A smart woman in possession of the common sense God gave her would not have spent the night in Damon Walter's bed and arms.
Lucia was a smart woman with a lot of common sense. She didn’t go to him, but she hadn't been able to say no when he came to her.
Alex had fallen asleep on the way home from the hospital. He’d bounced out to the car, chattering animatedly about how much his daddy liked the balloon and how good it was going to be to have his mother and Georgie home tomorrow.
"An’ pretty soon my daddy, too," ’d said happily. ‘‘And then we’d all be together.’’
And the next thing she knew he was sound asleep in the seat. She parked close to the house and was carrying him up the walk when Damon opened the door.
Wordlessly he came and lifted Alex from her arms. He carried the little boy with the ease of a father as he strode along the hallway to his brother’s bedroom and put Alex into his bed.
Lucia took the child’s shoes off, then covered him with the duvet, leaving his shorts and T-shirt on. If he woke later she could get him into his pajamas, but she didn’t think he would. It had been a busy day. He was tired. She bent and kissed him, then stepped back.
Damon dropped down to his knees by the bed and looked at his little brother. One hand came out and smoothed Alex’s hair. A knuckle brushed his petal-soft Cheek.
Then Damon too, pressed a light kiss on his forehead, got up and followed Lucia out of the room.
It was his goodbye to his brother, and she knew it.
If she’d had any hope that he would stay, she lost it then. If he couldn’t face Alex and tell him he was leaving, if he couldn’t look his brother in the eye and say goodbye, then she knew he was really and truly going.
Maybe that was why she let him come to her that night. So she’d have one more memory to drag out in a lifetime of regret. She hadn’t had long with Damon Walter. She needed all the memories she could get.
She dared to hope that he needed them, too. His desperation as they made love told her without his having to say anything, that he did. If their first night’s love making had been strong and urgent and powerful, it was nothing compared to this one...
It was all those things and gentle besides. His touches were tender, his kisses urgent. His hands made her whimper and reach for him and writhe.
She did her share of loving him too. She had a lifetime of love to teach him in just one night. She molded his face with her hands, memorizing the strong cheekbones, the firm line of his jaw, the sharpness of his nose. She studied his lips, traced them with her fingertip and then her tongue. She kissed his lashes, ran her fingers through his hair, kissed his chest, his navel, let her mouth dip below.
He sucked in a ragged breath and dragged her up the length of his body. ‘‘Enough,’’ he muttered as he fitted them together.
But though they loved all night, Lucia never got enough.
She didn’t think Damon did, either. His hands were still stroking her, petting her, holding her, as his body spooned around her and they slept.
She was asleep when he left.
It was alright not to wake her and say goodbye. They’d said goodbye all night long. They’d loved… and loved… and loved. Words couldn’t have said anything more.
It was better this way.
Better this way. The words echoed in his mind, a mantra that he said over and over, all the way to the airport. He was doing what he wanted to do. What he needed to do. What was better for her and for him. He was doing the right thing.
Still, once he got to the airport, he wanted to get on his way! He didn’t understand why they had to make him be there two hours before the international flight. Once he was there, he was ready to go. If he was leaving, he wanted to be gone, damn it, gone.
He paced the terminal, scowled out the window, slumped in a chair, then got back up, irritated, distracted, and stared out the window some more.
“Damon?" The voice was low, raspy, familiar, Greek. Totally out of place.
He spun around.
His father stood right behind him, leaning on a cane, breathing in short shallow breaths, his forehead damp from exertion, his face pale.
“What the hell—?’’ Damon shook his head. ‘‘What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in the hospital!”’
"I checked myself out.”
"Why? Do you have a death wish, for God’s sake!’’ Damon grabbed his father’s arm and towed him to a chair and sat him down. He didn’t sit down beside him.
He stood, glowering, his own heart beating double time. As Mr. Walter commanded him to sit, he patted the chair next to his.
“I don’t want to sit. "I'm going to miss a flight in hours!”
Mr. Walter looked up, straight into Damon's eyes. "Sit."
A muscle ticked in Damon's temple. He ground his teeth. He rocked back on his heels. He glared at his father and finally, he sat.
“Good.” his father nodded and took a slow breath. "I've come to tell you a story.”
“A story?" Damon was taken aback.
“You checked yourself out of the hospital and drove two and a half hours down to this place, just to tell me a story?”
“Thomas drove,’' He admitted. “I'll tell you a story.”
"Don't tell me, damn it! Then go home and get back to bed. You’re going to die if you don’t! You don’t want to die. You’ve got little kids to take care of.”
“You would take care of them,’’ He said confidently. He looked at Damon, his expression almost serene.
Damon's jaw worked. ‘‘You’re so sure of that, are you?”
"I am.” A faint smile touched his father's face. ‘‘I saw you with Alex.’’
Damon looked away. “He’s a good kid,” he muttered.
"He is like his brother was.’’
“What's with the operative word?”
“Is,'’ His father corrected himself, looking at him sharply.
"Revising your opinion, are you?”
“Yes.” There was no apology. Just a statement of fact. He wouldn’t have been Mr. Walter, of course, if he had said he was sorry. Still, Damon felt a small stab of satisfaction.
“I'll tell you the story," his father said. He looked straight ahead out the window, watching planes on the runway while he spoke. ‘‘It is about a young man with big ideas. It is about a woman he fell in love with. It is about me and your mother.’’
Damon starred. He didn’t speak. He wasn’t sure he heard correctly. Was his father saying that he’d loved his mother?
‘‘The marriage was arranged,” he protested.
‘‘Agreed to, not arranged,’’ Starvos, (His father's middle name), said. ‘‘She was to marry someone else. Someone of her own class and background. Not a young upstart like me. A real Greek. Not an immigrant who left his country behind. That is what her father said.’’
The older man shook his head. “I comfort myself sometimes thinking that it wouldn’t have been any different if she’d married him. But I don’t know.’’
"What the hell are you talking about?’’ None of this made any sense to Damon. ‘‘Are you saying you took her away from another man?’’
"I loved her,’’ Starvos said simply. ‘‘She loved me. She would not marry him. She refused. She wanted me, she told her father. She wouldn’t marry anyone else. Angelika could be very persuasive,’’ he added ruefully.
“I know.”
Damon knew too. His mother had always been able to bend him to her will. Not by force but by the warmth and sweetness of her character. But, that his father had loved her? He didn’t know what to think.
“It was a wonderful marriage,’’ Starvos went on, his voice almost dreamy all at once as he stared off into space, seeing, Damon guessed, the early years of his life with Angelika. “We worked hard together. We played together. We loved each other. And what we had was in two years made better by the arrival of a son.’’ Here he flickered back to the present long enough to look over
"A perfect son.’’ Starvos smiled a little Sadly.
His father had thought he was perfect? Well, maybe Once he had, a long, long time ago.
"I took you everywhere,’’ he said. ‘‘To work, to the beach. To sail. You loved to sail.’’
Damon didn’t remember loving to sail with his father anyway. He didn’t recall ever sailing with his father. He remembered sitting in the boat, waiting... waiting... He must have been very small.
Yes, he did remember it now. How eager he had been. How much he had waited for the afternoon to come when his father would be back from a trip so they could go Sailing again.
Again? Something flickered through his mind. Vague displaced memories. The feel of the wind in his face, of the list of the boat, of his father’s strong arm around his narrow shoulders. Yes, they had gone sailing... until...
"We were best friends once,’’ Starvos continued. "And all your mother and I could think was how wonderful it would be to have more children like you. So she got pregnant again. And she lost that child. A miscarriage. These things happen, the doctor said. We tried again, and again. More miscarriages. She was in bed a lot. Do you remember? She used to read to you in her bed.”
Damon remembered. He didn't know why she was in bed. She was 'resting,’ she always told him.
“Come keep me company for a little while,’’ she would say. And she would read to him.
"She needed you there,’’ his father said. ‘‘You were the bright spot in her day. So I didn’t take you with me so much anymore. Sometimes though, I took you sailing. I remember the last time. You were five. We had planned it for a week, maybe more. I'd had to go to Athens and I was looking forward to coming home to your mother, who was expecting again, and to you. And when I got there, she was being rushed to the hospital, Another miscarriage. And of course I went with her, not to you. You never forgave me for that.’’ He smiled a little.
"You wouldn’t listen when I tried to explain. You ran out of the room.”
Damon wanted to deny it. He couldn’t. He remembered the waiting. He’d been waiting forever for his father to come. ‘Soon,’ his mother would say. ‘Soon he will come.’ And then, ‘Tomorrow.’ And then, ‘In a few hours.’ White-faced, she said then, ‘‘Damon, run get Mrs. Anagnostopoulos next door.’’ He had.
Then he’d gone down to the dock to wait for his father.
But his father had never come.
And he hadn’t listened. He’d been angry. Furious. "You promised,’’ he yelled. And then he’d run. He remembered it now as if it were yesterday. And he remembered, too, that he’d never gone sailing with his father again.
“I was a child,’’ he said gruffly, looking away, watching as another child went limp as its mother tried to get it to walk toward the gate.
"You were a child,’’ Starvos agreed. ‘‘I should have made you listen. I thought you would come around. I had other things on my mind. Your mother. Her health. My business. It was necessary to work very hard just then. I wanted to prove to your mother’s father that I was worthy of her, you see.”
Damon wasn’t sure he saw at all. But he didn’t run this time. He sat still. He wanted to know. He had so many questions.
“If you loved her, why did you leave?" He tried to make his voice sound casual, as if he was inquiring about the weather. But even he could hear the anguish in it. His jaw locked. He looked away.
Starvos sighed. "Because I was a fool. ‘One last time,’ she said to me. ‘I want to try to have a baby one last time.' You were almost eight. She wanted you to have a brother or a sister. She knew how much I wanted more children. She wanted them herself. ‘Please,’ she begged me. And—’’ he shook his head ‘‘—I said yes. Our miracle, she called it when she not only got pregnant, but stayed pregnant. She was very careful. I was very careful. I didn’t go near her for fear of making her miscarry. She was doing very well. So well that I took a chance and went to Athens for a meeting. A weekend, I promised her. It was necessary for a merger. She wasn’t due for two months. All was well.’’ His voice faded. He stared at his hands which lay loosely in his lap. His shoulders sagged. He looked like a very old man.
Damon waited for him to say it, even though he thought he knew. He remembered Julietta’s words, Poor Starvos. It'll be just like last time. Only now Damon understood what she meant.
"There was something wrong with the placenta, a ridge in it or something. The baby was finally big enough and active enough to kick a piece of it loose. She went into labor the night I left. I didn’t get back until after the baby was born."
"And died?’’ Damon whispered. It shouldn’t have been a question, he knew.
His father nodded. ‘‘Stillborn. Too small. A breech birth. She almost died. I would never have forgiven myself if she had died!’’ He looked at his son, and for the first time Damon saw clearly the anguish in his father's eyes. For a long time, neither of them spoke. Damon tried to remember that time. He didn’t remember for sure knowing that his mother was even pregnant. Surely he would have realized!
“She told you she was getting chubby, not that she was expecting a baby,’’ Starvos said, answering the question that Damon didn’t ask. ‘‘She didn’t want you to know in case it didn’t happen. Now I think she was wrong. But then I said nothing. After all, she knew you better than I did.”
Or thought she did, Damon realized. His mother would have thought she was doing the right thing, not getting his hopes up, not wanting him to be disappointed. Protecting him.
“I had made plenty of mistakes up until then,” Starvos went on, ‘‘but after that I made the worst of all.’’ He folded his hands and looked straight at Damon. His eyes were like burnt holes in his ashen face. ‘‘I still loved your mother, but I couldn’t make love to her. If I did, I knew she would insist on trying again. So I stayed away from her. From you. I moved out. I thought I was protecting her. I was determined to be a Martyr to my love—to do the right thing.’’ He smiled with wry bitterness. And then his gaze dropped. ‘‘I didn’t realize what I was doing by turning my back on her. I failed her. I failed you.”
Beyond the glass a jet engine thrummed. Inside the terminal a loudspeaker called for passengers to approach the gate. A baby cried.
And Damon swallowed hard, blinked rapidly, and fought his own tears. He wouldn’t cry. He wouldn’t!
And he didn’t, until a tear trickled down Starvos’ cheek first, and the old man reached out and pulled Nikos into his arms. Then the tears came, pressed into Damon's shoulder as his father murmured the Greek words that Damon had long forgotten. ‘‘Ah, my son. I love you, my son.”