“Nonsense. What man could resist playing checkers with a woman dressed to the nines, heh?”
She laughed softly, but took her place at the small square game table in the corner of the living room.
“Does my grandson play with you?”
“He used to, before.”
“Then he will again. That is a good thing, child.”
She nodded with a slight smile, unsure how much it could really signify.
She and the old man had both played their opening gambits when Takis spoke again. “My Helene, God rest her soul, she and I married at the behest of our parents. Did you know?”
“No.” But that explained his insistence on seeing the most positive side of her marriage to Ariston.
On his pressuring Ariston into an arranged marriage to begin with. By all accounts, Takis and Helene had been very happy together.
“We had forty good years together before the cancer took her.” His face suffused with melancholy for a brief moment as he paused with his hand over the checkerboard. “She was the light in my life for all that time.”
Chloe smiled, having no difficulty believing his claim.
Takis made his move and then looked up, his gaze very serious. “Words of love were never spoken between us.”
“But you were so happy.”
“We were.”
“You must have loved her.” Chloe frowned, unable to imagine a man not loving the woman he considered the light of his life.
“Ne.” Yes. He’d agreed.
“But you never told her.” Why wouldn’t he?
“I did not need to. She knew she was my wife, that our marriage vows were sacred to me.”
“You don’t think she minded, that you never said the words?”
“She never said them either, child.”
“But …”
“My son, Balios, now … he has imagined himself in love many times and married almost all of them. Though he has only managed to give me one grandchild.” Takis shook his head at his son’s failings.
Chloe’s mouth twisted with distaste she found difficult to suppress whenever she thought of the selfish man that was Ariston’s father. “I don’t think what Balios calls love is what most of us would associate with that emotion.”
“Perhaps. What I am sure of, child, is that mutual benefit and compatible backgrounds can be the best basis for marriage.” Because he’d experienced it, he believed it.
“Not everyone is as lucky as you and Helene.”
“You and my grandson will be, now that this nonsense of a divorce is behind you.”
“If he’d loved me, I wouldn’t have left him,” she admitted. “And he certainly wouldn’t have divorced me.”
Or had the papers drawn up for her father to discover.
“You think so? His father has divorced every one of the wives he loved.”
It was a valid point.
“You’re sure our marriage will make it this time?”
“Yes.”
“Why so certain?” she asked jokingly, expecting another rendition of the I-was-here-to-witness-the-ceremony theme.
“My grandson has grown up.”
“He was hardly a child before.” At thirty, he’d already been working for Spiridakou & Sons Enterprises for most of his life, having started running errands within the company for his grandfather at the age of twelve. Ariston had been in charge of operations for seven years by the time he divorced her. “I don’t see how two years could have made that much difference.”
“Didn’t it with you?” Takis asked as he kinged one of his pieces.
“Yes,” she had to admit. She’d only today realized how much. She jumped two of his pieces with relish.
“Two years ago you got on a plane and flew out of my grandson’s life without a word. You won’t do that again.”
“No. I won’t.”
“See? You’ve grown up.”
“You’re a very stubborn man, Takis Spiridakou.” And he liked to be right.
Just like his grandson.
“This is not news to me, child. A man never built a life worth having by giving in on everything that mattered to him.”
“I suppose you think that goes for women as well.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I’m not sure what Ariston would do if I turned out to be as stubborn as his beloved pappous,” she said with the first real smile in hours.
“I am terrified to contemplate it, though after the past weeks, I had begun to suspect such already.” Ariston came to stand beside Chloe’s chair and laid his hand on her nape, under the fall of her hair.
That simple touch felt so right.
She looked up at Ariston, trying to read the odd expression on his chiseled features. “I didn’t hear you come in.”