Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
“It’s okay, sweetie. I…I just thought your father and I had an understanding.”
“What’s an understanding?” Theo asked.
Ava’s eyes never left her son’s. And Christos saw her shrinking away from him as the seconds passed. He’d ordered the test so he could give her what she wanted, bring real trust to their relationship. And he’d decided that he wasn’t going to hear the results.
But now he felt as though he shouldn’t even have made the gesture. He saw the hurt and anger in her. And understood it on one level, but on another…well, he wasn’t the type of man to trust blindly and she had to have known that.
“An agreement. Like the one you and I have where you always tell me the truth no matter what,” Ava said, finally lifting her gaze.
Theo put the box on the couch and stood up, looking up at him with a serious expression that he knew mirrored his own. “Did you lie, Baba?”
How to answer this? “No, Theo, I didn’t.”
“Did I misunderstand you when you said that you trusted me?” Ava asked.
He shook his head. This conversation was complicated and delicate. Not fit for the ears of their four-year-old son. He swept the boy up in his arms and hugged him so tightly that Theo squirmed. His son.
“Will you give your mother and I some privacy?”
“Yes,” Theo said. Christos put him down and Theo ran out of the room, taking the stuffed bear with him.
Ava had her arms wrapped around her waist and was staring at him in a way she never had before, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Even that day at the school when he’d come back into her life, she hadn’t looked like this.
“Ava—”
“Don’t try to sugarcoat this or explain your actions. I made it clear that I needed your trust on this issue, Christos.”
“I know that. I do trust you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. You can’t carry it off.”
Her arms dropped to her side. “I’ll be whatever I like. I’m the injured party here.”
He shook his head at her. “Put yourself in my shoes, Ava. I saw you and Stavros together. Nikki knew he was sleeping with another woman that summer and you were the only one near him.”
Those were images he’d never been able to get out of his head. Though they were fading with time.
“Put yourself in my shoes, Christos…you give your virginity to a man you think you love and your boss comes on to you and you end up losing the man you love, your job and your family.”
“I’m sorry that your family didn’t stand by you,” he said, unable to fathom her family abandoning her, because his never would. Even when he was at his wildest his father had still kept in touch. And he’d always had Guillermo and Tristan, who were like brothers to him.
“Their rejection I expected. I never fitted in at home and knew they wouldn’t want anything to do with me or Theo. Your rejection hurt a lot.”
“I never intended to hurt you,” he said, thinking about the pain he’d carefully disguised as anger when he’d caught her in his brother’s arms. The anger that he’d used to mask the vulnerability he’d felt at having trusted her.
“Of course, you didn’t. Now that you know Theo’s your son, is everything magically fixed in the past?”
He didn’t hesitate, because the one time he had, with her, had brought them to this moment. “I had the test performed, but I haven’t read the results.”
“Then why have the test done?”
“I needed proof on this so that I could trust you.”
“You needed proof? Trust doesn’t work that way. Relationships are built on a belief in the other person, not facts and tests, and I can’t live with a man who doesn’t trust me.”
“Are you threatening to leave?” he asked. He wanted to toss her over his shoulder, take her up to his room and lock her in. Ensure that she could never leave. But on the outside he struggled to play it cool.
“You sound as if it doesn’t matter to you,” she said.
“Hell, yes, it matters to me. But I’m not going to beg you to forgive me for something that was necessary.”
She shook her head. “What do you mean necessary?”
“You wanted me to trust you, to believe in you and I wanted to give you that. To be able to love you the way you deserve…”
“And the only way you could do that was to go behind my back and have Theo tested?” she asked.
He took a step toward her, because this time she hadn’t sounded defensive or angry. She’d sounded confused.
“You wanted something from me that I’m not capable of giving.”
“What do you think I want from you?”
“Blind trust.”
“I didn’t want blind anything, Christos. I wanted love. Full-on, head-over-heels love. The kind of stuff that you read about in old epic tales.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the tension there. “That’s not realistic.”
“I know what reality is and I know what I feel. And I love you that way, Christos.”
Suddenly nothing else mattered. “You love me?”
She shrugged. “Yes, I do. But I can’t live with you if you are going to lie to me, especially where Theo is concerned.”
She walked past him and out of the room. He just stood there, thinking about her words. She loved him. What did that mean? Was that the emotion that had been buzzing around inside of him? Was that what all the possessiveness and jealousy he felt around her stemmed from?
He realized at that instant what Ava had meant by needing his trust, because there was no way he was ever going to be able to find proof of her love unless he simply believed her.
Ava felt small and very much the little girl from the trailer park as she left Christos and went out on the balcony that overlooked the vast, landscaped gardens at the Theakis compound.
The house was huge and she had no idea where Theo was, but she wanted to see her son.
Wanted to cuddle his little body next to hers and just bask for a few minutes in his unconditional love.
“What are you fighting with my son about?”
Surprised, she looked up at Ari as he came out onto the balcony in his wheelchair. He was the last person she’d talk about her problems with. In fact she suspected he’d probably applaud her problems with Christos and have Maria pack her bags and drive her to the airport.
“It’s none of your business,” she said at last.
“Everything that affects the Theakis family is my business.”
“Did you meddle in Stavros and Nikki’s marriage like this?” she asked. Anything to change the topic from her and Christos.
He sighed and for a moment she saw every one of Ari’s eighty-one years on his face. “No. Stavros and Nikki…they had their own way of working things out. I didn’t understand them.”
“Me, neither,” Ava said.
“You got caught in the middle of one of their games.”
Ava knew that but was surprised to hear it from Ari. “What do you know about that?”
“I know everything that happens in my kingdom.”
“This isn’t a kingdom.”
“Stop giving me a hard time. And stop letting the past dictate your future. You married Christos and are his wife—it’s time you acted as if those vows meant something to you.”
She glared down at him, thinking about broken vows, and knew she wasn’t the one who had started this.
But then again, this wasn’t an elementary-school game of blame.
“I take my vows very seriously, Ari, but some things…I can’t compromise to make my marriage work.
It’s silly and probably American, but I can’t change the fact that I want my husband to trust me. ”
Ava wrapped her arms around her waist and turned away from her father-in-law. Had her dreams of marriage been too unrealistic? Had she somehow been brainwashed by too many Disney animated films as a young girl? She’d never thought so. She’d seen evidence of happily married people.
And all of her single friends were looking for the same thing she was.
They wanted the spouse and the kids and the other crazy stuff that went along with them.
Not an idealized version of family life, but the reality of it.
And Ava knew that had to start with trust. Because if she and Christos had a real marriage there were going to be fights, and only with real love could they weather those storms.
“You remind me a lot of my wife.”
“I thought you didn’t like me,” she said.
“I don’t. You’re too stubborn and refuse to do what I say…that’s exactly how Leka was. You have that same fire and passion when it comes to protecting your son and standing up to me.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you look like you are finally thinking of giving up, and that’s not who you really are.”
“Ari, I’ve tried. I can’t make Christos trust me, and without that everything else is built on air.”
“Why do you think he doesn’t trust you?”
“I asked him to believe my word that Theo was his son.”
“The paternity test was legitimate. We had to have it for insurance purposes.”
“The Theakis men do whatever they want. If he’d wanted to, Christos could just have said Theo was his son.”
“He’s not the only one who decides these things,” Ari said.
“Are you saying you’re the one who asked the doctor to administer the test?” she asked, knowing perfectly well that Ari hadn’t. Christos had admitted to doing the deed himself, but she wondered how far Ari would go to try to convince her to stay.
“I was going to, but I can tell from your tone that you know it was Christos.”
“Yes, I do.” She sighed again. She felt so hollow inside and had no idea how to get back to normal.
“It’s not that Christos doesn’t believe in you, Ava, it’s that he’s afraid to believe in you.”
“I don’t follow.”
“When my Leka died, Christos was young—only nine. He was very close to his mother, and even when he was a young child, he and I never saw eye-to-eye. And her loss was…hard on all of us, but especially on Christos.”
Ava imagined how Theo would react if she were taken from his life. It was a heart-wrenching thought and made her really feel for Christos.
“What does this have to do with the man he is now?” she asked.