“Yes.” This time the word sounded torn from her, not annoyed, but pained.
Again. Still. It did not matter which.
He wanted that pain gone. Now. “There is a simple solution to both our dilemmas.”
“You think so?” She was looking at him again, her eyes molten silver and blazing with anger.
Anger he did not understand, but was just as determined to extinguish as the pain. “I know it.”
“What is this simple solution?” Her concrete disbelief in him having any solution that would appease her was written into every lovely aspect of her face.
He would prove his problem-solving skills were up to the task. “Marry me.”
CHAPTER TEN
KAYLA’S LIMBS WENT KERSPLUNG, her arms flailing of their own accord, her legs shooting off the chair, nearly taking the rest of her body with them. Shock deprived her lungs of oxygen as the towel she was covered with fell away at her body’s jerky movements.
“What?” she demanded, absolutely sure she was hearing things.
Deep emerald eyes widened at her reaction, Andreas dropping to his knees beside her chair again. “It is the only thing that makes any sense.”
Even fully covered by the luxurious robe, he was still a risk to her equilibrium. If the topic of their conversation hadn’t been so shocking, she would have lost her train of thought with his nearness. Andreas Kostas as a friend was dangerous to her heart and sanity, but this close? This intimate? He was pure kryptonite.
“No... You don’t know what you’re saying.” She grabbed at the bath sheet, pulling it back around her, pulling her knees back up, curling into herself and staring at him with near hatred for making her hope when she knew he didn’t mean it. “You’re not being serious.”
“Believe me.” Warm, masculine hands covered her now-cold fingers and squeezed. “I have never been more so.”
“But, Andreas, Genevieve would never approve of me for you.”
“I fired Genevieve.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?” His thumbs caressed her chilled hands, seducing her with warmth.
“You don’t want to marry me.” If he had, he would have done so six years ago. Right?
She’d finally come to terms with the truth of their relationship. He couldn’t turn everything on its head. Not now.
“But I do.” His smile was as close to self-deprecating as she’d ever seen on this arrogant Greek-American’s features. “I think you’ll realize if you consider it that you will find marriage to me a good thing.”
Was he kidding? He was the one person she’d always wanted to call family, but this made no sense. And she said so. Again.
“On the contrary, it makes all kinds of sense.”
“Oh, really?” she managed to snark past her very slowly dissipating shock. “How is that?”
His smile was devastating. “We are already family. This would simply make it official.”
Did he really believe that? The expression of sincerity in his emerald gaze said he did.
She shook her head. “But you wanted a bride pimp. For the perfect wife.”
“You fulfill every one of my requirements.”
“Requirements?” He had requirements? Wasn’t that kind of clinical? Did he think marriage was a business contract?
Clearly, the answer was yes.
“Preferences. However you want to put it.”
Yes, to Andreas, any preference he evinced, he would consider in reality to be a requirement. Kayla almost had it in her to pity Genevieve if she’d kept the position of matchmaker for such an exacting client.
“I don’t see how.”
“How what?”
“Focus, Andreas,” she said with some asperity. “That I could fulfill your requirements. I don’t have social position or family standing.”
She didn’t have any family at all, except him apparently.
He jumped up and crossed the room, coming back for the second time that day brandishing his phone. “It’s all right there.”
She looked down at the screen. It was opened to an interview intake form for Genevieve’s matchmaking service. He’d already scrolled to the question that asked Andreas to list his top-five preferences for his future partner.
He had made a neat, succinct list.
Practical, not given to emotional displays.
Must have own career.
Must have post-high-school education.
Not Greek.
Must want children.
Kayla shook her head. “Why not Greek?” was the first thing she thought to ask.
Andreas made a sound somewhere between disgust and anger, averting his gaze for a moment before meeting her eyes again, his a window into an old torment. “When I was in Greece, forced to live with my father, forced to take his name, forced to do so many things, I heard over and over again how one day I would marry a good Greek girl, someone who would do the Georgas name proud.”
There was so much old pain in his taut body right now, she couldn’t have stopped herself reaching out with one hand and sliding it into the opening of his robe to press against his heart. “Your mother was a good Greek girl.”
“I know, but even after he decided to acknowledge me, Georgas was never going to acknowledge that, or his part in her downfall with her family and community.”
“So, you are determined not to give in to even the least of his demands.”
“Exactly.”
Lucky for Andreas he’d never fallen in love, particularly with some beautiful Greek woman. It might have broken him. But then, maybe that was lucky for Kayla too, she was finally beginning to realize.
“You weren’t ever looking for someone with social standing, a family that dated back generations.”
“No. Those would be Georgas standards for measurement of a person’s worth, not mine. I am a Kostas, my own person.”
“I can be emotional,” she pointed out. She wasn’t going to pretend to be an automaton after all this time.
“You are eminently practical.” Andreas sighed and smiled. “When you aren’t haring off to New York and refusing to tell me where you are.”
“I have emotions, Andreas. I am capable of love.” She knew her social awkwardness was often interpreted as a lack in that department, or any kind of sentiment, but the truth was nothing like that.
“Good. Then you will love our children.”
She hugged her knees tighter as a thrill of hope went through her that even six years of practice tamping it down didn’t seem able to diminish. “I want to adopt out of foster care.”
“I know.”
She’d told him her dreams of doing so six years ago, but assumed he’d forgotten. “That’s
not a problem for you?” she pressed.
“No. Though I am hopeful your willingness to forego birth control today indicates an openness to trying for children with our DNA, as well. I want Melia Kostas to live on in my children.”
It was such a sentimental, emotional thing to say, Kayla was flabbergasted. “I did the math, the chances of pregnancy during this time in my cycle were astronomically low.”
“There’s that practical side to your nature showing itself.” His lips quirked, his green eyes filled with amusement.
“Do not laugh at me, Andreas.”
“I’m not, pethi mou. The fact is, even a one-in-a-thousand chance remains a chance and you would not have taken it if you were unwilling to have children with me.”
“I know.”
“So?”
“Would you treat all our children the same?” His answer mattered, enough she would turn him down if he gave the wrong one.
Kayla had spent her entire childhood standing on the outside of the families she lived with, looking in. She would never allow that for her own children. Not if she could help it.
And she was determined to help it.
He curled both hands over hers again, scooting farther into her personal space, his body heat surrounding her. “Any child we bring into our home, any child who has reason to call me Papa, will enjoy every ounce of my protection, my support and my love. Adopted, natural or born to us within our marriage, no child of mine will ever doubt their importance to me. How can you doubt it?”
Kayla’s heart just melted. Was it any wonder she’d loved this man since she knew him? Despite his corporate-shark side, he understood what really mattered.
“I guess I don’t.”
“Good.”
She wanted to give in, but part of her still wondered how this could be real. “Why now? Why not six years ago?”
“Six years ago, I was not ready to marry.”
Right. It hadn’t been part of the plan right out of graduate school. “Now you are.”
“It is time.”
His words served as a cold reminder that Andreas was not asking her to marry him in some grand romantic gesture, but because he had a plan to prove to his overbearing father that Andreas Kostas was every bit as good, or better than he ever would have been as Andreas Georgas.