She refused to fail him.
CHAPTER TWO
‘YOU THINK I’M wrong to take him away?’ Santos straightened, drawing himself to his full six-and-a-half feet, looking down on the slight schoolteacher with a sense of rumbling fury. It wasn’t entirely h
er fault. He’d carried this anger for weeks now—since learning that a woman he’d spent two nights with seven years ago had borne him a child and failed to mention even a hint of the boy’s existence. He’d been denied any chance to know his own son, any chance to prepare for this, until Cynthia had died and both Cameron and Santos had been thrust well and truly into the deep end.
‘Yes.’ Her eyes didn’t quite meet his. It was a frustrating habit she’d shown ever since he’d drawn the door inward to reveal her on the doorstep. One minute she was the personification of timidity and the next she was burning with passion and wild accusations, practically threatening to call child welfare, or whomever looked after inadequate parents in this country.
At least she wasn’t attempting to obfuscate now. ‘And you think you have any right coming here to lecture me about the choices I make for my son?’
Her eyes glanced in his direction, landing briefly on his squared jaw before skittering back to the window. His fingers tingled with an urge to reach for her chin and pull it towards him, to draw her stubborn, runaway gaze to his even when she refused to hold it.
‘When they’re so obviously contrary to his best interests? Yes, sir, I do.’
A muscle ticked at the base of his jaw; he felt it tapping against his flesh and sought to control his emotions before he spoke. ‘He is my son. I can do whatever the hell I’d like.’
‘Even if that’s going to hurt him?’ She responded with fierceness now and something leaped inside his chest, interest and curiosity combined in one arrow of emotion.
‘His mother’s death hurt him,’ Santos inserted quietly, the words devoid of emotion. ‘His mother’s choice to keep him a secret from me hurt him—and me—in untold ways. I am only doing what I would have insisted on six years ago, if Cynthia had bothered to inform me of her pregnancy.’
‘I’m not interested in that,’ the teacher responded, compressing her lips with a primness he found strangely tantalising. If it was true, she was unlike just about anyone in his life had been since Cameron’s existence had been revealed. Everyone wanted to know about his secret child. ‘However,’ she conceded after a moment, ‘I appreciate his pain isn’t of your causing.’
‘That’s generous of you.’ He took another sip of his Scotch and placed the cup on the edge of his desk, crossing his arms over his chest and staring down at her distractedly.
‘Yet.’
She was the definition of dull. So very English, just like Cynthia had been, with that clipped accent and cool disposition. But, where Cynthia had been strikingly attractive and flirtatious, Amelia Ashford looked as though she’d rather be dragged over hot coals than spend another minute in his office. Except...
Yes, except for when their knees had brushed. She’d startled and made a soft noise, almost a moan, her lips parting and her eyes showing surprise. Was it possible that this woman was far less icy than her surface demeanour might suggest?
‘If things had been different, perhaps you would have raised him in Greece, but there’s no sense losing ourselves in the hypothetical. Cameron is English. He’s lived here all his life, never even travelling abroad. His whole world has changed so much since the accident. He was very close to Cynthia; she adored him and every day without her is a struggle for him.’ Emotion coloured the last sentence, the threat of tears obvious in her softly voiced observation. ‘Perhaps in time, when the shock has lessened and he knows you better, uprooting him wouldn’t be such a monumental ask. But right now? I honestly think you’ll worsen his grief tenfold. It’s not fair, Mr Anastakos.’
‘Fair?’ He couldn’t help himself. Despite the fact he could see the logic in what she was saying, disbelief fired through him, making him want to contradict her. ‘You think having a small child dropped on my lap—a child I had no earthly idea existed six weeks ago—and expecting to know what is right or wrong for him is fair?’
‘No,’ she conceded quietly. ‘Nothing about this situation is fair but you’re the only one who can make a difference for Cameron. Right now, he needs all of us to pull together and help him. You can’t take him away from everything he knows—everyone who knows him. He deserves better than that.’
‘My son is an Anastakos. We have lived and died on Agrios Nisi for generations and he will be no different.’
Fire shifted through her eyes once more. Wide and brown, they landed on him with a strength that surprised him. ‘Perhaps, but all I’m asking is that you give him time. What harm could come from leaving things as they are for another year? Let him take some solace from the school friends he’s known since nursery, from the parents of his friends who know and adore him, from the teachers who—’
‘Yes, care for him,’ Santos interrupted, wondering why her impassioned plea was so irritating to him. ‘You said that.’ He didn’t move his body by a degree, staying exactly as he was, his gaze heavy on her face. ‘You care for my son?’
A hint of colour shifted beneath her olive complexion. ‘I care for all my pupils.’
‘And so you do this often, then? Go into their houses and accuse their parents of being selfish and wrong?’
Her cheeks darkened in colour as she stood, her throat moving as she swallowed convulsively. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you in some way.’ The words were haughty. ‘I would never forgive myself if I didn’t ask you to reconsider. Cameron deserves that of me.’
She stood directly opposite him, toe to toe, though she was at least a foot shorter, so her head had to tilt in order for her eyes to meet his. ‘He deserves more than this.’
Her words rang with accusation, making a mockery of her earlier apology, and something snaked through him, something born of masculine pride and ancient, primaeval impulses.
Her judgement was tightening around his chest and he felt a desire to unsettle her easy blame, to rail at her accusation and make her understand that this last month and a half had been a type of hell on earth for Santos as well. Having a child? It was something he’d always, always sworn he wouldn’t do—a mistake he had never intended to replicate. He had a half-brother who could carry on the family name. Santos was free to remain single and alone, just the way he liked it. Having Cameron foisted upon him out of the blue—the product of a two-night affair with a woman he’d long since almost forgotten about—was like a stick of dynamite exploding in his face.
‘Tell me, Amelia Ashford.’ He couldn’t help the mockery that curled through her name. ‘What makes you an authority on this? Do you have children?’
Her cheeks were now the colour of the sky beyond the window, a vibrant peach, her eyes darker than the sun-ripened olives that grew wild over the southern side of Agrios Nisi.