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‘Do you imagine the school headmaster lied to you?’ His question was teasing, gently sarcastic in nature. It wasn’t intended to be rude, she thought, but that didn’t stop it from having an immediate effect on her.
Heat began to bloom in her cheeks. She wasn’t used to being treated like an imbecile. She glared at him forcefully, her expression clearly showing how unimpressed she was, but she forced a brittle smile into place, remembering the old adage that you caught more bees with honey. ‘I hoped he’d made a mistake somehow.’
‘He didn’t.’ Santos shifted a little, inadvertently brushing her knee with his. It was like being jolted with a thousand volts of electricity. She stared at him in surprise, a reaction she was nowhere near experienced enough to conceal, and saw speculation move over his features. She blinked her eyes closed, before turning them towards the view once more, but it wasn’t quite enough. He’d seen her reaction and was now wondering at the reason for it.
Great.
She was literally the opposite of the sophisticated beauty in the room down the hallway. Where Maria was stunning and expensive-looking, Amelia felt dowdy, dull and quite utterly out of her depth even having a conversation with a man like this. For goodness’ sake, his knee had touched her knee and she was permitting that to turn her stomach into a tangle of knots! Preposterous.
‘When the school year finishes, Cameron will move to Agrios Nisi with me.’ He spoke as though he hadn’t even realised they’d touched—his bloodstream wasn’t running with the force of a thousand wild stallions.
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s where I live. And I am apparently his father.’
She ignored the last remark. ‘But what is there for him on Agrios Nisi?’ The words were delivered with uncharacteristic fire, but Amelia couldn’t help it. Ever since the headmaster had relayed the plans to Amelia, her head had been swimming with disapproval, and her heart with a sense of panic and pain. It wasn’t right to drag Cameron away from everything and everyone he knew. The little boy deserved better than that, especially now. She knew, better than anyone, what it was like to be sent from pillar to post—and by your parents!
‘Apart from miles of pristine coastline and a chance to have the kind of childhood any boy would kill for?’
A small noise of ridicule escaped her lips before she could stop it. ‘What he needs, Mr Anastakos, is to be here—especially now.’ She drew in a breath, trying to calm her racing heart and pounding pulse without much success. ‘He’s lost so much already this year. To take him away from the friends who adore him—and the faculty who also adore him,’ she finished ineptly, her throat thick with the pain of how much Cameron had come to mean to her, ‘Will be to inflict further trauma on a little boy who’s already suffered considerably. I understand things weren’t necessarily amicable between you and Cynthia but that hardly seems like a reason to punish Cameron. He deserves you to act in his best interests and keeping him here, in England, at Elesmore, is the very least you can do.’
‘My relationship with Cameron’s mother is none of your business.’
Amelia’s eyes narrowed. ‘No, but how you treat Cameron is, very much so.’
‘As for Cynthia,’ he continued, as though she hadn’t spoken, ‘It was neither amicable or otherwise. The truth of the mater is, we barely knew each other.’
Amelia blinked at this sterile description of the woman with whom he’d made a child and shook her head. ‘Be that as it may, you clearly knew each other well enough to become parents, and now you’re all Cameron has left. He deserves more than this.’
The silence that fell now was punctuated only by the sound of her own breathing. Santos stared at her from eyes that were almost oceanic in colour, his tanned skin slightly flushed along the hard ridges of his cheekbones. It was a face prone to sternness anyway, all symmetrical and sharp, as though a sculptor had been obliged to turn granite into humanity with only a blade as a tool, leaving no room for nuance and undulation, only harsh edges and finality. But now, like this? There was such obvious anger and rejection on his face that Amelia almost regretted coming here.
Almost, but not quite.
Cameron deserved to have someone fight on his behalf. At six, he was too young to realise how the adults in his life had failed him, but Amelia recognised the behaviours and, while she wouldn’t ordinarily think of interfering, this was different. Cameron was different.
She refused to fail him.
