“You must,” Maggie contradicted. “I haven’t seen you since…that day,” Maggie’s voice faltered as she referred to the funeral, “and now you’ve arrived with a charming friend—and someone from home. I can’t have you whisk her away so soon, before I’ve had a chance to get to know her properly. Stay the night.” Then, to Mila. “As you can see, space is not a problem we have here.”
“Yes, stay,” Thanasi drawled, in the direction of his brother, then, to Mila, a wink. “Don’t let Leo be such a killjoy. I’m also looking forward to getting to know you.”
“Areyou always so different around your family?” Mila asked, twenty minutes later, when Leonidas was giving her a cursory tour of the house.
“Different how?”
“You’ve hardly looked at me,” Mila said, aware in the back of her mind that she was picking a fight because she was exasperated and frustrated and felt an inexplicable urge to cry.
“How should I have looked at you?” He responded, tilting to face her now.
The question stumped her and heat spread beneath her cheeks. “Like a friend?” She said with a lift of her shoulders. “Like a person?”
“Have I offended you?” He asked, putting her in the awkward position of admitting that yes, in fact, he had offended her, which would only reveal how much she cared about his opinion.
“I’m a big girl, Leonidas. I’m just saying, it’s strange.”
“It’s less than ideal for my mother to speculate on our relationship. I hadn’t realized she’d be so devastated. Thanasi told me, but I still wasn’t prepared…”
And just like that, Mila’s frustration and anger evaporated, leaving her feeling like the most self-obsessed person in the world. She stopped walking and reached out, extending a hand to him.
“No one’s around, Leonidas.”
He put his hand in hers and tugged gently, pulling her to him. She saw need in his eyes. Not sexual need, but a need to be comforted, to be told that everything will be okay.
“It must be strange coming home here,” she said gently.
“Yes.” He was so hard, like a rock wall, and then, on an exhalation, he softened. “I keep expecting him to come out from around a corner. My father was—it’s hard to explain. He was larger than life. Somehow, that makes this more difficult. His absence is a gut punch.”
She lifted up and pressed her lips to his. “Tell me about him,” she invited, arm wrapping around his waist, as they began to walk again.
Leonidas breathed out slowly and he began to talk, regaling her with stories of Konstantinos, as a father, as a boss, as a man, and she listened, rapt, as fascinated by the picture of family life that Leo painted as she was in Konstantinos. They reached large glass doors that led to a back garden and wide, brick stairs. A heady fragrance of jasmine and citrus hung in the air.
“My mother’s English garden,” he said quietly, gesturing to the most beautiful, structured garden Mila had seen. In the center, there was a statue, made of bronze, of a young girl. Tears filled her eyes because she knew, without having to ask, who it was.
“This used to be the swimming pool,” he said gruffly. “After Val, my father wanted to concrete it in, but mum insisted it be filled with earth so that she could do this. A memorial garden, somewhere she could sit and be near where Val took her last breath.”
“God, Leonidas, that’s so beautiful and so bloody heart-wrenchingly sad.” She shivered. “Did your family ever think of moving away?”
“Our life was here,” he said with a shake of a head. “And Val, too. Everywhere I look, I see her. The tree she used to love climbing, the hill she would roll down, the curve of the driveway where she tumbled off her trike and cracked a tooth, the peach tree she adored—as a toddler she would sit at the base of it and wait for them to fall, then suck on the sweet, juicy, sun-warmed flesh.” He shook his head lovingly. “How could we leave?”
How could they indeed?
“She loved to dance. You asked if I was musical,” he said with a frown. “And I answered too quickly, because I suspect Valentina might have been. She danced almost as soon as she could walk. She only had to hear the faint strains of a tune before her hips would wiggle and her knees would bob. She started ballet lessons at three.”
“So young,” Mila observed.
“Probably very similar to you?”
By unspoken agreement, they walked down the steps, towards the statue. “I didn’t formally do lessons at that age; my mother taught me. I would skate with her for hours and hours on end. I never tired of it. When she said it was time to go home, I would cry, because I didn’t want it to end.”
“You’ve always loved skating?”
“Yes,” she agreed quickly. “But it was more than that. As a child, the time with my mother was so special to me. That’s what I really didn’t want to end. When we were on the ice, it was just the two of us.”
“And when you were at home?”
Mila flinched. She’d said too much. “This is Valentina?” She asked, changing the subject.