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God, how she wished she could do that. Just put it all away, let her relationship with Sienna grow from this vacation on. But she couldn’t. “Thank you for not pressuring me or putting a claim on her. But when you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”
Nodding, he obviously knew the old saying.
“That’s what I did. I got into bed with Donald Walker. He’ll eventually tell her, and he’ll chose the time when he believes it will do the most damage. I feel that deep in my bones.” Her body quaked. “The worst thing that can happen is for Donald to tell her. Sienna needs to hear it from me. She deserves that. And I owe her that.”
“How did your husband even know? She looks like you. Even if I see a resemblance to my own daughter, no one else would know.”
“She takes after my Mediterranean genes.” She breathed deeply, the story still painful even after all these years. “Sienna was eight years old when she fell out of a tree. She was such a tomboy,” she said with fondness and the love she felt in every fiber of her being. “We rushed her to the hospital, but she’d lost a lot of blood from a branch that tore her leg.” She licked her lips, took a sip of coffee to wet her throat. “Donald’s blood wasn’t a match.” She held his gaze. “What type are you?”
There was a dark pleading in his eyes, as if he needed this. “AB.” He waited a beat. “Am I a match?”
Breathless, speechless, all she could do was nod. Then she told him about Donald. “He punished me for years after that, but I couldn’t leave because of the children. He would have taken them both away from me.”
“But why not divorce him once they were out of the house?”
“Donald always held the truth over my head. He didn’t need to say it out loud, it was just always there, that he could tell, even after the kids had gone to college and started their own lives. I knew Sienna would hate me. So I stayed.” She shrugged helplessly, the corners of her mouth drooping in a frown. “I thought after the divorce and his remarriage, the emotional blackmail might end. But I know it’ll never stop. I can’t live with that for the rest of my life. I need to get out from under Donald’s thumb, and the only way is for Sienna to know the truth.”
He curled his fingers around hers. So racked by guilt and regret, she’d almost forgotten his touch. “You’re right,” he said. “You need to be the one to tell her. My presence will only make it worse. When do you plan to do it?”
She breathed in, realizing she’d been holding her breath until she felt lightheaded. “This is what I’d like to do. The gang wants to go to the Minoan ruins at Akrotiri today. I’d like to invite you. I want you to get to know her. I already told her last night that you and I met when I was here before. I want to start off telling the truth, even if it isn’t the whole truth. Let that percolate for a couple of days. Then I’ll tell her.”
“You want me to tour with you for two or three days?”
She learned nothing from his inflection. “Can you take the time away from work?” Then she added, “Would you want to?”
He laughed, a deep sound that made her want to feel him inside her. “I have a good staff, good family, and Niko and Juliana. And they like it when I’m not asking them questions every minute. They don’t really need me.”
How different he was from Donald, who had to control everything. “I’m so glad they support you that way.”
He smiled wide, his teeth gleaming, his eyes bright with possibilities for the future. “Since I have a travel company, I can arrange the trip using a company van, if you’d like.”
Honestly, she didn’t want to share him yet. She would have been happy spending the day with him, helping him cook, floating beside him in the pool and stealing kisses until he took her to his bed.
But she had to put Sienna first.
“What do you think your children will say?” she asked softly, tentatively.
He breathed deeply, his nostrils flaring. “I don’t know. But we are Greek. We take things in stride, as you Americans say. I think they’ll be fine once they get used to the idea.”
She could only pray it would happen that way. She had enough to worry about with Sienna’s reaction.
* * *
He droveher back to her villa on the quad bike, and as he watched her bound down the stairs to tell their daughter and her friends about the change in plans, he wanted to run after her, as if once she was out of sight, he might never see her again.
He could castigate her for not telling him about Sienna. He could even hate her. For a moment in that restaurant last night—after they’d made love in his house, after he’d held her against him as they watched the sunset, after they’d shared so much, yet nothing at all—he’d seen her daughter, his daughter, and he had hated Angelika. He’d wanted to shake her and make her tell him why she’d kept his daughter from him.
And yet, understanding hadn’t taken long to come to him. They’d both been kids. He was three years older than her, twenty-five, but he hadn’t been the man he’d thought he was. He should have written her, should have flown to her. Instead, he’d become engaged to another woman without ever going to Angelika. And if she’d told him she was having a baby?
He didn’t know what the young man he’d been would have done.
So who bore more blame?
He had a daughter he’d never known. The realization filled him with as much sadness as it did joy. He wondered if she’d ever want to know him.
But he was no longer a young man. He no longer had the same fears. And no matter what happened with their daughter, no matter how she took the news, he was never letting Angelika leave him again.
* * *
