‘I’M HAPPY YOU spent some time with your son.’ She evidently chose the words with care, her manner crisp. He dipped his head forward, concealing a wolfish smile, before changing the subject.
‘How long were you in Paris for?’ He sat down in his own chair with a lithe athleticism, reminding her of some kind of wild predator, all strength and muscle.
‘A little over a year.’ Her mouth was dry but her water was finished.
‘Would you like some wine?’
She eyed it for a moment before nodding. The moment he’d walked into the room she’d begun to tremble, her insides awash with fierce recognition, as though he were a magnet and she the perfect polar opposite.
When she was thirteen, she’d been badly bullied by a student at college. The girl was seventeen and should have known better but she’d made it her mission to make Amelia’s life hell. Amelia had prided herself on not showing the bully how badly it hurt, nor how upset she’d been with the cruel name-calling. She’d perfected a calm exterior that rarely failed, even when her insides were being shredded to pieces. Her heart had been slamming into her ribs and her pulse filling her ears with a tsunami-like power but, outwardly at least, she’d kept calm.
With Santos, that had been almost impossible and tonight, the first time she’d seen him since they’d slept together, the effort had cost her. He’d strolled into the dining room, in the midst of their happy domesticity, and her body had begun to reverberate, as if recognising its master. She’d found it almost impossible not to look at him during dinner but she hadn’t been able to look—not without staring. It had been a difficult forty minutes. Wine was welcome.
She watched as he poured the rich burgundy liquid into her glass, half-filling it.
‘What is it?’ She lifted it to her nose, inhaling its wooded fragrance.
‘Xinomavro.’ The word had an almost magical-sounding quality. ‘A type of grape varietal that grows well on the island.’
‘You grow it here?’
He made a noise of agreement. ‘It ages well, so each harvest is bottled and stored for at least five years before it’s sent to my homes around the world.’
She stared at him for several seconds and then laughed. ‘I’m sorry, I know you’re probably used to that, with your helicopter and jets and whatever else, but do you have idea how unusual what you just said is?’
His expression showed a hint of amusement. ‘I do.’
She took a sip, her eyes roaming his face, the same flicker of need that had been tormenting her all week flaring to violent life. She’d felt it endlessly—need, desire, impatience and hunger. What they’d started had launched a thousand wants within her. At twenty-four she’d had her first sexual awakening and, far from satisfying her curiosity, it had only served to fill her with renewed curiosity.
‘I can’t imagine growing up with that kind of money,’ she said honestly, thinking back to her own childhood, how marred it had been by intense poverty—how incredible the contrast when she’d started travelling and suddenly they’d been able to afford some non-essentials, and eventually even a few luxuries. As a child, she hadn’t really connected her activities with an improvement in her family’s fortunes; she’d just been grateful things were slightly less strained at home.
‘It was normal.’ He lifted his shoulders, but there was something in his eyes that had her waiting for him to elaborate. After a moment, he did. ‘I was born into money but my father lost almost all of it.’ She leaned forward and beneath the table their knees brushed so she almost jumped out of her seat, jerking them away. His eyes showed a hint of speculation but he reached down and put his hand on her knee, holding them where they were then stroking her flesh so stars began to dance against her eyelids.
‘How?’ Her question was husky, coated by her unmistakable desire. ‘I would have thought that to be impossible, given your wealth.’
‘Bad investments. Messy divorces.’ Santos grimaced.
‘Plural?’
‘Plural indeed. He’s currently on wife number nine, and that marriage looks like it has just about run its course.’
‘Nine?’ she repeated, her eyes wide with disbelief. ‘How in the world...?’
‘He’s a hopeless romantic.’ Santos said the words lightly enough but she felt the undercurrent of irritation, his strong sense of disapproval. ‘Each wife is younger than the last—my current stepmother is my junior by several years.’ He shook his head.
‘And the divorce settlements are expensive?’
‘Were.’ His lips were a grim line. ‘He signs pre-nuptial agreements now, limiting what his wife is entitled to.’
Was it any wonder Santos had proclaimed a distaste for marriage and commitments?
‘But the first few, when I was still a boy and a teenager, were costly. The fortune was divided, and divided again, so it was left to me at eighteen to take over the running of things. My grandfather had taught me from a young age and I enjoyed it—I lived and breathed the business and had a knack for investments. It took me the better part of a decade but I shored up our interests and transferred away from old corporate strategies to more nimble, digitally based options.’
‘Impressive.’ And she meant it. His business acumen must have been brilliant, given what his father had done to their wealth.
‘Not really. It’s just where my talents lie. Did you always want to be a teacher?’
The rapid-fire conversation change had her shaking her head before she could stop herself. ‘No. I took a pretty circuitous route to this occupation, actually.’ The wine was spicy and made her feel warm as she sipped it.
‘Via mathematics at the Académie?’
‘Right.’ She chewed on her lip, wondering at the temptation to speak honestly with him when she made a habit of keeping her background to herself these days. Having been a child prodigy, trotted out for newspapers and television talk shows, had taught her how valuable discretion was. Additionally, most people tended to be intimidated by her, or became too embarrassed to speak honestly, as though she might be critiquing their sentence structure on repeat. Isolation had been part and parcel of her life as a child and teen. For the first time, it played no part in her life; she generally ensured it stayed that way by not mentioning her academic career.
‘What were your other specialities?’ It was as though he knew how close she was to opening up to him and understood exactly the question to ask.
‘Physics.’ She looked at her wine as she spoke. ‘My first degree was in physics. My postgraduate as well.’
‘First degree? How many do you have?’
‘Three.’
His surprise was obvious even without looking at him. She felt it in the way he shifted in his chair and in the tone of his voice. ‘Three?’
Heat flushed her skin. She ran her fingers along the stem of her wine glass.
‘No wonder you never got around to having sex. When in the hell would you have found the time?’
He laughed and she found herself laughing with him, shaking her head a little, but a moment later he was quiet, leaning forward and putting his hand over hers. Sparks flew through her veins, startling her with their intensity.
‘You’ve been teaching for a few years. It doesn’t add up.’
‘No, probably not,’ she drawled, and then words began to drop from her mouth without her conscious decision. ‘I graduated my physics degree at eleven. Maths at thirteen. I got my doctorate at fifteen then decided to study education.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘I would have gone straight to teaching, but I was too young at sixteen, obviously, so spent a few years working with space agencies and doing some research projects.’
He was silent. When she lifted her eyes towards him he was staring at her as though she’d relayed all of this in an alien language.
‘You’re some kind of genius.’
‘I don’t really like the term genius,’ she said after a slight hesitation. ‘It’s often misunderstood, certainly misapplied, and it’s incredibly elitist. I have particular aptitudes. Where your strengths lie in business, mine are in mathematics and science. I was born being able to comprehend it and, because that’s reasonably unusual, was given unbelievable opportunities to develop that predisposition.’
‘Fine, not a genius,’ he said with a shake of his head, his beautiful blue eyes roaming her face. ‘How old were you when your parents realised you were—gifted?’
She sipped her wine, the myth of her brilliance one she’d heard her parents tell in interviews—interviews they’d been paid for, of course—so many times, she could almost repeat it verbatim. ‘I spoke in full sentences at six months of age. That’s unusual, but actually in people with extraordinarily high IQs it’s common.’ She flushed. ‘I appreciate how that must sound—’
‘It sounds like you have a nose on your face, two eyes in your head and an extraordinarily high IQ,’ he interrupted quietly, squeezing her hand. His words, and the simple acceptance of her brain’s abilities as merely something she’d been born with, filled something in her she hadn’t realised had needed filling. She nodded, just a small, involuntary movement.
‘By the time I turned one, I was reading and comprehending full books. At eighteen months, my parents had enrolled me in a monitoring programme that’s a global initiative. Children like I was are watched, tested, bench-marked endlessly. Sometimes, though it’s rare, a child can exhibit early signs of high IQ and then simply plateau. For those that don’t, the programme tracks development and finds placements that will, theoretically, stimulate cognitive skills.’
‘What kind of placements?’
‘I undertook several subjects at Walsh when I was five.’ Amelia named the American Ivy League that had been her first introduction to education. ‘From there, I spent two years in Japan, at the Nagomyaki Institute, and so on and so forth.’
‘Your family moved around a lot, then?’
‘They came with me, at first, but after a year or two they returned to their normal lives and left me at school to study.’
Amelia’s eyes met Santos’s and saw something in their depths that pulled at the fibres of her being.
‘You travelled on your own? To America?’ His frown was harsh, his disapproval obvious.
What could she say? She felt the same way, now that she was an adult. ‘America, Japan, Sweden. I was very capable,’ she offered by way of excusing her parents, even when emotionally she couldn’t really justify their actions. ‘But it was hard,’ she said on a sigh. ‘I was still a child and I think there was an expectation that emotionally I was on par with my intellectual abilities. I wasn’t. I used to get nightmares, terrible nightmares, and all I wanted was my mum.’ She shook her head a little, the maudlin thoughts the last thing she wanted to consider. ‘Anyway...’ she tapered the word off, lifting her shoulders. ‘That’s ancient history.’
He took a drink of his wine, then placed his glass between them. ‘Where do your parents live now?’
Something sharp jabbed her inside. ‘They’re in London.’ She spoke carefully but the words were still rich with emotion.
‘Do you see much of them?’
She swallowed past the lump in her throat. Six years and it was still almost impossible to accept the state of her relationship with her mother and father. ‘We’re estranged.’
‘Because they sent you around the world when you were practically young enough to be in diapers?’
Her expression lifted a little into a tight smile. ‘It’s at their choosing, not mine.’
He was watching her with obvious surprise. ‘Why?’ he prompted eventually, when she didn’t elaborate.
‘Because I opted to become a teacher. And teaching isn’t a particularly well-remunerated or regarded profession—at least, not like being a world-renowned astrophysicist.’
His features showed his lack of comprehension. ‘And so?’
She took a small sip of the wine then pushed the glass away. As delicious as it was, the fact she didn’t drink often meant it was already making her feel a little light-headed and tingly. Or maybe that was Santos’s proximity and having the full force of his attention.
‘And,’ she continued slowly, to give the words less time to hurt. ‘We were really poor. My dad was a welder, and didn’t have a lot of work; Mum wasn’t qualified for anything so took work when she could but, when I came along, they were paid all this money—’
‘By whom?’ he interrupted, business-like as he honed in on the facts of what she was saying.
‘By the programme conducting research, initially—they were paid annually to keep me enrolled. There was a lot of media attention too and they had an agent who found them interviews and the like. Then, colleges were vying for me to attend, and in the end it came down, largely, to how much they were willing to pay. I didn’t know any of this.’ She shook her head, the words a little scathing even when she’d long ago made her peace with the financial aspects of it. That wasn’t what really hurt.
‘That’s exploitative.’
‘They were very poor, Santos.’ She gently defended them.
‘Perhaps; but, while I don’t think that’s necessarily any justification, I was referring to the universities.’
‘Ah.’ She nodded. ‘I got a lot out of it, though. I hated leaving my parents, I hated being away from home, but I loved the learning. I was challenged and pushed for the first time in my life.’
He nodded thoughtfully, easing back in his chair. Her hand was cold compared to the warmth of his touch moments ago. ‘You were their meal ticket.’
She winced at the phrase, but it was accurate. ‘Yes.’
‘And they came to consider your income as theirs?’
Her face paled a little. ‘They managed my income,’ she said softly. ‘When I began to consult at space agencies, any payment was being handled by dad. He took a management fee.’
‘A considerable one?’ Santos’s voice was flattened of emotion, but not enough. She heard the disapproval there and ingrained protective instincts that had her lifting her shoulders. ‘I’m not really sure.’ It wasn’t true. After they’d argued, she’d taken the reins of her own career and had realised how much money had been flowing through her bank account—both in and out. The reality of that had almost broken her.
‘And so at five years of age you sat through courses designed for—what?—sixteen-year-olds?’
He brought the conversation back to her studies. She lifted her brows in silent agreement.
‘You didn’t have any friends your own age?’
She pulled a face. ‘I didn’t have any friends at all,’ she said seriously. ‘What teenager wants to spend time with a child?’
‘But as you got older?’
‘I was still young and, by then, pretty socially awkward. What I had in academic ability I absolutely lacked socially. But eventually, yes, I met someone—a friend. He was the first person to introduce me properly to the Classics, and through them I learned so much about emotion and motivation.’
‘And you’re still friends?’
‘Yes. We’re close.’ She smiled. ‘He’s very important to me.’
She wondered at the slight shift in Santos’s expression to something like speculation. ‘And yet you and he never...?’
‘Never...?’ she prompted, even when she knew what he was asking.
‘You weren’t intimate?’
‘No. Brent’s like my only family now—there’s no way I’d ever do anything to ruin that.’
‘So you might have been interested in him but for the fact you don’t want to confuse friendship with sex?’
She ignored the jangling of nerves in the pit of her stomach. ‘Until I met you, I’d never known anyone I wanted to have sex with.’
His eyes swept shut for a moment, his expression impossible to read.
‘Amelia...’ There was a warning tone in his voice. She ignored it.
‘I’m only being honest.’
‘It shouldn’t have happened.’
She made a noise of frustration. ‘Yeah, well, it did. Are you going to ignore me for the rest of the time I’m here?’
He angled his face away. ‘It’s for the best.’
She stared at him, frustration eating her, but whatever doubts she’d had earlier his determination to box away what had happened, as though it was a simple aberration they could both forget, filled her with a sense of absolute determination.
‘Are you seriously going to sit there and act as though you can just flick a switch and feel nothing for me?’
He turned to face her, his eyes showing impatience. ‘I don’t feel anything for you.’
‘I’m not talking about emotions.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I mean chemistry. Desire. Lust.’
He ground his teeth, his jaw tightening with the movement. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘I want you to look at me. I want you to stop ignoring me and pretending it didn’t happen. I want you to acknowledge that you still want me.’
When he turned to face her, his expression was like granite. ‘It shouldn’t have happened.’ He stood, scraping the chair back.
But she wasn’t ready for him to simply walk away from her.
‘You keep saying it shouldn’t have happened, but I wanted it to! And I’d do it all again. I’d do it again right now, if you weren’t acting like a coward, too scared to face up to this.’
He made a growling noise. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t I? Or is this what it’s like for you? You have sex with a woman and then move on without a backwards glance?’
‘Generally, yes.’
She blanched a little, so he felt a wave of remorse.
‘But we are living in close quarters for the next few weeks and, believe me, ignoring you is best—for both of us.’
Amelia had waited up on purpose but the sight of Santos striding into his home still hit her with an unexpected wave of sensation. Emotions fired through her, and her body responded in kind, as though recognising its master. How she hated that.
‘Amelia?’ He stilled, his eyes sweeping over her in that way he had. ‘What are you doing awake?’
‘I want to talk to you.’
He compressed his lips. ‘We’ve already spoken.’
‘It’s not about us.’ Hurt lanced her, his easy dismissal making her feel like a nuisance. ‘It’s Cameron.’
Wariness crept across his features. He moved towards her, pausing a few feet away, a safe distance, but none the less her senses went into overdrive.
‘Go on.’
‘I get that you’re ignoring me, but if the by-product of that is you ignoring him, not being home the whole time he’s awake, then my being here is completely pointless.’
‘I disagree. You being here is meant to help Cameron adjust to life on the island, life in Greece. You’re doing that.’
‘And what about helping him adjust to you?’ she pushed, her eyes loaded with feeling.
‘I told you, my relationship with my son is not your concern.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ she retorted angrily. ‘How can you say that?’
‘He’s my son.’
‘Not that you’d know it,’ she retorted, then wished she hadn’t when he took a step backward, as though physically reeling from her comment. She took in a breath, needing to remember how to stay calm when calm was the opposite of how she felt.
‘Look, when I’m not here, you’re going to need to know how to be some kind of father to him. You’ve uprooted him, dragged him across to Greece, and for what? So he can be pampered by people he doesn’t know?’
‘He has you.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not enough. You’re his father. And if the reason you’re staying away all day and into the night is because you don’t want to see me then I’ll go away again, Santos.’
‘Don’t threaten me.’
‘I’m not threatening you. I will pack my bags and leave tomorrow unless you promise to start spending time with him.’
‘It’s not that easy!’ His voice was raised and there was something in his features, a sense of panic or disbelief; she couldn’t say. He controlled his temper, lowering his voice. ‘It’s not that easy.’
‘It’s not meant to be easy. He didn’t choose to lose his mother, and you didn’t choose to discover you’re a father to a six-year-old boy, but that’s the situation.’ She held his gaze. ‘If the idea of seeing me is so distasteful to you—like you’re worried I’m going to throw myself at your feet or something—then don’t. Believe me when I tell you, I’ll very happily go to the other side of the island when you’re in the house, if that’s what it takes.’ She glared at him to underscore how serious she was. ‘Just spend time with your son, Santos. He needs to know you.’