Dimitri looked at the nearly sleeping child in the crib. She was peaceful and angelic. He knew that was a cliché, but he couldn’t think of any other words to describe his daughter. It was the first time he’d really seen her, not hidden by the shoulder of a stranger or buried in her mother’s arms. Her skin was dark, like both her parents’, but the eyes—they were his. He knew that Anna hadn’t seen him yet, her body hadn’t stiffened the way it had every single time he’d come within a foot of her. But she was far from relaxed, and he deeply regretted that their adult emotions had come to interfere with his child’s sleep.
* * *
How had this mess happened? She’d been shocked by Dimitri’s accusations, his presence...all of it. For nineteen months, she’d forced herself to abandon the hope that he might come for her. The hope that her daughter wouldn’t grow up feeling that same sense of rejection that felt almost a solid part of Anna. But that was the thing—Anna’s father hadn’t just been absent, it wasn’t a passive thing...he had walked away. Had actively chosen to leave her and her mother behind.
She pushed at the adrenaline still pounding through her veins, desperately fighting the need to flee. Instead, she clung to the words she’d spoken to the lawyer. They really did need to find a way forward, now that he knew about Amalia, now that he claimed to want their child. Wasn’t that what she’d dreamed of when she first reached out to him? Never would she have chosen to raise her daughter without a father in her life...the way she had been raised.
As Anna watched her daughter in the crib, she marvelled at how she’d got so big. She was twenty-seven months old and before lying down on the soft mattress Amalia had held on to the bars and looked at Anna with big brown eyes. Anna had reached out and smoothed a soft curl of hair from Amalia’s forehead. She’d bent down and whispered a promise to her child.
‘It will be okay, sweetheart. It will.’ She’d hoped that she wasn’t lying.
Anna waited until she heard the sounds of her daughter’s breathing slow. She waited until she knew she couldn’t put it off any more and turned to leave the room.
But Dimitri stood in the doorway.
How many times had she imagined him standing there? How many times, during Amalia’s sleepless nights, the teething, the crying...the times when Anna had been so exhausted she couldn’t even weep? What would she have given to see him standing there, a support, a second hand, anything to help take away some of the weight of being a single parent?
But when she’d heard the lawyer—the assistant, as she now knew—dismiss her claims as one of the many women who had called Dimitri, she’d realised that she hadn’t known Dimitri at all. The disbelief and incredulity in Tsoutsakis’s voice had been the reminder she’d clung to each and every night that she had been right to hang up the phone, to end the conversation before she could reveal any more of herself, of her daughter.
But now? What did it all mean? That it hadn’t been Dimitri who had outright rejected his daughter. That he was innocent of the imprisonment that had made her sure she couldn’t let a criminal be the father of her child. Now that he was here, standing before her.
‘I don’t even know her name.’ Anna read a whole host of emotions in that one sentence: pain, regret...anger.
‘Amalia. Her name is Amalia.’
For a second, he looked as if he had been punched in the chest... He closed his eyes briefly but when they opened he wore a mask.
‘She’s mine.’ It was a statement rather than a question. But for all his seeming arrogant certainty, she could tell that he needed to hear it from her. It was as if he was holding his breath.
For just a moment, Anna considered lying. It would all go away. Dimitri would leave and go back to Greece, or America, or wherever he’d come from. Life could return to normal, she’d continue to manage the bed and breakfast, continue to handle her mother’s alcoholism, continue to raise her daughter on her own. But she couldn’t do it. She knew what it was like to grow up in this small village without a father, with the stigma of being discarded and unwanted. She knew the questions that were sure to come from her daughter’s lips because they had come from her own.
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