She bit down on her lower lip but promptly stopped when his gaze was drawn to the gesture, overheating her already frantic blood. ‘A whiteboard.’
He nodded crisply. ‘Of course. I suppose as a teacher you’re used to writing vertically.’
It took her a moment to connect her vocation with this work. ‘Right.’ She cleared her throat.
‘I’ll have Leo arrange one for you in the morning.’
‘I don’t want to put him to any trouble.’
‘It’s not a problem.’
‘Well, not for you,’ she pointed out, surprising them both with the joke. His smile was instinctive, but it died almost instantly. He stared at her for several moments and she felt as though he was choosing his words carefully.
‘What if I can’t love him?’
Amelia’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You’re serious?’
His features were like stone as he nodded once. ‘Nai.’
‘Oh, Santos.’ She was so swept up in his worry that it didn’t occur to her to use his surname. ‘You will. Not just because he’s your son, but because he’s an amazing little boy. Open yourself up to the possibility of loving him and it will happen without you realising it.’
‘Your confidence is naïve.’
She blinked, trying to remember the last time anyone had said anything even remotely approaching an aspersion cast on her intelligence.
‘I can only assume your own childhood was a picture of rosy parental doting, but that’s not the norm for many people. I am not close to my father. Nor is my brother. In my family, “love” is very far from how we do it. So how can you expect me to open myself to the possibility of loving him? How can I ever replace the mother he lost? I’m simply not built that way. Christos, I chose to not have children for this very reason, Amelia.’
She flinched a little, wanting to refute his assumption about her and his words about himself. Her childhood had been far from what he believed. But his own summation of his life and choices filled her with such sadness. His uncertainty was so unexpected that she was lost for words.
He spoke before she could, anyway.
‘Regardless, he is my son, and I will care for him to the best of my ability. I will raise him so that he wants for nothing it is within my power to provide. But do not expect miracles while you are here. Your concern is my son’s happiness, not his relationship with me.’
CHAPTER FIVE
AMELIA SLEPT FITFULLY and woke early. Santos had filled her dreams. He’d overtaken every single one of them, his words filling her with a strange heaviness.
She wasn’t sure why his confession had caught her off-guard. Because he seemed so confident, so ruthlessly capable of anything he set his mind to? Or because he’d echoed one of her own deeply held fears? Her parents had hardly given her a shining example of what family life should be like, yet deep down, despite that, she knew that the love between a child and parent was generally inviolable.
Santos would see that. He had to.
Throwing back the lightweight cover, she pushed out of bed and padded across the room to the enormous windows that overlooked the ocean. Waves tumbled towards the shore in the cool dawn light. There was no heat accompanying the sun—yet—though she knew it would come.
But for the moment, the view beyond the window was so tantalising she didn’t think twice. Pausing only to pull on a simple cotton dress and some sandals, she slipped out of her room, quietly moving through the enormous house that, at this early hour, seemed to be almost completely asleep. Which suited her perfectly.
She opened the glass doors just enough to slide between them, then almost ran towards the water. How long had it been since she’d swum in the sea? Years. Not since she was last in Cape Canaveral.
A smile lifted her lips as the tiled deck gave way to the cool sand, crunchy underfoot, and she could smell the tang of salt in the air. At the water’s edge she slowed but kept moving forward. The water was warmer than she’d expected and she walked up to her knees; then, chancing a look over her shoulder towards the house to reassure herself that she was completely alone, she tucked her dress into the elastic hips of her underpants and went deeper still. It was the most sublime feeling—she wished she’d taken a little longer to change into bathers. Tomorrow,
she’d know better. The idea of floating on her back as the waves rolled beneath her was almost too tempting.
With a small sigh, she began to walk parallel to the coastline, staying mid-thigh-depth, so each step required her to push through the water. The exercise felt good, the weight of the water a pleasant obstacle.
The coastline on the island was flat here, but only ten minutes or so later the sand gave way to small dunes that morphed into hills and finally cliff-faces, white with tufts of green sprouting through them. She eyed them with curiosity, wondering at the stones in their formation. Cliffs on islands like this tended to boast caves and naturally occurring dens. She wondered if there were any here. If she followed the water round, would she find a disused pirate sanctuary? The idea had her curiosity piqued and she walked on, further than she’d intended, until the wall of the cliff jutted out far enough to make further exploration impossible. She looked upward, the sheer size of the rock wall causing her to hold her breath a moment.
It would be impossible to explore without a swimming costume—and possibly without a boat. Putting it on the ‘another time’ list, she turned and began the walk back to the house, this time wading through water that was a little shallower, up to her calves.
The sun was just fully bursting into the sky by the time she reached a place in the water that was parallel with house. She stood for a moment with her back to the ocean, simply staring at the beautiful property. Had he built it? Or had his father? It was modern in style but it could still have been built anywhere from the fifties and refurbished over the years. While it was beautiful, it was isolated, and she wondered about that too. Did he feel lonely here? Or did he like that?