“Because I’m not perfect,” Theo said.
“Yes, you are,” Ava said.
“Your mother is right. To us you are perfect as you are. Don’t try to hide something that’s a part of you, especially if it can hurt you.”
Theo nodded and Christos lifted the boy into his arms. Ava stood next to them, feeling the bond starting to form between father and son. She felt a rekindling of the love she’d always felt for Christos, only this time it was a little deeper than before.
Christos insistedon driving Ava and Theo back to their house, Antonio following with Ava’s car. Antonio waited with Christos’s vehicle, and Christos joined Ava as she settled the boy into bed. Their house was small, but very comfortable and welcoming. The living room was dominated by bookcases along one wall and a large chair that had a colorful blanket draped over the back of it and a large overstuffed pillow on it.
The walls were covered in pictures of Theo from birth until, if he wasn’t mistaken, a few weeks ago. There were Christmases chronicled with visits to Santa.
He walked slowly down the hall looking at the pictures of the boy’s life. He felt cheated by his own hand. Theo was his nephew; he should have stayed involved with him. He should have been there at the boy’s christening, which was documented by photos and a certificate on the wall.
Of course, she’d had the boy baptized in the Roman Catholic Church instead of Greek Orthodox. His father would have a fit.
“Thanks for seeing us home,” Ava said as she came into the hallway and partially closed the door to Theo’s room.
“You’re welcome. How bad is the asthma?”
“They don’t know. He might outgrow it.”
“I have it.”
“What?”
“I know, shocking, isn’t it? It runs in the family. My mother’s side.” His condition wasn’t something he advertised and thanks to medication he kept it under control, but when he’d been a child it hadn’t made his life easier. Hard to believe it now, but he’d been a pudgy, wheezing kid.
“Yes,” she said. “I had no idea. You seem so fit.”
“Fit?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Strangely enough, I do. Swimming is good for the lungs. I’ll show him some of the things I do to control it.”
She nibbled on her lower lip, which brought to focus another reason he’d come back to her place. He wanted her. The arousal that had burned through him earlier in his gardens was back.
“Theo’s afraid of water.”
“What? The Theakis are of the sea.”
She shrugged. Somehow she doubted that was going to make Theo realize that he should love water. “I don’t know. I’ve tried to get him into the pool here, and in the ocean, and he won’t do it.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Christos said.
As they walked down her hall of memories, he felt more the outsider than he had before. But that was nothing new. His entire life he’d been out of step with the rest of the world. Well, the world that his father had created.
“Do you have anything to drink?” he asked.
“Sure, come on in the kitchen,” she said, leading the way into the bright room. There was a booster seat on one ladderback chair. He glanced around and saw the life she’d created for herself and Theo.
This was what he’d always imagined her life to be. This cozy, homey little place. And he knew he didn’t fit in with it. He didn’t want to. He had long ago made his peace with the life he had.
Right. Even with Stavros gone and him stepping up at Theakis Shipping, he still felt like an outsider. Like the spare heir that he’d always been to his father.
He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the expectations of everyone weighing on him.
“I’ve got a bottle of pinot grigio that might be a little old, or soda, or light beer.”
