Actually they had all kinds of surprises for Theo. Ava had bought him a stuffed bear in a shop in Paris and Christos had gone wild in another toy store, buying all kinds of things.
“What is it?” Theo asked, jumping from foot-to-foot when Christos put him down.
“I’m not sure we should give it to him,” Christos said, looking very intent and serious.
Ava hid a smile behind her hand, enjoying her son and his father. Just enjoying everything that this moment was bringing her.
“Please,Baba.”
“Were you a good boy?” Christos asked.
The two of them joked around as Christos carried Theo up to the house. Ava paused there on the circle drive of the large, luxurious house and for a minute flashed back to the small, single-wide mobile home she’d grown up in. When she’d met Christos, she’d been pretending her past didn’t exist and had built a world based on lies. But now she saw that some of the things she’d told herself weren’t lies. Christoswasa good man. The kind of man she could safely give her heart to.
She loved him. Heck, she’d always loved him, and acknowledged to herself that she’d never stopped. But now that love felt bigger, more encompassing than it had before, because this time she wasn’t his secret lover.
She glanced down at her left hand and the large platinum and diamond band there. She was his wife.
She’d just caught up to them near the entrance of the house when Ari’s Bentley pulled up.
“I need to talk to you privately, Christos,” Ari said through the car’s open window.
“Can it wait?”
Ava guessed his father wanted to talk about Christos’s dismissal of the nanny Ari had hired. He’d told her about that on the way home.
“No.”
Christos handed her the bag with Theo’s gifts in it. “Why don’t you go inside with Theo and show him his surprises?”
“Yes, I will.”
Christos brushed a light kiss against her lips and then nudged her toward the stairs with a discreet push on her backside. Theo held her hand as they entered the house.
“What did you get me?”
She smiled at the eagerness in his voice and drew him into one of the open rooms on the first floor. There were three long couches and some armchairs in the room.
She sat down on one of the couches and slowly opened the bag, drawing out one of the gifts. “First you have to tell me one new thing you did while I was gone.”
He climbed up on the couch next to her and put the present in his lap. “I went on a speedboat ride with Uncle Gui.”
“Was it fun?” she asked, hearing the enthusiasm in Theo’s voice. He liked having so many men in his life, and their love of boats seemed to be conquering Theo’s fear of water.
Theo’s eyes sparkled. “Yes, it was. We went so fast nothing could catch us. Can I open this now?”
She nodded and he tore the wrapping off the gift box. He opened the lid and pulled out the stuffed bear she’d chosen for him.
“Thank you, Mama,” he said, hugging the bear to his chest and leaning over to give her a kiss.
“What are you going to call him?”
“Hmm…Fluffy.”
“Fluffy it is. Are you ready for another present?”
He nodded. She drew out another package and handed it to him. “Tell me something else you did while I was gone.”
He took the long box and held it with two hands. She could tell his attention wasn’t on the question she asked but on trying to figure out what was in the box. She knew he was going to love this present. It was Spy Gear. The play set contained everything Theo would need when he pretended to be a bodyguard.
