The Sarantos Secret Baby

Her midnight-sky eyes grew enormous, stormy with an amalgam of tempestuous emotions that buffeted him in turn.

He groaned his plea. “Please, kala mou. Say yes.”

Yes.

That seemed to be the only word Selene could say to Aris anymore.

She’d said it to his irresistible invitation less than twenty-four hours ago.

She’d set things up with Kassandra, told her brothers she was leaving with her for a much-needed vacation as Kassandra went on a fashion tour through Europe. She told them she’d contact them periodically to let them know that she and Alex were all right.

And here she was, already halfway across the world to where he’d whisked her aboard his private jet. Her and her entourage.

Though he’d assured her that his maternal aunt and her family lived on his estate and they’d have plenty of experienced babysitters to attend Alex when needed, she’d wanted to bring Eleni. He’d told her to invite Eleni’s family if she hesitated to leave them behind. It was Selene who’d been hesitant to bring more people, wanting their time together to be as private as possible. But he’d assured her his estate was arranged in such a way that they’d have total privacy even if a hundred people were around. So she’d ended up bringing Eleni and her husband, daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, the older generation seemingly beside themselves for a chance to go back to the “motherland,” and the rest excited to be treated to such an unexpected luxury vacation.

After they’d arrived in Heraklion’s airport, Crete’s capital, Aris himself had flown them to his estate by the sea in an even more impressive state-of-the-art helicopter. They’d landed half a mile from his mansion, and two limos had been waiting to drive them there.

True to his promise, the limo taking the others headed to buildings nestled among olive groves in a layout that made the estate look like a compound with the main building totally inaccessible from any of the satellite ones, leaving her and Alex to arrive at his house in total privacy.

They came to a stop before the three-story edifice built on the highest point of the land, which then rolled gently to the seashore. The house was ensconced within an explosion of dense thickets of palm trees, pines and cypresses. Beyond their lush cordon lay the most exquisite and seemingly endless landscaped, yet deceptively natural-looking, grounds. Within their vivid embrace the stone-and-plaster building sparkled with the same pristine pale gold as the beaches that spread from its verdant perimeters to the Sea of Crete’s waters, the most intense azures and emeralds she’d ever seen.

Selene trembled at the intensity of the stimuli that flooded her, the sensory pleasures cocooning her. From Aris’s nearness, to the breathtaking beauty that encompassed them, to the air that enveloped them in its balmy caress. After the nip of cold in NYC’s April, the Greek climate embodied spring with its warmth and dryness calibrated to perfect comfort, the air breathing a freshness and purity she could only believe had remained unchanged since the time of the ancient Greeks.

Aris led her up thirty-foot-wide stone steps to a Corinthian-columned portico out of the folds of time. She could now estimate that this place covered around seven thousand square feet and was nestled among at least fifty acres of land with a mile-long beachfront. But it wasn’t the size that impacted her, aroused her awe.

She’d lived most of her life in a stately Colonial mansion almost as large, had moved in the circles of those who lived in prodigious homes. But this place was something far more.

With its architecture drawing abundantly yet subtly on ancient Greek themes, Selene felt it siphoning away the strains of the hectic modern life they’d left behind just hours ago. She felt as if it were beckoning them to embrace the tranquility of ancient ways of life. It felt new yet reflected a centuries-old style, was faithful to a millennia-deep culture, catapulting her back to the time of her ancestors. It tugged at her on an elemental level, at the heritage mixed with her blood, but which she’d known only from secondhand accounts, understood only on an intellectual level.

Now, as she walked inside with Aris hugging both her and Alex into the warmth and protection of his body and solicitude, she felt for the first time what it meant to come home.

She sighed with pleasure as the same monumental design greeted her through an interior dominated by unobstructed spaces. There was no pretentiousness, no complex ornamentation or cluttered furniture that served only to flaunt the owner’s wealth and questionable taste. And she had no doubt the perfection was all an embodiment of Aris’s taste, his eye for the workable, the best.

The expansive entrance gave way to an invitingly simple and sprawling living area draped in utility, comfort and soothing sand tones, with a grand stone-clad fireplace connecting the interior and exterior in spatial and visual terms. The two-story ceiling made her feel she could fly if she wanted to, the flood of golden light pouring from the floor-to-ceiling window imbuing her with such serenity and a sense of freedom and providing an unrestrained view of a stunning internal garden and swimming pool.

A robust, sun-weathered and very good-looking couple in their early sixties entered the house behind them. Selene guessed they must be Aris’s aunt Olympia and her husband, Christos. They advanced toward her and Aris with what Selene judged to be more than a little confusion, which deepened when they saw her and Alex and noted Aris containing them within his embrace as if he was afraid they’d evaporate if he loosened his hold.

“Aristedes, you’re really here!” the woman exclaimed in Greek, sparing him a glance and pushing back a lock of still mostly dark hair before fastening her gaze on Alex and Selene with utmost curiosity—and in Selene’s opinion, not much hope that they might really be who they appeared to be to Aris.

“I bet you thought I wouldn’t come…as usual.” Aris spoke in Greek, too, making Selene’s eyes jerk up to him.

She constantly forgot he was Greek, fully, unlike her. He’d never acquired an American citizenship. But his perfect English, one of the many languages he spoke fluently, did bear the stamp of an accent that she’d found deepened when he was tired. And only served to make every word out of his mouth more unbearably sexy.

Aris guided her and Alex to meet the couple halfway, bent and kissed the woman’s cheek before doing the same with the man.

He turned to Selene with such indulgence. “Kala mou, please meet Thia Olympia and Thios Christos.” He turned his eyes to the others. “Please welcome Selene Louvardis and our son, Alexandros. I hope you’ll help me make their stay here unforgettable.”