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‘Your aunt had one daughter, Fotini.’ Something in his tone made her watch him intently. His lips had compressed tautly, curved down at the corners. His eyes were bleak.
‘A few years ago Fotini and I married, which makes us, you and I, related by marriage.’
‘Cousins-in-law,’ she whispered, wondering why she found the expression on his face so disturbing. She’d never seen this man anything but controlled. Yet something about his set jaw and the desolation in his eyes told her he clamped down hard on the strongest of emotions.
‘Your wife, Fotini, is she here with you in Sydney?’
‘My wife died in a car smash last year.’
Now she understood the expression of repressed pain on his face. He was still grieving. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured.
Sophie wondered how she’d feel about her own loss in a year’s time. Everyone said the pain would be easier to bear later. That the happy memories would one day outweigh the ponderous weight of grief that pinned her down till sometimes she felt she could barely breathe.
She looked at the man beside her. Time didn’t seem to have healed his wounds.
‘Thank you,’ he said stiffly. Then after a moment he added, ‘We have a little girl. Eleni.’
She heard the love in his voice as he spoke and watched his features relax. His lips curved into a fleeting, devastating smile. Gone was the granite-hard expression, the grimly restrained power. Instead, to her shock, Sophie saw a face that was … handsome? No, not that. Nor simply attractive. It was compelling. A face any woman could stare at for hours, imagining all sorts of wonderful, crazily sensual things.
Sophie snagged a short, startled breath and looked away, letting her feet scuff the grass.
‘So you do have a family in Greece,’ he said. ‘There are second cousins. There’s little Eleni. And me.’
No! No matter what he said, Sophie would never be able to think of this man as a relative. She frowned. The idea was just too preposterous. Too unsettling.
‘And there’s your grandfather, Petros Liakos.’
‘I don’t want to talk about him.’
‘Whether you want to discuss him or not, you need to understand,’ Costas said.
Sophie refused to meet his gaze and stared instead across the park, watching wrens flit out of a nearby bush.
‘Your grandfather isn’t well.’
‘Is that why you came?’ Anger rose, constricting her chest. ‘Because the old man’s sick and wants his family at long last?’
She shook her head. ‘Why should I care about the man who broke my mother’s heart with his selfishness? You’ve come a long way for nothing, Mr Palamidis.’
‘Costas,’ he said. ‘We’re family after all, if only by marriage.’
She let the silence grow between them. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
‘No, I’m not here for that. But your grandfather’s condition is serious.’ He paused. ‘He had a severe stroke. He’s in hospital.’
Sophie was surprised to feel a pang of shock at his words. Of … regret. Could it be? Regret for the man who’d turned against her mother all those years ago?
Sophie’s lips thinned as she dredged up the ready anger. She wouldn’t allow herself to feel anything like pity for him. He didn’t deserve it.
‘Do you understand?’ Costas asked.
‘Of course I understand,’ she snapped. ‘What do you want me to do? Fly to Greece and hold his hand?’
She swung round to face him, all the repressed fury and despair of the last weeks fuelling her passion. ‘It’s more than he did for my mother. For twenty-five years he pretended she didn’t exist. All because she’d had the temerity to marry for love and not in some antiquated arranged marriage! Can you believe it?’
She glared up at him. ‘He cut her out of his life completely. Didn’t relent with the news that she’d married. Didn’t care that he had a grandchild. Was probably disappointed I was only a girl.’
She drew a rasping breath. ‘And when she’s dying he refuses to call and speak to her.’ Her voice broke on a rising note and she turned from his piercing gaze, dragging a tissue out of her back pocket and blowing her nose.
