SAM watched in disbelief as her sisters and her tough-as-nails brothers-in-law went into the house.
“We want to help you,” Carin had said. Amanda had blinked back tears. And when Demetrios appeared, Rafe and Nick made it sound as if they’d never let him get anywhere near her.
Instead, they’d disappeared. Even her mother had walked away.
Wonderful. The very people who’d all but pushed her into Demetrios Karas’s arms had abandoned her. She hadn’t been able to hear what they were saying up on the deck, but everyone’s body language had been simple enough to read. Her mother was upset, her sisters were frantic, their husbands were infuriated…and Demetrios had gotten his way. It would have been hard to believe if she hadn’t seen what he was like when he wanted something.
When it came to displays of bad temper and arrogant, pigheaded stubbornness, he’d always be the winner.
Now he was coming down the wide wooden steps, taking his time, looking macho and irate.
“Sam,” he said.
His voice was soft, a whisper of smoke in contrast to the banked anger in his eyes.
“Don’t run, Sam. I’m warning you. I have no intention of letting you get away this time.”
Don’t run? Was that a new command, a variation on “stay”? Sam lifted her chin. He was right, she’d been going to run, though not for whatever reasons his self-conceit would probably dredge up but the choice was hers, not his.
She folded her arms, watched as he came down the last step and started towards her. She’d been stunned to see him but now that the shock was over, she was sure she knew the reason he’d come after her. Women didn’t slip out of Demetrios Karas’s bed and steal away in the middle of the night. Maybe it was a good thing he was here. She hadn’t stolen away; she’d simply left him. There was a difference, and he needed to know it…
But he didn’t need to know she was pregnant. He mustn’t know she was pregnant! Sam felt a stab of panic. In the surprise of the last minutes, she’d forgotten all about that. There were changes in her body, ones she’d finally let herself see—see and love, because her baby had gone from being a nonentity to a new life she longed for.
He stopped a few feet from her and folded his arms. Sam dragged in a breath. Would her baby look like its father? Would it have his eyes? His dark hair? Would looking at her child always remind her of how deeply she’d loved Demetrios?
It was stupid to think about that now. Besides, it wasn’t true. She’d only imagined she loved him. What woman in her right mind would love a man like him? All she had to do was look at that infamous scowl to know that there was nothing the least bit lovable about him.
And even though she felt as if his eyes were burning holes in her, he’d never see that she was pregnant. She was wearing an enormous old T-shirt, a relic of her university days, that hung as shapeless as a tent to her knees. Nobody who looked at her could possibly—
“Thee mou,” Demetrios whispered. “You are with child!”
Sam didn’t hesitate. She turned and ran. He was right behind her.
“Sam? Sam, stop!”
She ran harder.
“Sam!” She could hear the whiplash of anger in the way he called out her name. “Samantha, are you crazy? You are pregnant. Pregnant women should not run.”
She raced through the garden, towards the fountain that stood at its hidden heart.
“Are you deaf?” he roared, right on her heels. “I am ordering you to stop!”
That’s it, she thought, that was absolutely, positively it. She spun towards him, her blood hot with fury and frustration.
“Sam,” he said, and she did what she had so often longed to do, raised her hand and slapped his face.
“Damn you, Demetrios,” she said…except, to her horror, she didn’t say it. She sobbed it. She was weeping, tears spilling from her eyes like rain from the skies that day, all those months ago, when she’d been stupid enough to let him drag her into his life.
“Kitten,” he whispered, and then she was in his arms and he was kissing her.
“Go away.” She put her arms around his neck and clung to him. “Go back to Greece,” she sobbed between kisses. “Get out of my life.”
“I cannot do that, gataki.” He cupped her face in his hands. He was smiling, she saw, but his eyes were almost as wet as hers. “I am your life, just as you are mine.”
“You see?” Sam pressed a kiss to his mouth. “You always think you know what I’m thinking. And you don’t. How could you possibly know how much—how much—”
“I love you,” he said softly. “That is how I know. I adore you, kitten. Se latrévo. I love you more than words can ever say.” He drew back, just enough so he could lay his hand gently over her belly. “And I will love this child with all my heart, and all the children you and I will have together.”
Sam gave a broken little laugh. “There you go, planning my life for me.”
“No,” he said gruffly, “never that.”
“Demetrios.” She reached up and clasped his wrists. “I was teasing you.”
“And I am serious, sweetheart. I will never make you feel as if your life is mine to control.” He took a deep breath, then expelled it. “My father created a gilded cage for my mother but it was a cage, nevertheless. I will not do that to you. I have a home in New York, Sam. Whenever you wish, we will fly there. If you want to work, you will do so. I love you. I need you. But I do not wish to own you. Do you see?”
“Yes,” she said, “oh yes, my love, I do. I see that you are my heart, my soul, my life.”
Demetrios gathered her close and kissed her again. Sam sighed and leaned back in his arms.
“I didn’t know about the baby when I left you,” she said softly. “Although, to be honest, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I’d have gone anyway. I couldn’t have stayed, not when I thought you wanted to end things between us.”
“I was such a fool, kalóz mou. I should have told you that I loved you. Instead, I hurt us both by trying to convince myself that I didn’t.”
“Samantha?” a man shouted. “Where are you?”
Sam groaned. “It’s Nick.”
“Sam,” another man yelled. “Answer us. Where are you? Are you all right?”
“And that’s Rafe.” Sam smiled at Demetrios. “They probably figured we’ve murdered each other by now.”
“Sam?” a third voice joined in. “Damnation, girl, you let us know if you’re all right, you hear?”
“Oh, hell. Jonas, too.” She sighed as Demetrios leaned his forehead against hers. “They’re going to find us in a couple of minutes.”
“That’s good.” Demetrios cleared his throat. “I wish to speak with Jonas. And with Marta.”
Sam looked up at him in surprise. “Why?”
“I am Greek,” he said, as if that explained everything.
Her eyebrows lifted. “What a surprise,” she said sweetly.
“I am Greek and old world, as you once pointed out. And I wish to ask your mother and stepfather for your hand in marriage.”
“Well,” she said softly, eyes bright with love, “in that case, I think you might keep in mind that I am American and new world, and you’d better ask me first.”
He knew she was teasing him, that she had already given her answer with her kisses and her tears, but he wanted this moment to be one they would remember all their lives, how they’d admitted what was in their hearts in a garden filled with flowers while water spilled like soft rain from a fountain and filled the air with its music.
Demetrios dropped to one knee and clasped Sam’s hand.
“Samantha. I love you more than life itself. I’ll be the best husband I can be, if you will marry me and share my life.”
Tears welled in Sam’s eyes and slipped down her cheeks. “Yes. Oh, yes, Demetrios. I will.”
He rose just as footsteps pounded down the path. Jonas Baron burst into the clearing with his wife, his stepdaughters and their husbands on his heels.
“There you are,” he yelled, “you lily-livered, no-account, no-good Greek son of a—”
“Son-in-law,” Marta said, putting her hand on her husband’s arm. “Isn’t that what you were going to say, Jonas?”
Jonas looked at the man who stood with his arm around Sam’s waist. He was big and hard-looking. And smitten, Jonas thought with delight. Absolutely, totally smitten.
“We have met before,” Demetrios said. He stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Perhaps you recall…”
Smitten and nervous, too. Jonas almost cackled with delight.
“Mr. Baron. Jonas. I ask for the hand of your stepdaughter. I love her with all my heart, and she loves me. We very much want your blessing. And yours, of course,” he said, flashing a smile at Marta, but steely determination replaced the smile in an instant. “But I should tell you both that if you refuse me the right to marry Sam, I’m going to marry her anyway.”
Marta laughed. Jonas grinned, put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and held out his hand to Demetrios.
“Son,” he said, “welcome to the family.”
* * *
The four Baron brothers had been tossed out of the house by their stepmother.
“Out, all of you,” Marta had said. “You’re just in the way here. Go on, take a walk or something until it’s time for the ceremony.”
Travis, Slade, Gage and Tyler had shot each other looks and made a quick break for the door. It wasn’t often a man got away from all the hubbub that went with what their wives insisted on calling a simple little home wedding at Espada.
On the way through the kitchen, they stopped just long enough to grab a couple of six-packs…and to collect three other lost-looking males. Their cousin, Gray, looked as if he was trying to fade into the wall along with Nick and Rafe.
“What are you guys doing in here?” Tyler said in surprise.
“Trying to keep from being caught in the stampede,” Rafe muttered.
“Trying to avoid your old man,” Gray said bluntly. “I don’t think Jonas and I have said more than hello and goodbye in the last ten years but every time I turned around today, there he was.”
Slade grinned. “He wants something from you. That’s the old here-I-am and by god, there-you-are routine he’s so good at.”
“Well, that’s the problem. ‘You want to talk to me, Jonas?’ I finally said. And he got this look on his face as if I were crazy. ‘What the hell makes you think so?’ he said, and wandered away.”
“So? Problem solved.”
“Yeah.” Gray sighed. “Except, he looks like a man with something on his mind…” He shook his head and reached for a six-pack. “How about we get out of here for a while?”
Tyler clapped his cousin on the back. “The man’s a genius,” he said. “Is it any wonder he’s a big-shot New York lawyer?”
The little group laughed, went out the back door, almost ran over a pair of gardeners giving a last-minute manicure to some shrubs and made a beeline for the barn.
“We used to hold meetings here, when we were kids,” Travis said. “Well, Slade and Gage and I did. Nobody ever found us.” He looked from one man to the other. They were all wearing tuxes, white shirts with ruffles and the pained expressions of men who knew they looked foolish and couldn’t do a damn thing about it. “Anybody worried about gettin’ dirt on these monkey suits?” He waited, then chuckled. “I didn’t think so.”
Moments later, the men of the Baron clan were sitting in the old hayloft, their backs against the planked walls as they soothed their parched throats with gulps of cold beer.
“Man,” Slade said, “you’d think women would get tired of these things.”
“Weddings?” Gage sighed. “Never.”
“He’s right,” Travis added. “Women love all this stuff. The flowers. The candles. The music. The fuss. And I’ll be damned if I can understand the reason.”
“The reason,” Tyler said smugly, “is because they’re women.” His brothers looked at him. So did Nick, Rafe and Gray. “Well, it’s the truth. There are X chromosomes, and Y chromosomes, and—”
“And you can tell the ones that are X’s,” Gray offered, “because they’re dressed in pink.”
“Definitely dressed in pink.” Nick said solemnly. “Yeah, I read about that new scientific discovery.”
They laughed, sighed, drank more beer. Rafe cleared his throat.
“The man’s okay, you know.”
They all knew what he meant and they all nodded.
“He’d better be,” Slade said, after a minute. “Otherwise, we’ll set him straight.”
“You mean, Sam’ll set him straight,” Gage said.
The men chuckled.
“She’s one tough piece of work,” Tyler said, and smiled. “Like my Caitlin.”
“Like all of them,” Travis said. “Baron men don’t marry weak women.”
“And Brewster women don’t marry weak men.”
They mulled that over, looked at Gray who raised his hands as if to say they could count him out. Everybody laughed again, and then Nick raised his beer bottle in salute.
“Here’s to Demetrios. All he needed was a good woman to straighten him out.”
Bottle clinked gently against bottle. “Yeah,” Slade said lazily, “well, some men are like that, I guess.”
Nobody made eye contact. Then someone snickered. Seconds later, they were all laughing. They went on laughing until they heard Caitlin calling from below.
“Club meeting’s over,” she yelled. “Come on down.”
“You wanna come up?” Travis yelled back. “There’s some beer left, and you’re an honorary Los Lobos member.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Too little, too late.” But her voice had a smile in it that made the men smile, too. “Actually, I’d love to, but they’re about to start.” She stepped back as the men came down the ladder. “Ushers? Best man? Places, gentlemen. It’s time.”
* * *
It was time, Demetrios thought as he waited at the altar, time for his new life to start.
He and Sam had talked about eloping, just flying to Las Vegas and getting married, but Marta wanted to make her last unmarried daughter a wedding, a real one, she said. Finally Sam said well, maybe a wedding with flowers and music and things—maybe that would be nice. Didn’t Demetrios think it would?
What he’d thought was that he’d have walked through fire, if it made her happy, so he’d smiled and said yes, sure, the idea of putting on a silly suit and sharing the most wonderful moment of his life with a bunch of strangers was a great idea. Well, of course, he hadn’t said any of that except for the “yes” part…
“Here she comes,” Nick said softly.
Demetrios looked up and felt his heart turn over.
Sam, his beautiful Sam, was floating towards him on her stepfather’s arm, an exquisite vision in white lace. Her hair was gathered high on her head in a loose knot ringed with tiny white and yellow roses. Her gown had a low neckline and tiny sleeves he’d heard her sisters refer to as caps before Marta had noticed he was in the room and shushed them to silence. The skirt was long and slender, and his gaze lingered on the beautiful little rounding of her belly, where his child lay in unborn slumber.
Jonas brought her to the altar, kissed her cheek and went to sit down beside Marta in the first row of white chairs that had been arranged in the garden.
“Hello,” she said softly, smiling up at Demetrios.
He smiled back. “Hello, sweetheart,” he whispered and though he knew he wasn’t supposed to do it, he bent his head and brushed his bride’s soft mouth with his.
“I love you, gataki,” he murmured. “With all of my heart. And I will love you forever.”
Tears of joy glittered in Samantha’s eyes. “Forever,” she whispered.
Moments later, they were husband and wife.
* * * * *