Chapter Eight #2
Nelios nodded and, while he was too formidable to show his relief, she sensed it as he gazed down at his son and the corner of his mouth twitched. ‘It seems beauty is lost on him. For now at least.’
‘Hmm, maybe not entirely,’ she murmured before she could stop herself.
His gaze transferred to her, his eyes glinting.
Then, wrapping his free arm around her to draw her closer, they stopped speaking entirely and simply basked in the moment.
Touching is not forbidden.
As glaring slippery slopes went, this one came with flashing neon lights so bright, they might have been seen from space.
But could she push the warning away long enough to rationalise it or remember just why not touching Nelios was the safest option?
Because he seemed to have zero qualms about touching her after their heated kiss in the hotel room.
He touched her back as he guided her onto the plane bright and early the next morning. And as he offered her a segment of the juicy clementine she’d thought he was peeling for himself right until he held it out to her, his thumb brushing her lower lip when she accepted, heart lurching wildly.
And then there was Angelos’s feeding times.
Repeatedly Nelios asked if she minded him staying.
She always said no, she didn’t. She wasn’t ashamed of breastfeeding her son in public or wherever his need demanded, so it wasn’t what caused the relentless turbulence inside her.
It was the possessive hunger in Nelios’s eyes, the eagerness to learn everything he could about his son.
To record everything, given he’d missed the three months since Angelos was born.
It was as if she’d been given the floor to wax lyrical about her favourite subject on earth to an ardent audience of one. If this was a ploy on his part to gain some sort of leverage in this marriage, then she had to applaud him. He was succeeding hand over fist.
And that was even before the small plane they’d boarded from Italy touched down on a narrow strip of runway on a jewelled island in the middle of the Aegean.
Between what she saw on the internet, her brief jaunt as a stowaway-turned-tourist in Buenos Aires and living in London, one of most cosmopolitan cities on the planet, Vayle thought she couldn’t be stunned speechless by anywhere.
She was now. Apeiron was aptly named for its shape that followed an almost perfect infinity sign.
The villa followed the outer eastward curve that faced a rolling vista of green bordering white sandy beaches to the pinched middle of the island.
The westward curve was much craggier, full of trees, orchards, shallow and steep brown hills and even a tiny church poised on top of a gentle promontory, alongside smaller clusters of villas and a smattering of goats and sheep.
It was a place she could see Angelos exploring to his heart’s content when he was older.
Altogether, it was less than a kilometre across at its furthest point, but she felt as though it had everything a family needed.
A proper family, not one cobbled together by a dozen pieces of paper, signed and witnessed by sharply suited men in a hotel room.
That squeeze in her chest signalling the ever-deepening yearning arrived and stayed all through the tour, Nelios escorting them to the fully decked-out nursery that held everything a treasured baby boy would need.
‘Is this all right?’ Nelios asked, his rapt gaze flicking between his son and her.
Her heart full, Vayle nodded. ‘More than. Thank you.’ And, if there was the shadow of a crumb of envy that yearned for some of that attention, well, she kept that disgraceful notion to herself.
She spun away to eye the two doors leading off opposite sides of the nursery.
‘They’re adjoining suites. Mine is through there. And this is yours. We can both check on Angelos when needed.’
Walking forward as he spoke, he threw open the doors leading to her suite…and stunned her all over again. There was a probability that one day she might get blasé about the luxury Nelios seemed to take in his stride. Today wasn’t that day.
But you have nearly two decades to get used to it. Her heart didn’t jump at the thought. But that squeezing replayed, harder, more insistent than before.
‘We share a common terrace,’ he went on, watching her with an edgy ferocity, as if it was vitally important to him that he interpret what she felt.
Spotting a snazzy baby’s rocking chair similar to one they’d used before placed under a large sun umbrella complete with a light blanket, Vayle placed a drowsy Angelos in it and strapped him in.
His eyes were drooping even before she turned away and walked to the edge of the terrace where Nelios was staring at the horizon.
While the atmosphere was a little charged—and she suspected that, for as long as they were in close proximity, that chemistry they’d both acknowledged would create its own ecosystem—there was a lack of prowling restlessness about it.
It was as if Nelios was at peace here. ‘You didn’t just name this place for its shape, did you?’
He paused for a second, then sent her a tight smile. ‘I had an awakening of sorts here. The previous owner, who was forced to leave for health reasons, didn’t want to sell to me at first. Not until I’d given him a vision of what my intentions were for his pride and joy.’
‘I’m guessing he didn’t want it turned into a hedonistic Club Med destination for the rich?’
His mouth quirked. ‘Exactly so. And he wasn’t impressed with the prospect of another Nelios hotel, no matter how selective the clientele, or how sympathetic to the environment I intended to be.’
‘What was the awakening?’
‘That only my life was finite. That what I left behind could be truly infinite.’ His gaze drifted to his sleeping son. ‘I saw it as leaving a legacy without having actual offspring, but now I’m seeing it’s even better with.’
‘And that’s all it took to sway him?’
He shook his head and a guarded look descended over his face. ‘No. I told him that, for every year I owned his island, I would fund a necessary project somewhere in the world.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Really?’
‘Ne.’ His gaze paused in the middle distance for an age before he glanced at her. ‘That morning after our night in Buenos Aires, I left because I had to oversee one of those projects.’ His shoulder twitched. ‘Granted, I didn’t have to leave that early, but I still would’ve left.’
She filed away the confession and pushed to satisfy her curiosity. ‘What was the project?’
‘Five hundred homes for families who need to relocate from the slums. Another five hundred for struggling families with young children who are at risk of being made homeless—or worse.’
Families, children, his possessive claiming of Angelos: she didn’t need a crystal ball to show her that, while Nelios was a wildly successful tycoon, there was an equally resolute part of him that was obsessed with righting the wrongs done to him at whatever level he could achieve.
He couldn’t see that, in obsessing over the past, he was adversely affecting his present… and his future too.
Knowing she risked shattering the relative peace and tranquillity, she licked her lips and pushed ahead anyway. ‘You still owe me a re-telling of your story.’
He stiffened and his jaw worked for a few tense seconds. But the furious rejection never arrived. He remained tense but slowly his jaw unclenched, as did the bunched fists resting on the stone balustrade.
After a minute of his gaze roving the landscape, he finally spoke. ‘I told you the foster carer judged me as a problem child on that first day she visited?’
Her nod was jerky, her emotions churning with distress for him. ‘Yes.’
He shrugged. ‘In the first month alone, I ended up being moved to three different foster homes, each one progressively worse than the last.’
Her heart squeezed tighter when he exhaled harshly.
‘In the third month, I was placed with carers who believed the harsher the corporal punishment they doled out, the better.’ Naked fury washed over his face and she knew he was reliving the horrendous memory.
‘It didn’t matter how young or old the children were.
They all received the same treatment—a fist or a belt for the smallest infraction. ’
‘God.’
His head jerked down, his mouth thinning.
‘I grew tired of it very quickly. Especially when it became clear they weren’t beating us just to be corrective but to merely suppress us because they could.
It was base cruelty for the sake of it, because they could get away with and it and be rewarded with a pay cheque at the end of the month. So I decided to do something about it.’
Her eyes widened. ‘What did you do?’
‘My first instinct was just to leave. I figured the streets would be far better than what I was enduring.’ The harsh twist of his mouth suggested he’d discovered differently. ‘But I couldn’t leave the other children under those conditions, especially the three younger ones.’
Her little finger bumped his and she realised she’d moved closer without conscious thought. He glanced down at where they touched for a long moment before his gaze returned to the horizon.
‘By a stroke of fate, luck or whatever you wish to call it, the decision was taken out of my hands. A lit cigarette left untended by a drunk foster mother literally ignited the start I wanted.’
‘Your foster home went up in flames?’
He nodded. ‘Down to the last cinder. I got the kids out and waited until the fire brigade and ambulance arrived to take care of them. Then I put my plan in place and took my chances on the streets.’
If her chest had been tight before, it barely let her breathe now. Tears stung the back of her eyes. ‘That wasn’t a breeze, though, was it?’ she murmured.
‘Far from it. And especially not when I discovered I wasn’t alone.’
She blinked. ‘What?’
His mouth twitched. ‘Turns out another kid had the same idea.’
‘Andreas?’ she guessed.