But after her death, Gabi realized it was a promise she couldn’t keep. In the first place, the twins’ birth father was alive. Legally no one could adopt them without his permission.
And in the second place, over the last three months Gabi had learned to love the boys. She’d bonded with them. Maybe she wasn’t Greek, but, having been taught Greek from the cradle, Gabi was bilingual and would use it with them. They would have a good home with her. No one but their own father could ever pry them away from her now.
Suddenly the rear door opened. “Ms. Turner?” the driver called to her. “If you’ll follow me.”
Startled out of her thoughts, she exited the limo, not having realized they’d arrived at the port of Piraeus. He held her overnight case and walked toward a gleaming white luxury cabin cruiser probably forty to forty-five feet in length moored a few steps away along the pier.
A middle-aged crew member took the bag and helped her aboard. “My name is Stavros. I’ll take you to Kyrie Simonides, who’s waiting for you to join him in the rear cockpit. This way, Ms. Turner.”
Once again she found herself trailing after a stranger to an ultraleather wraparound lounge whose sky roof was open. Her dark-haired host was standing in front of the large windows overlooking the water lit up by the myriad boats and ferries lining the harbor. The dream vessel was state of the art.
Since she’d last seen him in the lift, he’d removed his suit jacket and tie. He’d rolled his shirtsleeves up to the elbow. Thea had been right. He was spectacular-looking.
She understood when the man announced to her host that the American woman had come aboard. He turned in her direction. The lights reflecting off the water cast his hard-boned features into stark relief.
“Come all the way in and sit down, Ms. Turner. Stavros will bring you anything you want to eat or drink.”
“Nothing for me, thank you. I just ate.”
After his staff member left the room, she pulled the envelope out of her purse and put it on the padded seat next to her, assuming he wanted a better look at everything. He wandered over to her, but made no move to take it. Instead his enigmatic gaze traveled over her upturned features.
She had an oval face, but her mouth was too wide and her hair was too naturally curly for her liking. Instead of olive skin, hers was a nondescript cream color. Her dad once told her she had wood violet eyes. She’d never seen wood violets, but he’d said it with such love, she’d decided that they were her one redeeming feature.
“My name’s Andreas,” he said, surprising her. “What’s yours?”
“Gabi.”
“My sources tell me you were christened Gabriella. I like the shortened version.” Unexpectedly he reeked of the kind of virile charm to turn any woman’s head. Thea hadn’t stood a chance.
Gabi understood that kind of potent male power and the money that went with it. Once upon a time she’d loved Rand. Substitute this Greek tycoon’s trappings for seven hundred thousand acres of Texas ranch land with cattle and oil wells and voilà—the two men were interchangeable. Fortunately for Gabi, she’d only needed to learn her lesson once. Thea had learned hers, too, but it had come at the cost of her life.
One black brow quirked. “Where are these twins? At your home in Virginia, or are they a little closer at your father’s consulate residence in Heraklion?”
With a mere phone call he knew people in the highest places to get that kind of classified information in less than an hour. Naturally he did. She wanted to tell him that, since he possessed all the facts, there was no need to answer his question, but she couldn’t do that. Not after she’d been the one to approach him.
“They’re on Crete.”
“I want to see them,” he declared without hesitation, sending Gabi into mild shock that he’d become curious about these children who could be his offspring. She felt a grudging respect that he’d conceded to the possibility that his relationship with Thea, no matter how short-lived, had produced them. “How soon are you due back in Heraklion?”
“When I left this morning, I told my parents I was meeting a former work colleague from the States in Athens and would fly home tomorrow.”
“Will they send a car for you?”
“No. I told them I wasn’t sure of my arrival time so I’d take a taxi.”
He shifted his weight. “Once I’ve delivered you to Heraklion, there’ll be a taxi waiting to take you home. For the time being Stavros has prepared a room for you. Are you susceptible to the mal de mer?”
They were going back by sea?
“No.”
“Good. I’m assuming your parents are still in the dark about the twins’ father, otherwise you wouldn’t have needed to lie to them.”
“Thea never wanted them to know.” She hadn’t wanted anyone to know, especially not Thea’s ex-husband Dimitri. For the most part their marriage had been wretched and she hadn’t wanted him to find out what she’d done on the very day she’d obtained her divorce from him. Dimitri wouldn’t hesitate to expose his ex-wife’s indiscretion out of simple revenge.
“Yet she trusted you.”
“Not until she knew she might die.” Thea hadn’t wanted to burden anyone. “Though she admitted making a mistake she dearly regretted, she wanted her babies to be taken care of without it being Mom and Dad’s responsibility. I approached you the way I did in order to spare them and you any notoriety.”
“But not my pocketbook,” he inserted in a dangerously silken voice.
“You would have every right to think that, Mr. Simonides.”
“Andreas,” he corrected her.
She took a deep breath. “Money isn’t the reason I came. Nor do you have to worry your name is on their birth certificates. Thea refused to name the father. Though I promised to find a good home for the twins with another couple, I couldn’t keep it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re alive. I’ve looked into the law. No one can adopt them unless you give away your parental rights. In truth, Thea never wanted you to know anything.”
He shrugged his elegant shoulders. “If not for money, then why didn’t you just spirit them away and forget the legalities?”
Gabi stared hard at him. “Because I plan to adopt them and had to be certain you didn’t want to claim them before I take them back to Virginia with me. You have that God-given right after all.” She took a fortifying breath. “Being their aunt, I don’t.”
Her lids prickled, but she didn’t let tears form. “As for the twins, they have the same God-given right to be with their father if you want them. If there was any chance of that happening, I had to take it, thus my presence in your office today. Naturally if you do want them, then I’ll tell my parents everything and we’ll go from there.”
The air seemed to have electrified around them. “If you’re telling me the truth, then you’re one of a dying species.”
His cynical remark revealed a lot. He had no qualms about using women. In that regard he and Rand had a lot in common. But Gabi suspected Mr. Simonides didn’t like women very much.
“One day when they’re old enough to understand, I wouldn’t be able to face them if I couldn’t tell them that at the very beginning I did everything in my power to unite them with you first.”
His eyes looked almost black as they searched hers for a tension-filled moment. “What’s in Virginia when your parents are here in Greece?”
“My life, Mr. Simonides. Like you, I have an important career I love.