Selene’s heart almost exploded from her ribs.
She had never thought she’d hear Aristedes say those words, let alone like this. And Alex…she could swear he understood. Why else did he give this sudden squee of delight?
“Your mother calls me Aristedes, or Sarantos.” Aristedes went on. “Or both, if she’s really mad at me. I want to be Aris to her. And Papa to you. How about you try this out for today?”
“He hasn’t said anything yet.” Selene heard her voice trembling. “Not real words, anyway.”
Aristedes eyes moved to hers distractedly. “Too early?”
She coughed her incredulity. “You know nothing about kids for real, do you?”
He gave a tight shrug. “Right up till this moment, nothing at all, apart from the fact that they are scary and fragile and noisy and they take over a person’s life.”
She found a chuckle bursting on her lips. “That’s all true. And how.” She sobered a bit, looking her love at Alex. “They’re also priceless and worth every bit of sacrifice and suffering.”
“Not everyone thinks so.”
She stilled at the darkness that came over Aristedes’s face like an eclipse. Was he talking about himself?
Before she could wonder, question him, Alex turned to her, whimpering, eyes imploring.
She exhaled a ragged breath. “He wants breakfast. He always wakes up hungry.”
“I do, too.”
A wave of goose bumps stormed through her. She remembered how he woke up. Ravenous. For her, for food, then for her again…
She tamped down the urge to press against him, feel that vast hunger his body contained, the instant ignition she was capable of unleashing.
That wasn’t why he was here, wasn’t how it should be.
To bypass the moment of madness, she tried to take Alex from him. Both man and baby overrode her, Aristedes turning away a fraction while Alex nestled more securely into his arms, declaring his preference of vehicles.
“Turncoat!” she muttered as she pivoted, her heart sputtering with a crazy mixture of disappointment and delight.
Aristedes’s sonorous, satisfied chuckles followed her all the way to the kitchen.
Once there, she gestured to Alex’s high chair. Aristedes placed him there with all the care one might use to defuse a bomb.
He pulled back after he’d buckled Alex in and put his tray in place, all relieved triumph at this unprecedented achievement.
She smirked at him. “Since he wants you to hold him, you can do the rest of the morning ‘honors.’”
Aristedes’s eyes widened on something close to terror. “You mean you want me to feed him?”
She almost laughed at Aristedes’s totally incongruous expression of helplessness and shock. “A scary new experience every second, eh? That’s what everyday life with a baby is.”
Aristedes shook his head, nodded, then his eyes moved down to her breasts, a mixture of hunger and bemusement entering the silver of his eyes. “You don’t nurse him?” Images of his head at her breasts, his lips suckling her nipples, exploded in her mind, flooded her body, her core.
She shook them off, handed him two of the food jars she’d prepared before she’d gone to bed. “You think I need to do that in the kitchen? But to answer your question, not anymore. He weaned himself, adamantly, at six months. He wants to eat.”
Aristedes said nothing as Alex’s impatient prodding made him concentrate on the alien chore. He dipped the small spoon into the pureed fruit mix, offered it tentatively to Alex. Alex lunged and inhaled the spoon’s contents.
A laugh of surprise and delight rumbled deep in Aristedes’s chest as he offered him more then more spoonfuls, all which met the same fate. “He certainly does want to eat.”
She resisted the urge to run her fingers through the deep mahogany mane bent before her. “Remind you of someone?”
He turned his head to her, eyes crinkled with the first real smile she’d ever seen there. “We Sarantos men need our food.”
“Alex is not a Sarantos.”
Selene’s heart convulsed with instant regret over her vehemence, at the deep, still darkness that crept into his eyes dousing the second-ago merriment.
“I meant biologically speaking,” he finally acknowledged. “In all other ways, he’s yours. A Louvardis.”
She wondered how deep the need to make Alex a Sarantos had insinuated itself inside Aristedes. At this stage she could only believe he was too Greek, too male, that not being able to lay claim to what was his, “biologically speaking,” hurt.
Nothing more was said as Alex polished off his food. In his enjoyment of the new experience of having Aristedes serving him, he hadn’t picked up on the sudden tension between his parents. Still silent, Selene gestured for Aristedes to take him out of his high chair and follow her to another cross section of the everyday reality he’d wanted to witness and share.
Once in Selene’s sunny, child-friendly sitting room, he placed Alex in his playpen. Alex made a beeline for his favorite toys, tackling playtime with the same determination his father attacked business projects.
Her Turkish Van cat, Apollo, woke up at their entry. Instead of dashing away at the sight of strangers as he usually did, he rose, stretched leisurely, and jumped off the couch and approached Aris in avid curiosity.
Aris purred encouragements to him and in moments had the unfriendly-but-to-her-and-Alex cat purring back in his hold.
After moments of fondling an ecstatic cat, Aristedes put Apollo down. As the cat rushed to join Alex in play, Aristedes straightened and the vast space that she’d furnished in bright blues and greens seemed to shrink.
“Is Alex his real name or is it short for something else?”
She gulped a knot of emotion. “Alexandros.”
Aristedes nodded, clearly approving. “He’s nine months.”
“Ten.” He raised his eyes at that. “His doctor said developmentally, I should count him as a month less until after he passes the one-year mark. But so far he’s actually ahead of the average curve.”
Aristedes frowned. “He should be nine months.”
She squared her shoulders, met his scowl with narrowing eyes. “Are you thinking he’s not yours, after all?”
There was no hesitation. “I know he’s mine. Not just because I felt it the moment I laid eyes on him, but because you would have told me, and delighted in telling me, if he wasn’t.”
She pulled herself to her full height. “I wouldn’t have ‘delighted’ in doing any such thing. I’m not vindictive. And then, why should I have thought it would matter to you? It didn’t occur to me you’d want to have anything to do with him.”