Alexa didn’t remember.
“Over the last year he’s been in the news—he gets around.” At least Monika knew of him. Alexa’s grandparents couldn’t object to that. “There’ve been times when he’s played volleyball here on the beach with some of his highbrow friends, picking up girls. He’s the last guy on earth you should ever get mixed up with.”
Whoa. How could Alexa have known something like that while she’d been living in Cyprus for so many years with her grandparents? “He’s still out there waiting for me.”
Monika laughed. “You really think so with a line like the one he just fed you? A mermaid? How naive can you get.”
Alexa felt foolish. “Maybe I am. But all the same, I’m swimming back out.” She hurried into the water once more, wondering, fearing that he’d disappeared. Somehow the idea of never seeing him again disturbed her.
“Mara?”
He was still there. Alexa had almost forgotten that was the name she’d given him. She had her answer and knew she was going to spend the next few hours with him no matter what Monika said.
“Nico!”
CHAPTER ONE
Nineteen years later
ON A WARM Saturday evening in June, thirty-eight-year-old Nico Angelis drove up to the front of the Papadakis mansion in Salonica. Nico was still trying to get over the pain of losing Tio Papadakis six months ago.
They’d met in the military and became best friends. Later, they’d each served as the other’s best man at their weddings. But a dinner out last December had ended in tragedy for his friend.
Tio had been driving the car that had killed him and had put his wife Irena in a wheelchair with a bruised spine. It had taken her a month to be able to walk again without help and she still used her wheelchair sometimes. Until then she’d had a health caregiver who looked after her and provided the therapy she needed.
Since the accident Nico had tried to look in on Irena and her two sons once a week. He’d lost his wife years earlier and knew the pain Irena had to be in. Nico suffered survivor’s guilt over the part he’d played in his own wife’s death that couldn’t be erased. He didn’t think it would ever go away. To be able to help Irena by talking to her about Tio made him feel like he was doing something worthwhile.
Eleven years earlier his wife Raisa and their unborn child had been killed in a plane crash. Like Tio, Nico had been at the controls when the accident occurred. For an inexplicable reason, Nico and his copilot had escaped death.
Since then, Nico had plunged into his work to deal with his pain and put away thoughts that he didn’t have a child to cherish. He’d wanted their baby more than anything in this world and had been so excited for its impending birth. A son or daughter to love would have meant everything to him, but it hadn’t happened.
At least Irena had her boys. Nico envied Irena that blessing and had learned to love her sons like his own. Raisa’s death was something no one could fix, but he could give Irena and her boys his love and support.
Two months ago Nico’s father had stepped down as head of the Angelis Shipping Lines, owing to heart trouble. Nico, one of three vice presidents at the time, had been voted in as CEO of the corporation.
Their headquarters maintained the largest cargo shipping company in the Balkan hinterland and Southeastern Europe. The Angelis conglomerate also owned several manufacturing companies and the Halkidiki News, a newspaper servicing Northern Greece.
It had been managed by his uncle—the brother-in-law of Nico’s mother—for over a decade. But he’d caused a scandal in the family and their father had promoted Nico’s thirty-six-year-old sister Giannina to executive status at the newspaper to keep him under control.
Their uncle, who’d been born a Hellenian before becoming a Greek citizen, resented a woman having that kind of power and hadn’t been making it easy for her. Nico was proud of how Giannina handled their uncle as she worked her way up in administration at the newspaper.
It pleased him that their father saw her potential to be a tour de force. Now, with the responsibility of the Angelis Shipping Lines falling on his shoulders, Nico had little time for anything else besides looking after his parents and of course Irena and her boys.
These days Nico commuted to headquarters in Salonica by helicopter from his villa in Sarti eighty-seven miles away. Tonight he was running late. The housekeeper Melia let him in and told him he’d find Irena and Kristos in the salon. Apparently her younger son Yanni was over at a friend’s house.
“Nico, at last!” Irena cried and held out her arms to him. He hugged her. She’d been a redheaded beauty who’d claimed Tio’s heart in his teens.
Kristos got up from the couch to give him a hug. “I was afraid you might not come, Uncle Nico.” Her boys had called him that for years. They’d never know how much they meant to him.
“Sorry I’m late. Already I’m learning why I rarely saw my father growing up.”
“He’s paid a price for it,” Irena interjected. “Don’t let hard work cut your life short, Nico.” She stopped there, unlike Giannina who would have said she feared he didn’t have any other life now. His sister worried that he hadn’t found another woman and she wouldn’t let it go. Nico had been involved with several women from time to time, but he’d had it with love and commitment.
“I’m not planning on it,” he muttered, looking at Irena with concern. “Have you been brooding again?”
“Yes. I miss Tio more than usual tonight.”
Nico could relate. “Why is that?”