The Greek Tycoon's Secret Heir (12 page)

She glanced down at her left hand and the large platinum and diamond band there. She was his wife.

She’d just caught up to them near the entrance of the house when Ari’s Bentley pulled up.

“I need to talk to you privately, Christos,” Ari said through the car’s open window.

“Can it wait?”

Ava guessed his father wanted to talk about Christos’s dismissal of the nanny Ari had hired. He’d told her about that on the way home.

“No.”

Christos handed her the bag with Theo’s gifts in it. “Why don’t you go inside with Theo and show him his surprises?”

“Yes, I will.”

Christos brushed a light kiss against her lips and then nudged her toward the stairs with a discreet push on her backside. Theo held her hand as they entered the house.

“What did you get me?”

She smiled at the eagerness in his voice and drew him into one of the open rooms on the first floor. There were three long couches and some armchairs in the room.

She sat down on one of the couches and slowly opened the bag, drawing out one of the gifts. “First you have to tell me one new thing you did while I was gone.”

He climbed up on the couch next to her and put the present in his lap. “I went on a speedboat ride with Uncle Gui.”

“Was it fun?” she asked, hearing the enthusiasm in Theo’s voice. He liked having so many men in his life, and their love of boats seemed to be conquering Theo’s fear of water.

Theo’s eyes sparkled. “Yes, it was. We went so fast nothing could catch us. Can I open this now?”

She nodded and he tore the wrapping off the gift box. He opened the lid and pulled out the stuffed bear she’d chosen for him.

“Thank you, Mama,” he said, hugging the bear to his chest and leaning over to give her a kiss.

“What are you going to call him?”

“Hmm…Fluffy.”

“Fluffy it is. Are you ready for another present?”

He nodded. She drew out another package and handed it to him. “Tell me something else you did while I was gone.”

He took the long box and held it with two hands. She could tell his attention wasn’t on the question she asked but on trying to figure out what was in the box. She knew he was going to love this present. It was Spy Gear. The play set contained everything Theo would need when he pretended to be a bodyguard.

“Theo?”

“Yes, Mama?”

“Tell me something so you can open this one.”

He ran his fingers over the colorful pattern on the wrapping paper. “The doctor did a test on me.”

“For allergies?” she asked. “Did they prick your back?”

“Yes and he put something in my mouth and rubbed it on my cheek.”

“What? Why did he do that?” she asked.

Theo shrugged. “I don’t know. Can I open my present?”

“Yes,” Christos said coming into the room.

“What other kind of test did the doctor perform?” she asked.

Christos rubbed the back of his neck and looked away from her and she knew the answer before he said it.

“A paternity test.”

She stared at Christos, unable to really understand what he’d said. “I thought you and I had already come to an understanding on this topic.” Her ears were buzzing.

“We have,” he said.

“They why did you have a test done?”

“Mama, don’t get mad. The test didn’t hurt me.”

She hugged Theo to her side and bent to give him a kiss. Christos had gone behind her back.

This was the second time she’d allowed Christos Theakis to break her heart. When was she going to learn that he couldn’t be trusted?

“What’s an understanding?” Theo asked.

Ava’s eyes never left her son’s. And Christos saw her shrinking away from him as the seconds passed. He’d ordered the test so he could give her what she wanted, bring real trust to their relationship. And he’d decided that he wasn’t going to hear the results.

But now he felt as though he shouldn’t even have made the gesture. He saw the hurt and anger in her. And understood it on one level, but on another…well, he wasn’t the type of man to trust blindly and she had to have known that.

“An agreement. Like the one you and I have where you always tell me the truth no matter what,” Ava said, finally lifting her gaze.

Theo put the box on the couch and stood up, looking up at him with a serious expression that he knew mirrored his own. “Did you lie,
Baba
?”

How to answer this? “No, Theo, I didn’t.”

“Did I misunderstand you when you said that you trusted me?” Ava asked.

He shook his head. This conversation was complicated and delicate. Not fit for the ears of their four-year-old son. He swept the boy up in his arms and hugged him so tightly that Theo squirmed.
His son.

“Will you give your mother and I some privacy?”

“Yes,” Theo said. Christos put him down and Theo ran out of the room, taking the stuffed bear with him.

Ava had her arms wrapped around her waist and was staring at him in a way she never had before, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Even that day at the school when he’d come back into her life, she hadn’t looked like this.

“Ava—”

“Don’t try to sugarcoat this or explain your actions. I made it clear that I needed your trust on this issue, Christos.”

“I know that. I do trust you.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Don’t be sarcastic. You can’t carry it off.”

Her arms dropped to her side. “I’ll be whatever I like. I’m the injured party here.”

He shook his head at her. “Put yourself in
my
shoes, Ava. I saw you and Stavros together. Nikki knew he was sleeping with another woman that summer and you were the only one near him.”

Those were images he’d never been able to get out of his head. Though they were fading with time.

“Put yourself in my shoes, Christos…you give your virginity to a man you think you love and your boss comes on to you and you end up losing the man you love, your job and your family.”

“I’m sorry that your family didn’t stand by you,” he said, unable to fathom her family abandoning her, because his never would. Even when he was at his wildest his father had still kept in touch. And he’d always had Guillermo and Tristan, who were like brothers to him.

“Their rejection I expected. I never fitted in at home and knew they wouldn’t want anything to do with me or Theo. Your rejection hurt a lot.”

“I never intended to hurt you,” he said, thinking about the pain he’d carefully disguised as anger when he’d caught her in his brother’s arms. The anger that he’d used to mask the vulnerability he’d felt at having trusted her.

“Of course, you didn’t. Now that you know Theo’s your son, is everything magically fixed in the past?”

He didn’t hesitate, because the one time he had, with her, had brought them to this moment. “I had the test performed, but I haven’t read the results.”

“Then why have the test done?”

“I needed proof on this so that I could trust you.”

“You needed
proof
? Trust doesn’t work that way. Relationships are built on a belief in the other person, not facts and tests, and I can’t live with a man who doesn’t trust me.”

“Are you threatening to leave?” he asked. He wanted to toss her over his shoulder, take her up to his room and lock her in. Ensure that she could never leave. But on the outside he struggled to play it cool.

“You sound as if it doesn’t matter to you,” she said.

“Hell, yes, it matters to me. But I’m not going to beg you to forgive me for something that was necessary.”

She shook her head. “What do you mean necessary?”

“You wanted me to trust you, to believe in you and I wanted to give you that. To be able to love you the way you deserve…”

“And the only way you could do that was to go behind my back and have Theo tested?” she asked.

He took a step toward her, because this time she hadn’t sounded defensive or angry. She’d sounded confused.

“You wanted something from me that I’m not capable of giving.”

“What do you think I want from you?”

“Blind trust.”

“I didn’t want blind anything, Christos. I wanted love. Full-on, head-over-heels love. The kind of stuff that you read about in old epic tales.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the tension there. “That’s not realistic.”

“I know what reality is and I know what I feel. And I love you that way, Christos.”

Suddenly nothing else mattered. “You love me?”

She shrugged. “Yes, I do. But I can’t live with you if you are going to lie to me, especially where Theo is concerned.”

She walked past him and out of the room. He just stood there, thinking about her words. She loved him. What did that mean? Was that the emotion that had been buzzing around inside of him? Was that what all the possessiveness and jealousy he felt around her stemmed from?

He realized at that instant what Ava had meant by needing his trust, because there was no way he was ever going to be able to find proof of her love unless he simply believed her.

Ava felt small and very much the little girl from the trailer park as she left Christos and went out on the balcony that overlooked the vast, landscaped gardens at the Theakis compound. The house was huge and she had no idea where Theo was, but she wanted to see her son. Wanted to cuddle his little body next to hers and just bask for a few minutes in his unconditional love.

“What are you fighting with my son about?”

Surprised, she looked up at Ari as he came out onto the balcony in his wheelchair. He was the last person she’d talk about her problems with. In fact she suspected he’d probably applaud her problems with Christos and have Maria pack her bags and drive her to the airport.

“It’s none of your business,” she said at last.

“Everything that affects the Theakis family is my business.”

“Did you meddle in Stavros and Nikki’s marriage like this?” she asked. Anything to change the topic from her and Christos.

He sighed and for a moment she saw every one of Ari’s eighty-one years on his face. “No. Stavros and Nikki…they had their own way of working things out. I didn’t understand them.”

“Me, neither,” Ava said.

“You got caught in the middle of one of their games.”

Ava knew that but was surprised to hear it from Ari. “What do you know about that?”

“I know everything that happens in my kingdom.”

“This isn’t a kingdom.”

“Stop giving me a hard time. And stop letting the past dictate your future. You married Christos and are his wife—it’s time you acted as if those vows meant something to you.”

She glared down at him, thinking about broken vows, and knew she wasn’t the one who had started this. But then again, this wasn’t an elementary-school game of blame. “I take my vows very seriously, Ari, but some things…I can’t compromise to make my marriage work. It’s silly and probably American, but I can’t change the fact that I want my husband to trust me.”

Ava wrapped her arms around her waist and turned away from her father-in-law. Had her dreams of marriage been too unrealistic? Had she somehow been brainwashed by too many Disney animated films as a young girl? She’d never thought so. She’d seen evidence of happily married people.

And all of her single friends were looking for the same thing she was. They wanted the spouse and the kids and the other crazy stuff that went along with them. Not an idealized version of family life, but the reality of it. And Ava knew that had to start with trust. Because if she and Christos had a real marriage there were going to be fights, and only with real love could they weather those storms.

“You remind me a lot of my wife.”

“I thought you didn’t like me,” she said.

“I don’t. You’re too stubborn and refuse to do what I say…that’s exactly how Leka was. You have that same fire and passion when it comes to protecting your son and standing up to me.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you look like you are finally thinking of giving up, and that’s not who you really are.”

“Ari, I’ve tried. I can’t make Christos trust me, and without that everything else is built on air.”

“Why do you think he doesn’t trust you?”

“I asked him to believe my word that Theo was his son.”

“The paternity test was legitimate. We had to have it for insurance purposes.”

“The Theakis men do whatever they want. If he’d wanted to, Christos could just have said Theo was his son.”

“He’s not the only one who decides these things,” Ari said.

“Are you saying you’re the one who asked the doctor to administer the test?” she asked, knowing perfectly well that Ari hadn’t. Christos had admitted to doing the deed himself, but she wondered how far Ari would go to try to convince her to stay.

“I was going to, but I can tell from your tone that you know it was Christos.”

“Yes, I do.” She sighed again. She felt so hollow inside and had no idea how to get back to normal.

“It’s not that Christos doesn’t believe in you, Ava, it’s that he’s afraid to believe in you.”

“I don’t follow.”

“When my Leka died, Christos was young—only nine. He was very close to his mother, and even when he was a young child, he and I never saw eye-to-eye. And her loss was…hard on all of us, but especially on Christos.”

Ava imagined how Theo would react if she were taken from his life. It was a heart-wrenching thought and made her really feel for Christos.

“What does this have to do with the man he is now?” she asked.

Ari pushed his sunglasses onto his forehead and looked her straight in the eye. “He stopped letting anyone into his life. He put up a barrier that only those two hellions he hangs out with were ever able to get past.”

She wanted to smile at the way he described Guillermo and Tristan. They were two of the wealthiest and most successful men in the world, yet to Ari they were hellions.

“I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”

“I think he’s testing you to see if you’ll stay.”

She shook her head. She had no doubt he was testing her in some way. But what Ari said…“I’m not sure I believe that.”

“I’ve known him all his life, Ava, and I haven’t seen him smile the way he does around you and Theo since he was a little boy.

“I’ve lost one son and am not going to give up on the one I have left now that he’s finally found his way back.”

Ava shook her head. “You can’t make him love me.”

“No, but you can.”

“I’m not going to. I’ve spent my entire life striving for things out of my reach and just once I’d like someone to put me first.”

“Christos already does that with you. He cuts his days in the office short to spend more time with you and Theo. Think about that.” And Ari wheeled around and left her there.

Ava sighed and made her way back to her own room. She couldn’t bring herself to go back to Christos’s bed. Not yet.

She wished she could believe that Christos had been motivated by love, but she didn’t think she could. She’d fooled herself twice into thinking that Christos loved her, and she’d been wrong.

Ava came out of the house the next afternoon and found Christos and Theo playing in the pool. She knew that Christos had been teaching Theo to swim but watching her son jump from the pool deck into the water made her breath catch. He surfaced quickly, swam to the edge and got out again.

“Mama, watch this,” Theo said.

“What am I watching?”

“Cannonball!” He jumped into the pool with a big splash of water.

Christos stayed in the water but swam over near her. Resting his tanned muscled arms on the side, he looked up at her.

“How are you?” he asked, softly.

There was real concern in his voice. Or was she just imagining it? Hearing what she wanted to. “Fine.”

“Ava, I don’t like this distance between us.”

“I didn’t put it there.”

“How can I make it up to you?”

“You can’t, Christos. There was only one way to prove you trusted me.”

“Mama?”

“Yes, Theo?”

“Watch this.”

“I am watching.”

She looked away from Christos to stare at Theo. But what she saw was the fact that her son used to be afraid of the water and being here with Christos had changed that. Being with Christos had changed
them.
She’d always been afraid of who she was, but Christos had given her the strength to be herself.