“I never stop wondering about him, Mama. What would it have been like if you’d been able to marry him. You can’t deny you wanted to marry him. You told me he was the one for you no matter what. Right?”
Alexa moaned inwardly. “That’s true, but it’s also true that I was too young. Honey, you’ve got years to be thinking of getting married.”
“I’m eighteen.”
“Barely.”
“I don’t want to wait!” She was Alexa’s daughter all right, at least the way Alexa used to be. “Please do this for me.”
She patted her arm. “I’ll think about it. Now go to bed. Morning will be here before we know it.”
Her daughter didn’t say anything else and slipped away, hurt by her mother’s unenthusiastic response.
Alexa turned over and buried her wet face in the pillow. Tonight’s conversation with Dimitra had brought back the past with swift, sharp pain. Only two weeks after Nico had left for military service, Alexa’s grandfather Gavril had been made the Greek ambassador in Ottawa, Canada. It wasn’t until they moved there from Nicosia on Cyprus that Alexa discovered she was pregnant.
As Alexa had found out, once you started a partial truth, it lived with you forever.
She’d wanted her daughter to grow up having a respectable background. But she was also desperate to cover her shame and embarrassment over h
er failed relationship at seventeen years of age with a playboy who’d never loved her. With a baby coming, the only thing she could say to people was that something unavoidable had happened that had kept her and Dimitra’s father apart. They’d lost total touch with each other.
It was the same explanation she’d given her daughter when she was old enough to understand.
Alexa prayed it would stop Dimitra from asking too many questions about her father. She also hoped to avoid scandal involving Nico’s prominent family, or scandal for her grandfather who held an important position in the government.
It wasn’t until four years later that Monika Gataki, Alexa’s teenage friend whom she hadn’t heard from in several years, phoned Alexa out of the blue. She made an admission that changed Alexa’s world forever. Monika admitted that she’d been so jealous of Alexa’s relationship with Nico, she’d sent all his letters back unopened.
He’d honestly sent her the letters he’d promised?
The phone call sent her into shock. Alexa couldn’t believe Monika had done something so horrible, so immoral. After four years of guilt, a repentant Monika—who didn’t expect to be forgiven—couldn’t stay quiet any longer.
The devastating revelation meant Alexa and Dimitra could have had a wonderful life with Nico once he’d returned from the military. After getting off the phone, she told her grandparents everything and prayed that it wasn’t too late to tell Nico the truth.
But when her grandfather made inquiries through his private sources to locate Nico, he learned that Nico had recently married a woman from an illustrious family in Athens and was now an executive at Angelis Shipping Lines.
The news that her beloved Nico had recently married changed everything. It made her wonder how long it had taken him to get over her and find another woman to love.
Alexa couldn’t bring herself to tell him about their daughter. Obviously he’d moved on and had found love, something Alexa never expected to find again. It hurt to know that he’d met another woman he cared about enough to marry, but Alexa didn’t want to ruin his chance for happiness. To take vows meant he had embraced a new life. Did she dare disturb the life he was living now?
Could his new marriage survive the fact that he had a daughter? How would he and his wife deal with it? Alexa couldn’t do that to him or to the woman he’d married. As for Dimitra, she’d been a happy, contented child since birth, protected by love and from any hint of scandal or gossip.
Even if Nico were to be told and wanted to see Dimitra, how would her daughter react? Only being four years old, would she be frightened and upset? Or would she love Nico immediately and want to be around the daddy she’d always asked about no matter what?
How would her precious daughter handle visitation when they all lived thousands of miles apart? Her little girl’s life would never be the same. Alexa’s instinct was to protect Dimitra to the death. In the end she decided never to tell father or daughter the truth.
But she did give Dimitra the one little two-by-two photo Alexa had taken of a handsome Nico at nineteen so she’d have something to treasure. She’d also told her he’d gone by the nickname Dino and she’d met him in Greece on vacation before leaving for Canada with her grandparents.
Alexa claimed she’d found it on a shelf in the closet among some things she’d stored. Dimitra kept it like a sacred treasure, making Alexa realize how her daughter hungered for the daddy she’d never known. Dimitra had noticed he had dark hair like her own and that made her happy.
Alexa’s grandparents believed she should seek out Nico and tell him everything. They said he had a right to know he was a father, but they also said it was her decision to make. They hoped she could live with her silence. She’d assured them she could now that she knew Nico was happily married. The knowledge had helped her put her pain and feelings on hold. Her grandparents accepted her decision.
For many years she’d been forced to deal with her guilt and fought not to let it consume her. But recently everything had changed. For one thing, Alexa’s grandmother had died and her grandfather had moved them back to Salonica after retirement.
Once they were settled in the home he’d bought here, Alexa had been watching the news with him. Suddenly a breathtaking picture of a dark-haired Nico Angelis flashed on the screen. He’d just been named CEO of Angelis Shipping Lines and stood with a group of officials as he christened their latest tanker. After nineteen years, the first sight of a grown-up Nico brought Alexa close to a faint.
CHAPTER TWO
NOW THAT THE FAMILY was back in Greece, it was inevitable Alexa would see an important national figure like Nico Angelis on TV. Sure enough the other night the news had shown him among a group of foreign dignitaries discussing a new water route to the east on the Aegean.