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Kelly slid back on the seat. ‘That’s close enough. I—I just came to check you’re OK.’
‘Why wouldn’t I be OK?’
‘Because you—you talked about stuff you don’t usually talk about.’ Out of her depth, she looked at him warily. ‘I just wanted to make sure you’re all right.’
He gave a wry smile and reached for a towel. ‘Typical Kelly,’ he said softly. ‘You hate me, but you think I might be upset so you have to check I’m all right.’
‘I just don’t want your death on my conscience.’ Finding it impossible to concentrate with all that gleaming male muscle on display, Kelly averted her eyes. ‘So, let me just check I’ve understood this correctly: you’re basically saying that you don’t want children because you’re afraid you’ll hurt them, is that right?’
‘Yes.’
Kelly chewed her lip, waiting for a full confession to spill out. When he was silent, she prompted him. ‘Your dad was selfish? He hurt you?’
‘Yes.’
Kelly stared at him in exasperation. ‘Can’t you say more than “yes”? “Yes” doesn’t tell me anything about your feelings. Oh, forget it,’ she mumbled. ‘You don’t want to talk about it, I get that. Whatever it is, you’ve blocked it out. I heard what you said to the doctor, although I didn’t realise at the time what it meant. You’d rather just plough on, pretending it didn’t happen, because that’s what works for you. The trouble is, that doesn’t work for me. I played guessing games last time and I guessed all wrong. I assumed you’d just decided you didn’t want me—that I was too inexperienced or something.’
‘I loved the fact you were inexperienced.’ He knotted the towel around his hips and Kelly swallowed, trying to focus on a different part of him.
‘Right. Which just goes to show I’m rubbish at reading your mind. And you won’t tell me what’s on your mind, so we might as well give up.’
‘We are not giving up. But you’re right—it is a subject I find hard to talk about.’ He poured himself a glass of water from the jug that had been left on the table. ‘What is it you want to know?’
‘Well, all of it! I want to understand.’
Alekos stared into the glass in his hand. ‘My parents had a disastrous marriage. My mother had an affair, my father left her, I was made to choose who I wanted to live with.’ He lifted the glass to his lips and drank while Kelly stared at him, absorbing that information slowly, slotting the pieces together in her brain.
‘Y-you were made to choose between the two of them?’ Shaken, she rubbed her hand over her forehead. ‘But—how old were you?’
‘I was six. They stood me in a room and asked me who I wanted to live with. I knew that whichever decision I made, it would be the wrong one for them.’ His tone grim, Alekos thumped the glass down on the table. ‘I chose to live with my mother. I was worried about what she might do if I went to live with my father. She was the more vulnerable of the two of them. She told me that if she lost me she’d die. No six-year-old boy wants his mother to die.’
Six? They’d forced a six-year-old to choose who he wanted to live with? Kelly was appalled. ‘That’s completely shocking. What about your dad? Didn’t he understand what a hideous position you were in?’
His mouth twisted. ‘A son is a Greek man’s most precious possession. To him, I made the wrong choice. He never forgave me.’
‘But—’
‘I ceased to exist. I never saw him again.’ Alekos looked at her and for once there was no mockery in his eyes, no hint of humour. Just a hard, steely determination. ‘I never, ever want any action of mine to hurt a child. And it happens. All too easily. So now you understand why I overreacted to the revelation that you want at least four children. It came as a shock.’
Kelly licked her lips. ‘I wish you’d told me.’
‘We weren’t doing that much talking, were we? Most of our communication was physical.’ He gave a cynical laugh. ‘To call our relationship a whirlwind would be like calling Mount Everest a molehill.’
‘I did plenty of talking,’ Kelly muttered, feeling a sudden stab of guilt. She’d never asked him that much about himself, had she? She’d never pushed him to talk about his family or his hopes. She’d been thinking about her dreams, not his. ‘It didn’t occur to me you were thinking that way. You just seemed so confident about everything. You seemed to know exactly what you wanted.’
‘I did know what I wanted. Or, at least, I thought I did.’ Alekos pulled her to her feet and drew her towards him. ‘Things change. Life throws things at you that you weren’t expecting.’
Without her shoes, she barely reached his shoulder. For a brief, indulgent moment Kelly leaned her forehead against smooth, bronzed skin, breathing in the tantalising scent of him. ‘Yes, life does throw the unexpected. This doesn’t feel like the fairy tale.’
He gave a cynical laugh. ‘Some of those fairy tales were pretty nasty, agape mou. How about the wicked witch and the fairy godmother?’
‘The fairy godmother was good. You mean the wicked stepmother.’
‘Her too. I told you I’d make a terrible father; I don’t even know the right stories,’ Alekos lifted her chin with strong fingers. ‘How is your poor head?’
‘Aching. Like the rest of me. I feel as though I’ve been trampled by a herd of cows. I’m never wearing shoes in your house again.’ But the thing that ached most was her heart—for him. For the small child who had been forced to make an impossible choice by parents too selfishly absorbed by their own problems to put him first. And for herself, who now had to make an equally impossible choice.
Leave and live without him, or stay and risk that he’d walk away again?
