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‘No!’ Nuala roared.
‘Then I’ll carry you the rest of the way like a baby.’
Nuala lost her head again and screamed while her brother chanted delightedly, ‘Nuala’s a baby!’ as he walked by his mother’s side.
Silence fell only as they reached the gates of the park.
‘Please,’ Nuala framed as if every syllable hurt.
Cristo lowered his daughter slowly back onto her own feet.
‘I hate you!’ Nuala launched at him furiously, snatching her hand free of his and grabbing her mother’s free hand in place of it. ‘I don’t want a daddy!’
As Cristo parted his lips to respond Erin cut in, ‘Just ignore it … please.’
Once she sat down on the mercifully free bench in her accustomed spot, Erin murmured, ‘The best way to handle the twins is with distraction and compromise. Going toe to toe with them simply provokes a tantrum.’
‘Thanks for the heads-up. I’m going to need it. I believe I used to throw tantrums,’ Cristo confided. ‘According to my foster mother, I too was a challenging child.’
‘Tell me something I couldn’t have guessed.’ Erin laughed, abstractedly watching the breeze ruffle his cropped hair into half curls, so very similar to his son’s. As she met his spectacular amber and honey coloured eyes framed by sooty lashes, it was as if a hand grabbed her heart and squeezed and possibly that was the moment that she understood that she would never be entirely free of Cristo Donakis. That was not simply because she had given birth to children who had inherited his explosive personality. It was because she enjoyed his forceful character, his strength of purpose and persistence and the very fact he could sit on an old bench in a slightly overgrown and rundown park and seem entirely at home there in spite of his hand-stitched shoes, gold cufflinks and a superbly well-cut suit that still looked a million dollars even after he had sat up all night in it. He might be arrogant but he was hugely adaptable, resourceful and willing to learn from his mistakes.
‘I should tell you about my marriage,’ Cristo said flatly.
‘You never mention your ex-wife,’ she remarked helplessly, disconcerted by the sudden change of subject and the intimacy of the topic as she watched Lorcan play on the swings and Nuala head down to the sandpit, her cast protected by the cling film Erin had wrapped round it. It wasn’t like Cristo to volunteer to talk about anything particularly private.
‘Why would I? We were only married for five minutes and now we’re divorced,’ Cristo fielded coolly.
‘Have you stayed friends?’
‘We’re not enemies,’ Cristo stated after a moment’s thought on that score. ‘But we move in different social circles and rarely see each other.’
‘Was it a case of marry in haste and repent at leisure?’ Erin pressed tautly. ‘Did you know her well before you married her?’
‘I thought I did.’ Cristo bit out a sardonic laugh. ‘I also thought it was time I got married. My foster parents, Vasos and Appollonia, had been urging me to marry for a couple of years. It was the only thing they had ever tried to influence in my life and I did want to please them,’ he admitted gruffly. ‘I met Lisandra at a dinner party at their home. I already knew her but not well. We seemed to be at the same stage in life, bored with the single scene. We got married three months later.’
‘So what went wrong?’ she almost whispered, recognising the shadow that crossed his lean, darkly handsome face.
‘About a year after we married, Lisandra decided that she wanted a child. I agreed—it seemed like the natural next step.’ His shapely mouth tightened and compressed. ‘When she got pregnant, she was ecstatic and she threw a party to celebrate. Both our families were overjoyed at the prospect of a first grandchild.’
‘And you—how did you feel about it?’ Erin prompted hesitantly.
‘I was pleased, happy Lisandra was happy, grateful she had something new to occupy her. She got bored easily,’ Cristo admitted stonily. ‘And a couple of months into the pregnancy Lisandra got cold feet.’
‘Cold feet?’ Erin queried with a frown, her attention locked to the air of harsh restraint etched in his lean strong face that indicated that, while his voice might sound mild, his inner feelings were the exact opposite.
‘My wife decided she wasn’t ready to have a child after all. She felt too young for the responsibility and trapped by her condition. She decided that the only solution to her regrets and fears was a termination.’
Erin released her pent up breath in a sudden audible hiss. ‘Oh, Cristo—’
‘I tried to talk her out of it, reminding her that we could afford domestic staff so that she need never feel tied down by our child.’ He breathed in slow and deep and bitter regret clouded his dark eyes. ‘But I failed to talk her round to my point of view. She had a termination while I was away on business. I was devastated. Our families had to be told. My foster mother, who was never able to have a child of her own, had a nervous breakdown when she found out—she just couldn’t handle it. Lisandra’s parents were distressed but they supported their daughter’s decision because they had never in their entire lives told her that, no, she couldn’t have everything and do anything she wanted …’
‘And you?’ Erin prodded sickly, feeling guilty that she had not even suspected that a truly heartbreaking story might lie behind his divorce.
Cristo linked lean brown hands and shrugged a fatalistic broad shoulder. ‘I suppose I couldn’t handle it either. Intellectually I don’t know what Lisandra and I would have done with a child whose mother didn’t want it and resented its very existence but I still couldn’t forgive my wife for the abortion. I tried, she tried, we both tried but it was just there like an elephant in the room every time we were together. I made her feel guilty, she made me feel angry. I saw too much in her that I didn’t like and I didn’t think she would ever change, so I asked her for a divorce.’
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‘I’m so sorry, Cristo … really, very sincerely sorry,’ Erin murmured shakily, a lump forming in her throat as she rested a slender hand briefly on his arm in a gesture of support. ‘That must have been a shattering experience.’
