His face was carefully blank, but she could hear the strain in his voice. Once again she had that sense of words being forcibly pulled out of him, and she knew that he’d never told this story before.
‘That’s young,’ she said quietly.
He stayed silent for so long that she thought perhaps he hadn’t heard her speak, and then, breathing out slowly, he nodded. ‘My mother got remarried to this English lord, so they sold the house in Greece and I moved to England with my mother, to live with her and my stepfather, Peter.’
Her mind rewound through her rudimentary knowledge of Aristo’s life. How had she not known about this? She’d been married to this man, loved him and had her heart shattered by him, and yet she knew so little. But she was starting to understand now why he was being so insistent about them remarrying. The adults in his life had made decisions based on their needs, not their son’s, and in his eyes it must seem as if she had done the same with George.
‘And what about your father?’
His shoulders stiffened, as though bracing against some hidden pain. ‘He moved to America.’
She stared at him in silence, wanting to pull him close and hold him closer, to do anything that might ease the bruise in his voice and the taut set to his mouth. Except she was too afraid to move, afraid to do anything that might make him stop speaking.
‘How did you get to see him?’ she asked softly.
His shoulders shifted almost imperceptibly again. ‘With difficulty. After we moved I was sent to boarding school, so there was only really the holidays, but by then my mother had a new baby—my half-brother, Oliver—and my father had remarried so everyone had got other stuff going on.’
Everyone but me.
She heard the unspoken end to his sentence, could picture the lonely, confused six-year-old Aristo, who would have looked a lot like their own son.
A muscle flickered in his jaw. ‘After a couple of years it sort of petered out to one visit a year, and then it just stopped. He used to call occasionally—he still does.’ He looked away, out of the window. ‘But we don’t really have anything to say to one another.’
He hesitated.
‘I dream about him sometimes. And the crazy thing is that in my dreams he wants to talk to me.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Probably the longest conversation I actually had with him was when he signed the business over to me.’
He fell silent and, her heart thudding, she tried to think of something positive to say. ‘But he did give you the business. Maybe that was his way of trying to show how much he cared.’
‘I hope not.’ Aristo turned to meet her eyes, his mouth twisting—part grimace, not quite a smile. ‘Given that he was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. The company was a wreck and he was up to his neck in debt—he hadn’t even been paying the staff properly.’
‘And you turned it around,’ she said quickly. ‘He could have just walked away, but I think he had faith in you. He knew you’d do the right thing.’
Her chin jerked upwards, and he watched her eyes narrow, the luminous green like twin lightning flashes.
‘You’ve worked so hard and built something incredible. I know he must be proud of you.’
Teddie stared at him, her heart thudding so hard that it hurt. At the time of their marriage she’d hated his business, resented all the hours he’d spent working late into the night. But this wasn’t about her or her feelings, it was about Aristo—about a little boy who had grown up needing to prove himself worthy of his inheritance.
She felt a little sick.
Was it any surprise that he was so intently focused on his career? Or that success mattered so much to him. He clearly wanted to prove himself, and felt responsible for saving his father’s business—that would have had a huge impact on his character.
She felt his gaze, and looking up found her eyes locked with his.
‘I don’t expect you to understand how I’m feeling,’ he said eventually. ‘All I want to do is be the best father I can possibly be. Does that make sense?’
She bit her lip.
‘The best father I can possibly be.’
His words replayed inside her head, alongside a memory of herself on the night that George had been born. Alone in her hospital room, holding her tiny new son, seeing his dark trusting eyes fixed on her face, she’d made a promise to him. A promise to be the best mother she could possibly be.
‘I do understand.’
She was surprised by how calm and even her voice sounded. More surprised still that she was admitting that fact to Aristo. But how could she not tell him the truth when he had just shared what was clearly such a painfully raw memory of his own?
‘I felt exactly the same way when I was pregnant. And it’s what I wake up feeling most mornings.’