Читать книгу Ruthless Revenge: Sinful Seduction: Demetriou Demands His Child / Olivero's Outrageous Proposal / Rafael's Contract Bride - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 16

CHAPTER EIGHT

ANTICIPATION AND ANXIETY warred within Alekos as he approached the front door of Iolanthe’s town house the next morning to meet Niko. His son.

Seeing the boy last night had felt like a fist reaching right into his heart and squeezing hard. Niko’s floppy dark hair had reminded him of his own as a child. He’d glimpsed a book on computer programming thrown by the bed and he’d remembered devouring similar manuals as a young boy. Niko was his more than just biologically. Already Alekos felt a connection to his child, one he’d never expected.

His own family had been fractured at a young age, his siblings split up after his father’s death and farmed out to relatives, his mother working hard as a cleaner to keep body and soul together, and not much else. Family had never meant anything to him except inevitable disappointment, inherent rejection.

But this time it could be different. He certainly wouldn’t abandon Niko the way his parents had, in different ways, abandoned him and his siblings. Resolutely Alekos knocked on the door.

The housekeeper he’d met briefly last night answered it, her wrinkled face set into lines of obvious disapproval. She gave him a short nod. ‘Kyrie Demetriou.’

‘I am here to see Iolanthe and Niko.’

The woman pressed her lips together. ‘What business do you have with my mistress?’ she burst out and Alekos drew back, surprised and affronted by the temerity of the question.

‘I don’t believe that’s any of your concern.’

‘It is my concern because she is my mistress and she has been through enough these last ten years,’ the housekeeper declared. ‘You seem like you will only cause her yet more grief.’

‘I have no intention of doing anything of the sort,’ Alekos answered, although he was surprised and a little shaken by the housekeeper’s words. He realised how little he knew about Iolanthe’s marriage. She’d said she hadn’t loved Lukas, but had Lukas loved her? Or had it merely been a marriage of cold expediency—the boss’s daughter in exchange for accepting her bastard child? Alekos didn’t like to think of her marriage at all. Incredible that after a single night and ten years, he could feel so much as a twinge of jealousy.

Iolanthe met him in the drawing room where he’d seen her last night. Now, instead of looking casual and touchable in jeans and a lacy top, she wore a pair of tailored trousers and a high-necked blouse, clothes she clearly considered a defence against him. She’d drawn her hair back in a clip and although her lips were bright with lipstick her face looked pale. She was nervous, but then so was he. He was going to meet his son.

‘I’ve told Niko you’re a friend,’ she said without preamble. ‘For now. And that you’re interested in computers. He loves them.’

‘All right.’

Iolanthe clasped her hands together and met his gaze, her eyes bright with anxiety. ‘I told you he’s a bit different...’

‘I know.’ Alekos held up a hand. ‘Let me meet him, Iolanthe, and see and judge for myself.’

She nodded as she released a low breath. ‘Okay,’ she said, and bit her lip, still clearly nervous.

Alekos had the bizarre urge to comfort her, even hold her. He was amazed at how natural it would feel, to pull her into his arms and stroke her hair. To tell her it was going to be okay, that he would take care of her.

He shook his head to clear it of that unsettling impulse. He wanted to marry Iolanthe for Niko’s sake, but he didn’t want to care about her. He knew where indulging in that kind of emotion led. His only interest was in his son.

‘Where is he?’

‘Upstairs, on the computer. It’s probably best if we go up there.’

‘Very well.’

Once again they climbed the staircase, this time with bright sunlight pouring through the window. Alekos took the opportunity to examine what he saw of Iolanthe’s house, her life, but he couldn’t tell much from the tasteful prints on the walls or the antique furniture. It looked bland to him, the home of someone rich and important, nothing else.

‘Niko...?’ Iolanthe called as she knocked on the door of the room next to his bedroom. ‘Remember I told you Alekos was coming to meet you?’ Shooting a quick, anxious smile at Alekos, she pushed open the door and entered the room.

Alekos followed, his gaze arrowing in on the little boy who sat in front of a computer monitor, his expression closed and wary.

‘Hey.’ Iolanthe smiled and stepped aside so Alekos could come more fully into the room. ‘This is Alekos. A friend.’

Niko eyed Alekos silently. His eyes, Alekos saw with a jolt, were golden-brown, a similar colour to his own. He was slightly built, but then Alekos had been at that age as well. One hand rested possessively on the keyboard.

‘Did you know my father?’ he asked Alekos.

‘I knew of him, but we’d never really met.’ It took effort to keep his voice mild and friendly. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about Lukas.

‘You work with computers?’

‘Yes.’ Niko’s gaze flitted towards him and then away again, as if he was uncomfortable meeting Alekos’s eye. Alekos tried not to feel the sting of rejection. He was too emotional for this meeting, too raw. ‘Your mother told me you like computers?’

‘Yes.’ Niko had already turned back to the screen, clicking the mouse, having summarily dismissed Alekos.

‘Niko...’ Iolanthe began. ‘Alekos is here to talk to you...’

‘I don’t want to talk to him.’

Alekos drew his breath in sharply at such rudeness. Iolanthe, he saw, looked pained but not surprised. So his son was badly behaved.

‘He came all this way...’

‘I don’t want to.’ A new, sharper note had entered Niko’s voice and his hand clenched on the mouse. From across the room Alekos could see the tension in the little boy’s body; he was practically vibrating with it.

‘All right, Niko, all right,’ Iolanthe soothed. She threw Alekos an apologetic and faintly panicked glance. He felt as if he was missing part of the conversation; something was happening that he didn’t understand.

‘We can talk later,’ he offered, and Niko didn’t reply. He had started to rock a little back and forth, one skinny arm wrapped around his middle. Iolanthe stepped towards her son.

‘It’s okay, Niko. You don’t have to talk to anyone now.’ She put her hand on his shoulder and Niko flinched away.

‘Don’t.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Biting her lip, she withdrew. ‘I’ll come back later, okay?’

Niko didn’t respond. Iolanthe turned to Alekos and motioned for them both to go out of the room.

Alekos waited until they were back downstairs before he asked the question that was burning in his chest. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Don’t say that.’ Iolanthe whirled around, her expression savage, her voice a crack of a whip that he hadn’t expected. Alekos blinked with the force of its sting.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...’

‘Yes, you did,’ she stated flatly. ‘Do you know how often I get that question? How people look at him?’ She drew a ragged breath and he realised she was near tears. He felt suddenly, overwhelmingly repentant.

‘Iolanthe—’

‘Don’t.’ She flung out one hand as if to keep him distant, even though he hadn’t moved. ‘Don’t ask what’s wrong with him, don’t assume he’s rude or badly behaved or whatever else I could see in your face. You looked...disgusted.’ Her voice trembled on the word.

‘I wasn’t,’ Alekos said quietly. He felt the stirrings of shame. ‘Surprised and disappointed, perhaps. I suppose, unrealistically, I was expecting for a better meeting. Interest, friendship.’ Politeness, at least. ‘I still don’t understand.’

Iolanthe tucked some stray tendrils of hair behind her ears and drew a calming breath. She seemed more composed, resolute, although her face was still pale. ‘I told you he was different.’

‘I know, but I don’t understand why or what that means.’

‘The truth is no one really understands,’ she admitted on a sigh. ‘He’s been to a whole raft of doctors and psychiatrists and therapists over the years. They’ve all had different diagnoses, but none of them really fit.’

‘So you knew there was some issue for a while.’

‘Yes, since he was small. Even as a baby...he had trouble attaching—breastfeeding was impossible, and he never liked hugs or cuddles. He screamed for the first three months of his life, non-stop.’ She spoke tonelessly, reciting these facts as if they didn’t matter to her, and yet Alekos knew they had to have cut her deeply.

‘And later?’ he asked.

Iolanthe let out a deep sigh and sank onto a sofa, her head bowed so Alekos could see the tender nape of her neck. He had the impulse to rest his hand there, rub the muscles he could see corded with tension. He didn’t move.

‘Similar things. He went to nursery for a short while, but he found it too overwhelming, and he fought with the other children.’ She gave a little shake of her head, lost in memory. ‘Forming friendships has always been difficult for him. Not impossible—by that time I’d started attending therapy with him, trying to figure out what was wrong and how to help him. Having a routine made things easier and, as he grew older, coaching him in ways to behave that weren’t rude or aggressive.’ She looked up at him, her eyes shining and damp. ‘He’s come a long way, Alekos, even if it doesn’t seem like it to you.’

‘I wouldn’t make such a judgment.’

‘You already did.’ She spoke wearily, without accusation, but even so Alekos felt a sharp pang of guilt.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have phrased it like that.’

‘You wouldn’t be the first. And I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t take my frustrations out on you. It’s just that this kind of thing has been happening for so long.’

‘I understand.’ Iolanthe gave him a small, grateful smile that pierced Alekos to the heart. She was thankful for that negligible bit of grace? And yet he realised that they were actually having a civilised conversation. An important conversation. Standing there, seeing Iolanthe look so tired and disheartened, Alekos realised there were things he could not begin to fathom about her life.

‘Tell me more,’ he said, and moved to sit across from her.

‘What more do you want to know?’

‘I don’t know. Anything.’ He shrugged, spreading his hands. ‘I want to understand.’

She pressed her lips together, her gaze distant. ‘Doctors suggested he was on the autism spectrum, but not all of his symptoms fit the classic diagnosis. Of course there’s a range, but they weren’t entirely comfortable with it and neither was I. Other doctors suggested a sensory disorder, but some of his emotional behaviours didn’t fit that either.’ She raised her slight shoulders in a helpless shrug. ‘In the end they slapped the PDD label on him and called it a day.’

‘PDD?’

‘Pervasive Developmental Disorder. A jack-of-all-trades diagnosis.’ Her smile was wan, heartbreaking. ‘We’ve both coped as best as we can. Taking him out of school helped—it was too much pressure on him to make friends, to behave a certain way. He gets along very well with his tutor.’

‘Where is his tutor? I thought he was going to be here this morning.’

‘I had him leave early, in anticipation of this meeting.’

Alekos frowned. ‘Is that a good idea? If routine is important—’

‘Don’t question me please, Alekos.’ Iolanthe’s voice rose sharply. ‘I know you like to be in control. I know you want to be the one giving the orders. But please, please trust that I might have a better idea of how to handle my son than you do.’

‘Our son, and only because I was kept from being involved in his life until now,’ Alekos returned before he could keep himself from it. Iolanthe flinched.

‘Will you always throw that in my face?’ she asked quietly.

‘No.’ He let out a low breath. ‘But it’s a hard thing to accept, Iolanthe. To forgive.’

‘So you’ve said.’ She drew herself up, a new resolve entering her eyes. ‘So surely you can see there is no sense in us marrying. We would be at cross purposes all the time, arguing and throwing old hurts in each other’s faces.’

‘I would hope we are both mature enough not to act in such a way.’

‘It wouldn’t be a good environment for Niko,’ Iolanthe persisted. ‘He picks up on such undercurrents. Tension affects him very badly.’

Alekos held on to his temper, keeping his voice both level and firm. ‘Then we will both have to make a concerted effort not to have such tension in our home.’

Iolanthe let out a hollow laugh, falling back against the sofa with a weary shake of her head. ‘Talking to you is like battering a brick wall. The only thing that happens is I get tired and bruised.’

‘Perhaps you need to stop treating our conversations as battles,’ Alekos suggested. Iolanthe rolled her eyes.

‘It’s my fault, then, is it? Of course. Some things never change.’ Bitterness spiked her words, making him wonder. Admittedly, the history between them was fraught, but surely they didn’t have so much for her to speak with such cynical experience? No matter that they’d created a child together, they still hardly knew one another.

‘I don’t mean to apportion blame. But I believe strongly indeed that a child belongs with his parents, Iolanthe. Both his parents.’ Alekos heard the throb of emotion in his voice and inwardly cringed at it. He hated revealing such things.

Iolanthe eyed him with tired curiosity. ‘It almost sounds as if you speak from experience.’

‘I do.’ This time Alekos kept his voice diffident. ‘My father left when I was young and I was separated from my mother soon after.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Her expression had softened into sadness, or maybe pity, which he couldn’t stand. ‘That must have been very hard.’

‘It was what it was.’ Alekos dismissed his miserable childhood with a flick of his shoulders. ‘But I do not want the same for Niko.’

‘He doesn’t do well with a disturbance in his routines, Alekos—’

‘And that is your justification for keeping his father out of his life?’ he demanded. ‘Routines have to be altered, Iolanthe. It is a fact of life. You can’t keep Niko up there in his ivory tower for ever.’

‘You don’t know—’

‘Maybe I know more than you think. Maybe I understand some of what Niko is going through—’

‘You do?’ She looked and sounded disbelieving.

‘He is my son. And he grew up with a man who was not his father, as I did.’ A sudden suspicion assailed him. ‘Was Callos close to him?’

Iolanthe’s expression shuttered and she looked away. ‘He...he tried,’ she said in a low voice.

‘He tried? What does that mean?’

‘He knew Niko wasn’t his biological son...’ The words were a wretched whisper, cementing Alekos’s suspicions and making fury surge through his blood.

‘He knew that when you wed. He never should have married you if he couldn’t treat Niko as his own.’ He’d thought he hated Lukas Callos already, but he realised he’d barely plumbed the depths of his derision for a man who stole other people’s ideas as well as their sons—and failed in both regards.

‘Perhaps he thought he could.’ Iolanthe’s voice was thready. ‘I can’t blame him...’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he married me when he knew what I’d done,’ Iolanthe stated starkly. ‘Which was more than anyone else was willing to do.’

Guilt felt like acid corroding his veins. ‘You had sex,’ Alekos stated. ‘Hardly unforgivable in the twenty-first century.’

‘Unforgivable in the world I live in,’ Iolanthe returned. ‘No matter how the rest of the world sees it.’ She sighed and then steeled herself. ‘But we were talking about Niko.’

‘I want to spend more time with him.’ Even as he said the words, Alekos knew that carefully orchestrated visits to Iolanthe’s house would not suffice. He needed an environment where he could get to know Niko properly, completely—and, he realised, get to know Iolanthe as well. If he really intended to marry her, for Niko’s sake it couldn’t be the cold-blooded arrangement he’d initially intended. What it could be, he had no idea, but he needed time to figure it out. They all needed time...as a family. To become the family they could be, the family Alekos had been denied as a child himself, and Niko had too.

‘Let’s go away,’ he said, and Iolanthe’s eyes rounded, her lovely mouth dropping open in shock. ‘The three of us. Somewhere we can be alone and private together. It will give Niko time to get to know me, and also time for us to know each other and decide if we can make something of a marriage.’ He had no intention of allowing Iolanthe to make that decision by herself—it was far too important to leave to emotion or chance. But perhaps a few weeks alone together would remind Iolanthe of what they’d had together.

The spark was still there, Alekos had felt it last night, when he’d brushed by Iolanthe, the softness of her breast touching his arm. He felt it now, leaping between them even as they argued. All he needed to do was fan it into burning flame. Passion was surely a good basis for marriage. Better than slippery, untrustworthy love.

‘I told you, Niko doesn’t—’

‘Do well with a change in routine. Yes. But he must have had holidays.’

Iolanthe shook her head. ‘We don’t go anywhere.’

His assumption that she had lived a spoilt, carefree socialite’s life experienced another blow. ‘Then you don’t know if a holiday would suit him,’ he stated, determined to press his point—and win. ‘Give us this chance, Iolanthe. Surely I deserve that much.’

Guilt flashed across her features and her shoulders sagged. ‘Very well,’ she whispered, and Alekos felt a surge of triumph as well as one of anticipation and desire. He had no intention of letting Iolanthe or his son slip away from him again.