you leave in the morning.’
‘I doubt the agency can get a replacement any time soon.’
‘Oh, they will,’ Nico said darkly.
‘I can’t …’ She wanted to go; there was a part of her that was tempted to just escape, to go home, to hide at his property and heal, and there was part of her too that needed to be there, to stop the train wreck that would surely happen. But there was another reason that she was scared to go.
One reason.
And Nico knew it and he faced it.
‘We need to talk,’ Nico said. ‘There are things we need to discuss.’ He looked at her lank hair, her puffy face, could feel the exhaustion that seeped from her, and his harsh voice softened. ‘But not now,’ he said, ‘not yet—not till you are ready.’ He saw hope flare in her dull eyes as he tossed her the lifeline, and he willed her to take it. ‘You have my word. For now all you have to do is deal with the basics.’
‘The basics?’
‘Be a mother,’ Nico said. ‘And when you’re not being a mother, you rest.’
How sweet those words were, how tempting, how blissful it sounded. She wanted to close her eyes right now, to just sink into them, not think of problems, the hows, the whys, the hell that surely would follow.
She wanted what he offered.
‘Rest,’ Nico said. ‘We’ll leave in the morning. For now you should sleep.’ But Connie shook her head.
‘I have to do the laundry.’ He watched as she heaved a basket across the kitchen and he saw her jaw tighten as, instead of offering to help, he sat down, and just once as she loaded filthy sheets into the machine did she glance up, but said nothing.
And still she said nothing as she turned the machine on, and then opened the dryer, pulling more of the same out and folding the old man’s bedding, but he could feel her tension at his lack of assistance as he picked up the remote and flicked the television to the news.
‘I don’t do laundry,’ he said.
‘Clearly,’ Connie said as she dragged out the ironing board.
‘You want to be a martyr …’ He shrugged. ‘Go ahead.’
And she didn’t want to be a martyr so, for the first time, rather than ironing them, she put away the board and she just folded them instead.
‘Rebel,’ Nico said, glancing up, and she felt something she hadn’t in a very long time—a move on the edge of her lips that was almost a smile as she left the wretched laundry and sat on the only seat left in the kitchen, the one on the sofa beside him. It was horribly awkward, staring ahead at the news when she wanted to turn and stare at him, wanted to talk, but scared what might come out if she did.
‘Why don’t you go to bed?’ Nico suggested. ‘While he sleeps, shouldn’t you rest?’
‘I shall go to bed as soon as you’ve gone.’
‘Oh, I’m going nowhere,’ Nico said. ‘I’m not giving you a chance to come up with a million reasons why you can’t leave in the morning. I’m staying right here.’
‘What about your hotel room? What about—?’
But Nico wasn’t going to argue. ‘Go to bed.’
And she sat there.
‘Go on,’ he said, and her face burnt, and she bit back tears. Neither victim nor martyr did she want to be, but dignity was sometimes hard to come by.
‘You’re sitting on it.’
And to his credit he said nothing, did not act appalled, just headed over to the kitchen and prepared the second cup of instant coffee he had ever had in his life, then perched himself on the barstool.
‘There is a bedroom.’ She felt the need to explain. ‘It’s just Henry moans if …’ she hesitated a moment ‘ … the baby starts crying. He can’t hear so much if we are down here.’
And there was the longest pause so he was determined not ask, but more than that, he wanted to know. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Leo,’ Connie said, and swallowed, because by tradition he should be Vasos after Nico’s father, and though she had ached to name him Nico, it would have been too much of a constant reminder, so instead she had named him Leo, for it was in August that he had been made.
‘Sleep,’ he ordered, and she unravelled a blanket.
And she tried to sleep.
Turned her back on him and faced the faded pattern of the sofa, tried not to think about the man in the room and that tomorrow she would leave here with him.
Tried not to fathom her scary future.
Because, even with Nico’s offer, the future was scary. Scarier, in fact, than going it alone, because the truth would out—deep down she knew that.
She was just in no position to run from it.
SURPRISINGLY, she slept.
Despite his presence, despite her anxiety about the next day, with Nico in the room, a strong, quiet presence, somehow her exhausted mind stilled. Somehow she fell asleep to the whir of the tumble dryer and washing machine and did not think about what the next day would bring.
Even in the night, when her baby awoke, Constantine hardly did. Nico watched in silence as, surely more asleep than awake, she dragged herself from the sofa at Leo’s first murmur, crossed the dark room and changed her child then went back to the sofa with him. She curled on her side, hardly a word spoken, just a hush to her baby and then the sound of him feeding, and after a while, when the room was silent, he watched her sleepwalk her baby back to his crib. It happened again early in the morning, but this time the feed was interrupted by the incessant demands of the old man.
‘I could go up for you?’ Nico offered, the third time she dashed to the stairs.
‘And scare the life out of him.’
He was more tempted than she could know, but he held onto his temper. Nico even sat quietly while Constantine rang the employment agency, watching her fingers rake through her long hair as she explained that today she would be leaving.
‘Next week?’ Connie said, and Nico’s jaw tightened and she knew, just knew, he was about to take the phone from her, but she was determined to handle this. ‘I want someone here today.’ But the agency knew Connie was a responsible woman who would not leave the old man alone, and took full advantage of that fact. For, really, they could find someone at their leisure without her walking out. Defeated, she handed him the phone.
‘Nico Eliades speaking.’ His voice was one she had heard before, that morning she had rung him from her father’s study.
For mal.
Brutal.
‘You have one hour to send someone or, failing that, to get here yourself.’ And he said a little more than that, as Connie sat cringing, that he was considering reporting them. First he would check with his lawyers about minimum wage and work hours, and most certainly he would do that at ten a.m., ‘if no one is here’.
The owner was there within half an hour.
She told Henry, who must have been used to staff leaving, because he didn’t seem remotely bothered. He knew full well there would be plenty of others who were desperate to take her place.
Connie packed her things into her suitcase, which bulged a little more now that it had to hold Leo’s things.
‘What about the crib?’
‘It was already