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“Yes.” She’d thought the mention of Dax joining them might take the edge off this new worry in his life, but she was a fool to think that. After hearing his father wanted to see him, what little boy could think about anything else?
At this point Ari was horribly confused. So was she, and heartsick for him. His dark eyes filled with tears before he trudged toward the porch, leaving her devastated.
The resort Theo had built on St. Thomas in the Saronic Islands brought an influx of the elite from the major continents. The manager Theo hired said they were fast becoming the preferred vacation destination in all Greece and had the statistics to back it up.
That was always good news, but after leaving Athens to spend the night here, he’d had other things on his mind. He’d give Stella another hour to respond to his letter before phoning her. There was no telling where she was right now. Probably with her brothers while they planned a way to stop Theo cold. It would do them no good.
There was a reason for that and it lay in front of him. The velvety green of the golf course extending in two directions from the sprawling white hotel represented many lucrative investments that now ensured Theo’s wealth. It took this kind of money to be on a par with the Athas dynasty.
Theo had never been a mercenary man. He still wasn’t. That was why the medium-size villa he’d had built on Salamis was comfortable without overwhelming Theo’s own parents and siblings with a lifestyle foreign to them.
Needing an outlet for his energy, he walked around the resort to the marina. Most of the motorboats and small sailboats were out enjoying the beautiful late afternoon. One morning soon he’d take his boy out on the calm water.
He didn’t doubt his son had been exposed to every water sport imaginable, but he’d only been taught by the Athas family. There was a whole side to him he didn’t know about yet that only Theo could show him because he was his father.
After chatting with a few of the employees, he entered the hotel and headed for the manager’s office. The other man had arranged for Theo to meet the new head chef and go over the various menus for Theo’s approval.
Once their business was concluded, he had the office to himself. Boris, his bodyguard, stood outside the room while Theo walked over to the window that looked out on the blue sea. He pressed the digit for Stella’s cell phone he’d programmed into his. Nestor Georgeles, his attorney, had his methods of obtaining information. Theo flicked on the device that blocked his caller ID.
When Stella picked up after four rings, she was still talking to someone else. He could hear another voice in the background.
“Hello?”
It was her voice. Yet it was different. It was the voice of a woman.
“Kalispera, Stella.”
He heard her sudden intake of breath. “Theo—h-how did you—” She paused. “Never mind. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“I have to admit that when I drove past your villa for old-time’s sake, I was surprised to discover you hadn’t aborted our baby after all.”
“Aborted?” she cried.
Just then Stella had sounded too aghast at his comment to have faked it. He clutched his phone tighter. Among Nikos Athas’s many sins, he’d coldbloodedly lied to Theo about Stella getting rid of the baby.
Sickened by the possibility that she’d really gone through with it and couldn’t face him with the truth, Theo had left for NewYork determined to start a new life and make the kind of money so his family would never know poverty again.
However, now that he was back home and had discovered he had a son, no power was going to keep Theo from him. If Nikos interfered again and tried to do his worst, it wouldn’t get him or her brother Stasio anywhere. Theo was more than prepared to fight fire with fire because he intended to be a full-time father to his child.
All these years he’d accused her in his heart of doing the worst thing a mother could do. He should have known she wouldn’t have done away with their child. It wasn’t in her nature. But for her to keep all knowledge of their son from him wounded him so deeply, he could hardly talk. His eyes smarted.
“What did you name him?”
There was a period of silence before she said, “I…I’m surprised you didn’t find that out since you seem to know everything else.” After another pause while he waited, she added, “He was christened Ari.”
He sucked in his breath. “Is that an Athas family name?”
“No. I just liked it,” she murmured.
Now that he knew that, he liked it, too. Very much, in fact. For the moment she was sounding like the old Stella.
In the past they’d been forced to speak quietly over the phone so her family wouldn’t know she was making plans with him. She hadn’t been allowed to start dating until she was eighteen, but she’d caught his eye before her seventeenth birthday. The thrill of falling in love had made both of them careless.
They’d slipped out at different times to be together. Theo had paid an old fisherman on a regular basis for the use of his wooden rowboat. There had been a protected cove on Salamis and he had always taken her there. They’d swim and then lie on a quilt spread on the sand. Theo knew he shouldn’t touch her, but he couldn’t help it, not when she begged him to make love to her.
She had been so giving, so utterly sweet and passionate while at the same time being so innocent, he had told her that if they waited until she turned eighteen, they’d get married and have a real church wedding. Though they’d tried to wait, there came a day when neither of them could stand it any longer. Once they’d made love, there was no going back.
He cleared his throat, intent on learning everything about his son. There were six years to catch up on. “If you could tell me the most important thing about him, what would it be?”
“I couldn’t pick just one thing.” Her voice shook. “He’s sweet, loving. I think he’s the smartest, kindest little boy in the world.”
That described the woman he’d once loved. She’d spoken like a mother who adored her son. Ari sounded the antithesis of his uncle Nikos who years before had caught up to Theo with his first volley of threats. “Stay away from my sister or you’ll live to regret it.”
Nikos had been watching them at church, following them while they went for walks. When his threats didn’t work, he had tried to bribe Theo with money. Theo had thrown it back in his face.
A week later there had been a small fire at his parents’ taverna. The police had said it was arson, but they never found the perpetrator. Someone working for Nikos had phoned with more threats, and Theo had been warned there was more to come if he didn’t leave Stella alone.
When Theo’s brother Spiro had been injured on his motor scooter by a luxury car driving way too fast for that time of night, Theo realized Nikos was in dead earnest.
The last time he ever saw Stella, she had told him she was pregnant. The news had overjoyed him and suddenly everything made sense. She’d been impregnated by a Pantheras. It was no wonder Nikos had behaved like a madman—Theo had violated his sister and there’d be hell to pay.
That night Theo had told her he wanted to marry her as soon as possible. They would go away and he’d get a good job to support her and the baby. They’d planned everything out and had decided to meet at the church in secret. But on the night in question, Nikos had been waiting for him in the church parking lot. He had told Theo that Stella wouldn’t be coming now or ever, that she had aborted their baby and wanted to forget all about Theo.
In shock Theo had lunged for him, but he had been beaten up by hired thugs and left for dead on the island of Salamis. After he had recovered from his injuries he’d looked everywhere for Stella, but no one had seen her. She didn’t answer his calls or letters. She’d simply vanished.
Eventually he came to the conclusion that she really didn’t want to see him again. It was evident her family had talked her into getting rid of the baby. His baby.
He shifted his weight. “I’ve been waiting all day for your call so we could discuss Ari. When I didn’t hear from you, I decided to phone you. Where and how would you like my first meeting with him to take place?”
“I’d rather it never happened in this lifetime or the next.”
A nerve throbbed at the corner of his mouth. “Then you’re saying you want this handled through the court?’
“No,” she blurted in agony. For a moment she reminded him of the vulnerable girl he had once known. “I have to know what you plan to do. Ari keeps a lot of things to himself. Naturally he’s frightened about things.”
“So am I,” his voice grated. “Do you have a sense of how he truly feels?”
A groan escaped her throat. “I wish I could tell you he despises the idea of you and would prefer you didn’t exist, but the truth is, I have no idea how he feels deep inside.”
In other words, Ari knew his mother hated Theo.
“Today he was probably reacting the way he did to please me. He always tries to please,” she explained. “Maybe more than is healthy at times.”
He had little doubt that Ari hated the man who’d fathered him and then had promptly rejected him even before he was born. A six-year-old could hate just as vehemently as a fiftyor an eighty year-old. Theo was under no illusion that this would be easy. In this case the hatred would be worse because Ari would have been indoctrinated by his uncles who’d wished Theo dead long ago.
He realized he needed to be prepared for hostility from Ari that might last a lifetime. A lot of factors would enter in, beginning with the atmosphere in which Ari had been raised, the amount of hate built up against Theo on the part of Stella’s family. Her parents had been against him from the beginning.
Taking into account that the Athas brothers considered Theo the underbelly of Greek society and had done everything short of killing him to keep him away from Stella, Theo was starting off with an enormous minus handicap.
“Thank you for that much honesty, Stella.” He hadn’t expected it. “Since I already love him more than life itself and know you do, too, let’s meet somewhere this evening to discuss him. A public place or not, whatever you prefer. Can you arrange for someone to watch him while we’re together?”
“Of course, but it’s not possible. I’m on Andros right now.”
In other words, she assumed he was in Athens and that any plans he had for tonight were out of the question. He had news for her. “I can be there in an hour. Just tell me where you’ll be exactly.”
He counted a full minute while she was forced to realize he had a helicopter at his disposal. That put him in the same league with the way her family moved around. “There’s a paddleboat concession on the beach in Batsi. I’ll wait for you there in the parking lot at seven-thirty.”
She clicked off before he could say thank you, but it didn’t matter. Progress had been made. The gods had been with him today.
He checked his watch. It was six-thirty. After phoning the pilot to give him their next destination, he rang the manager to say goodbye, then headed for the helipad with Boris.
Theo had never been to Andros, but Stella had told him so much about it, he felt like he knew its special places by heart. Certainly his son, young as he was, could probably show Theo around and know what he was talking about.
Andros was the home of the legendary Stasio Athas, where some of the most elite Greek families lived. To the people in Theo’s family it represented lala land. A smile broke one corner of his mouth. This Pantheras member was about to trespass on ground not meant for untouchables.
Stella’s elite family viewed other families like Theo’s, who lived close to the poverty line, at the bottom of the food chain. When Theo had refused the money Nikos had thrust at him to stay away from Stella, Nikos had snarled words like scum and untouchable among the many insults hurled at him. Nice people, Stella’s family.
He looked out the window. Summer had come to the Cyclades. As Andros came into view, his breath caught at the lush green island dotted with flowers. No wonder Stella loved it here. St. Thomas was idyllic, but it didn’t compare in the same way.
After the helicopter had dropped down over the little port of Batsi, his gaze swerved to a white convertible sports car driving along the road at a clip toward the water. The sight intrigued him. Once the chopper touched ground, he jumped down and started across the wooded area to the car park where it had just pulled to a stop.
To his surprise he saw a well-endowed brunette woman climb out and walk around the area with confidence, as if she were searching for someone. Closer now, he noticed she bore a superficial resemblance to the lovely longhaired teen of Theo’s youth.
Stella.
CHAPTER TWO
THE years had turned the only Athas daughter into a gorgeous female, whose classic white dress was cinched with a wide belt, highlighting curves above and below her slender waist. She’d always been beautiful to Theo, but having the baby had caused her to blossom.
Her high cheekbones, combined with the lovely contours of her face and glossy hair made her so striking, he couldn’t look anywhere else.
He’d wondered how much she might have changed. What he hadn’t expected was to feel his senses ignite by simply looking at her again. That wasn’t supposed to happen, not when she’d kept all knowledge of their child from him.
Another step and their eyes met. Those velvety brown eyes he remembered so well stared at him with a mixture of shock and anxiety. After what she’d done, she ought to be terrified of him. She seemed to weave for a minute before she wandered back to her car and held on to the frame as if needing support.
He strolled up to the other side of the car. Deciding they were too much of a target for any observers, he climbed in the passenger side and shut the door. She hesitated before following suit.
The second she sat behind the wheel, her fragrance reached out to him. Again he was stunned because it was the scent he would always associate with her. It took him back to the last time they were together. Everywhere he’d kissed her, she’d tasted delightful, like fresh flowers on a warm spring morning.
Right now it was the last thing he wanted to be reminded of, but trying to blot out certain intimate thoughts was like attempting to hold back a tidal wave.
He turned to her, sliding his arm across part of the seat. She’d averted her eyes. If he wasn’t mistaken, she was trembling. On some level it pleased him she wasn’t in total control.
“Thank you for meeting me, Stella.”
“You didn’t leave me a choice.” Her words came out jerkily.
“Actually, I did.”
“You’re talking about court. I can’t imagine anything more terrifying for Ari,” she cried, sounding desperate.
“Believe it or not, it frightens me even more. Too much time has been lost as it is.” It surprised him how much he wanted to reach out and touch her, to see if she was real. “You were always lovely before, but you’ve turned into a startlingly beautiful woman.”
If anything, her features hardened at the compliment.
His gaze drifted beyond her face. “Strange how this little secluded stretch of beach reminds me of—”
“Don’t.” Her profile looked chiseled. Apparently she’d had the same impression and didn’t want to travel down that road of remembered ecstasy. “I agreed to meet you so we could talk about the best way to help Ari deal with this situation.”
A situation that had been put in play six years ago and was never of his choosing, but he didn’t voice his thoughts. For the moment Theo was walking on eggshells. “Do you think he’d be more comfortable meeting in Athens than here?”
She kneaded her hands, drawing his attention to her beautifully manicured nails. He grimaced to realize every part of her body looked quite perfect to him. It was impossible to eye her dispassionately. “Ari won’t be comfortable anywhere with you, but since we’re staying on Andros for a while, it should probably take place here.”
“What have you told him about me?”
She sucked in her breath. “Very little.”
“Even so, could you spell that out for me?”
Suddenly she jerked her head in his direction. Those gorgeous brown eyes pierced his with laserlike intensity. “You mean the way you spelled it out for me?” she cried. Her hands had gripped the steering wheel with enough force he imagined she could bend it. “I told him the truth, that you didn’t love me after all, so we never saw each other again. That was all I knew to tell him. It’s all he knows.”
Theo studied her features. “Yet you left out half the story. It’s time he heard that you stopped loving me. I’m sure he has no idea that you never intended to come to the church and go away with me so we could be married and have our baby in peace.”
The blood seemed to drain out of her face. “I was there, waiting inside the back of the nave. I waited for hours,” her voice throbbed.
Theo was incredulous. “That’s an interesting fairy tale. I was attacked before I could make it inside and was told that you got rid of our baby because you didn’t want anything to do with me.” For now he didn’t want to mention Nikos’s name and give her something else to fight him about.
“You’re lying!” she lashed out. “No one would believe such a monstrous story.”
“In the beginning I didn’t, either, not until you never, ever tried to make contact with me again. Obviously, this is a case of your word against mine, except I have the scars to prove it.”
“What scars?”
“The ones you’re looking at. While we’ve been talking, I’ve felt your eyes on me. They’re traveling over the small cuts, noticing the dents where my face got smashed in and my nose had to be rebuilt. These are nothing compared to what my X-rays show below the neck.”
Stella quickly concealed her glance, but not before he glimpsed confusion in those dark brown depths. That was something, at least.
“Whatever happened to you,” she finally said in a less-than-assured voice, “don’t you think it’s stretching it just a little to take six years before showing up?”
“Under ordinary circumstances, yes, but after you were nowhere to be found and all my mail to you came back unopened, I realized I would have to return to Greece and hire a PI to locate you. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that luxury at the time, not when I was building a business I couldn’t leave.”
Her head whipped around. “I don’t know what mail you’re talking about.”
Theo reached in his trouser pocket for the first letter he’d sent to her after he’d gotten out of the hospital. He’d addressed it to Stella at the Athens villa. It had the canceled stamp and date. Across the bottom the words “Addressee Unknown” had been scrawled.
“Take a look.” He handed it to her. “If you’re ever curious enough to read what’s on the inside of the envelope, then you’ll know my state of mind at the time. In the meantime, I’m here to claim what’s mine—Ari.”
She glanced at the front of it before tossing the letter back at him. “Ari’s not yours,” she said in an icy voice he didn’t recognize.
He put the letter back in his pocket. “Let me phrase that a better way. He’s both of ours.”
She threw her head back, causing those glistening dark strands to splay across her jaw. Combined with her golden skin, she was a miracle of womanhood. “You gave him life, but that’s all you did.”
“That was all I was allowed to do,” he countered. “Since you clearly don’t believe me, let’s not talk about the past. It’s over and done with. I much prefer to discuss Ari’s future. Perhaps you could bring him here tomorrow so we can get acquainted. We’ll let him choose what he’d like, or not like, to do. How does that sound?”
Her body stirred in agitation. “You can’t expect too much, if anything, Theo.”
As if he didn’t know. “I’m aware of that. What time shall I meet you both?”
She started the car. “Tomorrow’s Sunday. We have plans.” She was stalling, but he had to be patient if he hoped to get anywhere with her. “The day after would be best. One o’clock.”
“I’ll be here. Stella, I swear I’ll treat him with the greatest consideration possible. I’m not unaware he wouldn’t be the marvelous boy he is if you weren’t his mother. You were meant to be a mother, Stella. Every child should be so lucky.”
Though they weren’t touching, he could feel her trembling. “Y-you can have two hours with him if he’s willing,” she stammered.
“That’s more than I’d hoped for. The Stella I once knew was a giver. Remember that little heart I gave you?” It had been a cheap trinket he’d bought her in the Plaka because it had been all he could afford, but the sentiment had described her. “Love the giver.”
She revved the engine, obviously not liking being reminded of anything to do with their past. “Please get out of the car. Ari’s waiting for me.”
There was a time when she would have begged him not to leave. Of course, back then he wouldn’t have gone anywhere because he’d needed one more kiss, one more embrace before wrenching his mouth from hers. Damn if he didn’t need her mouth so badly right now he was ready to explode.
Forcing himself to act, he got out of the front seat. “I love your car by the way. With its classic lines, it looks like you. In case you didn’t know, that white dress was made for you.”
For an answer she backed out and drove off.
Stella only made it two kilometers before she had to stop the car for a minute. She buried her face in her hands. How was it possible Theo could get under her skin like this after the pain she’d undergone at his hands?
Inside of half an hour he’d pushed every button until she’d wanted to scream. But what truly haunted her was the change in his facial features.
As far as the gradation of male beauty was concerned, Theo had been a beautiful man before. If she were honest with herself, he still was. However, one scar pulled at the corner of his mouth a little. His right eyelid didn’t open as wide as the other. At some angles it gave him a slightly sinister look. His nose was still noble, but there were several bumps.
Theo hadn’t lied about the damage done to him. As he got out of the car, she’d seen the scar below his left earlobe. A thin white line ran down his bronzed neck into the collar of his dark blue shirt.
The rest of his tall body covered by his elegant clothes revealed he’d grown into a powerfully built man. She didn’t want to think about the damage beneath the surface he’d referred to, the kind an X-ray could detect.
He had an aura about him that hadn’t been obvious six years ago, but that was because he’d needed time to mature. Other men would be intimidated by him now. She bit her lip because she recognized that women would be irresistibly drawn to him.
While deep in torturous thought, she heard his helicopter pass overhead. Embarrassed that he might think she’d had to pull over because of her reaction to him, she started driving through the cobblestone streets of Batsi toward Stasio’s villa in Palaiopolis.
En route she picked up some toiletries in the village, proof of the reason she’d had to go out for a little while. She’d left the boys swimming in the pool with Rachel and the girls.
Unless Ari had let something slip to the family by mistake, she felt relatively confident they could keep Theo’s presence a secret so they could get through this holiday without anyone being the wiser. On Monday she would tell the family she was going to drive the boys around the island as Dax hadn’t been to Andros before.
Stasio worked so hard. Now that he’d taken three weeks off work to enjoy his wife and children, she didn’t want her problems to mar their families’ precious time together. Hopefully when Nikos arrived, he wouldn’t cause trouble.
He’d been wildly against her keeping Ari. In his opinion it wasn’t fair to their parents’ wishes, nor to Stella, who didn’t have a husband and who couldn’t give Ari what adoptive parents could. He’d been furious at Stasio for helping her, telling him he should have kept out of things.