An Offer She Can't Refuse (18 page)

‘I’m your Papa,’ he told her.

Her little chest lifted and a sigh whispered from her lips as though the bond she needed was in place. She closed her eyes. The grip on his finger slowly eased.

‘Be at peace, little one. I’m here for you,’ Ari murmured.

But she would need her mother, too.

He
needed Christina, though he wasn’t sure how much that would mean to her. She had accepted him as her husband. He saw the love she openly showered on their son, but whatever was in her heart for him had always been closely guarded.

So he willed her to live for their children.

That was the stronger pull on her.

Her son and her daughter.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

S
IX
weeks … They’d been the longest six weeks of Ari’s life. The doctors had explained it was best that Christina remain in a coma until the swelling of her brain had gone down and her injuries had healed. They had also warned him she would initially feel lost and confused when they brought her out of it and would need constant reassurance of where she was, why, and what had happened to her.

Most probably any dreams she may have had during this time would be more real to her than reality and it would require patient understanding from him to deal with her responses to the situation. Ari didn’t care how much patient understanding he had to give as long as Christina came back to him. Yet as mentally prepared as he was to deal with anything, it hit him hard when she woke and stared at him without any sign of recognition.

Tears welled into her eyes.

He squeezed her hand gently and quickly said, ‘It’s okay, Christina. Everything’s okay.’ ‘I lost the baby.’ ‘No, you didn’t,’ he vehemently assured her. ‘We have a beautiful little baby girl. She’s healthy and happy and Theo adores her. We’ve named her Maria—your favourite name for a girl—and she looks very like you.’

The tears didn’t stop. They trickled down her cheeks.

Ari told her about the accident and the need for a Caesarian birth and how their daughter was thriving now. She kept staring at him but he didn’t think she was registering anything he said. The look of heart-breaking sadness didn’t leave her face. After a while she closed her eyes and slid back into sleep.

He took Theo and Maria with him on his next visit, determined to set Christina’s mind at rest.

Again she woke and murmured the mournful words, ‘I lost the baby.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ he assured her. ‘Look, here she is.’

He laid Maria in her arms and she stared at the baby wonderingly as he explained again about the accident and their daughter’s birth. Then Theo, super-excited at having his mother finally awake from her long sleep, chattered non-stop, telling her everything about his new sister. She smiled at him and was actually smiling at the baby as her eyes closed. Ari hoped her sleep would be less fretful now.

Yet from day to day she seemed to forget what had been said and he would have to remind her. He started to worry that she might never fully recover from her head injuries. The doctors explained that it could take a while for the drugs to wash out of her system. Until she completely emerged from her dream-state, it was impossible to gauge if there was some negative side-effect that would have to be treated.

Mostly he just sat by her side and prayed for her to be whole again.

It felt like a miracle when one day she woke up and looked at him with instant recognition. ‘Ari,’ she said in a pleased tone.

His heart kicked with excitement, then dropped like a stone when her expression changed to the darkly grieving one that had accompanied her other awakenings. But her words were slightly different.

‘I’m sorry. I lost the baby.’

‘No!’

Encouraged by the certainty that she was actually talking to him this time, he explained the situation again. There was an alertness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. He was sure she was listening, taking in all the information he gave, sifting through it, understanding. A smile started to tug at her mouth.

‘A daughter,’ she said in a tone of pleasure. ‘How lovely!’

Elation soared through him. ‘She’s beautiful. Just like you, Christina,’ he said, smiling back.

A frown of concern puckered her brow. ‘And Theo? I’ve been here … how long?’

‘Two months. Theo is fine. Missing his Mama but happily distracted by having a baby sister. I’ll bring both of them in for you to see as soon as I can.’

‘Maria …’ She smiled again, a look of blissful relief on her face. ‘Oh, I’m so glad I didn’t lose her, Ari.’

‘And I’m so glad I didn’t lose you,’ he said fervently. Her eyes focussed sharply on him for several moments before her gaze slid away to where her fingers started plucking at the bed-sheet. ‘I guess that would have been … inconvenient for you.’

Inconvenient!

Shock rattled Ari’s mind. It took him several moments to realise she had no idea how much she meant to him. He’d never told her. He reached out and enclosed the plucking fingers with his, holding them still.

‘Look at me, Christina,’ he quietly commanded.

She did so, but not with open windows to her soul. Her guard was up, as it had been from the day she had agreed to marry him. He had never worn it down. He should have felt grateful for this return to normality, but the need to break through it was too strong for patience in laying out what was very real to him—had been real for a long time although he hadn’t recognised it until faced with losing her from his life.

‘Do you remember asking me about falling in love and I told you about the American woman I’d met when I was eighteen?’ he asked.

She slowly nodded.

‘It was nothing but blind infatuation, Christina,’ he said vehemently, his eyes burning into hers to make her believe he spoke the truth. ‘I didn’t love her. I didn’t know her enough to love the person she was. Being with you this past year … I’ve learnt what it is to really love a woman. I love you.’

Her eyes widened but still they searched his warily.

‘If you’d died from this accident, it would have left a hole in my life that no one else could ever fill. It wouldn’t have been an inconvenience. Christina. It would have been …’ He shook his head, unable to express the terrible emptiness that had loomed while he’d waited for the miracle of her return to him. ‘I love you,’ he repeated helplessly. ‘And please, please, don’t ever leave me again.’

‘Leave you?’ she echoed incredulously. ‘I’ve always been afraid of you leaving me.’

‘Never! Never! And after this, let me tell you, I’m going to be nervous about letting you out of my sight.’

She gave him a rueful little smile. ‘That’s how I felt … nervous when you were away from me. Women always look at you, Ari.’

‘They don’t make me feel what I do for you, Christina. You’re my woman, the best in the world. Believe me.’

Tina wanted to. Somehow it was too much … waking up from the dreadful nightmare of loss and being handed a lovely dream. She lifted her free hand to rub her forehead, get her mind absolutely clear. ‘My hair! It’s gone!’

‘It’s growing back,’ Ari instantly assured her. ‘They had to shave it for the operation.’

Tears spurted into her eyes as she gingerly felt the ultra-short mat of hair covering her scalp. Ari had liked it long so she had let it grow after their wedding. She remembered taking the taxi to the hairdressing salon …

‘My mother!’

‘She’s fine. Minor injuries. She was only in hospital for one day. Everything’s fine, Christina. Nothing for you to worry about.’ ‘Who is looking after the children?’

‘The housekeeper, the nanny for Maria, your mother, my mother, my sisters, your aunts … our home is like a railway station for relatives wanting to help.’

The sudden rush of fear receded, replaced by a weird feeling of jealousy that a nanny was replacing her for Maria. ‘I need to go home, Ari,’ she pleaded.

‘As soon as the doctors permit it,’ he promised.

‘I need to see my children.’

He squeezed her hand. ‘You rest quietly now and I’ll go and get them, bring them here for you to see. Okay?’ ‘Yes.’

He rose from the chair beside her bed and gently kissed her forehead. ‘Your hair doesn’t matter, Christina,’ he murmured. ‘Only you getting well again matters.’

The deep caring in his voice washed through her, soothing the tumult of emotions that had erupted. Everything was all right. Ari always made perfect arrangements. And he’d said he loved her.

She didn’t rest quietly. No sooner had Ari gone than doctors came, asking questions, taking her blood pressure, checking tubes and wires, removing some of them. She had questions for them, too. By the time they left she knew precisely what she had been through and how devoted her husband had been, visiting her every day, doing his best to console her whenever she’d shared her nightmare with him.

The doctors had no doubt that Ari loved her.

Tina started to believe it.

Theo came running into the hospital room, his face lighting up with joy at seeing her awake and smiling for him. ‘Mama! Mama! Can I hug you?’

She laughed and made room on the bed for him to climb up beside her. ‘I want to hug you, too.’ Her beautiful little son. Hers and Ari’s. It was wonderful to cuddle him again.

‘And here is my sister,’ he declared proudly as Ari carried their baby into the room, grinning delightedly at the two of them together.

Theo quickly shuffled aside to let Ari lay the baby in her arms. Tina felt a huge welling of love as her gaze roved over her daughter, taking in the amazing perfection of her.

‘Maria’s got more hair than you, Mama,’ Theo said, and she could laugh about it, no longer caring about the loss of her long, glossy locks.

‘She has your mother’s hair, and her eyes and her mouth,’ Ari said, as though he was totally besotted by the likeness to her.

Tina couldn’t help smiling at him. He smiled back and the words simply spilled out of the fullness of her heart. ‘I love you, too, Ari.’

His eyes glowed a warm gold. He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. ‘I will thank God forever that you’ve come back to us, Christina,’ he murmured against her lips, leaving them warm and tingling, making her feel brilliantly alive.

A new life, she thought. Not only for the baby in her arms, but for her and Ari and Theo, too.

A family bonded in love.

It was what her father had wanted for her. No more disappointment. She had it all.

It was summer on Santorini again and both families had gathered in force to attend Maria’s christening. The same church, the same reception centre, but for Tina, this was a much happier occasion than her wedding. Although Ari’s family had welcomed her into it before, she really felt a part of it now, and she also felt much closer to her own family, no longer having the sense of being an outsider who had broken the rules.

It was a truly joyous celebration of life and love. The sun shone. There were no shadows between her and Ari. She saw desire for her simmering in his eyes all day and her own desire for him was zinging through her blood. No sooner was the party over and the children finally asleep in their part of the Zavros villa, than they headed off to their own bedroom, eager to make love. But before they did, there was one thing Tina wanted to do.

She’d put the prenuptial agreement in the top drawer of the bedside table and she went straight to it, took it out and handed it to Ari. ‘I want you to tear this up.’

He frowned. ‘I don’t mind you having it, Christina. I want you to feel secure.’

‘No. It’s wrong. It’s part of a bad time that’s gone, Ari. If you were asking me to marry you now, I wouldn’t insist on a prenuptial agreement. I trust you. I believe what we have is forever. It is, isn’t it?’

He smiled. ‘Yes, it is.’

He tore it up.

She smiled and opened her arms to him, opened her heart to him. ‘I love you. I love our family. We’re going to have a brilliant life together, aren’t we?’

He laughed, lifted her off her feet, twirled her around and dumped her on the bed, falling on top of her, although levering his weight up on his elbows as he grinned down at her. ‘Brilliant and beautiful and bountiful, because I have you, my love.’

She reached up and touched his cheek, her eyes shining with all he made her feel.

‘And I have you.’

Read on for a sneak preview of Carol Marinelli’s
PUTTING ALICE BACK TOGETHER!

Hugh hired bikes!

You know that saying: ‘It’s like riding a bike, you never forget’?

I’d never learnt in the first place.

I never got past training wheels.

‘You’ve got limited upper-body strength?’ He stopped and looked at me.

I had been explaining to him as I wobbled along and tried to stay up that I really had no centre of balance. I mean
really
had no centre of balance. And when we decided, fairly quickly, that a bike ride along the Yarra perhaps, after all, wasn’t the best activity (he’d kept insisting I’d be fine once I was on, that you never forget), I threw in too my other disability. I told him about my limited upper-body strength, just in case he took me to an indoor rock-climbing centre next. I’d honestly forgotten he was a doctor, and he seemed worried, like I’d had a mini-stroke in the past or had mild cerebral palsy or something.

‘God, Alice, I’m sorry—you should have said. What happened?’

And then I had had to tell him that it was a self-diagnosis. ‘Well, I could never get up the ropes at the gym at school.’ We were pushing our bikes back. ‘I can’t blow-dry the back of my hair …’ He started laughing.

Not like Lisa who was laughing at me—he was just laughing and so was I. We got a full refund because we’d only been on our bikes ten minutes, but I hadn’t failed. If anything, we were getting on better.

And better.

We went to St Kilda to the lovely bitty shops and I found these miniature Russian dolls. They were tiny, made of tin or something, the biggest no bigger than my thumbnail. Every time we opened them, there was another tiny one, and then another, all reds and yellows and greens.

They were divine.

We were facing each other, looking down at the palm of my hand, and our heads touched.