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A flush heated her chest, working its way up to her face. “A walk sounds perfect.” She picked up her hat and swished by him out the door. He cursed under his breath and followed. A smile curved her lips. She liked having the power for once. It was a heady feeling.
They walked along the pristine, blindingly white sand beach, cooled by a perfect light breeze that came off the sea. Nik reached for her hand and laced his fingers through hers. She didn’t protest this simple intimacy because it felt so familiar, so right, it was impossible to.
She turned her gaze to the sea. It was the most perfect shade of blue she’d ever seen. Not turquoise, not the gray blue of the New York harbor, but a pure, vibrant cerulean blue that took her breath away.
Her thoughts turned to Athamos, whose body might still be out there somewhere, was still out there. “Do you think they’ll ever find him?”
Nik looked down at her, his eyes shaded by the dark glasses he wore. “Athamos?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “The currents are too strong. The divers spent weeks combing the waters. There was only so long we could ask them to be out there in a fruitless pursuit.”
“That was the hardest part,” she said. “Not ever being able to say goodbye to my father. We were fortunate they found his body. Some families were not so lucky.”
He moved his gaze back to the water. “I went to the crash site after I met with Idas. It wasn’t until then that I realized I was holding out some crazy hope by not finding his body with the car that perhaps it was all a big mistake, that he was alive out there somewhere. Some fisherman had picked him up, he was concussed and couldn’t remember who he was. Or he’d ended up on one of the many deserted islands and we just hadn’t found him yet.” The grim lines around his mouth deepened. “That was, of course, wishful thinking. He would have been recognized if he was alive. And it never would have happened in the first place because no one would ever have survived that drop.”
Her heart throbbing, she squeezed her fingers tight around his. “Was Idas able to shed any more light on what happened?”
“Nothing more than it was a personal dispute between the two of them. Which I believe now it was. He said that Kostas was struggling with it.”
“I’m sure he must be. To be the one to survive, regardless of the dispute between them, it must be difficult.”
“If guilt is what he is feeling, yes,”
She let that sit, the lap of the waves and the cry of the gulls the only sounds in the air.
“They had a complex relationship, Athamos and Kostas,” he said after a moment. “They were rivals with a fierce respect for one other. They went to military school together. God only knows what happened between them.”
She thought back to his father’s cutting words that night at dinner. If Athamos had been here, this wouldn’t have happened. We would have had a deal with the Agieros.
“Has it always been like this between you and your father? The differences you have?”
“Always.”
“That must have been difficult,” she said carefully, knowing she was treading dangerous waters but equally sure this was key to understanding her soon-to-be husband. “For your father and brother to be so close. For you to have such different leadership styles.”
He turned his aviator sunglasses–protected gaze on her. “Confession time, Sofi´a?”
She lifted her chin. “I thought we were just having a conversation.”
He bent, picked up a shell, examined it and tossed it back into the sea. “I have deep internal wounds because of it. It’s shaped me into the closed, guarded man that I am. Is that what you want to hear me say? That my brother having my father’s ear has driven a painful wedge between him and I?”
Her mouth compressed. “Only if it’s the truth.”
He stared at her, whatever was going on behind those dark glasses a mystery to her. “I graduated top of my class at Harvard. Summa cum laude. I was the valedictorian. And yet my father did not see fit to attend. It was not of enough importance to him. Whereas my brother’s graduation from Oxford was. Where he did not graduate with honors. Where he was not valedictorian. That pretty much sums up the family dynamic.”
A lump formed in her chest. “What about your mother? Are you closer to her?”
He shook his head. “My mother doesn’t possess a strong maternal instinct. She left the child-rearing to our nannies. Particularly after my father’s infidelities. She spent more and more time away working on her charitable endeavors.”
