CHAPTER TWELVE
BEAWASBEYONDworried about Amy. The last time they’d spoken, everything had been fine. Sure, the conversation was rushed, but Bea had presumed Amy was just caught up with work. But now Amy was back in London and her first order of business had apparently been to send this email. Bea read it again, shaking her head at Amy’s request: Fire me, before this scandal gets out of hand. It made no sense, and all Bea could think was that she needed to speak to Amy, to tell her she loved her and would always support her. There was no way anyone was getting fired, no matter what had happened!
‘Where are you? When are you coming back?’ Amy asked when Bea called to reiterate her support. But before Bea could brush the question aside and bring the focus back onto Amy’s email, Amy had a text from her demanding mother and had to abruptly end the call.
Bea’s placed her phone down with a growing sense of disquiet.
The following week was the first time Ares had been allowed to see his brother and the visit brought with it a maelstrom of emotion. Matthaios looked good, but still, it was impossible for Ares to shake his sense of anxiety, as though he might say or do the wrong thing and set Matthaios back in his recovery. He felt as though he must walk a mile on eggshells.
‘Who’s the woman in the photo?’ Matthaios asked conversationally, pointing to the image of Bea on Ares’s phone.
Ares’s eyes were drawn to her face, the affection she felt for Danica obvious in every line of her body. From the way she cradled Danica so completely, to the look in her eyes as she stared at the baby’s dimpled face.
‘Just someone who’s helping me care for her,’ Ares hedged uncomfortably. After all, that was the primary purpose of having Bea at Porto Heli. Never mind that they’d also spent the past three weeks exploring each other’s bodies and minds to the point where she was almost all he could think of.
Not that Ares would ever really let a woman have that kind of control over him. He was focused on his work, on Matthaios, and now on Danica. That was it.
‘Theós, she looks like her mother.’
For a moment Ares thought Matt meant Bea, who bore no resemblance to Ingrid whatsoever, except, he conceded, for their slender frames. But Ingrid had been so Danish, with her white-blonde hair and sky-blue eyes. Belatedly, he understood. Matt only had eyes for Danica. He was staring at the phone so hard it was possible a hole might burst through it.
‘I will ask your doctors if I’m allowed to bring her here,’ Ares said firmly. ‘You’re doing so well, Matt. You seem like yourself again.’
Matthaios looked to his older brother, shaking his head slowly. ‘Don’t bring her to this place. It’s bad enough that I’m here,’ he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. ‘I don’t mean that I don’t need to be here. I know that I do. But I don’t want Danica to see me like this.’
‘She’s barely six months old,’ Ares reminded Matthaios. ‘I don’t think she’ll mind that it’s somewhat lacking in charm.’
‘I’ll mind,’ he said.
‘I think she misses you.’
‘She deserves so much better.’
Ares’s sigh was heavy, drawn from deep inside. He’d been reflecting on that lately—the bond between children and their parents or carers, the people put on this earth to keep them safe. For them, that had been their grandfather, and when he’d died they’d been cast out on their own, needing to fend for themselves. Their grandfather had died but the lessons he’d taught them remained. Ares knew that was where his resilience and determination had come from: mornings spent battling harsh weather and frigid temperatures, pulling ropes out of the ocean until calluses had formed across his palm, never once complaining or even remarking on the difficulties of that life.
‘I think she’s doing okay,’ Ares commented.
‘Thanks to you. Ares to the rescue, as always.’
But Matt was wrong. Ares wasn’t coming to the rescue. He was simply cleaning up his own mess—fixing something that would never have been a problem in the first place if he’d done a better job of looking after Matt and Danica.
‘Is she from an agency?’
Ares didn’t immediately follow.
‘I thought you said Cassandra was the last nanny they’d send you, after all the nannies I fired or shouted at.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s...a friend.’
‘Oh.’ Matthaios regarded the screen with more attention and now Ares wanted to flick the image away. A possessive heat ran through him. Not possessive of Beatrice so much as of what was happening between them. He wasn’t prepared to discuss it; that felt like a betrayal. What they were sharing was inside a bubble, separate from time, and from their normal lives. Though they’d never agreed to keep it a secret, it just felt right.
‘We’ve worked together. She saw how much I was struggling and offered to help out.’
‘I see.’
Damn it, Ares suspected Matthaios did see. Having grown up so near in age and enduring most of life’s adventures at each other’s side, their relationship was very close, and Matthaios understood Ares better than anyone.
‘Will I get to meet this friend of yours?’