Chapter 3
Chapter Three
It was tempting to just let Christos make all of the decisions and say he was forcing her into marriage, but she had to be strong for Theo. She wanted to be the kind of parent that hers never had been and that meant standing up for herself now.
“Marriage will legitimize Theo’s birth,” he said, his voice low and husky in the darkening light.
Whenever he spoke of Theo she felt as though she was missing something. “I didn’t think there was still a stigma to that.”
“Maybe here in America there isn’t, but in my father’s eyes there is. And with his legitimate heirs gone…”
Her heart broke at the thought of the deaths of Vennie and Althea. And the fact that Theo would never know his cousins. But she also felt angry that Theo was an afterthought. “If that’s all Theo is to you then I’m afraid we’re done here.”
“He’s not only an heir.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s not?”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want to know what you really feel toward Theo.”
“I like him. I see Stavros in him and I miss my brother.”
She dropped her arms and felt her heart melt a little. She heard the truth in his words. “Okay, so all of that’s why you want Theo. But why are you willing to marry me? I thought you could only marry a Greek woman.”
A hard laugh escaped him. “Times have changed.”
She walked toward him on the cobblestones stopping when only a breath separated them.
She wanted…wanted to hear him say that he was offering marriage because he’d finally realized she was the one woman he couldn’t live without.
Looking into his obsidian eyes and seeing how guarded he was, she knew that was a fantasy.
“I’m not going to let you keep these barriers between us,” she said, knowing she couldn’t be the kind of wife that Nikki had been.
Nikki had let Stavros push her to the background of his life, a place where Nikki was forced to watch her husband carouse with other women.
Ava refused to blend quietly into the background as she might have five years ago when she hadn’t been as sure of herself.
Before she’d had Theo she might have compromised herself, but not now.
He took a deep breath, the warm exhalation brushing along her cheek. His hands fell on her hips and he drew her to him. “Then by all means come closer, my dear.”
She brought her hands up, putting them on his chest to keep some space there. Why had she thought she could take control of the situation and Christos?
“This isn’t what I meant,” she said, but there was a rightness to his hands on her. She wanted to lean forward and put her head on his chest. To feel his arms around her once again. Oh, man, this had bad idea written all over it, but she didn’t want to move away.
“This was always right between us,” he said, the words uttered under his breath.
Yes, she thought. Yes, it was. She tipped her head back to meet his gaze.
His lips were firm and full and so close to hers.
She remembered the way he’d kissed her, and she sucked her lower lip between her teeth, biting down on it before she did something really stupid like lean forward and touch her lips to his.
Someone cleared his throat and Christos held her firmly against him when she would have jerked away.
“Yes, Antonio?”
“Master Theo is wheezing,” Antonio said.
“He has asthma,” Ava said, pulling away from Christos and running back toward the house. She had left her purse in the study and she hurried to find it. She grabbed her bag and found Antonio and Christos in the hallway. “Where is he?”
“Kitchen.”
She ran down the hall in the direction that Antonio had pointed. She skidded to a halt, seeing her little boy sitting on the chair, his little chest going in and out as he struggled to breathe.
“Hey, baby,” she said, sinking to her knees next to his chair.
“I’m fine,” he said, the words breathy and not at all in his normal tone.
“No, you’re not.”
He shook his head. “Mama, I don’t want to use the inhaler.”
She didn’t argue with him. She struggled with Theo and his asthma all the time. He hated the weakness and refused to acknowledge when he needed the medicine. “I know, baby.”
She pulled out the inhaler and the long chamber that attached to it. She shook the inhaler. She was dimly aware of Christos standing quietly in the doorway, but she paid him no mind.
Theo glanced over his shoulder at Christos and then leaned into her shoulder. “I don’t want Baba to see.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
Theo shook his head.
She turned to ask Christos to leave but he’d come further into the room, leaning back against the table. “Mind your mother, Theo, we’ll talk about this after you’ve had your treatment.”
She lifted the inhaler toward Theo and he took it into his mouth. She dispensed the medicine, counting quietly and watching him the entire time.
Christos put a hand on Theo’s shoulder and when they were done, she looked up at him and saw a shadow of the same worry she felt for her son. It was a moment that brought them closer together after the nonsense on the patio.
Well, it hadn’t been nonsense, she thought, but when faced with something like their sick child, it seemed silly. She wanted to marry him. It was all she’d ever wanted, so even though she wanted to know what had changed his mind about being her husband, she wasn’t going to ask any more questions.
Theo needed the stability that having two parents would bring him. She saw the seeds of caring in Christos’s eyes when he looked at Theo and she wanted that directed at her again.
She wanted to find a path back to the passionate couple they’d been that long-ago summer, and, without the outside influences of Stavros and Nikki Theakis, they might just have a chance.
“Tell me what’s up, paidi mou?” Christos said.
Theo shrugged in that little-boy way of his. Ava put her arm around her son, struggling not to pull him tight against her chest because his breathing was easier now.
“I want you to like me,” Theo said.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I’m not perfect,” Theo said.
“Yes, you are,” Ava said.
“Your mother is right. To us you are perfect as you are. Don’t try to hide something that’s a part of you, especially if it can hurt you.”
Theo nodded and Christos lifted the boy into his arms. Ava stood next to them, feeling the bond starting to form between father and son. She felt a rekindling of the love she’d always felt for Christos, only this time it was a little deeper than before.
Christos insisted on driving Ava and Theo back to their house, Antonio following with Ava’s car.
Antonio waited with Christos’s vehicle, and Christos joined Ava as she settled the boy into bed.
Their house was small, but very comfortable and welcoming.
The living room was dominated by bookcases along one wall and a large chair that had a colorful blanket draped over the back of it and a large overstuffed pillow on it.
The walls were covered in pictures of Theo from birth until, if he wasn’t mistaken, a few weeks ago. There were Christmases chronicled with visits to Santa.
He walked slowly down the hall looking at the pictures of the boy’s life. He felt cheated by his own hand. Theo was his nephew; he should have stayed involved with him. He should have been there at the boy’s christening, which was documented by photos and a certificate on the wall.
Of course, she’d had the boy baptized in the Roman Catholic Church instead of Greek Orthodox. His father would have a fit.
“Thanks for seeing us home,” Ava said as she came into the hallway and partially closed the door to Theo’s room.
“You’re welcome. How bad is the asthma?”
“They don’t know. He might outgrow it.”
“I have it.”
“What?”
“I know, shocking, isn’t it? It runs in the family. My mother’s side.” His condition wasn’t something he advertised and thanks to medication he kept it under control, but when he’d been a child it hadn’t made his life easier. Hard to believe it now, but he’d been a pudgy, wheezing kid.
“Yes,” she said. “I had no idea. You seem so fit.”
“Fit?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Strangely enough, I do. Swimming is good for the lungs. I’ll show him some of the things I do to control it.”
She nibbled on her lower lip, which brought to focus another reason he’d come back to her place. He wanted her. The arousal that had burned through him earlier in his gardens was back.
“Theo’s afraid of water.”
“What? The Theakis are of the sea.”
She shrugged. Somehow she doubted that was going to make Theo realize that he should love water. “I don’t know. I’ve tried to get him into the pool here, and in the ocean, and he won’t do it.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Christos said.
As they walked down her hall of memories, he felt more the outsider than he had before. But that was nothing new. His entire life he’d been out of step with the rest of the world. Well, the world that his father had created.
“Do you have anything to drink?” he asked.
“Sure, come on in the kitchen,” she said, leading the way into the bright room. There was a booster seat on one ladderback chair. He glanced around and saw the life she’d created for herself and Theo.
This was what he’d always imagined her life to be. This cozy, homey little place. And he knew he didn’t fit in with it. He didn’t want to. He had long ago made his peace with the life he had.
Right. Even with Stavros gone and him stepping up at Theakis Shipping, he still felt like an outsider. Like the spare heir that he’d always been to his father.
He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the expectations of everyone weighing on him.
“I’ve got a bottle of pinot grigio that might be a little old, or soda, or light beer.”
He shook his head. “Beer. Thank you.”