“Theo?”
“Yes, Mama?”
“Tell me something so you can open this one.”
He ran his fingers over the colorful pattern on the wrapping paper. “The doctor did a test on me.”
“For allergies?” she asked. “Did they prick your back?”
“Yes and he put something in my mouth and rubbed it on my cheek.”
“What? Why did he do that?” she asked.
Theo shrugged. “I don’t know. Can I open my present?”
“Yes,” Christos said coming into the room.
“What other kind of test did the doctor perform?” she asked.
Christos rubbed the back of his neck and looked away from her and she knew the answer before he said it.
“A paternity test.”
She stared at Christos, unable to really understand what he’d said. “I thought you and I had already come to an understanding on this topic.” Her ears were buzzing.
“We have,” he said.
“They why did you have a test done?”
“Mama, don’t get mad. The test didn’t hurt me.”
She hugged Theo to her side and bent to give him a kiss. Christos had gone behind her back.
This was the second time she’d allowed Christos Theakis to break her heart. When was she going to learn that he couldn’t be trusted?
Chapter Twelve
“It’s okay, sweetie. I…I just thought your father and I had an understanding.”
“What’s an understanding?” Theo asked.
Ava’s eyes never left her son’s. And Christos saw her shrinking away from him as the seconds passed. He’d ordered the test so he could give her what she wanted, bring real trust to their relationship. And he’d decided that he wasn’t going to hear the results.
But now he felt as though he shouldn’t even have made the gesture. He saw the hurt and anger in her. And understood it on one level, but on another…well, he wasn’t the type of man to trust blindly and she had to have known that.
“An agreement. Like the one you and I have where you always tell me the truth no matter what,” Ava said, finally lifting her gaze.
Theo put the box on the couch and stood up, looking up at him with a serious expression that he knew mirrored his own. “Did you lie,Baba?”
How to answer this? “No, Theo, I didn’t.”
“Did I misunderstand you when you said that you trusted me?” Ava asked.
He shook his head. This conversation was complicated and delicate. Not fit for the ears of their four-year-old son. He swept the boy up in his arms and hugged him so tightly that Theo squirmed.His son.
“Will you give your mother and I some privacy?”
“Yes,” Theo said. Christos put him down and Theo ran out of the room, taking the stuffed bear with him.
