‘Is it the wrong kind? I didn’t know—’
His words were cut off by a fierce kiss that ended all too quickly as Anna darted around the room, looking at all the bits and pieces Dimitri had somehow amassed in the last five hours.
‘This is incredible!’ she exclaimed on a sigh. ‘But what happened to your office?’
‘I moved it. To the room that you were in,’ he said, not meeting her gaze, as if afraid of her reaction. ‘I thought... I wanted you to be with me in my room, our room.’
Anna didn’t know where to start, what to think, to say.
She was utterly speechless. She knew that things had been better between them since Kavala, but this? This was more than she could have imagined. Already her fingers itched to rip open the packets of clay, to pour over the different-coloured glazes and...the kiln?
She turned to Dimitri, her cheeks almost aching from the smile and wonder she felt. ‘What did I do to deserve this?’
‘You... I wanted to give you something that had been taken away from you. I wanted you to know that you can still reach for your dreams, that you can still have them. That Amalia, your desires and I aren’t mutually exclusive.’
It was then that the cracks in the armour around her heart shattered completely. She rushed to him and pulled him into a kiss that hopefully expressed all the things she was unable to say. Her hands reached for his neck, drawing him to her, moulding his shoulders with her fingers, desperate for more, for that last little bit of him that was just out of reach.
She pulled back, sensing the uncertainty there.
‘Do you like it? Is it okay?’ he asked, his voice gravelly.
‘It’s perfect. It’s amazing,’ she said, looking about her. ‘You didn’t have to get everything,’ she said with a little laugh.
‘I didn’t want to miss anything.’
His words nudged at her. Nudged at a memory from when he had first found her and Amalia. Of just how much he had missed of Amalia’s first years. And she wondered whether perhaps he might finally be ready to read the letters she had written to him over the years. Because finally, here, standing before her in a room he had created just for her, was the man she had always dreamed of. The real Dimitri.
‘You didn’t,’ she assured him. ‘You didn’t miss a single thing. But there is just one thing left for me to see.’
He frowned his question to her.
‘My new room,’ she said, smiling, pulling him back into a deep kiss.
CHAPTER TEN
Dear Dimitri,
How could you do it? How could you break my heart?
SHE DIDN’T KNOW how to speak to Dimitri, the Dimitri she married. So instead Anna wrote to the man who was the father of her child. The man she’d been writing to since the day her daughter was born. The man of her imagination.
But for the first time since she’d started writing the letters it was hard, almost impossible, to put pen to paper. For the man of her imagination was blurring into the man she loved, with his faults, his anger, his pain, but also the love she could see he felt for their daughter, the love that she had hoped he might feel for her.
A week ago he’d flown to America to see his half-brother. It was supposed to be for only two days, but he’d emailed her to explain that he’d extended his stay. She’d tried to tell herself that she was imagining the distance that had sprung up between them. That what she was feeling was just a relic of long-ago hurts.
The last two weeks before that, the incredible time they’d spent together since that day in Athens, had been...like a dream. Anna couldn’t remember laughing so much, loving so much. The Dimitri she’d seen had been playful, charming and utterly devastating. So she clung to that dream, rather than her fears. She clung to the image of the three of them, united as a family, and poured it into the first sculpture she’d made in nearly four years.
Every night since Dimitri had left she’d come to her studio after putting Amalia down for bed, and moulded, shaped and smoothed out her dreams and hopes for the future. She hadn’t known quite what it was she was making—her fingers moving instinctively over the cold clay until it warmed beneath her hands—until after nearly six days she’d finally stepped back and seen what she’d created.
It was the sister of the first clay piece Dimitri had seen, all those weeks ago when they’d first arrived in Greece. Only this one was different. Instead of two orbs, there were three, all joined by a sweeping arc, binding the figures together, encasing them in an embrace. Her hope. Her family.
* * *
‘It’s happening now.’
Dimitri slammed the phone down in his office. He had to get himself under control. But ever since the night he’d visited Manos... He clamped down on those feelings. He couldn’t allow them to jeopardise what he was about to do. For once, he was actually fearful of his own self, of the sheer fury that coursed through his veins. He feared that it was too much for him to control.
He was afraid that whatever twisted kind of love he felt for his father that could remain after what his half-brother had told him would make him weak. And would make him unable to do what he had to do.