The Secret Behind The Greek’s Return by Michelle Smart

CHAPTER SEVEN

MARISAHELD NIKIclose as she stepped over the threshold of the door Nikos opened for her in the wide corridor, using his solid little body as a shield to protect herself from the emotions thrashing and crashing inside her.

She’d known it would happen one day soon, that Nikos would assert his authority as a father, but she’d surprised herself at the strength of her feelings about it. Until that moment, every single decision about Niki had been made by her and her alone. Nikos had been dead! The times when she’d been uncertain about something she’d sought her mother’s advice but the ultimate decision had always been hers. His sudden assertion of parental authority while she was fighting the effect his nearness was having on her had made her angrier about it than she should have been... And his reasons for it.

Why would he employ a nanny for her benefit? Why would he care if she took time for herself? She knew he didn’t care a jot for her...

But he still wanted her. Hadn’t she known that since their meal together? And hadn’t she sensed it before that?

His desire was there in every gleam of his eyes, a sensual promise that lived as a hum in her veins.

He didn’t care for her but he still desired her as a woman, and, as she gazed around the room that would be hers for the week, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a full-length mirror. For a moment she stared at the woman with the child in her arms.

A mother. A daughter. A sister.

A woman.

And then she caught Nikos’s eye in the reflection. The icy steel she’d seen during their brief, heated argument had melted. What she saw in his light brown gaze now...

Her abdomen turned to liquid.

Marisa quickly looked away and forced her attention back to the room. It was as vast and white as the rest of the place but there were colourful feminine touches in the soft furnishings. The splashes of colour were the reds and oranges she adored, colours she hadn’t seen in any other part of his home. Had these colourful touches been added for her...?

She couldn’t stop her eyes darting back to Nikos. He stood by the glass door in the centre of the far wall, which had floor-to-ceiling windows, watching her.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

She had to swallow hard to get her throat moving. ‘It’s perfect, thank you.’

The returning gleam had her tightening her hold around their son, who, oblivious to the undercurrents happening around him, was merrily babbling away as he took in the newness of his surroundings.

Suddenly desperate to escape the intimate confines, she backed to the door. ‘Where’s Niki sleeping?’

He stepped away from the wall, a knowing half-smile playing on his lips. ‘The room opposite. It’s been turned into a nursery for him. I’ll show you.’

If she didn’t have Niki in her arms, she’d have run out of the room.

The nursery was a big hit with Niki, who immediately went crawling to the building blocks set out on the floor for him. The adjoining dressing room had been filled with brand new clothing and all the toys a baby on the cusp of his first birthday could wish for. As dinner would soon be ready, Marisa decided a change of clothes for him was needed. All the travelling had made their son grubby. It might have proved a great distraction from Nikos if he hadn’t stood next to her at the baby changing table so he could make funny faces at their son while she put a new outfit on him.

He stood so close—deliberately, she was sure of it—that her lungs contracted. She could feel the heat of his skin vibrating against hers and a job that should have taken two minutes doubled because her brain forgot how to work her fingers and thumbs.

As she fumbled to get socks onto her son’s plump feet, Nikos’s phone vibrated and he stepped away from her.

She met her son’s bright happy eyes and blew out all the air she’d been holding in one long puff, trying to make it into a joke for fear that if she didn’t, she would burst into tears. They wouldn’t be sad tears. They would be frustrated tears. Frustration at herself for still hungering and responding so desperately to the man who’d treated her so abominably.

‘My grandfather’s back,’ Nikos announced. ‘Is Niki ready?’

She pasted a smile to her lips, nodded and stepped aside to let Nikos pick him up.

Following them out of the room, she vowed to get a grip on herself. With this firmly in mind, she said, ‘When you say he’s back, does your grandfather live here?’

‘He lives in the villa next to the spa. He could have had a wing in here but he likes privacy to entertain his lady friends.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ she said evenly, descending the stairs in step with him. He’d never mentioned his grandfather living with him.

‘What, that my grandfather still has an active sex life? It’s something I try not to think about.’

A welcome kernel of laughter tickled her throat at his deadpan comment. ‘No, that he lives with you. Is that a recent thing?’

‘He moved in when I finished the renovations eight years ago.’

‘What made you buy it? Was it the views?’

There was a tightness to his smile. ‘I inherited it from my mother.’

She was instantly confused. ‘I thought you grew up in Chora?’ Chora was Mykonos’s capital and she distinctly remembered him saying it was the part of the island he was from.

‘This was my home until I was six.’

‘That must have been quite a change for you.’ Nikos’s beachside villa was incredibly remote. ‘Did you move for school?’

‘No. My grandfather took custody of me,’ Nikos replied shortly. ‘He took care of me as a child and now I take care of him.’

Shock had her tightening her grip on the bannister. Custody?

But there was no time to ask what he meant by this for he increased his pace to greet the elderly gentleman waiting for them.

Nikos’s grandfather, Stratos, was a man of, Marisa guessed, around eighty. He had a shock of white hair, a weather-beaten face, twinkling blue eyes and, from the way he bounded to them, the energy of a man half his age.

When Nikos made the introductions, she was taken aback to see the blue eyes turn to ice as they landed on her. His kiss to her cheek came with a definite coolness that immediately put her on edge. She was old enough to know that everyone couldn’t like each other but this was the first time since her school days she’d detected such an instant and noticeable dislike of her.

What on earth had she done to cause it? Could it be something as simple as Stratos being prejudiced against the Spanish or redheads?

If it was prejudice causing his frostiness to her, she was relieved to find his attitude didn’t extend to her son.

Stratos couldn’t speak Spanish or English. Marisa understood Greek far better than she spoke it—teaching herself Nikos’s language so she could teach it to her son had been her greatest joy during her pregnancy—so that meant any ice-breaking conversation was out, but he didn’t need verbal conversation to communicate with his great-grandson.

At first, Niki was as shy with him as he’d been with the nanny Nikos had hired. Stratos was undeterred, parking himself on the hard floor where he waited patiently for Niki’s confidence around him to grow and was soon rewarded by his great-grandson using him as a human climbing frame.

Not once during this did he look at or attempt to communicate with Marisa.

Nikos did, though. Though she kept her stare on the two generations playing on the floor, she could feel his gaze burning into her. She wished the burn didn’t feel like buzzing velvet in her veins. Wished her skin didn’t shiver with awareness of his presence. She’d been wishing these things since he’d come back into her life.

Her mind kept going over his throwaway comment about his grandfather having custody of him. How had she spent six months of her life loving someone without knowing something so fundamental about them? The few things he’d revealed about his past had been delivered matter-of-factly before he’d turned the conversations around to her. It had been done in such a subtle way that at the time she’d preened under the weight of his thirst for knowledge about every aspect of her life. Now she realised it had been a deflection to stop her asking questions about him.

But these were thoughts that had to be put on the backburner when dinner was served and they all headed out to the table on the terrace to sit beneath the warm night sky.

Stratos took the seat next to the highchair and insisted on feeding Niki the specially prepared mush. The utter disgust on her son’s face as the concoction hit his taste-buds was photo-worthy. He spat it out, globules of green goo landing on Stratos’s white shirt.

For the first time since their introduction, the elderly man met her eye. He burst into loud, gravelly laughter that set her off too.

‘Has that got courgette in it?’ she asked when they’d all stopped laughing and Niki had been pacified with a bread roll and a banana and Stratos had gone back to ignoring her.

Nikos grinned. This was his first shared meal with his son in his own home. He would never have imagined a month ago that something so simple and ordinary could provoke such huge enjoyment.

He’d shared plenty of meals in Valencia with his son but they’d all been with Marisa and her family. As outwardly welcoming and obliging as her mother and sister—on the occasions she’d joined them—had been to him, he’d known perfectly well that both of them would have cheerfully stabbed him with their forks if they’d thought they could get away with it. Strangely, he’d never had that vibe from Marisa, but then he remembered that in those first weeks she’d worn her indifference like armour.

He wondered if she was aware how greatly that armour had been stripped away. Or if she realised that every time she spoke to him, her fingers captured one of the ringlets splayed over her shoulders?

Seated diagonally from her, the pleasure of the evening was intensified by the enjoyment of her lovely face as his vista throughout the meal. Marisa was a beautiful woman but under the rising moonlight, her beauty turned into something other-worldly.

‘I’ve no idea what the chef made him,’ he answered after a drink of his wine. ‘I should have warned him not to put courgette in his food.’

‘You can add peppers and aubergine to the list,’ she said without looking at him, fingers tugging on a ringlet. ‘I made a batch of baby-friendly ratatouille a few days ago and you’d have thought I was trying to poison him.’

‘I’m still amazed you can cook.’

‘Only baby food,’ she hastened to remind him, eyes darting to his before quickly looking away again.

Yet another example of her devotion to their son.

His own mother had never, to Nikos’s recollection, cooked him a meal. She’d generally been too busy cooking her drugs to worry about feeding her son, and it rolled like poison in his guts to imagine his own son, belly cramping with hunger, teetering on a kitchen stool to reach a cupboard for food.

Theos, what was it about fatherhood that made the past feel more vivid and present than it had in decades?

Not just fatherhood. Marisa. The diametric opposite of his own mother but with the same power over her son in her hands.

He swallowed the poison away with more wine, determined not to ruin this evening by allowing thoughts about his mother and the past to intrude.

The main course over, staff cleared their dishes away. Marisa got to her feet. ‘I need to put Niki to bed.’

‘Stay for dessert?’ he coaxed.

She shook her head while unclasping the highchair straps keeping their son contained. ‘It’s way past his bedtime.’

Loving the way her silhouette played under the moonlight, Nikos looked her up and down. ‘Seema can put him to bed tomorrow night and you can stay with the grown-ups.’

She didn’t rise to the bait, lifting Niki from the highchair. ‘I like to put him to bed myself.’

‘You like to do everything yourself.’

‘Only when it comes to this little one.’ She leaned Niki towards Stratos so he could kiss his great-grandson goodnight then placed a polite kiss of her own to his wrinkled cheek.

Nikos watched her subtly brace herself before she carried their son to him. He took full advantage of her nearness, slipping an arm loosely around her back to keep her close. ‘Goodnight, moro mou,’ he said to his son as he smacked kisses over his face. When Marisa attempted to step away from him he trailed his fingers to her hips and slipped a finger into the pocket of her snug linen trousers. ‘Don’t I get a goodnight kiss, agapi mou?’

Her features tightened as her face made the tiniest of jerks before she found her composure and turned her flashing eyes on him. ‘Of course.’

He heard the breath she took before she lowered her face, their son in her arms making her movements careful. As her plump lips made light contact with his cheek he turned his face and their lips brushed. The moment of contact was fleeting but enough for him to taste the heat from her mouth. Heady warmth unfurled in him and coiled through his bloodstream.

Face bathed with colour, blinking rapidly, holding their son like a shield, she stepped away from him. When her eyes met his again there was dazed accusation in them.

‘Goodnight, agapi mou,’ he murmured, holding the stare. ‘Sleep well.’

She took another step back then inclined her head and turned. Moments later, she disappeared inside.

It took a few more moments for Nikos to pull himself together.

Shifting in his seat, Nikos topped up his and his grandfather’s wine glasses.

‘Your son is going to be a real character,’ his grandfather said with a chuckle.

Nikos smiled in response and took a large drink of his wine. His blood still pumped unexpectedly hard from the effects of the fleeting kiss.

‘I never thought I would live to meet a great-grandchild, least of all from you.’

Nikos was an only child but had a dozen cousins he’d run amok around Chora with. He kept in touch with a few of them and the rest he saw at the usual family events of christenings, weddings and funerals. ‘It was as big a surprise to me as to you.’

His grandfather’s gaze became serious. ‘You need to marry her.’

Nikos’s good mood ended with those five words. ‘That isn’t necessary.’

‘You won’t think that if she stops you seeing him.’

‘Marisa wouldn’t do that,’ he refuted automatically.

‘You don’t know that for sure. I raised you but she didn’t tell me about him, and don’t tell me she didn’t know how to, she had the means and money to contact me if she’d wanted, and she has the means and money to fight you if she decides to stop you seeing him.’

‘She loves him too much to do anything but what’s best for him.’ But his grandfather’s cynical words had set off a pounding in his head. Hadn’t similar thoughts already occurred to him?

‘Her opinion on what’s best might mean keeping him from you. What is best for him—and you—is having parents who are married.’

‘My parents were married. That was hardly best for me.’

His grandfather winced. ‘That wasn’t marriage’s fault. That was the drugs’ fault.’

‘They hated each other with or without the drugs.’ And neither had cared a jot for him, he thought with a stab.

‘They loved each other once. It was the drugs that ruined them.’

Nikos bit back his temper. He wasn’t prepared to fall into another argument about it. His grandfather had a more sympathetic view of the past. Nikos supposed that was Stratos’s love for his son still wanting to see the best in him despite all the evidence to the contrary.

‘I only remember them as being at war with each other. I’m not going to put Niki through that. We’ll formalise a custody arrangement when he’s old enough to be parted from her for periods of time.’

‘And when will that be?’ his grandfather challenged. ‘Do you see the way she is with him? She watches him like a hawk. It will be years before she allows you to have him without her.’

The ring of truth in his grandfather’s words reminded him of how the colour had drained from her face when he’d asked if Niki could come to Mykonos. The colour had only returned when he’d clarified he meant for her to come too. He remembered, too, her earlier reaction to him employing a nanny. By her own admission, Marisa liked to do everything for their son. She did not like her judgement on his welfare to be challenged.

But marriage?

‘You will have to hope she’s amenable to a formal arrangement,’ his grandfather added into the silence.

‘She will be.’ But Nikos’s words sounded unconvincing to himself.

‘I know you hate the idea of marriage but, remember, it doesn’t have to last for ever.’

He flickered his eyes to his grandfather. His marriage to Nikos’s grandmother, had been tragically cut short by her death from ovarian cancer four decades ago. Stratos had never said it in words but from the little he had said, Nikos had intuited the marriage had not been a happy one. His grandfather had enjoyed many lady friends since his wife’s death but had never remarried or lived with another woman.

By the time his grandfather retired to bed, the doubts Stratos’s words had sown had solidified his own fears into weights in his guts.

Too uptight to sleep, Marisa, baby monitor in hand, opened the glass door in her room and stepped out onto the balcony.

Putting the monitor on the wrought-iron table, she stepped to the balustrade and breathed deeply as she gazed out at the Aegean lapping on Nikos’s private beach in the near distance. If she inhaled hard enough the faint salty tang might clear her mouth of the taste of Nikos that no amount of minty toothpaste could eradicate.

A throb of heat pulsed in her abdomen. Their lips had connected for barely a second but that second had been long enough for their breath to meld together and for any hope of control to be shattered.

She wriggled her shoulders to fight the shiver lacing her spine as she replayed the sensual tone of his voice when he’d bidden her goodnight, and forced her attention on her surroundings rather than the melting mess she was in danger of turning into. Look at the stars! See how they reflected off the black sea. See how they shone so brightly. The Valencian suburb the Lopez estate was located in was renowned for its wealth and beauty but it had nothing on Nikos’s home. This had everything, beauty and peace.

What secrets were contained within its boundaries?

Many secrets. She was certain of it.

She’d intuited his childhood had been very different from the happy idyll of her own, but never had she guessed it had been bad enough that his grandfather had taken custody of him. He’d never even hinted at it. All she’d really learned about his childhood was that he’d lived and gone to school in Chora until he was fourteen, when he was sent by his family, as he’d put it to her, to boarding school in England, and the names of his childhood friends, many of whom he was still in contact with.

She squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to drive Nikos’s image away. She’d come out here to clear her mind, not think about him even more.

But not thinking about him was impossible when she could feel his presence in the buzz of her veins and when so many old familiar feelings were blossoming and singing and anticipation quivered low in her pelvis.

When she opened her eyes, she noticed for the first time that the long, wide balcony stretched further than the limits of her room. Tightening the sash of her satin robe, she followed her curiosity to the end of it and discovered the balcony was shared with the room next to hers. The curtains running the length of the glass wall were drawn but that didn’t stop her taking a step back and then quickly padding back to her own half.

Tingles danced over her skin as instinct told her the adjoining room was Nikos’s.