‘I do want you to know your daughter. Really I do. But I don’t understand why I have to marry you in order for that to happen.’ She ignored the darkening of his eyes and pressed on. ‘I’d be happy to amend the birth certificate, I’d be happy to discuss joint custody—’
‘It’s not enough,’ Dimitri ground out, trying to suppress the rage he felt. Knowing that it had as much to do with the present as it did the past. ‘All that legal wrangling...if something happened to me, or if something happened to you, I would not want my child’s future to be dependent on lawyers.’
‘Dimitri, nothing’s going to—’
‘You don’t know that!’ he barked, cursing himself for his loss of control. ‘You cannot know that, Anna. I was only seven years old when my mother died.’ His own words had shocked him. He’d had no intention of revealing his past, but now that he’d started he couldn’t seem to stop. ‘She’d been in a car accident on the way back from her shift as a waitress in the local restaurant. I’d come home from school, was watching TV, when the police knocked on the door.’ In his mind he was back in their small one-bedroom apartment in Piraeus, the sound of the fist against wood something he’d never forget. Ever. His memories skipped over the moment of shock, of pain...and instead called to his mind the confusion...of not knowing what would happen. Of being numb to almost everything, even his grief, other than the fear of what would happen to him now. ‘It took my mother’s sister two months to track my father down. The father I’d never met before. A family I knew nothing about and who, aside from my father, knew nothing about me.’ He’d been thrust into a world of impossible money and luxury, where the corridors echoed with arguments, and shouts, always accompanied by his name.
‘So yes, Anna, we might not know each other, and yes, marriage might seem extreme to you, but you will marry me because I know that you’ll do what’s needed to protect our child.’
She had watched him with solemn eyes and he turned away as something horrifyingly like pity shone there.
‘I know—’
He couldn’t prevent the dismissive huff that fell from his lips as he turned back to her.
‘I know,’ she repeated, ‘how important that is... My father was... My father left us before I was born.’
‘Then you understand why we must marry.’
Anna shook her head sadly, the long, dark, layered tendrils of her hair framing her face and shoulders. ‘Dimitri, your father wasn’t married to your mother, yet he took you in. My father was married to my mother and it didn’t stop him from leaving us.’
Dimitri frowned, remembering his investigator’s report on Mary Moore. ‘But there is no father named on your birth certificate.’
‘It was the only way my mother could find to hurt him the way he’d hurt her. And before you ask,’ she said, throwing up a hand between them as if to ward off an attack she’d known w
ould come, ‘I couldn’t have put you on Amalia’s birth certificate without you being there. And you were...’
‘In prison.’
She nodded. ‘I’d like some time to think about this. Perhaps we could talk tomorrow?’
Dimitri’s jaw clenched as he remembered what tomorrow would bring.
‘Sadly I don’t think that will happen. Tomorrow we have a family party to go to.’
* * *
The next morning Anna found herself wearing a sumptuous silk dress that would have kept the bed and breakfast away from the bank manager for at least two more months. The dress had appeared in her room as if magicked there by fairies—though, in reality, probably just by a very well-paid assistant. She, Amalia and Dimitri had been swept up in yet another limousine from Piraeus after the short boat ride from the island, and she was now staring, wide-eyed, as the limo pulled up the drive of one of the biggest villas she had ever seen.
If Dimitri had been concerned by the press lining the street outside his family’s home, he hadn’t shown it. Her eyes still stung from the camera flashes, even through the tinted windows. Her ears still hurt from the yells, demands for a sound bite, even though she’d not understood the Greek words.
But all of that was pushed aside by the sheer magnitude of the Kyriakou estate. To say it was enormous would have been a gross understatement. But she couldn’t help but find the ostentatiousness slightly distasteful. Calling to mind Dimitri’s words from the night before, she wondered how this must have been to a little boy whose mother had worked as a waitress. The loss he must have felt at such a young age... The thought of it made her chest ache. Her heart. She couldn’t even begin to imagine it.
‘This is where you grew up?’ she asked Dimitri, unable to hide the awe in her voice. ‘After leaving your mother’s?’ She waited so long for an answer, she was unbuckling Amalia from her seat when she heard his reply.
‘Yes.’
By the time she had retrieved Amalia from the car, Dimitri was standing beside a brand-new pushchair she had once lusted after. A pushchair that had felt a million miles out of her reach but had been obtained with less than a blink of Dimitri’s dark eyes.
Amalia was struggling in her arms, refusing to get into it.
‘It’s okay. You’re better off carrying her anyway,’ Dimitri stated. ‘My family will want to pass her around. I hope that you’re okay with that?’
The tone of his voice issued a challenge she knew she had no hope of winning. And besides, this was why she had come to Greece, she reminded herself. To allow Amalia to get to know her family. Of course, that was before she had been threatened with blackmail to marry a man she hardly knew but was beginning to see glimpses of. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours, it was hard to focus on that salient event. And today, she was supposed to smile and lie to that same family about what she was doing in Greece.
She hadn’t even agreed to his demands yet, but sensed that he, as with all else, simply expected her compliance. Anna felt swept along by the tidal wave that was Dimitri. With no choice, no decision-making necessary, all she could do was hope to come out the other end able to breathe.
She followed him up the stone stairs that led to an impressive set of large doors, open on their hinges. A wall of cool air hit her the moment she stepped over the threshold, as did the sounds of a large outdoor party in full swing. They passed through a cream marble foyer, with room after room shooting off the corridor, each decorated in styles that ranged from tasteful to outrageous. But it was when they reached the doorway to the garden that her feet slowed to a stop. Even Amalia had stopped wriggling. Anna tried to prevent the gasp that fell from her lips, but clearly failed. It was like a scene from a magazine spread of the rich and famous—only she didn’t recognise any of the people.