Chapter 12 #2
Ari pushed his sunglasses onto his forehead and looked her straight in the eye. “He stopped letting anyone into his life. He put up a barrier that only those two hellions he hangs out with were ever able to get past.”
She wanted to smile at the way he described Guillermo and Tristan. They were two of the wealthiest and most successful men in the world, yet to Ari they were hellions.
“I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”
“I think he’s testing you to see if you’ll stay.”
She shook her head. She had no doubt he was testing her in some way. But what Ari said…“I’m not sure I believe that.”
“I’ve known him all his life, Ava, and I haven’t seen him smile the way he does around you and Theo since he was a little boy.
“I’ve lost one son and am not going to give up on the one I have left now that he’s finally found his way back.”
Ava shook her head. “You can’t make him love me.”
“No, but you can.”
“I’m not going to. I’ve spent my entire life striving for things out of my reach and just once I’d like someone to put me first.”
“Christos already does that with you. He cuts his days in the office short to spend more time with you and Theo. Think about that.” And Ari wheeled around and left her there.
Ava sighed and made her way back to her own room. She couldn’t bring herself to go back to Christos’s bed. Not yet.
She wished she could believe that Christos had been motivated by love, but she didn’t think she could. She’d fooled herself twice into thinking that Christos loved her, and she’d been wrong.
Ava came out of the house the next afternoon and found Christos and Theo playing in the pool. She knew that Christos had been teaching Theo to swim but watching her son jump from the pool deck into the water made her breath catch. He surfaced quickly, swam to the edge and got out again.
“Mama, watch this,” Theo said.
“What am I watching?”
“Cannonball!” He jumped into the pool with a big splash of water.
Christos stayed in the water but swam over near her. Resting his tanned muscled arms on the side, he looked up at her.
“How are you?” he asked, softly.
There was real concern in his voice. Or was she just imagining it? Hearing what she wanted to. “Fine.”
“Ava, I don’t like this distance between us.”
“I didn’t put it there.”
“How can I make it up to you?”
“You can’t, Christos. There was only one way to prove you trusted me.”
“Mama?”
“Yes, Theo?”
“Watch this.”
“I am watching.”
She looked away from Christos to stare at Theo.
But what she saw was the fact that her son used to be afraid of the water and being here with Christos had changed that.
Being with Christos had changed them. She’d always been afraid of who she was, but Christos had given her the strength to be herself.
“Theo, enough for today. I have to go back to work.”
“Ok, Baba.”
Theo swam to the side where Christos was and hugged him. Ava lifted him out of the pool. Theo hugged her and then ran to the poolside table where Maria had placed lemonade and snacks.
Christos got out of the pool and stood next to her. It was the closest they’d been since their fight. “I can teach our son not to fear water, moro mou, but I don’t know how to teach you to trust me. I know that you can’t see past what I did, but the reasons were more complex than just your trust.”
“Your father told me. Tried to take the blame for the test.”
Christos shook his head. “I ordered the test, I did that. But I haven’t looked at the results, and I won’t.”
Ava felt the first chink of doubt in her resolve that his forcing the test was a bad idea. She watched him walk away, seeing for the first time that they both had to trust each other. She had to believe in him when he made promises to her, and she hadn’t.
Christos spent the next two days at the office trying to tell himself that he didn’t need a close relationship with Ava to be happy.
But he missed her. He wanted her back in his bed.
At night when he came home to tuck Theo in he’d prompt the boy for stories about his mother so he could find out how she was doing.
God, he was pitiful.
The love he wasn’t sure he felt for her was now seeming more and more real. He ached to have her back in his bed, not just so they could make love, but also so they could talk about the day.
He knew only one person who’d been in love, who knew what real heartbreak was. And though he’d always been careful to keep his emotions private, he had nowhere else to turn. Life with Ava couldn’t continue this way.
He left Theo’s room and walked down the hall to his study. The room was filled with items he’d collected and had at one time been a sanctuary for him, but no longer. Now it just seemed so much emptier than it ever had before.
He dialed Tristan’s number before he could change his mind and without calculating the time difference from Mykonos to Manhattan.
“Theakis, it’s the middle of the day here.”
“I’m sorry, this couldn’t wait.”
“What’s the matter? Is it Theo or Ava?”
“It’s…ah, hell, Tristan, I’ve screwed things up with Ava. You said something on our wedding day about women’s dreams…and I’ve never really understood what she wants from me.”
“Ask her.”
“What?”
“Ask her. She’ll tell you what her dreams are and then you can fulfill them.”
He knew what Ava wanted and realized he’d backed himself into a corner. “She wants me to love her and trust her.”
“You don’t really trust anyone,” Tristan said.
“I trust you and Gui.”
“Now, you do. But you didn’t for the first fifteen years we knew each other.”
“I don’t think Ava’s going to give me that much time.”
“Having met her, I’d agree. What’s the hold-up here? Is it the relationship with Stavros?”
No, it wasn’t. It was him and the damned hollowness inside that he knew was the wellspring of his aloofness. That distance he kept as a buffer between him and the world.
“No, that’s not it.”
“What is it then?”
He couldn’t put it into words with Tristan. “Nothing.”
“It sounds like you love her, mon ami. Don’t let her slip away. She’s the first good thing to happen to you since…well, ever. She’s the kind of woman who can give you the home and family you’ve always wanted.”
“I wasn’t looking for home and family.”
“Whatever you say.”
He wished it really was whatever he said. Because then he’d order Ava to move back to his room and make their lives together everything she wanted them to be. “Later.”
He hung up the phone as everything coalesced in his head. He needed Ava even more than he needed Theo or Ari or the Theakis shipping business. He needed her because she made him feel alive. Before her, he’d been stuck in the rut that came from always running and never standing still.
Did he love her?
Yes, he thought. He did love her. She was the only woman who’d ever made an impression on him. The only woman who’d ever made him feel so many different things. The only woman he’d never been able to forget.
He needed to find Ava and tell her that he loved her. Tell her that he’d been an idiot for not believing in her. Because now he understood what she wanted from him.
He went to the bedroom she’d moved back into two days ago and knocked on the door.
The door opened and she stood there in her bare feet and bathrobe. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup and her hair was pulled back. His breath caught in his throat as the love he felt for her swamped him.
She kept the door partially closed like a barrier between them and he realized he wasn’t going to let her do this. Let her turn him into some kind of simpering fool because he loved her.
He pushed the door open and scooped her up in his arms. He kicked the door closed and carried her across the room. He tossed her down on the center of the bed and then covered her body with his own.
She wedged her hands between them pushing against his chest. “What are you doing?”
“Claiming my wife.”
“You already did that on our wedding night.”
“No I didn’t,” he said, bending down to kiss her because the words hovering on the tip of his tongue were too revealing.
He plundered her mouth and restaked his claim on her. Tried to show her with his body all the things that he struggled to find the words to say. Her hands skimmed over his chest up to his neck, wrapping around his shoulders.
“I’ve missed you, moro mou.”
“I’ve missed you, too. But sex isn’t going to make everything okay between us,” she said. “I want more than this from you.”
“What do you want, Ava?”
“You to know that I trust you. So I have something for you.”
“What?”
“Go sit down and I’ll show you.”
“Show me?”
“Yes.”
She got up and walked away from Christos and he watched her go. She returned with an envelope, handing it to him. “I had this done because I don’t want to test you or your love. I need to trust you as well.”
“What is it?”
“Another paternity test. Open it and put your doubts to rest. I know that the situation you found me in with Stavros and the lies that I’d told you about my background all contributed to what you believed of me.”
“Ava, I trust you. I know—”
She put her fingers over his lips. “Just let me do this for us.”
He pulled her down on his lap and she snuggled close to him as he opened the envelope and pulled out the paper inside. He didn’t look at it but instead stared down at her. “This can’t change the way I feel about you. I trust you with my entire heart.”
“That’s wonderful, Christos, but I want more.”