It felt like a laser, piercing her to the core, pinning her in place. How was it that after a decade apart she could still feel this way? And he did too, judging by the heat in his eyes, the way he angled himself towards her.
No matter that it had been ten years and they didn’t even like each other. The attraction, the overwhelming force of it, was still there.
With effort Iolanthe looked away from Alekos as she pulled the door closed. The soft click of it shutting brought them both out of the moment, and Alekos turned towards the stairs.
Iolanthe let out the breath she’d been holding and willed her heart to slow. That had been close.
She followed Alekos downstairs, expecting him to head for the front door but he returned to the drawing room instead. Iolanthe followed him, steeling herself for another altercation.
‘I want to meet Niko tomorrow.’
‘I need to prepare him—’
‘You don’t need to tell him I’m his father yet,’ Alekos cut across her. ‘But I want to meet him. Talk to him.’
Slowly Iolanthe moved into the room. Emotional and physical fatigue crashed over her and she sank into a chair, her head in her hands.
‘Iolanthe...?’ Concern mingled with impatience sharpened Alekos’s voice.
‘I’m tired, Alekos. It’s eleven o’clock at night and I’ve been dealing with so much...’
‘What have you been dealing with?’
She thought of Antonis’s earlier phone call and the hard reality of her financial situation. If Alekos found out how desperate she was, he might press her to marry him even more. He’d know she was running out of choices, just as her father once had. She couldn’t bear to be backed into another corner.
‘Just...business things,’ she said, to put him off. ‘Lukas’s estate, and Niko losing the man he thought was his father. It’s a lot to process.’
‘You never told him the truth?’
‘No, of course not. He’s only nine, after all, and Lukas acted as a father to him.’ Barely.
Alekos’s mouth tightened. ‘Do you know what it does to me, to know that another man, a man I despise, was able to be the father to my son when I was denied?’ He pinched the bridge of his nose as he drew in a shuddering breath. ‘I don’t know if I can ever forgive that, Iolanthe.’
‘Then we certainly shouldn’t get married,’ Iolanthe retorted. The last thing she wanted was to enter another relationship based on guilt and fear. ‘Why do you despise Lukas? I didn’t think you even knew him.’
‘I didn’t,’ Alekos answered flatly. ‘But I knew what he did.’
Unease churned in her stomach and crept cold fingers up her spine. ‘What are you talking about, Alekos?’
Alekos stared at her for a long moment, his eyes opaque, his jaw set. ‘Now is not the time for that particular discussion. I’ll return here tomorrow to meet Niko. What time is he home from school?’
‘He doesn’t go to school.’
Straight, dark brows snapped together. ‘He doesn’t go to school? Why not?’
‘School has been...difficult for him.’
‘Difficult?’ Alekos’s voice came out in a growl. ‘What are you saying? Has he had problems? Was he bullied?’
‘No, no, nothing like that.’ Iolanthe pressed her fingers to her temples. She could feel the beginnings of a headache. How could she explain Niko to Alekos? ‘Niko didn’t perform well in school,’ she began slowly. ‘He had trouble making friends, and sitting still and paying attention has been hard for him.’
Alekos’s mouth flattened. ‘So he is badly behaved.’
‘No,’ Iolanthe fired back. ‘That’s not it at all. Some of his teachers made that assumption, but the truth is much more complicated than that.’
‘Then tell me the truth.’
‘It’s hard to explain. Niko is just...different.’ Doctors had offered various diagnoses, but none had seemed to fit. She stared at him unhappily. ‘You’ll understand when you meet him tomorrow.’
Alekos looked as if he wanted to press the matter, but then, to Iolanthe’s relief, he merely gave a terse nod. ‘I’ll come in the morning, then, around ten.’
‘He’s tutored until noon,’ Iolanthe said and held up a pacifying hand. ‘But I’ll take him out of his lessons. I was just telling you so you know that he is learning. He’s doing well in his own environment.’ And it had taken a long time and a lot of effort, not to mention tears, heartache, and worry, for her to be able to say that.
‘We’ll talk more tomorrow,’ Alekos said, and to Iolanthe it felt like a threat. What if Alekos rejected Niko after meeting him? Her son was fiercely intelligent and creative, but he could also be uncommunicative, awkward, and high-maintenance. Lukas certainly hadn’t had the patience to deal with him—what if Alekos didn’t either? What if this all blew up in her face, and worse, in Niko’s face? She couldn’t stand the thought of her son experiencing another rejection.
‘Tomorrow,’ Alekos said firmly, and Iolanthe nodded. She watched him leave the room, heard the click of the front door shutting. She felt a curious mixture of relief and disappointment; she was grateful for the reprieve but with Alekos gone she felt as if something vital had left the room. Left her life.
It was so dangerous, to think like that. To want like that. She remembered that moment upstairs, when for a few taut seconds she’d thought he might kiss her. She’d wanted him to kiss her.
And if they did marry...would he kiss her then? Would it be a marriage in the true sense of the word? Iolanthe couldn’t believe she was even asking herself those questions. She couldn’t marry Alekos. He’d made her feel like the most desirable woman on earth...and the least. She couldn’t live with that kind of see-sawing emotion, and she certainly couldn’t expose Niko to it.
But she had a sinking, certain feeling that Alekos would never let it go. Never let her or Niko go. She’d willingly walked into one gilded cage already. Perhaps it was no more than her duty to step into another.
ANTICIPATION AND ANXIETY warred within Alekos as he approached the front door of Iolanthe’s town house the next morning to meet Niko. His son.
Seeing the boy last night had felt like a fist reaching right into his heart and squeezing hard. Niko’s floppy dark hair had reminded him of his own as a child. He’d glimpsed a book on computer programming thrown by the bed and he’d remembered devouring similar manuals as a young boy. Niko was his more than just biologically. Already Alekos felt a connection to his child, one he’d never expected.
His own family had been fractured at a young age, his siblings split up after his father’s death and farmed out to relatives, his mother working hard as a cleaner to keep body and soul together, and not much else. Family had never meant anything to him except inevitable disappointment, inherent rejection.
But this time it could be different. He certainly wouldn’t abandon Niko the way his parents had, in different ways, abandoned him and his siblings. Resolutely Alekos knocked on the door.
The housekeeper he’d met briefly last night answered it, her wrinkled face set into lines of obvious disapproval. She gave him a short nod. ‘Kyrie Demetriou.’
‘I am here to see Iolanthe and Niko.’
The woman pressed her lips together. ‘What business do you have with my mistress?’ she burst out and Alekos drew back, surprised and affronted by the temerity of the question.
‘I