“Touché. I’ll stop saying it’s Stavros’s. What else makes me a jerk?”
“Acting as if Theo is a commodity…calling him ‘the Theakis heir.’ He’s a boy. I love my son. I don’t want him to be banished to a sleep-away school,” she said. There was a wealth of love in the way she spoke of Theo.
“Going to school will enable him to form bonds with future leaders. It’s far more than just getting kids out of their parents’ hair.”
“He can do that in other ways. I want?—”
“This isn’t about your wants, Ava.” She glared at him and he held back a smile. She tried to hide all of the fiery passion and temper underneath such a serene surface. But it was always there, waiting to break through.
“I’m afraid it is, Christos. This isn’t going to be one of your dictates. I don’t work for you or any of the Theakis family anymore. And when it comes to Theo, I’m the final authority.”
His gut instinct was to take the boy to the private airport where his jet was waiting and just leave. Once he was back on Mykonos with Theo, she’d have a difficult time seeing the boy again. He’d be charged with kidnapping the boy, but he paid his lawyers a lot of money and they’d figure a way to resolve that.
“You are not thefinal authoritywhen it comes to Theo,” he said.
“Yes, I am. There’s no father listed on the birth certificate.”
“Yes, but I have proof that Theo is a Theakis.” He hated that piece of paper that he’d found in Stavros’s private office four days after his brother’s death. The legal document promised Ava an annuity in return for not making a claim of paternity against Stavros. The very money she’d just mentioned. But the paper did acknowledge that the baby was a Theakis.
“You may have that paper I signed, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to just lie down for this,” she said.
“I don’t need threats. Just understand that Theo and I are leaving for Mykonos in less than ten days.”
“I have one more question,” she said.
He looked at her in the moonlight and tried to be objective. She wasn’tthatattractive. She was pretty, yes, but he couldn’t explain the bone-deep desire he had for her. It went beyond looks. “Yes?”
“Why are you offering marriage?”
Chapter Three
It was tempting to just let Christos make all of the decisions and say he was forcing her into marriage, but she had to be strong for Theo. She wanted to be the kind of parent that hers never had been and that meant standing up for herself now.
“Marriage will legitimize Theo’s birth,” he said, his voice low and husky in the darkening light.
Whenever he spoke of Theo she felt as though she was missing something. “I didn’t think there was still a stigma to that.”
“Maybe here in America there isn’t, but in my father’s eyes there is. And with his legitimate heirs gone…”
Her heart broke at the thought of the deaths of Vennie and Althea. And the fact that Theo would never know his cousins. But she also felt angry that Theo was an afterthought. “If that’s all Theo is to you then I’m afraid we’re done here.”
“He’s not only an heir.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s not?”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want to know what you really feel toward Theo.”
“I like him. I see Stavros in him and I miss my brother.”
She dropped her arms and felt her heart melt a little. She heard the truth in his words. “Okay, so all of that’s why you want Theo. But why are you willing to marry me? I thought you could only marry a Greek woman.”
A hard laugh escaped him. “Times have changed.”
She walked toward him on the cobblestones stopping when only a breath separated them. She wanted…wanted to hear him say that he was offering marriage because he’d finally realized she was the one woman he couldn’t live without. Looking into his obsidian eyes and seeing how guarded he was, she knew that was a fantasy.
“I’m not going to let you keep these barriers between us,” she said, knowing she couldn’t be the kind of wife that Nikki had been. Nikki had let Stavros push her to the background of his life, a place where Nikki was forced to watch her husband carouse with other women. Ava refused to blend quietly into the background as she might have five years ago when she hadn’t been as sure of herself. Before she’d had Theo she might have compromised herself, but not now.
