cannot know that, Anna. I was only seven years old when my mother died.’ His own words had shocked him. He’d had no intention of revealing his past, but now that he’d started he couldn’t seem to stop. ‘She’d been in a car accident on the way back from her shift as a waitress in the local restaurant. I’d come home from school, was watching TV, when the police knocked on the door.’ In his mind he was back in their small one-bedroom apartment in Piraeus, the sound of the fist against wood something he’d never forget. Ever. His memories skipped over the moment of shock, of pain...and instead called to his mind the confusion...of not knowing what would happen. Of being numb to almost everything, even his grief, other than the fear of what would happen to him now. ‘It took my mother’s sister two months to track my father down. The father I’d never met before. A family I knew nothing about and who, aside from my father, knew nothing about me.’ He’d been thrust into a world of impossible money and luxury, where the corridors echoed with arguments, and shouts, always accompanied by his name.
‘So yes, Anna, we might not know each other, and yes, marriage might seem extreme to you, but you will marry me because I know that you’ll do what’s needed to protect our child.’
She had watched him with solemn eyes and he turned away as something horrifyingly like pity shone there.
‘I know—’
He couldn’t prevent the dismissive huff that fell from his lips as he turned back to her.
‘I know,’ she repeated, ‘how important that is... My father was... My father left us before I was born.’
‘Then you understand why we must marry.’
Anna shook her head sadly, the long, dark, layered tendrils of her hair framing her face and shoulders. ‘Dimitri, your father wasn’t married to your mother, yet he took you in. My father was married to my mother and it didn’t stop him from leaving us.’
Dimitri frowned, remembering his investigator’s report on Mary Moore. ‘But there is no father named on your birth certificate.’
‘It was the only way my mother could find to hurt him the way he’d hurt her. And before you ask,’ she said, throwing up a hand between them as if to ward off an attack she’d known would come, ‘I couldn’t have put you on Amalia’s birth certificate without you being there. And you were...’
‘In prison.’
She nodded. ‘I’d like some time to think about this. Perhaps we could talk tomorrow?’
Dimitri’s jaw clenched as he remembered what tomorrow would bring.
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‘Sadly I don’t think that will happen. Tomorrow we have a family party to go to.’
* * *
The next morning Anna found herself wearing a sumptuous silk dress that would have kept the bed and breakfast away from the bank manager for at least two more months. The dress had appeared in her room as if magicked there by fairies—though, in reality, probably just by a very well-paid assistant. She, Amalia and Dimitri had been swept up in yet another limousine from Piraeus after the short boat ride from the island, and she was now staring, wide-eyed, as the limo pulled up the drive of one of the biggest villas she had ever seen.
If Dimitri had been concerned by the press lining the street outside his family’s home, he hadn’t shown it. Her eyes still stung from the camera flashes, even through the tinted windows. Her ears still hurt from the yells, demands for a sound bite, even though she’d not understood the Greek words.
But all of that was pushed aside by the sheer magnitude of the Kyriakou estate. To say it was enormous would have been a gross understatement. But she couldn’t help but find the ostentatiousness slightly distasteful. Calling to mind Dimitri’s words from the night before, she wondered how this must have been to a little boy whose mother had worked as a waitress. The loss he must have felt at such a young age... The thought of it made her chest ache. Her heart. She couldn’t even begin to imagine it.
‘This is where you grew up?’ she asked Dimitri, unable to hide the awe in her voice. ‘After leaving your mother’s?’ She waited so long for an answer, she was unbuckling Amalia from her seat when she heard his reply.
‘Yes.’
By the time she had retrieved Amalia from the car, Dimitri was standing beside a brand-new pushchair she had once lusted after. A pushchair that had felt a million miles out of her reach but had been obtained with less than a blink of Dimitri’s dark eyes.
