“Don’t worry. He cannot help but adore you and he has no reason to hate you.”
She would probably have been more confident of that concept if she were confident in Dimitri’s adoration. But while he was overtly affectionate, complimentary and the charming companion she remembered, he never spoke words of love. He’d never called her his love again either. Not in Greek, not in English or even French which they slipped into frequently, it being the language they had originally used to communicate.
Love words never passed his lips…even in the height of passion.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEOPOLIS PETRONIDES did not look at all like a seventy-one-year-old man who had undergone heart by-pass surgery only a few months ago. Even leaning on a cane for support, he stood commandingly tall in the middle of the spacious Mediterranean-style room. His almost black eyes bore into Alexandra with disconcerting force from below steel-gray brows that matched the hair on his head.
“So this is my new granddaughter, heh?” He put his hand out commandingly. “Come here and greet your family, child.”
Alexandra stepped forward with an assumed air of confidence, knowing to show her fear of his disapproval would be to lose his respect. She put her hands on his shoulders and reached up to kiss his cheek in greeting. He returned the salute with an approving smile before she stepped back.
“She doesn’t look like her pictures,” he said to Dimitri. Then he turned back to Alexandra. “I like you better this way. More natural. No fancy curls and dye jobs in your hair. My Sophia, she never used color on her hair.” His gaze roamed over her face like he was taking inventory. “Eyes a nice hazel, not some impossible green. It suits you.”
She bit back a smile at his blunt speaking. “Thank you. Dimitri thought maybe I was too ugly to support myself modeling any longer.”
Both men spoke at once.
“I did not say—”
“What’s the matter with my grandson?”
The smile broke through. “To be fair, I did look a fright from lack of sleep and morning sickness at the time.”
Mr. Petronides beetled his brows at Dimitri. “Never tell a pregnant woman she looks a fright, even when her appearance would be enough to scare the goats from the hills. You will find yourself sleeping in the guest room and dealing with enough tears to sink a fishing boat, heh?”
“A little piece of wisdom Grandmother taught you?” Dimitri asked.
“My eyes. She taught me.” He thumped his cane on the floor. “She asked me did I think she was fat? Of course she was fat. She was as round as a barrel and could barely walk. Your papa, he weighed ten pounds. She almost died. I said no more babies after that, I can tell you.” Remembered fear clouded the old man’s eyes for a moment. “I told her, yes I thought she’d gotten fat. She threw her dinner at me and then started in on the other dishes on the table. I said I was sorry and ended up with moussaka in my hair for my trouble. I ran for my life.”
Dimitri’s smile made Alexandra feel all gooey inside while she laughed at Mr. Petronides’s story. “And she made you sleep in the guest room?”
He grinned and winked. “She locked our door.”
“So you meekly found another bed for the night, hmm?” Dimitri asked mockingly.
Mr. Petronides laughed. “You are like me. Tell me what you would do if this lovely creature carrying my first great-grandson locked you out of her room.” He waved his cane in Alexandra’s direction.
Remembering a locked door and a very erotic shower, she smiled. No wonder Mr. Petronides had his security man teach Dimitri to pick a lock. For some reason that thought struck her as terribly funny and she started laughing so hard she was almost bent over double.
“So it’s already happened, heh?”
Dimitri didn’t answer, but took her firmly by the wrist and pulled her to a bright red armchair and almost pushed her into it. “The baby can’t be getting enough oxygen with you laughing like a loon,” he reproved her, but his eyes smiled and the corner of his mouth was engagingly tilted.
She took a deep breath and then another, finally managing to stop her mirth.
Mr. Petronides sat across from her, his face creased in a smile. “I did not have a smart grandfather to see to my education. I did not know how to pick a lock, so I threatened to kick in the door. She started crying so loud I could hear her through the thick wood.” He rolled his eyes. “I climbed in through the window and took her by surprise, heh? It was a very satisfactory reunion.”
Alexandra felt herself blush thinking of Dimitri’s similar approach to the same problem.
He sat on the arm of her chair with his hand on her nape. “Are Spiros and Phoebe back in Paris?” he asked his grandfather.
“Yes. They came here first, though. Wanted to tell me what a wonderful new granddaughter I had.”
Alexandra felt her cheeks heating again. She smiled at the older man. “I’m pleased they think so. I was worried they would resent me, but they were very kind as you have been.”
Mr. Petronides waved his hand in an expansive Greek gesture. “It all worked out for the best, heh? I have both my grandsons married, a grandchild on the way and everyone is happy as a clam. Sophia could not have done a better job if she were alive to arrange it all,” he said with obvious satisfaction. “I think I must send prayers of thanks to the Good God above for so many gifts all at once to my family.”
His clear sincerity moved her deeply. She impulsively pushed herself out of the chair and crossed to give him another kiss on the cheek. “Thank you. You are a very nice man.”
He waved her away, but his eyes revealed his pleasure in her words. “Take her upstairs, Dimitrius. Pregnant ladies need their rest, heh?”
Which made her giggle again, being so close to what Dimitri said at least once a day since his return into her life. They were usually followed by his version of a nap, the resemblance to which was loosely based on the fact they went to bed.
Dimitri shook his head and swung her up against his chest. “Come, pethi mou. I believe you need an afternoon nap.”
She went off into gales of laughter at that, but she choked back her amusement to protest. “You can’t carry me up the stairs. I’m too heavy.”
Dimitri’s eyes glittered down at her. “I won’t be accused of implying you’re fat. I learned my lesson from Grandfather’s story.”
“Letting me walk on my own isn’t making any sort of implication,” she asserted.
He was already a third of the way up the stairs. “It is after you said you were too heavy. Either you’re implying you are fat or I am a wimp. I refuse to give credence to either.”
She subsided, secretly thrilled at his macho display of consideration.
He carried her into a bedroom so big that even the extra-long, king-size four-poster bed looked small in the middle of it. Two sets of side-by-side sliding glass doors looked out onto the wrap around terrace and the crystalline-blue sea beyond it and her gaze alighted there first.
“It’s breathtaking, mon cher.”
He let her slide down his body in a very suggestive manner and she turned from the incredible view to smile into his blue eyes. “A nap I think you said?”
“We must make sure you are properly tired,” he informed her as he began working on the removal of her clothes.
Her gaze wandered around the room and was arrested by a familiar Lladro figurine on top of an antique chest of drawers. It was of a young girl in a garden. Dimitri had said the figure reminded him of Alexandra. The last time she’d seen it, it had been in a pile of paper wrapping on the floor of the living room in the Paris apartment.
She only had time to ponder the significance of it being here in Greece for a few moments before Dimitri’s expert ministrations shut down her thinking processes entirely.
Alexandra pulled open yet another drawer in the antique bureau looking for her clothes. So far she had found a drawer full of Dimitri’s socks, one full of silk boxers, another had the plain cotton t-shirts he liked to wear under sweaters or by themselves with jeans when he was relaxing at home. She closed the drawer and bent down to open the last one.
She’d opened it only a couple of inches when strong hands on her arms pulled her into a standing position. “Pethi mou, what are you doing? You should not be bending over like that and opening heavy drawers.”
“I’m just looking for my clothes, but so far all I’ve found are yours.” She looked in disgust at the last open drawer. Dimitri’s stuff again.
A small piece of white caught her eye and she found herself kneeling again to see what it was. She reached in and pulled the plastic stick from the drawer. She stared at it in her hand. He’d saved the pregnancy test.
Turning her head so she could see his face, she asked, “Why did you save it?”
“It was the only proof I had that my baby existed. I could not find you. I did not know where to look, but somewhere my baby was growing in your womb.” Red scorched the chiseled lines of his cheekbones. “It gave me hope.”