Claimed For The Greek's Child

Where’s my daddy? Didn’t Daddy want me? Did he not love me?

His eyes darkened impossibly as she made him wait for her answer.

‘Yes. She’s your daughter.’

‘How?’ he bit out. ‘We were careful. Every single time. We were careful.’

It was a question she had asked herself time and time again during her pregnancy. Forcing herself to relive that night, the intimacies they’d shared, trying to find the exact moment that their daughter had been conceived.

‘Protection fails sometimes,’ she said, echoing the words of the female doctor who had looked at her with pity.

Anna followed him out into the hallway, ensuring Amalia’s door stayed open just an inch.

He spun round to face her.

‘How could you? How could you keep this from me?’

This was the argument that she’d expected. The one she’d rehearsed in the dead of night when she’d known, somehow, that he would return and come to claim his child. This was the reason that she had poured hours and months into writing letters—documenting her thoughts, experiences, feelings from the day Amalia was born. Letters that had never been sent, nor read by the intended recipient, because they had been addressed to the father of her child. And this man? This man she did not know.

‘You left my bed and within hours were arrested for massive financial fraud. How could I subject the precious child I carried to a man I barely knew and who was in prison within months?’

‘I was wrongfully imprisoned,’ he bit out.

‘I didn’t know that at the time! And the moment I did find out, I was...’ She actually growled her frustration. ‘You know what I was told.’ She tried to take a calming breath. ‘Look, let’s talk about this in the morning. We both need sleep, or at least I certainly do.’ She stopped short of adding ‘please’ to the sentence. Instinctively she knew that any sign of weakness would be like blood in the water to a shark. She waited, her breath held, until the almost imperceptible nod of his head signalled his agreement.

Anna led Dimitri down the hallway to a room. Admittedly it was the smallest room she had to offer, but right now Anna was going to take any small victory she could. Did it make her petty? Perhaps. But she was too tired to care.

Only she hadn’t been prepared for the sight of his large build in the small room. She hadn’t braced herself for the memories that rushed to greet her of the last time he’d spent the night under this roof.

He’d swept into her life when she had been at her lowest, when she had felt helpless against the failings of both her parents. When all she’d wanted was something for herself. Just for once. One night that wasn’t about being responsible or putting someone else’s needs above her own.

She’d told herself that she would stop at one drink. She’d told herself she’d stop at one kiss, one touch...and after he’d given her pleasure she had never imagined possible she’d told herself she only wanted one night. But that had been a lie.

Until she’d woken, alone. The dull ache that took up residence in her heart that morning robbed her of the pleasure and the reckless need for one stolen night. In that moment she was cured of any selfish want she’d ever have, and she’d promised never to lose herself like that again. But she had never regretted that night. And she never would. For it had brought her Amalia.

* * *

Dimitri looked around the small room. It was little bigger than the cell he’d had in prison, but the exhaustion in Anna’s eyes had struck a nerve. He’d come here, all guns blazing, expecting to sweep in and take his child away from a mother who couldn’t care less about his child. What he’d seen instead was a beautiful woman who was fiercely protective of her child. A woman who had raised a child alone, just as his own mother once had. Perhaps he should take the time to work this new information into his plans, before trying again. As if sensing his resolution, Anna backed out quietly from the small room, and Dimitri sat heavily on the surprisingly comfortable mattress.

David was probably helping himself to a whisky from the hotel’s minibar right now, Dimitri thought as he pulled off his shoes. But he wouldn’t have changed places with the man. He was sleeping less than twenty metres from his daughter. From his own child. And he knew that he’d never let her out of his sight again.

A loud crashing sound from below jerked Dimitri from the fitful sleep he’d fallen into. Terror raced through his bones for just a second, until he saw the faint outline of flowery wallpaper and felt the soft mattress beneath him. He wasn’t back in prison. No one was about to get hurt. He waited for a moment to get his breath back, for the painful sting of adrenaline to recede from his pores.

But then the crash sounded again, and his daughter started to cry. What the hell?

He launched out of the bed and into the hallway, where he met Anna.

‘Anna, what—?’

‘Go back to bed,’ she whispered harshly. ‘Please, just—’

Another crashing sound came, this time accompanied by the sound of breaking glass.

He caught a look of panic passing across Anna’s features before she disappeared down the stairs. Amalia was starting to cry in earnest now, and he went into her room. Did he pick her up? Would that make her stop, or cry even harder?

Her poor little face was already red, with big, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. The ear-piercing screams of his daughter caught in his heart and he reached down and picked her up, ignoring the stab of hurt as she tried to pull away from him, her strength surprising him.

He held her against his chest and followed Anna’s footsteps down to the hallway and the bar below, thinking he was ready for whatever he would find down there. But he wasn’t.

Anna was on the floor, kneeling before a small red-haired woman, who was trying to shake Anna off.

‘Please, Ma. You need to go.’

‘You left me with that man—’

‘You know Eamon, Ma.’

Dimitri watched as Anna’s mother tried to get out of the chair, pushing Anna away and nearly succeeding, until Anna stood and took her by the shoulders.

‘Ma, please. It’s late and you’ve woken Amalia.’

For a moment, that seemed to do the trick. ‘My precious Amalia...’ But the moment she caught sight of Dimitri standing with her granddaughter, any hold that Anna might have had on her mother disappeared.

She knocked Anna off balance and she fell awkwardly on her knee. Mary took two uncertain steps towards him and Dimitri instinctively turned to protect his daughter, angling his body away from the drunk woman. He held out his arm.

‘Enough!’ His strong command brought the older woman to a standstill. ‘Anna, take Amalia upstairs.’

Anna looked for a moment as if she was about to argue, but clearly thought better of it.

She took her daughter from him, their skin brushing against each other’s for the first time since that night three years before. Ignoring the waves of little pinpricks that rushed over his hands, Dimitri watched as Anna disappeared up the stairs, her last glance at them uncertain and worried.

Dimitri stared at the woman in front of him, seeing very little trace of Anna’s colouring, but for just a moment he could see reflections of what must have once made the older woman beautiful, especially in the startling moss-green eyes looking back at him.

Dimitri wasn’t a stranger to what alcohol could do to a person and what kind of chemical prison it could be. Some responded to gentle persuasion, but the time for that had passed.

‘I’m going to get you some water, and you’re going to sleep down here on the sofa.’ There was no way he was going to let her upstairs near his child or her daughter. Mary made one last effort to complain, but he saw that off with a raised eyebrow.

‘Do not test me, Mrs Moore. You’ve done enough damage tonight.’

She just hadn’t realised how much yet.

As Mary reluctantly lay down on the sofa, Anna stuck her head over the bannisters. He raised a hand to stop her from coming further down the stairs, knowing that her reappearance would spark another round from the woman on the sofa.

Anna’s eyes were sad as she mouthed the words ‘thank you’ to him and disappeared. And just for a moment he felt sorry for her. Because she had no idea what was about to happen.

He waited until Mary Moore fell into a comfortably drunk sleep and pulled out his mobile. David answered on the second ring.

‘I need you to do a couple of things for me. I need indefinite management cover for the bed and breakfast and a list of rehab clinics as far away from this village as humanly possible, and I need both by ten a.m. tomorrow.’

‘Sure thing. Anything else?’

‘Yes. Tell Flora to get the house prepared for anything a two-year-old might need. And after that, I want you to start working on a watertight prenup.’

CHAPTER THREE

Dear Dimitri,

How could you do such a thing?

ANNA FLIPPED OUT the bed sheet, the whipping sound it made before it settled over the mattress making her wince. She was exhausted, having barely slept the night before. Every time she’d closed her eyes she’d seen Dimitri standing between her and Amalia as if it were a prophecy foretelling how she would, from now on, see her daughter—at a distance and with him separating them. If not that, then she’d been tortured by the memories of her own pleasure as Dimitri had teased orgasm after orgasm from her innocent body.

But when she woke, all she could think of was her mother. It had been years since Mary had turned up at the bed and breakfast that far out of control. A twinge cramped her stomach. This hadn’t been the life she’d wanted. Once she’d dreamed of escaping the small village, whose inhabitants had been hostile towards them from the moment Mary had been forced to raise her child alone. Anna had fantasised about studying art and sculpture, perhaps even at the University of Glasgow. It had been a hope that she’d cherished as she’d worked at the bed and breakfast saving every penny she made to put towards tuition fees. That Anna had somehow managed to follow in her mother’s footsteps—becoming, instead, another single mother—had sealed their fate. Undesirable. Unwanted. The cautionary tale that locals told their children. And what a cautionary tale it was. Only the masochistic would want Dimitri Kyriakou arriving on their doorstep to claim what he felt he was owed.

By the time the sun had peeked around her curtain that morning, she’d realised she needed a plan. She needed to take back the control that was slipping through her fingers like hot sand.

This was the last of the rooms that needed cleaning after the hasty departure of her guests the night before. If she was lucky, she’d be able to pull some new clients from the horse racing meeting in Dublin in a few days’ time.

Thankfully her mother had left before Anna had brought Amalia down for breakfast. It was the one showdown she hadn’t been prepared for. Where her mother was concerned, Anna realised that she no longer had any defences left. How could her mother have done that, knowing Amalia was in the house? Clearly all the talk of rehab—the apparent reason she’d taken the money from Dimitri in the first place—was a... Anna wasn’t ready to call it a lie, more of a thin spider’s web of fiction that broke under the weight of addiction.

Rehab had been a mythical promise she’d heard over and over again throughout the years. A place the woman wearing her mother’s skin would go, and upon her return would be her real mother gifted back to her. The mother who had once been a bright, powerful, creative woman with a deep well of love to give and not enough pools in which to store it. But her mother was one problem. Dimitri was another.

There were a hundred different ways she’d imagined their reunion, and not one of them came remotely close to what had happened the night before. Recalling the night they’d spent together three years before, she realised that she’d been wearing her mother’s shirt—the one with the name Mary Moore sewn onto the pocket. And, with her mother’s record, would she not have stormed in like a Valkyrie, ready to retrieve her child from such a woman? The way that no one had done for her?

She felt, rather than heard, a presence behind her. Siobhan was downstairs with Amalia, so there was only one person it could be. Only one person had ever had that effect on her body. It had been the same way the first time she’d laid eyes on him. A feeling that the world had ever so slightly tilted on its axis, a feeling that nothing would ever be the same again. It started on her forearms, as if she were held there between powerful hands, raising the hairs beneath the imaginary touch. It licked up her spine and across her neck. And then Anna cursed herself for being fanciful.

‘What are you doing?’ Dimitri asked, sounding as sleep-deprived as she.

‘Preparing the rooms. I may get some walk-ins later. The weather is good, and the races are on...’ She trailed off, knowing that she had to address what had happened with her mother. ‘About last night—’

‘Does she live here?’

‘My mother? No.’ Anna shook her head vehemently, instantly understanding his concern. ‘No. It’s been years since she turned up here like that.’

‘Who else do you employ here?’ It wasn’t perhaps the question she’d expected. She’d imagined Dimitri would haul her over the coals for her mother’s appearance. Anna was still trying to gather her thoughts from the breakneck speed of his inquisition. She still hadn’t turned to face him. She needed just a moment more to gather her strength.

‘Siobhan helps out when we’re at capacity. Which we would have been today, had not all my customers been removed to a hotel in Dublin.’ With this she finally turned to take in the broad expanse of the man who had no damn right to look that good after a night in the smallest room she had.

Instantly regretting it, she turned back to the room, picked up the cleaning basket and made her way into the en suite bathroom. She put on the rubber gloves and spread a healthy squirt of bleach on the scrubber as if she could clean away either the sight of him or him completely.

She got onto her knees, realising that this was perhaps the most ridiculous way to have a conversation, but, needing something to do with her hands other than throttle the man behind her, she pushed on.

‘I’ve been thinking, and I would like you to have a relationship with my—our—daughter.’ She told herself it was the smell of the bleach that had her stomach twisting and turning worse than any morning sickness she had experienced. ‘I’d be happy to grant visitation rights, but you must understand that we will be staying here. My life is here and so is my daughter’s. I will not uproot everything she’s ever known.’

There. She had managed to get the words from her mind to her mouth without crying, or sounding weak. She needed him to agree to this.

* * *

For a moment, just as he had done the night before, he felt almost sorry for her. She had no idea that her life was about to change irrevocably. But from the first time he’d heard of his daughter, Dimitri knew that he wouldn’t settle for visitation rights. He wanted his daughter with him. All the time.

He was man enough to admit that the knowledge that he currently didn’t have any legal rights to his child was nothing short of terrifying. The fear that had gripped him in those first moments of this shocking discovery had been nothing like anything he’d ever experienced. Nothing. Even when he’d arrived at his father’s house at the age of seven for the first time, not knowing if he’d take him in. Even before that, when the police filling the tiny apartment he’d shared with his mother were saying unintelligible things that he struggled to make sense of years after they had left his life. None of it scratched the surface of the deep well that opened up when he realised that there was a tiny life out there, his flesh and blood...

‘I don’t want you to miss out on things,’ Anna was saying as she furiously scrubbed at the toilet, before picking herself up off the floor and turning—still with her back to him—to the sink.

‘You don’t want me missing...’ His sentence trailed off as incredulity hit him hard. ‘What, like the first sonogram? The first sound of my daughter’s heartbeat? Tell me, Anna,’ he said, reaching out to pull her around to him, so that he could look her in the eyes, so he could see the truth written there in them when she answered his next question. ‘Does my daughter even know the word Daddy?’

He regretted touching her the moment his fingers hit the bare skin of her arm beneath her short T-shirt. He tried to ignore the flames that licked out at him from just one touch; he tried to ignore the rush of memories he’d held at bay for the last two days. He had to. Instead, he focused on the mounting horror in Anna’s eyes.

‘What? Did you think I wouldn’t have wanted to be part of those things? Christe mou, Anna, did you even think of me at all?’

Dimitri cursed again, but this time silently. He hadn’t want to reveal that much. He needed to get this back on to an unemotional level if he had any hope of persuading her to his cause. But the more and more he thought of all the things he had missed out on, all of the things Amalia would have grown up with, the stigma of being illegitimate in a sternly familial culture...and at how he hadn’t been able to protect her from that... He knew how much damage could be done to a child when they were unwelcome, unwanted...

So, no. No. He’d never put his daughter through that. He would do what he had to do. Because that was what Dimitri did. He put aside anything that would prevent the required outcome. He cut off the thoughts of the past, his mother, his half-brother’s betrayal, thoughts of the time he had spent wrongfully incarcerated in prison. They had no place here. Here was his daughter. And the mother of his child. And he needed them in Greece.

‘This is getting us nowhere,’ he said, looking around the small bathroom. ‘Can we... Do you have coffee? Can we sit and have a proper conversation, when you’re not...?’ He gestured towards the cleaning products and the hideous yellow gloves Anna was wearing.

* * *

The smell of coffee seemed to have a calming effect on his nerves, but the moment the insipid, thin liquid hit his tongue he regretted it. Dimitri kept his eyes trained on Anna, who had yet to stop moving, either around the small bathroom she’d been cleaning or the impressive, sleek chrome kitchen he’d been surprised to find tucked away from the main part of the old cottage.

He supposed the small staff area could pass as cosy and compact. But while he sat pressed up against the wall, his long legs barely fitting beneath the wooden table, his patience finally wore thin.

‘Sit down,’ he demanded.

Anna stilled, freezing against the command, but finally she slipped—easily—into the seat opposite him. Though her body had finally stopped moving, her eyes seemed to take everything in but him.

‘I want you to come to Greece.’

Ah. That did it. Anna’s gaze zeroed in on his.

‘No.’

‘No?’ he asked, his eyebrow raised.

She let out an incredulous laugh. ‘How can I go to Greece? I have a business here, my mother, my...life is here, Dimitri. I can’t.’

This was nothing he hadn’t expected, but the email he’d received from David that morning had confirmed that everything was in place. In fact, in just five short minutes Anna would see how pointless her arguments would be. He didn’t want to use her mother’s behaviour from the night before against her. But even if Mary didn’t live under the same roof she was still an influence on his daughter’s life, she could still put his daughter at risk. So he would use it if Anna forced him to. First he’d try a softer approach. And if that didn’t work...

‘Anna. The situation you’re in can’t be easy. The bank is about to take all this away from you.’ He ignored the small gasp of shock that fell from her mouth.

‘How do you—?’

‘And between Amalia and your mother, dealing with all that alone—’

‘I haven’t been alone—’

‘—must have been incredibly trying. All the work that you have to do here... You must be exhausted. It certainly can’t allow you the time you’d like to dedicate to our daughter.’ That there was no interruption this time told him all he needed to know. ‘I want to pay off the mortgage—in your name. I will also pay for your mother to go to a rehab clinic. Anna, your mother needs help. Proper help. And I can provide that.

‘A lovely couple is ready and willing to run the bed and breakfast in your absence, just for a short time, whilst you come to Greece. There, Amalia can get to know me, get to know her Greek heritage, her family.’ Forestalling her objections, he pressed on. ‘Anna, it’s something that you deserve—time away from this place, to relax and to spend time with your daughter without having to worry about keeping the roof together over your heads.’

Anna’s head spun. In her wildest dreams she had wanted this. She had wanted someone to sweep in, take care of everything, to resolve all her financial worries, to help with her mother, to allow her to focus solely on her daughter. In her deepest heart, she’d even wanted that person to be Dimitri. Like the fairy-tale prince and the happy-ever-after that she had never thought was possible. But, just like in all good fairy tales, Dimitri’s offer was surely too good to be true. Like the poisoned apple, or the spindle needle’s prick, there was always a price to pay. And, just like the miller’s daughter, there was no way she would hand over her child.

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