AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Loucas crouched down beside Mikey. “Andrew, can you say it just one more time?”
The little boy obliged, this time, holding Loucas’s gaze with an earnest intensity. “Deka.” He pointed to the final shell.
Loucas looked from Andrew to Mikey, surprise and disbelief on his face. “Deka is ten, in Greek,” he said quietly.
Elation spread inside of Mikey. “Oh, Andrew,” she put an arm around his shoulders, and squeezed his small frame tight. “Your mom must have been teaching you the numbers in Greek, too, huh?”
Andrew didn’t speak, but he stared at the shells, as if willing them to say something. Mikey reached down and grabbed Loucas’s hand. Her voice was urgent. “Loucas, count for Andrew. In Greek.”
She pointed to the first shell, and Loucas slowly began the Greek numbers. When he reached the seventh shell, Andrew chimed in. In unison, they said the final three numbers, and all three of them hugged on the shores of the pristine island.
Andrew scampered down, his face looking truly happy for the first time since Mikey had met him. As she watched him run right down to the water and stop to kick at the shallow waves, she realizedd that she and Loucas were still embracing. She cleared her throat, mortified, and looked up. He was watching her. His eyes had that glowing, lustrous intensity she had come to expect from him.
“That was amazing,” she whispered, feeling both awkward and proud. She disentangled her hand from his, and moved away. Even with distance between them, her skin still tingled as though they were touching. She shook her head. “I have been waiting for him to start counting for weeks, and he’s been doing it, and I just didn’t know.”
“I can’t believe my sister taught him Greek,” Loucas marvelled, stuffing his hands deep in his pockets. In response to Mikey’s enquiring glance, he elaborated, “When we had our disagreement, she told me she no longer considered herself an Aleksandros. She said she wished she had never been born into our family. That she would do everything she could to forget her Greek heritage. I truly believed she meant it.”
“And yet she appointed you legal guardian of Andrew. And taught him Greek numbers, and who knows what else.”
He nodded, his throat suddenly thick with emotion. “What does it mean?”
Mikey misunderstood his question. “That Helena taught him your language?”
That too, Loucas thought. “No. That he counted. Will he start speaking again?”
Mikey looked at him wistfully. “Unfortunately, I can’t say. It could just be that the numbers were said repetitively to him, and that they were an easier thread of memory for him to access. It’s an encouraging sign, though, Loucas. It shows that his words are there. It’s just a matter of untangling them.”
After Andrew’s early success, their afternoon progressed unremarkably. Andrew played contentedly, running about their ankles, kicking sand and frolicking in the shallows. And Mikey watched him like a hawk, because it meant she didn’t have to watch Loucas. The longer he was there with her, at the beach, the harder she was finding it to ignore her attraction to him.
As the sun dipped lower and lower towards the ocean, she stood up, motioning for Andrew to return. “Nanny Paxton will be cross if I keep him out longer,” she said, without meeting his eyes.
“She would not be cross with me,” Loucas pointed out arrogantly.
Mikey laughed. “You’d be surprised. Nanny Paxton is a formidable woman. When it comes to Andrew’s routine, no aberrations will be tolerated. I was told that on the day she hired me, and I’ve been too terrified to test it since.”
Loucas looked out at the sky, streaked with long fingers of orange and red, then further down the island, where the glimmering lights of the town were visible in the distance. “We could go to a taverna in town for an early dinner,” he suggested.
A small part of his mind was querying what the heck had got into him. Loucas Aleksandros should have been back in Athens by now. He did not do local tavernas. He did Michelin starred restaurants, and dinners that began just before midnight. He imagined the sight he’d make, tucking into hot chips with a four year old, before the sun had even gone down.
Mikey shook her head. “No. Andrew must get back. I know I make light of it, but that’s all in fun. Nanny Paxton’s routines are important. I don’t want to mess with them. It’s all part of the structure he relies on”
“As you wish,” Loucas spoke efficiently, standing and packing the few things they’d used back into her duffel bag.
When Andrew appeared, he linked his hand in Loucas’s. Mikey tried not to feel excluded.
* * *
It was only at the end of the night that Mikey started to feel like something was going on with Bobby. She smothered a yawn with her hand and then smiled, apologetically. “I’m sorry, Bobby. I’m bushed.”
“Don’t mention it,” he waved at her with his hand, ignoring her subtle signal and leaning back into the leather booth seat. He let his hand stretch along the top of the bench, so that his fingers dangled just a fraction away from her bare shoulder.
Mikey had come to dinner almost straight from the beach. Bobby had suggested it, again, and she had leaped at the opportunity to get away from the villa, and Loucas, for one night. The afternoon had been taxing. Spending so much time with him, ignoring the fact that she wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around his neck and pull his head down and kiss those angry, confusing lips… she sighed, stirring her soda water with the hot pink straw. She knew it could never be, but that didn’t stop her wanting it any less.
“You were saying you’ll head back to teaching elementary school after this?” Mikey asked, trying to concentrate on her friend, instead of the enigmatic tycoon who’d lodged himself firmly in her brain.
“For a while at least.” He shrugged. “I like to be free like the wind, Cali girl. No strings for me.”
“So this job must have been perfect for you, huh?”
