by Pippa Roscoe
He left the counter and approached his daughter with caution. Each eyeing the other with deep suspicion, Dimitri stepped closer to the table where she sat in the high chair. He had watched Flora every morning, presenting Amalia with that same breakfast. He was sure that he’d done everything the same way that she had. He leaned forward to the little pot of prepared breakfast Flora had left him in the fridge with a label on it, but the label had been smudged. He dipped his little finger into the grey goo and tasted it, pulling a face as the paste hit his tongue. Theos, that was awful. What had Flora been thinking?
He reached for a glass of water to drown out the foul taste, and locked eyes with his daughter.
‘Okay, Amalia, I defer to your better judgement. That was vile. Now, what else is there around here that you might like?’
* * *
As Anna made her way back up from the beach she was wondering if she’d made a terrible mistake. She’d wanted this time to just be a family unit without Flora, to prove to Dimitri, to prove to herself that they could make this work. That she had been right to trust Dimitri with her heart.
But what if she’d left her daughter with him and he’d failed? Her footsteps gathered speed, and by the time she reached the crest of the hill on which the house stood her heart was in her mouth and she was half terrified at what she might find.
But it was her daughter’s laughter and infectious giggles that she heard first. Then the splash of water and, to her greatest surprise, a deeply voiced laugh. It stopped her in her tracks. She’d never heard Dimitri laugh. And for a second that was almost one of the saddest thoughts she’d ever had.
As she reached the flattened area of garden she saw Dimitri and Amalia in the infinity pool. He was holding her above his head, Amalia with her arms encased in little float bands, laughing hysterically as he swooped her in and out of the water. And suddenly she felt guilty for doubting him.
She walked back into the house to change and couldn’t help the smile that formed upon the sight of the kitchen. Half-eaten fruit, breads and pastries littered the surfaces as if some grand eating competition had happened in her absence.
By the time she had showered, was dressed and leaving the room that had become solely used for her clothes, she heard Dimitri settling Amalia down in the living room to play. This time it was Anna who hovered in the doorway as Dimitri’s gentle tones were soothing his daughter’s excitement and redirecting her attention to the small building blocks she loved so much. It wouldn’t be long before Amalia grew out of such easy distraction. It wouldn’t be long before she was off to playgroup and then school. And for a moment her vision of the future jarred, because it had always been in Ireland that she had imagined those things to happen. But now the location had shifted to Greece.
Dimitri looked up and found Anna standing in the doorway, her usually open expression unreadable.
‘I think Flora might have set me up.’
‘I think Flora might have been teaching you a lesson.’
‘You knew?’ he demanded.
‘I guessed,’ Anna said with a shrug of her delicate shoulder and the faintest trace of a smile playing at her mouth.
‘And you didn’t think to warn me?’ he replied, his tone readily losing the heat of anger and instead becoming filled with the warmth of humour.
‘You’re big enough and ugly enough to handle it,’ she assured him.
As she passed him he reached for her hips and drew her towards him, leaning over her to crowd her, teasing her as she tried to bend out of his reach.
‘You think I’m ugly?’ he said, his head cocked to the side, the entire length of his body flush with hers.
‘Hideous. Terrible. A monster,’ she said as he punctuated her taunts with a kiss upon her neck. This Dimitri? This teasing, playful, impossibly sexy man? Simply irresistible.
‘I am not a monster,’ he mock growled as he pulled her into a kiss. A kiss that wasn’t a punishment, wasn’t demanding, but giving, generous and spine-tingling.
She met his growl with a groan of pleasure but batted him away and went to the fridge to prepare a snack.
‘What time did you want to leave for Piraeus?’
‘Forget it. We can cancel. Let’s just go to bed. It’s nearly dark anyway.’
‘Dark? Dimitri, it’s eleven in the morning!’
‘No, Anna, did you not hear that? It was the nightingale, not the lark.’
Anna let out a gasp. ‘How dare you corrupt Shakespeare to your own ends?’
Dimitri shrugged a nonchalant shoulder. ‘If it would help my cause I’d—’
Anna cut him off with a kiss. His megawatt charm was more devastating than any of his previous anger or righteous indignation. The look in his eyes made her hope, dared her to believe that this was how things could be. And for the first time in three years Anna desperately wanted to throw caution to the wind, to seize this day, this moment, this feeling for herself.
Dimitri’s phone pinged twice, alerting him to new emails, and he swept it up quickly and checked. If there was something secretive about it, the look of surprise, then of satisfaction, that flashed in his eyes smoothed over any misgivings. He looked...happy. That was what it was. For the first time since she’d met him...he seemed happy. And she couldn’t help but feel that she had contributed somehow, she had helped him reach that state.
‘Something important?’
‘Two somethings, but I’ll explain later,’ he assured her, his eyes sparkling. ‘Now, we have to get going,’ he said, whisking Anna and Amalia up in a whirlwind of excitement and happiness.
* * *
Five hours later and Dimitri was worried. It had been an almost perfect day. They’d taken the boat into Piraeus and his car had picked them up and whisked them off to Athens, to galleries and the Parthenon. He’d laughed at Anna’s sheer delight at a simple lunch of souvlaki, washed down with an ice-cold beer. The easy way she had with both Amalia and him was touching him deeply after the past few months fraught with tension and pent-up frustration. But his plans for his surprise for Anna were now complete, and for the first time he was beginning to doubt his decisions.
He’d wanted to give her something, anything, to help show her that she had given him such a gift. Just before they’d left for Athens, David had emailed to say that Manos had agreed to his visit request. He’d shared that information with Anna in the restaurant, and the smile she had greeted the news with had only inflamed the hope in his heart. It had felt right that he should receive that news today—when his plans for Anna had been underway in his home.
It had been a big project, and Dimitri had paid handsomely to have the changes to his home made and completed in just a few hours. He worried that he’d missed something, forgotten something that Anna might need. But he knew that wasn’t what really concerned him. The greatest worry was that he’d got it horribly wrong. That the surprise might not quite be something that Anna would welcome. And that fear? It was almost as great as the one he’d felt about her not agreeing to their marriage.
‘Are you okay?’ Anna asked as the boat docked at the jetty. The sun was readily setting and Amalia was tired, wriggling in her arms, after such an exciting day.
‘Nai. Let’s...let’s put Amalia to bed, and then...then we can...’
Why was he finding it so hard to get out a simple sentence?
‘Then we can...?’
‘Have the rest of the evening to ourselves,’ he concluded, not having to fake the desire he felt at the idea of having Anna all to himself. Spending time with Amalia was incredible, but he’d missed three years of Anna too and now he just couldn’t get enough of her.
Instead of leading them into the living room, Dimitri led Anna, still carrying Amalia, straight up to the bedroom. If she went anywhere else, if she even turned on the lights, then the surprise would be blown.
When Anna went towards her room
he nearly shouted for her to stop. She turned back at him, laughing.
‘Really, Dimitri. What on earth is going on?’
‘I...’
How had she made him so tongue-tied? Was it her or was it what he so desperately wanted to show her? he wondered.
‘Come with me?’ he asked, the uncertainty in his voice making him cringe inwardly. He wanted so badly to do something for her. To show her all the things that he seemed incapable of saying.
He took her by the hand and led her back downstairs. The sunset bled through the windows, lighting the living room and door to the study in orange hues. He paused outside the room that was once his study, marvelling at how easy the decision had been to give up his space in his home, once he’d given it up in his heart.
His hand paused on the door handle. For just a moment he took a breath. Looking back to Anna, he could see the beginnings of concern in her gaze. He shook his head; he didn’t want her to be worried. He pushed open the door and stepped back for her to see.
For a moment Anna was too distracted by Dimitri, by the hesitancy written across his powerful features, to look into the room. But, following his gaze, she turned to look at what had once been an office and was now...
Speechless, she took a tentative step into what was now, from just a glance, an incredible art studio. The desk and computer had been removed and in their place were long wooden benches lining two walls. On the third wall was a stack of shelves full of huge, plastic-wrapped slabs of clay, and so many different-coloured glazes she didn’t know where to begin. Her fingers reached out to touch the spindle of chicken wire she could use as a frame, rasps and rifflers, wire-end modelling tools, cutting tools and some she didn’t even know the names of.
She stepped further in and saw the pottery wheel in the middle of the room, cast in shadow from the setting sun, through the huge French windows leading out to the patio, where she saw...
‘Is that a kiln?’ she nearly cried. ‘You installed a kiln?’
‘Is it the wrong kind? I didn’t know—’
His words were cut off by a fierce kiss that ended all too quickly as Anna darted around the room, looking at all the bits and pieces Dimitri had somehow amassed in the last five hours.
‘This is incredible!’ she exclaimed on a sigh. ‘But what happened to your office?’
‘I moved it. To the room that you were in,’ he said, not meeting her gaze, as if afraid of her reaction. ‘I thought... I wanted you to be with me in my room, our room.’
Anna didn’t know where to start, what to think, to say.
She was utterly speechless. She knew that things had been better between them since Kavala, but this? This was more than she could have imagined. Already her fingers itched to rip open the packets of clay, to pour over the different-coloured glazes and...the kiln?
She turned to Dimitri, her cheeks almost aching from the smile and wonder she felt. ‘What did I do to deserve this?’
‘You... I wanted to give you something that had been taken away from you. I wanted you to know that you can still reach for your dreams, that you can still have them. That Amalia, your desires and I aren’t mutually exclusive.’
It was then that the cracks in the armour around her heart shattered completely. She rushed to him and pulled him into a kiss that hopefully expressed all the things she was unable to say. Her hands reached for his neck, drawing him to her, moulding his shoulders with her fingers, desperate for more, for that last little bit of him that was just out of reach.
She pulled back, sensing the uncertainty there.
‘Do you like it? Is it okay?’ he asked, his voice gravelly.
‘It’s perfect. It’s amazing,’ she said, looking about her. ‘You didn’t have to get everything,’ she said with a little laugh.
‘I didn’t want to miss anything.’
His words nudged at her. Nudged at a memory from when he had first found her and Amalia. Of just how much he had missed of Amalia’s first years. And she wondered whether perhaps he might finally be ready to read the letters she had written to him over the years. Because finally, here, standing before her in a room he had created just for her, was the man she had always dreamed of. The real Dimitri.
‘You didn’t,’ she assured him. ‘You didn’t miss a single thing. But there is just one thing left for me to see.’
He frowned his question to her.
‘My new room,’ she said, smiling, pulling him back into a deep kiss.
CHAPTER TEN
Dear Dimitri,
How could you do it? How could you break my heart?
SHE DIDN’T KNOW how to speak to Dimitri, the Dimitri she married. So instead Anna wrote to the man who was the father of her child. The man she’d been writing to since the day her daughter was born. The man of her imagination.
But for the first time since she’d started writing the letters it was hard, almost impossible, to put pen to paper. For the man of her imagination was blurring into the man she loved, with his faults, his anger, his pain, but also the love she could see he felt for their daughter, the love that she had hoped he might feel for her.
A week ago he’d flown to America to see his half-brother. It was supposed to be for only two days, but he’d emailed her to explain that he’d extended his stay. She’d tried to tell herself that she was imagining the distance that had sprung up between them. That what she was feeling was just a relic of long-ago hurts.
The last two weeks before that, the incredible time they’d spent together since that day in Athens, had been...like a dream. Anna couldn’t remember laughing so much, loving so much. The Dimitri she’d seen had been playful, charming and utterly devastating. So she clung to that dream, rather than her fears. She clung to the image of the three of them, united as a family, and poured it into the first sculpture she’d made in nearly four years.
Every night since Dimitri had left she’d come to her studio after putting Amalia down for bed, and moulded, shaped and smoothed out her dreams and hopes for the future. She hadn’t known quite what it was she was making—her fingers moving instinctively over the cold clay until it warmed beneath her hands—until after nearly six days she’d finally stepped back and seen what she’d created.
It was the sister of the first clay piece Dimitri had seen, all those weeks ago when they’d first arrived in Greece. Only this one was different. Instead of two orbs, there were three, all joined by a sweeping arc, binding the figures together, encasing them in an embrace. Her hope. Her family.
* * *
‘It’s happening now.’
Dimitri slammed the phone down in his office. He had to get himself under control. But ever since the night he’d visited Manos... He clamped down on those feelings. He couldn’t allow them to jeopardise what he was about to do. For once, he was actually fearful of his own self, of the sheer fury that coursed through his veins. He feared that it was too much for him to control.
He was afraid that whatever twisted kind of love he felt for his father that could remain after what his half-brother had told him would make him weak. And would make him unable to do what he had to do.
He waited until almost all the staff in the office had left, before stalking down the empty corridor of the offices to his father’s suite. He didn’t want anyone else dragged into this mess. Before he entered his father’s room, he looked back down the opulent halls of the empire of his family. He almost let go of a guttural sarcastic laugh that was threatening to escape from his tightly pressed lips.
These people weren’t his family. They may have given him blood, paid for his education, but that didn’t make them family. To think that he had actually believed his father, hoping for a fresh start, hoping for the connection he’d wanted almost his entire life. No. The only people he could rely on were himself and his true brothers, Antonio and Danyl. He had called them last night, explaining everything. They
had offered him whatever he needed. But they couldn’t help him with this. No. He was alone.
A small, Anna-sounding voice echoed in his mind. What about me?
And he shoved it away with all the force he could muster.
Dimitri pushed his way into his father’s office, closing the door behind him. He took in his father, a man who had grown to almost monstrous proportions in the last few days. So it was with surprise that he took in the wizened features of the man who had given his blood to him. Looking at him now, Dimitri saw a small old man who deserved neither kindness nor forgiveness.
‘Did we have an appointment? You know I have a meeting with the shareholders to prepare for.’
His father was yet to look at him. Did he know? Did he know why Dimitri had come here today?
‘It can’t wait.’
With a frown, Agapetos Kyriakou lifted his head to finally look at his son.
‘What is it?’
‘I went to see Manos last week.’ His father should have played poker. Nothing in his face betrayed fear, not even a twitch at the mention of his sons sharing a conversation. No. He was too good for that. Dimitri pressed on. ‘I went because I wanted to find some kind of resolution with my brother. The same kind I had thought I’d found with you. I wanted to see if there was something, anything there of a relationship I could salvage. Imagine my surprise at what Manos revealed to me.’
Agapetos’s eyes narrowed, suspicion clearly painted across his features. Dimitri needed his confession, not just to reveal his crime that it was he, not Manos, who had laid evidence leading to Dimitri, but because he needed to hear it from his father.
‘I just want to know why.’
‘Why what?’
‘Why you did it.’
‘Did what? Dimitri, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You seem a little unsettled. Perhaps you should go back to Anna.’
