Chapter Nine
ARES WATCHED AS Willa’s hand fell still. Everything in her seemed to still.
She looked small and young and unsteady as if something fundamental inside her had been compromised.
It was a shock, seeing her like that. In the past, when they had argued, she had fought back. Or fled. But now she seemed to be frozen in her own body, trapped and taut and expressionless.
‘Willa?’
He said her name softly, and he wanted to touch her, to take her in his arms and unfreeze that rigidity from her spine, but he was scared she might break apart if he did so.
‘You’re right,’ he said then, to give her space and turn the focus away from her stunned face.
‘I am a hypocrite. I don’t want to be. I want to tell Ari and Pappou the truth, but you saw my grandfather.
He doesn’t need to be upset by something he can’t change.
And Ari feels things so keenly. After my parents died, she was devastated.
In pieces. I can’t risk triggering all those feelings of loss again.
Actually, I can’t face it. It’s easier to keep lying, because I’m selfish—’
‘You’re not selfish.’ She looked up at him, as he’d hoped she would, and the pain in her eyes felt worse than any pain he was feeling now. Any pain he’d ever felt on his own account.
‘I saw how you are with Ariana and your grandfather. You walked him home. You bought Ariana your mother’s old flat. You’re protecting her future with this prenup. You’re looking out for them.’
For a second the pain retreated, pushed back by her sudden, partisan ferocity, and then she glanced away, and he saw that her vehemence had loosened other emotions, and he said slowly, ‘So why won’t you let me look after you?’
For a moment, she didn’t reply, she just looked away from him to the window, and he followed her gaze to where the Parthenon was illuminated in the darkness.
‘You don’t know me. Not really. And if you did, I think you’d pity me.’
‘Pity you?’ He stared at her, his brain spinning. ‘I don’t pity you, Willa. I’m in awe of you.’
Her eyes jerked back to his.
‘You’re a billionaire. You run a global business—’
‘Which I inherited. I got my job because of my surname. Okay, I’ve increased our profitability.
But do you want to know a secret of the super-rich, Willa?
It’s almost impossible to mess up. It’s not like the old days.
There’s so many checks and balances in place, and money isn’t stockpiled in one business.
It’s liquid. It’s in real estate, investments, stocks, bonds, private equity. ’
‘You make it sound so easy.’
‘It’s not. But it’s easier if the business has already been up and running for several centuries.’ He took a step forward, still not touching but closer.
‘But you got your job on your own merit. In a competitive industry, you fought to get where you are. And you got there because you’re talented and brave. Look at how you moved to a different country on your own.’
‘I didn’t go to London on my own because I was talented and brave. I came on my own because I don’t have anyone—’
His throat thickened and he stared down at her, shocked into silence not so much by her words but by the dullness in her voice.
Those weeks and days when they were apart, he’d pictured her flawless face, the supple curve of her body, the smooth gloss of her skin.
But it had never satisfied because nothing in his imagination could conjure up that energy she brought into any room.
Willa was a comet blazing across an ink-coloured sky. A lightning fork igniting a line of trees. A spinning sparkler. There was a vivacity to her, a life force.
Now life and colour seemed to have left her face.
More than anything he wanted to make her eyes sparkle like gemstones, but he had no idea what to say.
Not least because her words made no sense.
Her mother had died, but she had talked about her father, a stepmother.
There were younger sisters, triplets who thought she was cringe.
He remembered her telling him how her father had taught her to ride.
Surely if something had happened to them too, she would have mentioned it.
There was only one way to find out.
‘Your family—’
‘They’re not my family.’ Her hands were trembling.
Again, her words made no sense. He felt a stab of frustration and fear.
He’d never wanted to learn another person from scratch.
He’d never needed to. He had gotten to know Zoe organically: they had grown up in the same social circles, grown closer by osmosis rather than intent.
After Zoe, he was careful to keep a distance emotionally with the women he dated.
To never get close enough to care. And it was easy to do just that. Leaving was easy too.
But leaving Willa was the last thing on his mind.
He wanted to hold her and heal her. Because he cared, really cared.
And the newness and the expanse of what he was feeling was terrifying.
Because this was different than what he’d felt for Zoe.
He had loved her like he loved everything that was familiar and known.
Now he knew that it was a pale imitation. A forged Picasso. A souvenir model of the Parthenon instead of the towering original.
He thought back to when he’d told Willa about letting himself into Zoe’s apartment. If I hadn’t done that, I might never have found her. Now though, all he could think was that he might never have met Willa.
And even thinking that made him shake inside.
Because he loved her.
He knew because he was terrified. He knew because he felt young and stupid and bumbling and desperate not to lose her now to this terrible chasm that was cracking beneath her feet.
Knew too that it was why he had proposed.
That the baby was only a part of it. That he wanted her in his life.
Wanted to tell her that his love was unquantifiable.
Immense and immeasurable. That it swallowed up the universe.
And that she didn’t need to fear whatever it was that was making her tremble because he would slay her demons.
‘Who are they, then?’ he said softly.
‘They’re good people. Kind people. They took me in under false pretences. They think I have a right to share their lives, but I don’t.’
He’d never had a conversation like this, where questions created more questions rather than answers, more confusion rather than greater clarity.
‘Are you saying you’re adopted?’
She bit her lip. ‘It’s complicated.’
He thought about how long it had taken him to tell anyone what happened with Zoe.
And yet with Willa, the sentences had felt fully formed as if they’d been waiting for her to come along.
He cleared his throat, then took her hands in his.
‘Most things are. Until you take a second look, and then I find they’re often quite simple to unpick. ’
She didn’t answer, but maybe she was remembering their conversation too, because a moment later her shoulders shifted a little as if the burden had lightened just a fraction.
‘My mom died when I was two years old. She had pancreatic cancer. It was very aggressive, and she only survived ten weeks after she was diagnosed.’
‘I’m so sorry, Willa.’
He felt her fingers tighten around his.
‘I don’t remember her. My dad didn’t talk about her much.
I thought it was too painful for him, and so I didn’t ask about her.
And then he met Amber, and they got married, and she had the triplets.
And things changed. Got worse. My dad was always tense with me, but after the triplets, he never wanted the two of us to spend time together.
I thought it was because of my stepmother.
I blamed her. And then when I was working in LA, I ended up in hospital with the suspected appendicitis. ’
There was an unpleasant twist in his throat. He knew this part. Why, then, did it feel as if somebody was playing Grandmother’s Footsteps behind him?
‘I called my dad, and he came to the hospital. I wanted him to be there.’ Her voice trembled, and his fingers tightened around hers. ‘I thought if he came to the hospital, it might go back to how it used to be. But instead, it wrecked everything.’
She fell silent, but this time he didn’t prompt. He had pushed enough. He would accept how much she was prepared to share.
After a moment, she started speaking again. ‘I don’t know why he decided to tell me then. Maybe it was being in the hospital. Maybe it reminded him of when I was born. He’d brought me grapes and one minute he was handing them to me, the next he was telling me that I wasn’t his daughter.’
Whatever he had expected Willa to say, it wasn’t that.
‘My mother had had an affair just after they got married.’ She gave him a small, tight smile that looked painful. ‘When she realised she was dying, she told him the truth. I think it was quite close to the end. And then she died, and he was left with me.’
Now her smile was a mess. ‘It all made sense then. How he was with me. I don’t look like him. I must look like my biological dad. Every time he looked at me, he must have seen her betrayal.’
‘Her betrayal, not yours. You weren’t to blame—’
‘Not intentionally, no, but I ruined his life. After my mom died, what choice did he have but to keep me? He had no idea who my dad was. He’s not on the birth certificate. Robert is.’
‘And you’re sure he’s not your dad? I mean, could your mum have lied?’
She was shaking her head. ‘I have type B blood. Robert is an A, and my mother was an O.’
Ares pulled her against him. Her pain felt like a stake digging into his heart.
‘What happened after that?’
‘I left. I’d applied for this job in New York, and I got it, so I packed up my stuff and took the first flight to JFK.’
‘Have you talked to him since?’
The silence that followed that enquiry was full of tears and impossibilities.