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“I owe you nothing,” she said with a bravado she didn’t feel. Years of living with her father had taught her to bluff well.
“You say you werefriendswith my father?” He layered the word with a hint of disgust. “Then surely you owehimthe courtesy of treating his son with respect?”
“Because you’ve been such a peach to me?” She demanded, nonetheless stepping back and opening the door to allow him to enter.
Konstantinos had spoken about his family. She knew each of his son’s habits and yes, she even knew about his great guilt, the affair with Annie that he’d concealed from those he loved most, because he didn’t know how to split them in half with the truth. She knew about Valentina, the little girl who’d passed away twenty five years earlier.
And she knew about Anastasios and how hard he worked, how determined he’d been, since birth, to prove himself to his father. She knew Kon regretted his hard style of parenting, how much he’d expected from the boys, and the fact he’d pushed them to achieve their best. They’d all strived to meet the impossibly high bar, every time, but Anastasios particularly so.
For Kon, for her love for the older man, she allowed Anastasios to enter the bedsit.
His eyes flicked around the room, but the judgement she’d expected to see in his face was noticeably absent. Instead, there were simply questions.
“I presume the restaurant pays you?”
She dipped her head.
“Surely you can afford better than this?”
She squared her shoulders. “London is expensive,” she said tightly. “Besides, I like my landlady. She’s elderly and kind and I help her when I can.”
His eyes narrowed speculatively, and she couldn’t resist snapping at him.
“No, I’m not waiting for her to pass away so I can stake some devious claim on her money,” she muttered.
“Can you blame me for wondering?”
“Blame is irrelevant. I’ve never met anyone like you,” she shivered. “We just met and you think the absolute worst of me.”
“My father has been coming for secret rendezvous with you, and has left a small fortune to you in his will. What else should I think?”
She gaped, then shook her head. “He was a generous man.”
Anastasios frowned. “That’s not my experience.”
“I guess we knew different sides of him.”
“I think that goes without saying.”
“I just mean…”
“Yes?” He crossed his arms over his chest, staring at her straight down the length of his patrician nose. He reminded her so much of Kon, the same arrogant confidence, only she’d seen beneath Kon’s. She’d seen his heart, his kind, good, soft, hurt heart and it had so perfectly matched her own. She blinked past the veil of tears.
“Forget it. You’re clearly not going to listen to a word I say, so let’s get down to why you’re here. What can I do for you, Anastasios?” Again, the name rolled in her mouth and she suppressed a shiver, but not before he saw it, judging by the knowing speculation that lit his gaze.
“I want to understand,” he said quietly. “My father was clearly living a secret life behind our backs. You’re a part of that.”
Something like guilt tightened as a band around her chest, even when she didn’t have anything to feel guilty about. Only, she’d never imagined how their friendship might be perceived by those Kon loved.
“We were justfriends,” she said with a shake of her head.
“My father didn’t have friends. He worked, and he had family, and that’s it. He didn’t even have a hobby.”
Her eyes swept shut on a wave of fresh grief now, but not for Kon’s death, so much as what he’d lost in life. How could his oldest son know so little about him? And why had he chosen to open up to her so much?
But Phoebe knew the answer to that. She’d ignored it for a long time, but it was no longer something she could push aside. She reminded him of the daughter he’d lost, Valentina. He’d taken pity on her at first, but that pity had morphed into something else—a genuine connection that had sustained them both.
“Actually, your father liked to paint,” she said, quietly.
