AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The sizzle almost knocked her sideways. She looked away quickly.
“You were quite safe, darling boy,” she promised huskily, lifting him with her from the car. She held him against her chest, and waited for Loucas to join them.
“I’m sorry,” Loucas said earnestly, running a hand through his hair and encompassing them both with his apology.
Mikey shook her head. “Andrew,” she said, placing him on his feet and crouching down to his level. “Why don’t you go and see if you can find ten shells for me?” She held her hands up, wiggling each of her fingers to remind him of the number.
Andrew loved the beach. He scampered off immediately, his feet fast on the rocky earth that led to the beach.
“I didn’t think,” Loucas was stricken.
Mikey couldn’t help it. She reached up and touched his upper arm. She had meant to reassure him, but the strange awareness that arced between them hit her like a sledgehammer. And yet, she kept her hand in place. In fact, she ran her fingers slowly up and down over his shirt sleeve, in a gesture of intended comfort. “Of course you didn’t,” she murmured.
Loucas arched a brow. “Because I’m selfish and thoughtless?”
Mikey shook her head. “No, that isn’t what I meant. You’re new to all this. How could you know…”
“That a boy who has just lost his parents in an horrific car accident would be terrified to be driven at speed on dangerous roads?” He winced inwardly. “Doesn’t take a brain surgeon.”
“No,” she nodded. “Not when you put it like that.” She pulled her hand away. She had no way to know that his arm felt instantly cold. “It’s my fault, Loucas. I should have said something but I was… enjoying the drive.”
He looked down at her, his face unreadable. “When I take you out next, it will be in the car you liked, and it will be just the two of us. And I will drive as fast as you find pleasing, Arnaki.”
She gulped. It was such a statement of intent, Mikey didn’t know what to make of it. They had no reason to travel a deux. It hinted at a relationship that went well beyond what they could have. She smiled non-comittally and refocussed her attention on the small figure leaping across the sand. “He loves the beach.”
Loucas realizedd she hadn’t responded to his statement. That was fine. He had time. All the time in the world. Mikey wasn’t going anywhere, and so nor was Loucas.
CHAPTER FOUR
As they walked, side by side, across the gravelly ground, both watched Andrew.
“Your sister –,” Mikey began, at the same time that Loucas said,
“You’re young to be so highly regarded in your field.” Then, after a pause, “I’m sorry, what were you going to say about Helena?”
She searched his face, wondering if she was being completely inappropriate. “I… I got the impression that you hadn’t seen her for some time.”
“No,” he nodded curtly. When Mikey immediately withdrew, her face showing that she felt chastened, he regretted the harshly spoken word. He looked towards the horizon, just a distant line glowing on the edge of the ocean. “We had grown apart.” It was a clinical way to describe what had happened to them. As twins, they’d been inseparable from birth. Only her insistence on marrying the American had driven a wedge between them.
“And yet she named you as Andrew’s guardian?”
“As you see,” he pointed out, a grim smile on his face. “She could have chosen better.”
Mikey didn’t disagree. Hadn’t she told him as much in their first encounter? “Why do you think she did choose you, then?”
Loucas stared down at Mikey intently, his dark eyes raking her face. Finally, he expelled a sigh of loss. “I cannot possibly fathom. Surely there were more suitable candidates.”
“Yes,” Mikey agreed, for she had met many of them at the hospital in the days following Andrew’s accident. Chad’s parents were kind and youthful, though they hadn’t seemed overly close to Andrew.
Their young charge came runnin
g up, and held his hands out to Mikey. As the two of them had done many times before, she opened her hands skywards so that he could empty his quarry into her makeshift bowl.
These shells were different to the ones at the beach closest to the villa. She marvelled at the shapes and colors as she laid them down on the shore and kneeled beside Andrew. Oblivious to Loucas’s quiet watchfulness, she performed the ritual that was now a familiar routine. One by one, they counted the shells. She spoke each number aloud. One…two… and so on. And with each number, Andrew nodded, his small face earnest. As she placed the last shell down in a line in the sand, he seemed to whisper something. Dark eyes lifted to Loucas’s face, and then quickly looked away again.
It was difficult for Mikey not to react. Sometimes children were scared by over the top praise, but inside, Mikey’s heart was bursting. “I’m sorry, Andy. I missed that. What did you say?”
His response was an instant deflation to her enthusiasm. He made the same sound he’d been making for days. It was a little like Dek. She shook her head. “Ten,” she encouraged, but Andrew just said, “Dek.”
