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Sandor shrugged. “Better that than I be a lazy layabout, no?” His speech pattern always took on a more decidedly Greek bent when he was around his mother.
Hera pursed her lips and appealed to Ellie with her eyes. “I cannot imagine this one lazy. Can you?”
Ellie shook her head solemnly, though a smile flirted at the edges of her mouth. “No. I really can’t.”
“There, you see?” Hera said as if making a point.
Though Ellie had to wonder if Sandor knew what it was supposed to be because she wasn’t sure she did. She smiled regardless.
“And what am I supposed to see, Mama?” Sandor asked.
“That to work all the time is its own cage,” the older woman said, as if it should be obvious.
“Better that cage than many others I could name.”
“Perhaps, but it would be better not to be caged at all. Do you not agree, Eleanor?”
“Yes. Freedom is a beautiful thing and something we often have to sacrifice other things to attain.”
“Ah, this one, she is smart. You hold on to her, son.” Hera patted Ellie’s arm.
Sandor smiled. “I intend to, believe me.”
Hera nodded. “Good.”
Thankfully that was all she and Sandor said on the subject and Ellie had to be grateful that he had not told his mother he had asked Ellie to marry him. She had a feeling Hera wouldn’t be above trying to convince Ellie she should say yes.
So, why hadn’t Sandor pulled his mother in to argue his case? It seemed like a tactic he would use.
On the other hand, she’d asked for time to think and apparently Sandor intended to respect that. Which was a pretty darn effective argument in his favor, if he but knew it.
Since she wasn’t pressuring Ellie to accept her beloved son’s proposal, having Hera there as a buffer made the evening more relaxing. But nothing could mitigate the fact that Ellie’s mind insisted on playing the events of the night before over and over in her head. Being slammed at work had helped to keep her thoughts under control, but being in his company made it impossible to keep the memories at bay.
She would catch Sandor looking at her like a shark ready to gobble her up and she would stammer and blush and in general react without her usual aplomb. His mother would take him to task for embarrassing her and Sandor would just grin, pleading innocence if not ignorance.
An important call came in during dessert and Sandor excused himself to take it in his study.
Hera shook her head after he left. “He puts too much importance on business, that one. I thought bringing him to America would give him a better life. It is not so easy to be a child without a father in a small village like the one we came from, but now I wonder if I made the right choice. Had we stayed there, he would not be so driven by business maybe.”
“I don’t believe Sandor is the kind of man to be defined by his surroundings. He is who he is and would be that man, no matter where he’d spent the last years of his childhood. It wouldn’t have mattered if he started in a small town in Greece instead of Boston, your son would have climbed his way to the top no matter what. I think if you’d stayed there, though, that it would have taken longer and been harder for him. He might not be where he is right now, but never doubt he would have achieved what he set out to achieve.”
“Thank you, Eleanor. You are a kind and very perceptive young woman.”
The praise filled Ellie with a sense of well-being, of belonging. She grinned. “And just think, if he had to work harder to get where he is, he would have taken longer to begin considering matters besides business.”
She wasn’t about to spill the beans about his proposal, but she figured Hera was savvy enough to realize her son’s thoughts had turned to domestic matters.
The older woman’s expression turned-horror struck. “You think he might have made me wait even longer to get grandbabies?”
Ellie laughed. She knew the other woman was intuitive where her son was concerned. “I’m afraid so.”
Hera shook her head again. “I still worry about him. He never stops achieving. When is it enough?”
“He seems to have things to prove to himself,” Ellie said carefully.
This time Hera’s sigh carried a wealth of sadness. “Yes. He wishes to prove he got nothing bad from his father. My papa, he was a good man, but he was hard. He made Sandor to think he was responsible for things that he had no control over. Papa said nothing good about the young boy I loved, but he was good. Too young to be as strong as he needed to be maybe, but hewas good.”
