don’t care for Greek food?”
“I’m not very familiar with it.”
“There are no Greek restaurants in Vancouver?”
“Hundreds, and I’m told they’re very good. I just don’t eat out very often.”
“Why is that? And please don’t tell me you lack opportunity. Suitors must be lined up at your door, wanting to wine and dine you.”
“I’m afraid not. Shift work tends to put a crimp in a nurse’s social life.”
Right. And you’re such a dedicated professional that you never take a night off!
He shook his head in feigned mystification. “What’s wrong with Canadian men, to be so easily discouraged? Are they all eunuchs?”
She almost choked on her olive. “Not as far as I know,” she spluttered. “But then, I haven’t bothered to ask.”
“What about your colleagues? As I understand it, hospitals are a hotbed of romance between doctors and nurses.”
“The idea that all nurses end up marrying doctors is a myth,” she informed him starchily. “For a start, half the doctors these days are women, and even if they weren’t, finding a husband isn’t particularly high on my list of priorities.”
“Why not? Don’t most women want to settle down and have children? Or are you telling me you’re the exception?”
“No.” She nibbled a sliver of pita bread. “I’d love to get married and have children someday, but only if the right man comes along. I’m not willing to settle for just anyone.”
“Define ‘the right man,’” he said—a shade too abruptly, if her response was anything to go by.
She dropped her bread and stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“By what standards do you judge a prospective husband?”
She reached for her glass and took a sip while she considered the question. “He has to be decent and honorable,” she finally declared.
“Tall, dark and handsome, too?”
“Not necessarily.” She gave another delicate shrug, just enough to cause her dress to shift gently over her rather lovely breasts.
He wished he didn’t find it so alluring. “Rich and successful, then?”
“Gainfully employed, certainly. If we had children, I’d want to be a stay-at-home mom.”
“If you had to choose just one quality in this ideal man, what would it be?”
“The capacity to love,” she said dreamily, her blue eyes soft, her sweet mouth curved in a smile. Outside, the wind tore at the palm trees with unusual strength for September. “I’d want love more than anything else, because a marriage without it is no marriage at all.”
Annoyed to find his thoughts drifting dangerously far from their set course, he said flatly, “I disagree. I’d never let my heart get the better of my head.”
“Why not? Don’t you believe in love?”
“I might have once, very briefly, many years ago, but then she died of a blood clot to the brain. I was three months old at the time.”
“You mean your mother?” She clapped a distressed hand to her cheek. Her eyes glistened suspiciously. “Oh, Niko, how very sad for you. I’m so sorry.”
He wanted neither her sympathy nor her pity, and crushed both with brutal efficiency. “Don’t be. It’s not as if she was around long enough for me to miss her.”
The way she cringed at his answer left him ashamed. “She gave you life,” she said.
“And lost hers doing it, something I’ve been paying for ever since.”
“Why? Her death wasn’t your fault.”
“According to my father, it was.” Her glass remained almost untouched, but his was empty. Needing something to deaden a pain he seldom allowed to surface, he refilled it so hurriedly, the wine foamed up to the brim. “She was forty-one, and giving birth at her age to an infant weighing a strapping five kilos put her in her grave.”
“A lot of women wait until their forties to have children.”
“They don’t all die because of it.”
“True. But that’s still no reason for you to think Pavlos holds you responsible for the tragedy that befell her. After all, she gave him a son and that’s not a legacy any man takes lightly.”
“You might be a hell of a fine nurse, Emily Tyler, but you’re no spin doctor.”
Puzzled, she said, “What do you mean?”
“That nothing you can say changes the fact that my father didn’t care if he never had a child. All he ever wanted was my mother, and as far as he’s concerned, I took her away from him.”
“Then he should have seen to it he didn’t get her pregnant in the first place—or are you to blame for that, as well?”
“After twenty-one years of marriage without any sign of a baby, he probably didn’t think precautions were necessary. Finish your wine, woman. I don’t care to drink alone. It’s a nasty habit to fall into.”
She took another cautious sip. “I still can’t believe that, once his initial grief subsided, having you didn’t bring Pavlos some measure of comfort.”
“Then you obviously don’t know much about dysfunctional families. My father and I have never liked one another. He has always resented me, not just because I cost him his one true love, but because I remained wilfully unimpressed by his wealth and social status.”
“I’d have thought he’d find that commendable.”
“Don’t let misplaced pity for the poor motherless baby cloud your judgment, my dear,” Niko said wryly. “I rebelled every step of the way as a child, took great pleasure in embarrassing him by getting into trouble as a teenager and flat-out refused to be bought by his millions when I finally grew up. I was not a ‘nice’ boy, and I’m not a ‘nice’ man.”
“That much, at least, I do believe,” she shot back, leveling a scornful glance his way. “The only part I question is that you ever grew up. You strike me more as someone with a bad case of defiantly delayed adolescence.”
This wasn’t playing out the way he’d intended. She was supposed to be all willing, female compliance by now, ready to fall into his arms, if not his bed, not beating him at his own game. And his glass was empty again, damn it! “When you’ve walked in my shoes,” he replied caustically, “feel free to criticize. Until then—”
“But I have,” she interrupted. “Walked in your shoes, I mean. Except mine were twice as hard to wear. Because, you see, I lost both my parents in a car accident when I was nine, and unlike you, I remember them enough to miss them very deeply. I remember what it was like to be loved unconditionally, then have that love snatched away in the blink of an eye. I remember the sound of their voices and their laughter—the scent of my mother’s perfume and my father’s Cuban cigars. And I know very well how it feels to be tolerated by relatives who make no secret of the fact that they’ve been saddled with a child they never wanted.”
Flushed and more animated than Niko had yet seen her, she stopped to draw an irate breath before continuing, “I also learned what it’s like to have to work for every cent, and to think twice before frittering away a dollar.” She eyed his shirt and watch disdainfully. “You, on the other hand, obviously wouldn’t know the meaning of deprivation if it jumped up and bit you in the face, and I don’t for a moment buy the idea that your father never wanted you. So all in all, I’d say I come out the uncontested winner in this spontaneous pity party.”
He