Page 38

Then there was Alia.

You don’t want me.

He did, though. In ways that were base and sexual, but also in more esoteric ways. She had conditioned herself to pretend she was quiet and mousy and he understood she’d been afraid to lose her grandmother’s affection, but he caught flashes of her true, lively personality and had a bottomless appetite for it. She was a spitfire, unafraid to tap him in the chest and tell him to take a step back. He liked that she wasn’t intimidated by his forceful personality because anyone who spent a lot of time with him needed to be able to push back on him.

And yes, he was still uncomfortable with the fact she’d seen him at his most vulnerable, but she could have sat in his hospital room with her legs crossed and her nose in a book. Instead, she had talked to him, taking extra steps to protect him from his stepfather while trying to draw him from unconsciousness, leaving her voice imprinted on his psyche.

He already felt linked to her in ways he couldn’t describe.

That sensation—too much like interdependence—had him halting his strokes in the middle of the pool. He swiped the water from his eyes and shook the water out of his ears, trying to skim away the feeling that he was already indelibly linked to her.

He froze as he noticed Alia had come down to one of the loungers. She wore her robe and had her legs curled under her like a cat. She watched him with the same energy, quiet and focused.

“What’s wrong?” He glanced up at the doors he’d left open from the bedroom.

“You’re naked.”

“I always swim naked if the staff are gone for the night.”

“You’re not supposed to swim alone.”

“Is that why you came down? There’s a security camera. I’m confident someone will arrive to resuscitate me if I get a cramp. You can go back to bed.”

“You don’t care if the security guard watches you swim naked?”

“I do not.”

“Hmph.” She picked at her thumbnail.

“Were you scared?” His conscience pinched. “Because I left you by yourself?”

“No. Not of that.” She looked at the sky. “It’s a nice night. Cassieopia.” She pointed.

He looked up as he drifted to the far edge and extended his arms to rest on the ledge. “Why did you come down, then?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I don’t like that you’re mad at me.” She shifted, drawing her knees in tighter, and hugged herself in the robe, even though the night wasn’t cold. “It makes me feel as though something bad will happen.”

“I’m not mad at you. I’m angry that there are things in life I can’t control. That I can’t—” There were no words for this thing in him that needed to be bigger than it was. “You’re upset about the prospect of losing the only person who feels like family to you. I can’t fix that for you, but I want to.”

“By giving me a baby? That’s worse than pity sex.”

He looked to the garden behind the garage. “I take back what I said about liking that razor tongue of yours.”

“I’m not trying to start a fight, Spiro. Or finish one,” she muttered, picking at her nail again. “But this is really tempting for me, no matter what your motives are. I would love to have a baby. I would love to know I could stay here indefinitely. It’s the best thing for Yaya, but what if you decide the responsibility of an elderly dementia patient is too much? What if you decide having a child is too much? Then where am I? Exactly where I am right now, wondering who I am and where I belong, but with a mouth to feed.”

“Children have always felt like more responsibility than I was willing to take on,” he admitted. “Frankly, I imagined parenthood as something that would weigh more heavily on me than my partner. My mother was never maternal. She came from money. Nannies were normal in her world.” She had treated him and Khristos like toy poodles, showing them affection when it suited her, but never performing hands-on care, mostly preferring them seen but not heard. “Our father was the one who spent time with us and made us feel valued.”

Spiro had been a confident young man before he lost his father, very certain in who he was and what he could accomplish.

“We went from our father telling us we could do anything to Lambros telling us we were useless. I hated him, but I was too young to be effectual when I pushed back. I tried to be the father Khristos needed, but I wasn’t enough.” His brother’s struggles with depression had made him feel useless in the extreme.

“You were a child yourself,” she pointed out gently. “One who had also lost his father.”

He knew that intellectually, but still found it hard to forgive himself.

“You have to want a baby, Spiro. Do you?”

“What else will I do with my fortune?” he said dryly. “I can leave it to my brother, who doesn’t need it, or my mother, who will give it to a man who has already taken more from me than I can bear.”