Georgia frowned, not remembering the picture. Or the clothes. Or anything about the oddly formal pose.
Maybe because that wasn’t her.
It was another tall, slender blonde...
Georgia dropped the picture back onto the basket of laundry, horrified.
Elsa.
* * *
Nikos had just returned from a run and was stripping in his room to take a shower when the bedroom door crashed open. Georgia stood in the doorway, staring at him with huge eyes, her complexion ashen.
“What’s wrong?” He moved quickly toward her, thinking that something must have happened to the baby. “Are you all right? What’s wrong? What’s happening? Do I need to alert the doctor?”
She just stared at him, looking as if she’d seen a ghost.
Nikos put his hands on her shoulders, gave her a slight shake. “I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s happened!”
“Elsa,” she choked.
He stiffened. His hands fell off her shoulders. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
“She looked like me.”
His jaw dropped as if he’d speak but he didn’t. He couldn’t. His mind was blank. “You don’t want me,” Georgia whispered. “You want her.”
His brow creased. She was wrong, completely wrong. “That’s not true.”
“Then why does she look like me?” Georgia pulled a photo from her pocket. There were marks on the corners where it’d been worked into a frame. She thrust the photo at him, her hand trembling. “Look at her! Look. We’re the same! We could be the same person.”
Nikos took the photo, if only to keep her from shoving it at his face. He didn’t even need to look at it again to know the one. He only had that one photo left. Elsa had destroyed the rest.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” Georgia whispered, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Why play this game with me? Why not just tell me the truth?”
“What truth?”
“That you’re still in love with her, and that you miss her, and you wanted a baby that would be hers.”
“But that’s not how it is. That’s not what this is.”
“Really? Then what is it?”
But when he struggled to find the words, when he couldn’t blurt out an easy answer, she shook her head and started to walk away. Nikos caught her arm, keeping her from going.
“Let me shower and dress. I just need a few minutes. And then I’ll explain.”
“I don’t think you can explain, Nikos.”
“You have to at least give me a chance.” His dark eyes searched hers. “Meet me in the library in five minutes. Please?”
* * *
As Georgia waited for Nikos in the library, only one thought kept going through her head, over and over.
She’d been so happy.
She’d been the happiest she could remember...
This last month it had been almost impossible to study because she hadn’t wanted to sit alone in her room, surrounded by books and notes. She wanted to be with Nikos. Her attention had wandered constantly, her thoughts drifting to him throughout the day. She’d wonder what he was doing, wonder if he was swimming, wonder what he was working on... It didn’t matter what he was doing, either. She just wanted to be there, with him. Near him.
He’d never minded, either. He’d encouraged her to join him, be with him, sleep with him...
Now she knew why.
The library door opened and Nikos was there...tall, darkly handsome, overwhelming in every way.
He was dressed in all black, the way he usually dressed, and his expression was grim. But even then, her heart did a painful little jump and her eyes burned.
Her whole world turned inside out in just minutes. Everything she thought was true wasn’t.
“Sit, Georgia, please.”
His deep, commanding voice was so achingly familiar now, and yet she stiffened in protest. “I don’t want to sit.”
“It’s a long, complicated story—”
“I prefer the shortest, simplest version possible, please.”
He gave her a long look. “You’ve already judged me.”
“It’s hard to ignore certain facts.”
“Maybe there is no point, if you’re not even going to give me a chance.”
Her chin notched up. She wasn’t sure she liked his mocking tone, but at least he wasn’t begging. She didn’t think she could handle that. “I don’t know what you can say to make it better. I don’t know that there is anything that can change this. I certainly know I can’t compete with her—”
“You’re not supposed to compete with her!”
“But that’s who I am to you. I am her twin... It’s as if you’ve raised her from the dead.” Georgia felt desperately ill. Her stomach churned with acid and her throat burned, and it was all she could do to keep from getting sick. “You don’t want me. You want her.”
“I don’t. And for your information, you’re nothing like her.”
“No?” Georgia glanced wildly about, looking for the photo but realizing it was in Nikos’s room. But she didn’t need to see the image to remember her shock as she looked at a woman who could have been her twin. “Because she looked an awful lot like me. And the resemblance cannot be by chance.”
“It’s not,” he said flatly.
“You wanted a baby with Elsa.”
“No.” Nikos muttered an oath and shrugged. “Yes.”
Her heart thudded hard. Her stomach heaved. “And you wanted to make love to Elsa, too.”
“No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You might look like her, Georgia, but you are nothing like her.”
“And yet you loved her so much.”
“I didn’t—” He broke off, unable to deny it. “I wouldn’t have married her if I didn’t love her, but what I had with her is nothing like what we have.”
“Had. What we had.” Her throat worked. Her eyes burned. “There isn’t anything for us anymore, Nikos. There isn’t an us. There is just you and her and all your memories of her.”
“Georgia, listen to me. You are not Elsa. You are not twins. Yes, there is a strong resemblance but within minutes of you arriving here I knew you were nothing like her, and not just because your hair is lighter and your eyes have more gray in them, but because you are not her. She wasn’t strong like you. She wasn’t. Life was too hard for her. Love disappointed her—”
“Perhaps you disappointed her,” she interrupted. Just as you’ve disappointed me.
His dark gaze hardened, shuttering. “I am sure I did.” His voice had grown cold, too. “She took her life. She did it in front of me. Smashed the car into the side of the garage of our villa on Santorini. The car erupted into flames. I was able to reach in and pull her out just before the car exploded, but she was too badly injured. She died before the medics arrived.”
“How do you know she meant to kill herself? How do you know it wasn’t an accident?”
“She left me a note.” His jaw thickened. “And every year I get a letter in the mail, from her, telling me how much she hates me and blaming me for ruining her life.”
Georgia’s eyes widened. “How is that possible?”
“I think it’s just one letter that she wrote, but Ambrose, over on Amorgós, has made photocopies and he mails one to me every year on the anniversary of her death. The first couple years I made the mistake of opening the envelope and reading the message. Now I just throw them away.”
“What does the letter say?”
“Something along the lines of, ‘Nikos, you are a monster. I hate you with every fiber of my being. I hope you burn in hell.’”
“It doesn’t!”
“It does.”
“So why would you want this woman’s baby? How could you want to be reminded of her on a daily basis?”
“I already think of her on a daily basis. I have the burns and scars from the fire. I have the letters that come without fail every Augu
st 16. But this baby isn’t hers. The baby is mine. The future is mine. And she can’t take that away from me...and I won’t let her take you from me, either. I’ve lost too much to the past, Georgia. I’m not going to lose you.”
This was so much to take in, so much to process. Georgia struggled to sort through her wildly tangled thoughts and emotions. “Nikos, I don’t get this... I don’t. And I don’t want to hurt you, but it’s just so...strange. It’s not normal.”
“Lots of people use donors. Surrogacy is quite common.”
“No, I appreciate that you wanted to be a father and you found a way to do it on your own. I understand why you chose to go with a donor and surrogate, but why pick a donor that looks like her? Why not pick someone that makes you feel hopeful and optimistic? A donor that was the polar opposite of Elsa?”