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‘Anna, you need to sit down. Are you okay?’
She pushed past Dimitri and painfully made her way to the table where Amalia was sitting in a high chair, now red-faced and howling. Anna poured herself into a seat and her heart finally settled as she put her hand on her daughter’s arm, as she could feel her daughter, could see that, although upset, her daughter was there and was okay.
Only then did the hurt and pain of her own body start to come into focus.
‘I... I didn’t know what you’d done with her, where she was...’ Anna started shaking now, whether with fear for her child or shock from the fall she didn’t know.
Dimitri had come to the table, watching her, and he was saying something that Anna couldn’t quite hear.
‘...okay? Are you okay?’ he demanded. He’d crouched down in front of the chair, bringing him eye level with her, looking at her as if he expected something from her, and Anna resolutely ignored the concern in his eyes.
‘Okay? Seriously?’ An avalanche of adrenaline hit her. There were too many emotions crashing through her body to distinguish—fury, anger, shock, pain, fear. ‘You don’t do that! Ever! You never do that to a woman who has spent the last two years raising a child on her own. What the hell were you thinking?’
Dimitri stood there and she hated him. She weakly struck out at his chest. As her voice became louder and louder Amalia started to cry harder and harder.
‘After the stunt you pulled last night...’ Anna trailed off.
Dimitri turned and said something to the housekeeper, who was looking at Dimitri as if he were the devil. Flora’s furious stream of Greek made Anna feel just a little bit better.
‘I’m going to call the doctor,’ Dimitri announced, reaching out to help her as she picked up Amalia, clearly worried that she wouldn’t be strong enough. One look from Anna stopped his hand mid-air. Anna pulled her daughter onto her lap and hugged her fiercely. He had no idea how strong she could be for her daughter.
‘I’m fine. I don’t need a doctor.’
* * *
His pulse hadn’t even begun to settle yet. When he’d seen Anna fall everything had stopped. Including his heart. It must have hurt, and it would be a miracle if she’d not broken a bone. His daughter’s crying was just beginning to subside and as he looked Anna over he could see a nasty grazed bruise beginning to appear on her calf. Across her slim arms, similar red, angry welts painted her skin and guilt clenched his stomach so tight, worse than anything he’d ever experienced.
Flora came back into the room and gave him a look that could have stopped Hades in his tracks. She placed two bags of frozen vegetables on the table beside Anna, waited for Anna to meet her gaze and cocked her head in the universal body language of are you okay? When Anna finally replied in the affirmative, Flora nodded to herself once, rubbed Anna on the arm gently and held her hands out to take the now silent Amalia.
Dimitri watched, fascinated, as Anna handed over their daughter to his housekeeper in a way she’d never done with him. Flora took Amalia out into the garden, making sure to stay where they could both be seen by Anna.
Shame and guilt hit him hard. He’d wanted to spend some time with his daughter. He’d even wanted Anna to get some proper rest. He knew what she’d been through in the last few days, what he’d put her through. And look what had happened. He wanted to pace, he wanted to run, do something with all the feelings that were coursing through his body in that moment. But he didn’t. Because Anna was at the table, and most likely in considerable pain. Frozen peas weren’t good enough. He needed to call a doctor.
‘I’m truly sorry,’ he said, taking the seat next to her, still fearful that she might break into a thousand pieces.
‘I don’t know you,’ she said as if she were talking to a stranger. ‘We spent one night together nearly three years ago, and after that? You show up out of nowhere, threaten me, bring me to Greece and are presently engaged in forcing me to marry you. What did you expect me to think when I woke to find my daughter gone?’
‘I...’ Dimitri was struggling to find the words. Words that would somehow make her understand. ‘I just wanted to spend some time with my daughter,’ he said, hating the weakness, the vulnerability in his voice. ‘I know you might not credit me with this, but the moment I saw our daughter, that is how I felt. Terrified that you would take her away from me. That I would never have access to her. The reason I want us to marry is so that we have equal rights. Not because I want sole custody. I am not so much of a monster that I would rip my daughter away from her mother.’
‘As you intended when you came to my bed and breakfast and tried to take my daughter from me?’
‘As I intended when I thought that the mother of my child was an alcoholic, willing to use my child to blackmail me for money, a mother who I thought—at that time—was a threat to my daughter’s safety.’ Dimitri ran a hand over his face. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. ‘Please, let me call a doctor for you. That was a really hard fall.’
Anna looked at him accusingly. As if the fall had been his fault. As if this whole sorry mess was his fault. And he had to acknowledge the truth of it. He followed her gaze as she turned her attention to Amalia outside with Flora.
‘I didn’t know what to do when she started crying,’ he confessed. ‘She’d been so quiet and happy until...’
‘She’s good with strangers because of the bed and breakfast. She’s used to seeing different faces.’
Dimitri couldn’t stop the anger that rose within him quickly and eagerly, eating up the space that she had given him.
‘I’m not a stranger, Anna.’
‘Oh,’ she retorted with fake surprise. ‘Have you explained that to our twenty-seven-month-old daughter? She’s bright, but genetics may be a little above her age range.’
He barely restrained the growl that almost choked him.
Anna stood on still shaking legs. ‘I’m going to go and take a shower.’ Dimitri watched her struggle to get to her feet for barely a second before he stood and swept her into his arms. He’d done that the night they’d come together and had forgotten how impossibly light she was.
