Her breath caught as realisation deepened.She wanted more.
‘Vayle?’
‘Agnes wants to come to Athens.’
She watched his gaze shift to the screen and saw myriad expressions flicker over his chiselled features before his eyes swung back to her and stayed for an eternity.
‘I would like to spend some time alone with my wife and son. When I’m ready to talk, I’ll send my plane for you. Is that agreeable?’ he said with very little give.
Agnes’s eyes widened before she nodded eagerly. ‘Y-yes.Efkharisto.’
His gaze was still locked on Vayle. ‘I was going to show Angelos the sunset. Join us when you’re done.’
She was sure he hadn’t meant it as an order, despite it sounding like that. Because they’d just enjoyed a pleasant, non-confrontational few hours, and an invitation to watch the sunset shouldn’t be an order. She and Agnes spoke for a few more minutes, then she hung up.
The sun was showing off when she stepped out to join them on the terrace. Deep orange flirted with slashes of yellow and red, but she stopped for a moment to take in the more striking sight of her baby cradled in Nelios’s arms.
‘Come here or you’ll miss it,’ he drawled without turning round.
Edging closer, she glanced at his face. Tension from minutes ago remained but, when he looked at her, there was no censure in it. It was almost as if he’d already relegated it to the back of his mind until he needed to deal with it.
‘Can I look forward to our time on Apeiron free from pressure about Agnes?’ he rasped, his eyes returning to the horizon.
Deciding to take a leaf out of his book, she stepped up to the railing and smiled down at Angelos, who had zero interest in the sunset and raptly stared up at his father instead.
‘Yes.’
Nelios nodded and, while he was too formidable to show his relief, she sensed it as he gazed down at his son and the cornerof his mouth twitched. ‘It seems beauty is lost on him. For now at least.’
‘Hmm, maybe not entirely,’ she murmured before she could stop herself.
His gaze transferred to her, his eyes glinting.
Then, wrapping his free arm around her to draw her closer, they stopped speaking entirely and simply basked in the moment.
Touching is not forbidden.
As glaring slippery slopes went, this one came with flashing neon lights so bright, they might have been seen from space. But could she push the warning away long enough to rationalise it or remember just why not touching Nelios was the safest option? Becauseheseemed to have zero qualms about touching her after their heated kiss in the hotel room.
He touched her back as he guided her onto the plane bright and early the next morning. And as he offered her a segment of the juicy clementine she’d thought he was peeling for himself right until he held it out to her, his thumb brushing her lower lip when she accepted, heart lurching wildly.
And then there was Angelos’s feeding times. Repeatedly Nelios asked if she minded him staying. She always said no, she didn’t. She wasn’t ashamed of breastfeeding her son in public or wherever his need demanded, so it wasn’t what caused the relentless turbulence inside her. It was the possessive hunger in Nelios’s eyes, the eagerness to learn everything he could about his son. To record everything, given he’d missed the three months since Angelos was born.
It was as if she’d been given the floor to wax lyrical about her favourite subject on earth to an ardent audience of one. If this was a ploy on his part to gain some sort of leverage in thismarriage, then she had to applaud him. He was succeeding hand over fist.
And that was even before the small plane they’d boarded from Italy touched down on a narrow strip of runway on a jewelled island in the middle of the Aegean.
Between what she saw on the internet, her brief jaunt as a stowaway-turned-tourist in Buenos Aires and living in London, one of most cosmopolitan cities on the planet, Vayle thought she couldn’t be stunned speechless by anywhere.
She was now. Apeiron was aptly named for its shape that followed an almost perfect infinity sign. The villa followed the outer eastward curve that faced a rolling vista of green bordering white sandy beaches to the pinched middle of the island. The westward curve was much craggier, full of trees, orchards, shallow and steep brown hills and even a tiny church poised on top of a gentle promontory, alongside smaller clusters of villas and a smattering of goats and sheep. It was a place she could see Angelos exploring to his heart’s content when he was older.
Altogether, it was less than a kilometre across at its furthest point, but she felt as though it had everything a family needed. A proper family, not one cobbled together by a dozen pieces of paper, signed and witnessed by sharply suited men in a hotel room. That squeeze in her chest signalling the ever-deepening yearning arrived and stayed all through the tour, Nelios escorting them to the fully decked-out nursery that held everything a treasured baby boy would need.
‘Is this all right?’ Nelios asked, his rapt gaze flicking between his son and her.
Her heart full, Vayle nodded. ‘More than. Thank you.’ And, if there was the shadow of a crumb of envy that yearned for some of that attention, well, she kept that disgraceful notion to herself.
She spun away to eye the two doors leading off opposite sides of the nursery.
