Her heart quivered.
They were his aunt and uncle. Alex was his son.
She was just herself.
But what else was she? What would he call her? Fleeting ex-lover? Accidental mother-of-his-son? Test-in-progress?
At the mention of his full name, Alex had squeaked out an acknowledgment. Now he pulled at his father’s shirt, demanding his attention, to be included. Aris complied at once, bestowed one of those kisses that made Selene feel he was imbuing Alex with his very essence, before he whispered in his ear, and leaned forward, bringing him closer to his aunt.
The older woman’s mouth became a circle as her hands rose up, trembling, to receive Alex, who was now willing to be held by whomever at a murmur from his father.
He filled Olympia’s embrace with an excited squeal and her flabbergasted eyes surged with moisture. “Oh, Aristedes, oh, my dearest, at last. Your son!”
Alex looked up at Aris, demanding his praise for doing what he’d told him to do, and so successfully.
Aris delivered it, in that wordless code he’d developed with Alex as he caressed his cheek.
Selene almost whimpered at the intensity and purity of emotions that emanated from his eyes, from his every pore.
And that was before he raggedly said, “Yes, at last.”
Over the next few days, they settled in.
Aris gave her and Alex one of the mansion’s eight suites, which were almost as big as her condo, and took the one opposite them across a vast hall. She even had her own private staircase to the lower floor, via which Eleni came to babysit Alex.
With Aris there every second that Alex was awake, Eleni took over only when Alex napped. Which he did for longer than usual, expending so much extra energy with the excitement of being with his father all day in what he clearly recognized as a different and magical place.
And when he napped, it was Selene’s time alone with Aris.
It was another such time now, on a secluded part of the bay.
They strolled hand in hand in contented silence on the powdered gold sand, letting the surrounding beauty seep through them, and the tranquil rush of the bay’s jeweled waters set the tempo of their strides.
She kept stealing hungry glances at Aris. Each time she found him looking at her with an intensity that shuddered through her. Sometimes she shot him a tremulous smile. Sometimes she laughed. Sometimes she whooped, disentangled herself from his hold, sprinted to meet and chase the advance and lure of the gently foaming waves.
And who could blame her? She’d left an on-edge city and life to find herself catapulted here, to a place that put paradise to shame, served and catered to by a god of delights and temptation.
After frolicking like she hadn’t done since she was ten, she threw herself onto the warm, cushioning sand, spread her arms as if she’d embrace the cirrus-painted blue dome of the sky and sighed. “And to think I always thought you didn’t have a home.”
Aris came down beside her, leaned on his elbow and poured his inscrutable silver gaze over her boneless figure. “I don’t.”
That made her prop herself up on her elbows, look dazedly around, then cautiously back at him. “What about…all this?”
He shrugged a powerful shoulder, cast his steely gaze across the endlessness of the sea. “It’s not exactly a home. Not in the sense that I ever intended to live in it.”
“Then why did you buy it?”
His eyes moved to hers, translucent like sparkling diamonds yet unfathomable as sealed wells. “Actually I built it.”
“Why, if you never intended to live here?”
He shrugged again. “I thought I’d build something for my siblings, in case they ever wanted to come back to live in their homeland. So far they haven’t used the place for more than brief vacations.”
So he hadn’t built this place for himself. Or for a future family, something he’d thought he’d never have. Could someone like him change, embrace ties that he’d lived his life rejecting?
But there must be a reason that he’d built this place here.
She tried to find it. “Where you born close by?”
“Actually, I chose this spot because, when I was a boy, this was as far away as possible from where I was born.”
So that was his reason. An emotional one. It pained her that it was negative, but it meant he didn’t operate solely by cerebral coldness and practical responsibility, had impulses like other human beings.
He cast his gaze wide again, yet seemed to focus internally. “Crete, in this area, is only twelve miles wide. My home was on the other side of the island, overlooking the Libyan Sea. I used to cross the island on foot to go to Agios Nikolaos, a tourist town and port east of Heraklion, where I got my first job on the docks. I began to explore the uninhabited areas, until I came across this bay. I would come here to be alone, run up and down the hill the house is now built on for hours before sitting down to eat, if I had any food with me, looking out to sea as the sun set and the stars or moon dawned. From the time I was ten until I was fifteen, I slept under their canopy more than I did at home. When I made my first million, I bought the land. A few years back I finished building the estate.”
So much information, transmitting such heartache and loneliness and hardship, delivered with such conciseness and neutrality. She was dying to learn the specifics of the issues and milestones that had forged him into the man of steel everyone feared, who had no place in his life for anything but takeovers and acquisitions. The man who had acquired a monopoly on her thoughts and desires and was taking over her priorities and future plans.
“Why didn’t you ever become an American citizen?”
He exhaled, still not looking at her. “I saw no reason to.”
“Your siblings are all Americans now.”
Still looking at the horizon as if he could unravel it, he nodded. “I brought them to America when they were young, and they never wanted to be anywhere else. I wanted to be wherever my work was, to owe no allegiance to one place, with nothing to hold me back and no one to consider in any of my actions or the risks I take. Until the past few weeks, I never wanted anything else.”
Then he said no more.
Her heart buzzed inside her chest. With poignancy. With the unbearable crowding of questions. What had he run away from as a boy? Where was his family during those times he’d stayed away from home for nights on end, exposed to the elements, young, vulnerable, alone? Most important, how, just how, had he become the man he was today, with evidently everything against him to begin with?
But he’d told her a lot so far of his own accord. And she would wait for answers until he gifted her with more of his truth.