A Shameful Consequence (6 page)

‘W
ELL
, if the baby’s two months old,
I
don’t see how the marriage could have been annulled. Clearly there were …’ Everything had gone black then. Somehow Nico had maintained the phone conversation, had listened to his mother spout the latest gossip circling the two islands, had even managed to fire a few questions of his own in a voice that was presumably normal for his mother had not hesitated in her responses.

‘She went to Athens, but Dimitri soon drove her out. She’s in London now apparently …’ his mother said in a loud, stage whisper, ‘completely broke. Naturally, her parents cut her off when all the scandal happened … We’ll see how long she lasts. No doubt she will return with her tail between her legs.’

‘And Stavros?’ Nico demanded.

‘Stavros!’ His mother forgot to whisper. ‘Stavros left the island months ago—after that little tart shamed him. How could you not know that?’

Because they hadn’t spoken in almost a year, Nico
could have pointed out to his mother, but he chose not to.

But what a year it had been.

He had flown from Xanos to Lathira after the wedding and walked into a blistering row of his own. Of course he wasn’t adopted. His mother had laughed and pointed to his birth certificate, told him the proof was there in front of him.

‘Where?’ Nico had asked, for they had always been vague with details. ‘Where was I born?’

‘On the mainland. We moved here to start the new business.’ And then, when Nico, unsatisfied with her responses, had requested DNA, she had screamed and raged and ranted, his father joining in, too. Only now, all these months later, had they started talking again, but it was back to talking about the weather. The real issue was too sore to be raised, no matter how many times he tried to.

And now he put down the phone to the news he could be a father.

Nico rested his head in his hands, tried to take the news in. His first instinct was to find and confront Constantine.

How could she not tell him? His first response was anger. She had his number, how dare she take away his right to know? Nico closed his eyes, dragged in a breath and wrenched that thought out, because it simply could not be.

He had sworn he would never be a father.

He was overreacting, he told himself. So what if a
woman he had slept with nearly year ago had had a baby? It didn’t mean it was his. Anyway, Nico gave a cynical sigh, if it were his baby, there was no doubt in his mind that he would have been contacted long, long ago.

But, still, he wanted an answer, wanted perhaps to see her, to make sure for himself that she was all right, given all she must have been through. After a moment he had telephoned Charlotte, and it hadn’t taken long. The ever-impressive Charlotte had drawn a blank at first, but when Nico had told her to say she was asking after Connie, rather than Constantine, phone numbers had led to more phone numbers, and then to a few employment agencies and now, a few hours and a plane trip later, he stood at dusk outside a large London home. The heavy iron gate dragged in the dirt and weeds as he pushed it open, sure, quite sure that the address must be the wrong one. The place looked uninhabited. Certainly he couldn’t imagine Constantine living here, but he rang the bell and waited, then rang again, unsure what he was doing there. What he would he say if she did answer the door?

‘Nico?’ Had she not said his name, he would not have thought it was her.

She looked nothing like the woman he had met that day, nothing like the woman he had held that night.

She had put on weight, a lot of weight, her face was puffy and swollen, those gorgeous blue eyes peered out from two slits and that lush, ripe body was bloated now. Her once wild tumble of dark curls hung tired and lank
and even that delicious mouth was dry and cracked, but it was not that which made her so unrecognisable, it was more her stance, the defeat in her as she opened the door as if all the fire, all the energy, all the passion that made her her had been extinguished.

And Connie was painfully aware of that.

She could see the shock in his features, the same shock she felt sometimes when she stared dull eyed at her reflection in the mirror and tried to reconcile what she saw with the woman she once had been.

She wanted to close the door, to hide—for never, ever would she want him to see her like this.

‘You didn’t call.’ It was not the words he would have chosen to greet her with if he could do it again, but he had not rehearsed this. In fact, he had pondered all the way what he might say to her, and had decided he would see when he got there. ‘I said, if ever you needed anything …’ He looked her slowly up and down. ‘And clearly you do …’

It was a touch brutal and again he wished he could retract his words as he saw her chin rise in defence.

‘So sorry!’ Connie snapped. ‘Had you given me some warning, I’d have put on make-up, and answered the door in something a little more fetching …’

She missed the slight twitch of his lips as he realised not all of that energy in her had died. She missed it because an angry, sinewy voice came down the stairs and then several loud thumps as his stick hit the floor and Connie’s heart raced again, for she was not allowed visitors. ‘Connie,’ the voice demanded, ‘who is it?’

‘Just a delivery,’ Connie called, and then looked at Nico with urgent eyes. ‘You have to go. I’m not allowed to entertain.’

‘I’m not asking to be entertained,’ Nico said,’ just to talk.’

‘I’m not allowed guests,’ Connie said. ‘Please, Nico, just go.’

‘So what time are you off?’ He saw her eyes screw closed, saw her shake her head and go to close the door, but he blocked it with his shoulder. ‘When do you have a day off?’

‘Please,’ she begged. ‘I don’t get time off. I have to be on call …’ She saw him frown, saw incredulity flicker across his gorgeous features and she just wanted him gone, did not want to be seen like this, but Nico just stood there. ‘He’s bedridden,’ Connie explained. ‘He needs someone here at all times.’ Still Nico stood. And for a fleeting second she saw escape, that maybe Nico could help. Maybe she didn’t have to tell him about her father. It was so wonderful to see him. His beauty, his presence she had never even for a moment forgotten, but somehow, to be kind perhaps, her mind had dimmed it; somehow she had convinced herself that he was surely not quite as stunning as she remembered. Yet here he was and she didn’t want it to end. ‘I’m going to the shops in the morning …’ Connie attempted. ‘Maybe we could meet for a few minutes for coffee.’

‘A few minutes …’

He heard something else then, the wail of a baby, and clearly it irritated the old man, because the thumping
on the ceiling became more insistent and he demanded that she shut up that noise.

And Nico was furious, incensed on both her and the infant’s behalf, and he would not leave her there, not for a single night. There was no sensible thought pattern, no grandiose gesture. He just felt sick at what was taking place here, and he watched her eyes widen in horror as, without invitation, he pushed easily past where she held the door.

‘You can’t come in …’ Connie whimpered, but he could, and Nico put a finger to his lips and stood in the hallway. Connie stood shaking, wondering how she could get rid of him without making a noise.

‘Connie,’ came the reedy voice, ‘I need you …’

Nico’s jaw tightened. He stood in the dingy hall of a home that must once have been beautiful but now smelt of neglect and old man. Constantine did not belong here and surely neither did the baby that was still wailing. ‘I’m coming, Henry …’ She turned to race up the stairs, but he caught her wrist.

‘It sounds as if your baby needs you first.’

‘And I’ll tend to him soon,’ she whispered, but she was terrified to leave her baby. She could see Nico was angry and assumed it was at her. What if he simply took him? What if, as she tended to Henry, he simply plucked her son from his from the crib and left?

His son.

Connie felt her breath tighten in her chest, could not leave her babe, yet could not dare keep Henry waiting, especially as the banging was nonstop now.

‘Go to him,’ Nico said in a low voice. ‘I will wait here …’

‘No.’ She dared not trust him. She ran to the kitchen and scooped up her baby, and hushed him for a moment, but he was fretful as he nestled into her chest and heard his mother’s hammering, panic-stricken heart. She fled up the stairs with him, then gently placed him on the carpet outside Henry’s room where his screams intensified, but he was safer surely on the floor than in reach of a father who might choose to take him.

Henry was not best pleased. Connie had taken an hour off this afternoon to visit the doctor and he hated the baby that demanded his aide’s attention, and the noise, he told her, as she repositioned his pillows and rubbed his back, was not acceptable. ‘He’ll be quiet soon,’ Connie assured him. ‘He needs feeding and then he’ll settle.’ Then she felt Henry’s eyes linger on her heavy, aching breasts and she wanted to slap the disgusting old man, for his leers, for the endless silent innuendos, for the smile on his face as she washed him.

For so many things.

Except it was here or the street.

‘I’ll check on you later,’ Connie said when Henry was settled, but still her baby wept.

‘I’d like that.’

She did not respond, tried to ignore his veiled meanings, because, as she told herself so very often, he was all talk—but how she loathed it.

Loathed it so much her skin crawled in his presence, but she tried to look for the good in things. It was here
she had worked through her pregnancy and Henry
had
hired someone to care for him for three weeks after a very difficult delivery and allowed her to stay there.

She picked up her babe and held him, closing her eyes against dizzy fatigue, and hoped against hope that the tablets the doctor had given her would work, that the cloud would soon lift and she could start creating a proper future for herself and her son.

‘We’ll get there,’ she said to her tiny baby, holding him tight, but he would not be soothed. All he wanted was to be fed. ‘Soon,’ Connie hushed, because first there was a difficult conversation to have, an unexpected visitor to attend to, and, most importantly, Henry must have no idea she had allowed someone to enter his home.

Nico watched as she came down the stairs, holding the still crying baby, and she pressed her finger to her lips, warning him not to speak. She gestured for him to follow, which he did, down the long hallway to the rear of the house where she pushed open a large door. He found himself in a kitchen area, much brighter than what he had seen of the rest of the house. There was a certain homeliness to it—there was a crib and there was also a sofa decorated brightly with cushions.

She turned on the television and still she did not speak, placing the baby in his crib and trying to placate him with a dummy. She stacked and turned on the dishwasher and then turned the television up louder and only when there was enough noise filling the room to disguise their words did she speak.

‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Keep your voice down.’

‘I’m not the one making the noise,’ Nico pointed out, because the baby had spat out his dummy and was again shrieking.

‘I need to feed him.’

‘Then feed him,’ Nico said. ‘I’ll make a drink.’ He found his way about the kitchen as the woman he had spent but a few hours with picked up her child and sat on the sofa and started to feed her babe.

It was not as awkward as she expected, just a relief to finally sit and feed him, to let her brain catch up with the turn of events as Nico boiled the kettle and read the instructions on a jar of instant coffee.

‘A teaspoon,’ Connie said, ‘and two of sugar.’

‘It looks revolting,’ Nico commented, because he had never had instant coffee before and certainly not the powdered home brand that was available to him now.

‘Don’t talk about my friend like that,’ Constantine said, because coffee was possibly her only friend at the moment. It was her saviour at two a.m. and again at four, and it woke her up in the mornings, and now, after this one, she could tackle the mountain of washing both Henry and the baby created. She watched Nico’s lips move into a small smile as he got her wry humour.

He was really rather patient, making her a drink and letting her feed her baby in gentle silence for a little while. Patient was something she would never have expected a man like Nico to be in a circumstance such as this.

She had read more about him, of course, since then.

A man who jetted around Europe and America, a man of many lovers and deals, he bristled with restless energy and yet, as she fed the baby, he sat on a barstool and sipped on his coffee. Then he looked, not in an embarrassed or awkward way because she was feeding, he just looked straight into her eyes and his voice when it came seemed to reach into her soul, because he was the first person to ask without accusation, the first person to want to hear her version of events.

‘What happened?’

And she hesitated, because she honestly hadn’t had time to assess—the stocktake of her life had been put into the too-hard basket as she’d merely struggled to survive. Now this beautiful man sat in someone else’s kitchen, and though he must have demands and difficult questions, he did not ask the one she had dreaded most, he did not refer to their son. He just looked to her and after a moment her answer came.

‘I don’t know.’ She waited for a caustic comment, for a mental slap in return for her vagueness, but still he just sat. ‘I don’t know how I got to this point.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, felt her child suckle her breast, and was so grateful for that, that even if her milk supply was drying up, for now she could feed him. She loved the moments together where the world disappeared and it was just the two of them, but always she was forced to return.

‘You asked for an annulment?’

Constantine’s eyes jerked up, realising he wanted the full story, and close to a year ago seemed like a lifetime
now. It had been a very different life she had led since then, and she’d been a very different person then, too.