Husband By Request

He felt her shiver. It traveled the length of his body.

“Olympia didn’t mean any harm.”

Olympia?

“Apparently she and your sister had someone picked out for you long before I came on the scene. A dark-haired beauty from a good Greek family. We laughed ab

out the shock it must have given your parents when you told them you were going to marry me. I agreed with her, and that’s all there was to it. Promise me you won’t say anything to her. I would be devastated if you did.”

He buried his face in her neck, where her scent was the sweetest. “I give you my word.”

“Thank you. I’m sure that if your sister were alive she would have said the same thing to me and we would’ve had a good laugh too. You know that old adage about life happening to you when you have other plans? That premise certainly was true of you and me. If I hadn’t discovered the cancer, I would have finished college at NYU. No doubt I would have ended up marrying a New Yorker. And you, my love, would have married someone your family had envisioned for you.”

“No one decides my life for me.”

“I didn’t mean that literally. If I had a brother I’m sure I would see someone and say, ‘That’s the woman he should marry.’ It’s human nature. Haven’t you ever met a woman you thought might be right for Paul?”

Andreas chuckled. “Touché. You’ve made your point.”

“Good.”

Irresistibly drawn to her mouth, he shoved certain disturbing thoughts to the back of his mind and began kissing her. She gave him an electrifying response, unleashing his passion with such overwhelming force he lost all sense of time and place.

Hours later, when they were temporarily sated, she lay wrapped in his arms with her back against his chest. “Darling? Do you realize we’ve never made love on this bed before?”

There had been so many firsts since she’d come back into his life, he was dizzy from the excitement.

“I know another place we need to christen,” he teased, biting her ear.

“So do I, but taking a shower together means getting out of bed. Right now I’m much too content to budge.”

His breath caught. “In the morning, then.”

“It’s a date.”

Andreas crushed her against him, so happy he was terrified. “Tell me about these plans that don’t require going into an office every day.”

She turned so she was facing him. “I’m really excited about it, but you might not feel the same way. So if you have reservations, then I’ll propose plan B.”

Everything she said and did charmed him to his very core. “Forget B. I want to hear A.”

“Spoken like a true Stamatakis.” Her eyes shone like purple stars.

“Go on,” he urged, kissing the tip of her well-shaped nose.

“It’s a given I want to become fluent in Greek, so I’m planning to hire a tutor. Besides that, here’s my idea. Prior to my mastectomy, a woman my age, who was a volunteer from the local cancer institute, came to see me—before the operation.”

At the mention of her cancer he had to steel himself not to cringe.

“She’d had the same procedure done and explained her experience. I had so many questions only she could answer. It was more helpful than you will ever know. What I’d like to do is gather some other cancer survivors together under the umbrella of a Stamatakis Cancer Foundation. It would be a volunteer group that would eventually visit hospitals and clinics all over Greece, doing the same job that woman did for me. Educating me took away a lot of my fear. I’d like to do that for other women facing the same challenge.”

Andreas lay back against the pillow, fighting the urge to tell her he didn’t want to think about her cancer. He wanted it all to go away. But his beautiful, earnest wife felt so passionately about it he had no choice but to listen until she was through.

“One of the projects we could do to raise cancer awareness and save lives is to sponsor a fun run. You know—the kind of marathon I ran on Zakynthos. But only cancer survivors would be the ones running. We could hold them all over Greece. Maybe once every two or three months. I don’t know yet. It would take a lot of planning, and the cooperation of local government officials, but I think it would be exciting—and most of all beneficial.”

She leaned on his chest and cupped his temples with her hands. “I know you hate the mere mention of the word. All loved ones do. But if we face up to it and fight it together our marriage will be stronger for it. Naturally this isn’t all going to happen overnight. I’ll work on it slowly, around your schedule. But if you’d rather I didn’t do that, then I’ve been thinking of finishing college here. I don’t know how many of my classes at NYU will transfer, but I do know I want to get my degree.”

A tight band had constricted his breathing. He reached for her hands and kissed the tips of her fingers. “Let me sleep on it.”