She didn’t know what to say. She could tell he meant the words and that did something to her insides, tipping over a heart that had teetered on the precipice of love straight into its warm, sweet depths. Because as much as she’d learned he did not know about her, he had just proven he did know something about the woman she was under the skin and behind the image of a wealthy man’s daughter.
“Private schooling and deportment training can do wonders,” she said, trying to laugh it off while her heart contracted and expanded with her newly acknowledged feelings until she was dizzy with it.
“You were born with these traits, they are not something a person can learn.”
She didn’t agree. “You learned.”
“I am far from compassionate and kind.”
She’d seen the way he treated his mother. “I don’t agree, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“What then?”
“How to fit the society we move in.” She indicated the rest of the restaurant with a wave of her hand.
“But I do not fit.”
“You do.”
And yet, in a way he was right. He wore his suit, which was by a top designer and handmade, like he’d been born to it, but there was an aura of power around him that came from hard work and determination, not being born to wealth. His slight Greek accent. His direct way of speaking. They all spoke of a man not born to their world, but made.
But then she didn’t fit her world perfectly, either. All her little idiosyncrasies stemmed from the inside and only showed themselves on close inspection. In that they were alike.
“Tell me about your childhood.”
His eyes widened. “Why?”
“I want to know.”
His jaw hardened. “And if I do not want to tell you?”
“I’ll have you investigated.” She grinned at his shocked expression.
And then he laughed and she fell just a little harder as she laughed with him.
“I was born in Greece.”
“I knew that,” she teased.
“We lived there, with my grandfather, until I was ten.”
“We?”
“My mother, she was his only child, and I.”
“Where was your father?”
“Gone.”
A day ago, she would have respected the boundaries she sensed he’d erected, but a day ago, he had not asked her to marry him. “What do you mean, gone?”
“He was an American tourist. On the island for only a couple of days. By the time my mother realized she was pregnant, he was long gone. She did not even know his last name.” Sandor did not sound condemning…of his mother at least.
“That must have been very difficult for her.”
“Yes. But it could have been worse. My grandfather did not kick her out of the family home despite the shame her condition brought him. He supported her and me in the years that followed.”
At what cost though? Definitely Sandor had not come out of that home unscathed.
“What about your grandmother?”
“She had died the year before. Grandfather often said that it was a lucky thing, for the shame would have killed her.”
“He sounds like he was a harsh man.”
“He was. In some ways. But he loved my mother and he took care of her even though what had happened went against his entire belief system.”
“She was young.” Hera Christofides had to have been a teenager when she had Sandor because she barely looked forty now. She had to be older than that, but Ellie was guessing it wasn’t by much.
“She was sixteen. Grandfather forgave her, but he never forgave the man who made her pregnant.”
“Theonly a man without honor would take the virginity of a woman he’s not married to, thing?”
“Yes. And that man’s blood runs in my veins.”
She wondered if that was something else his grandfather had maintained, but she didn’t ask. She merely said, “You can’t know he wouldn’t have stood by her, if he’d known about you, I mean.”
“He knew she was a virgin, but he left her. He never returned to check on her. He did not care.”
“Maybe. He probably wasn’t much older than she was. There might have been reasons for why he didn’t come back.”
“Yes. Those reasons were that hewas an irresponsible teenager himself who should have kept his pants zipped if he wasn’t prepared to deal with the aftermath.”
“Like you said, he was a teenager. It probably never occurred to him that there even was an aftermath.”
“Ignorance does not change the outcome.”