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Niko came forward to pump her hand. “Nice to meet you.” Then he bounded down the two steps into the living room. Looking at his father, he said, “I can’t stay. I have another tour this afternoon.”
“You said you wanted no more than one a day.”
Niko shrugged, a gesture so like his father’s. “They came in at the last minute, and Lorenzo already had another one booked.” He was turning, dashing for the spiral staircase, his feet pounding on the stone. “It’s probably downstairs,” he called, disappearing into the stairwell.
“Niko stayed over last night,” Xandros explained. “He wanted to have a party with his friends, and his home is too small.”
“I’ve already met him, though I don’t think he remembers me. He was the captain of our catamaran.”
Xandros beamed. “I’m glad you chose Exotic Travel Adventures.” The pride in his voice had her putting all the pieces together. “You own Exotic Adventure Travels.”
“I expanded from what my father and I used to do, so we gave it a bigger name. We are now the busiest tour company on the island.”
She shook her head in wonder. “Not just on Santorini. Exotic Adventures Travels is all over the Mediterranean. You even have cruise ships.” Carter had told her all about the company.
He nodded. “Yes. My daughter Juliana is running a cruise this summer, in training I suppose you’d call it, before she goes back to university in the fall.”
“No wonder you have a house like this.” It was far beyond her imaginings. Far beyond anything her mother could have dreamed of.
Niko pounded back up the stairs, throwing out a flurry of Greek. Xandros pulled out his phone, tapped an icon, and somewhere in the living room, a phone rang.
Diving beneath the couch cushions, Niko came up triumphantly with the ringing phone. “So nice to meet you, Angelika.” He dashed for the door. “Gotta run,” he said just like a young American.
“He’s a whirlwind, isn’t he?” Finally, she looked at Xandros.
His smile was full of such love that it brought tears to her eyes. This was how she looked at Sienna and Matthew. But she would never feel the ease with her children that Niko and Xandros seem to share, especially not after Sienna learned the truth.
Or maybe the truth would eventually heal the wounds.
“They’re all a whirlwind.” Xandros stepped down into the living room, moving to a sideboard with a row of photos she hadn’t noticed.
In only a few steps, he changed her world. He held out a frame. She had to take it, and she saw exactly what she expected. Despite the emotions rising up her throat, she smiled. “You have such beautiful children.”
She remembered all their names. There was Niko, the image of Xandros. She picked out his son Christos, another Xandros clone, surrounded by a gaggle of beautiful children all under the age of ten, and, she presumed, his dark-haired wife clinging to his arm as she gazed up at him adoringly. The woman next to them, children clinging to her skirts, had to be Thea, her husband with the aquiline nose and long face of a Frenchman, his arm around her. Thea was a beautiful woman with Xandros’s thick curling hair. Xandros stood in the middle, one hand on his son-in-law’s back, the other arm draped around his son’s shoulders. Seated below them in the center was his youngest daughter, Juliana.
That’s who the young woman must be, and yet she saw Sienna in the long hair, the beautiful features, the pretty smile.
It was Xandros’s smile too, and Angela felt as if Sienna had transported into this photo, as if she was part of this family, the way she should have been for thirty years. How much happier would her daughter have been? Angela had always explained away the likeness to Xandros by saying that Sienna had her Italian heritage, her coloring, her wavy hair. But it was clear she was Greek through and through, that she belonged to Santorini. To Xandros.
It was painful to look at. Tears pricked the backs of her eyes, and she blinked quickly to wash them away. But Xandros saw, and he took the picture from her hands, setting it on the sideboard and cupping her cheek. “What’s wrong?”
She gave him the only explanation she could. “I was thinking about all that I missed.”
He added for her, “All that we missed.” He stroked his thumb under her eyes as if a tear had escaped. “But we wouldn’t change it, would we.” It was a statement. “I could never give up Niko or Christos or Juliana or Thea. Could you give up your son and daughter?”
She didn’t say that she’d lost her daughter and son long ago. She couldn’t say that she wouldn’t have lost Sienna if she’d been with Xandros. Sienna would have been theirs.
So softly he had to lean close to hear, she said, “And yet we missed so much.”
He framed her face with his big hands, his warmth seeping into her. “Look at it another way. We won’t miss anything else. You are here, we have found each other, and we can make up for what we missed.”
She looked at him, his beauty, his intensity, the deepness of his gaze on her. “Can we really have it all?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said just before his lips took hers in a kiss so sweet, so consuming, that she was suddenly the young woman in love she’d been all those years ago.
* * *
She tasted sweet and spicy,like the vinaigrette he’d drizzled on her salad.
