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Ares stifled a groan. ‘What are you doing here? You should be resting.’
‘Ah, this “resting” thing seems to be going around a lot today.’
He cringed at his father’s air quotes.
‘Is there something on your mind, Baba?’
‘I’m more concerned about what’s on yours,’ Sergios replied.
He could pretend he didn’t know what his father was talking about, but they’d long passed that stage of their relationship. They’d needed to stop hiding behind walls and façades a long time ago, when rejection, cruelty and grief had bound them together in an unbreakable bond.
Decades later, Ares still couldn’t stem the searing pain when he thought of his two-year-old sister Sofia and the mother who’d selfishly broken their family apart. Her last resort—claiming Sofia wasn’t his father’s—had been particularly cruel, a vicious retaliation for her husband’s supposed neglect.
It hadn’t mattered to her that Sergios had been bending over backwards to give her the life she craved. Or that Elio Santella was a devilish taskmaster who’d demanded unreasonable loyalty. His mother’s unhappiness had unfolded in the worst possible way, starting with her desertion and ending in tragedy.
Her death a mere six months later in a fiery car crash, along with Sofia and her new lover, had almost destroyed Sergios, and Ares knew he’d never forgiven himself for the mistakes he’d made.
Ares had grown up knowing his father wanted more than one child. And Sergios had been overcome with grief at losing the daughter he’d barely had a chance to know. But he’d buried it for Ares’s sake.
Ares had never forgotten that.
But, as much as he was still to decide on the final outcome of his actions, he didn’t want his father disillusioned. The old man had suffered enough at his mother’s hands.
‘I know it seems sudden, but I know what I’m doing,’ he said.
Sergios’s brows rose. ‘Do you?’
Ares strode towards his dressing room, avoiding his father’s stare. ‘If you’re concerned about how things have turned out today, don’t be.’
‘Oh, I’m not. On the contrary, I think she’s perfect for you,’ his father mused.
Ares stiffened, and a punch of something closely resembling panic slammed into his gut as that tingling from earlier returned. ‘Was that why you insisted on attending the funeral? Because you’d hoped for this outcome?’
‘What outcome?’ Sergios returned, his eyes probing deeper. ‘Are you referring to the unfinished business between you two? The thing that’s been holding you back from true happiness?’
Hot and cold chills danced over him as the weight of those words pressed down on him.
‘True happiness is a myth,’ he growled. ‘And no one’s perfect, Baba. You know that.’
He kicked himself for the flash of pain that flitted across Sergios’s face at the despised reminder that they’d both been deserted in the cruellest way possible, and then visited with unspeakable tragedy while they’d still been licking their wounds.
Ares’s fingers gripped the cotton shirt he’d plucked from a hanger, his thoughts rearing back in time, even though he didn’t need any mental gymnastics to work out that his sister would’ve been turning thirty this year if she’d lived.
Silence thickened behind him as he dressed, then pressed more heavily when he returned to the bedroom, his cufflinks in his palm. ‘I know what I’m doing, Baba. And please don’t get your hopes up, okay?’ he implored.
His father stared at him through unusually pensive eyes. Then he rose. He stopped long enough to tap Ares lightly on his hard cheek, then headed for the door.
‘You’re a strong powerful man, but even you can’t stop me from hoping, yios. For both our sakes, don’t make the same mistakes I did.’
Ares’s tension remained long after the door had shut behind his father...long after he’d secured the cufflinks and shrugged on his jacket.
He was straining to switch himself into business mode when he stepped into the living room and saw her on the terrace. She’d changed into a pair of jeans that did infuriatingly delicious things to her backside and her long, shapely legs. From this angle he couldn’t ignore the way her top moulded firm, high breasts and a flat stomach, or the fact that her hair was down, skimming her lower back and almost touching those firm globes.
He’d felt that heavy mass of lustrous curls more than once...knew the very real temptation it held for a man to bury his fists in it. To draw those curls to his nose and luxuriate in her scent. To picture those tresses spread across his pillow.
Ares cursed under his breath when his body rudely awakened. He took an involuntary step towards her before he caught himself.
No, his misguided moments of dancing to this princess’s tune were in his past.
