Page 37

“Consider getting pregnant by you. Why?” She was turning like a rotisserie chicken, getting tangled in the blankets as she did. “Do you want children? Because last I heard, you didn’t even want a wife. You’re already talking about divorce even if we have a baby so you don’t want me.”

“I do, though.” He rolled onto his back and his arm went under his head. “Obviously.”

Her heart felt as though it was beating outside her body, reaching toward him. Did he really want this? Her, with all her hang-ups?

“You want sex,” she accused mulishly.

“Do you not?”

“Maybe.” She rolled onto her back.

His light snort told her she wasn’t fooling him.

“Having sex and making babies are two different things,” she said into the quiet.

“Biology would disagree,” he drawled.

“You know what I mean. All I am is a convenient rando in your life. No. An inconvenient one. You might not dislike me, but—”

“Alia.” He came up on an elbow facing her. “I didn’t like waking up to learn I’d lost my grip on my life. That is objectively infuriating and yes, as the person here in my house and bed, you have borne the brunt of my resentment. I’m over it.”

She released a scathing, throaty, “Ha.”

“I am mostly over it,” he corrected. “Because I am mostly in control again. I like you fine.”

“You like me fine?” she repeated. “This effusive charm must be how you seduced me that night on your yacht. Maybe say something equally romantic like, ‘We could kill two birds with one stone.’”

For a few long seconds, she thought she had insulted him too deeply, that he was going to say something that would shrivel her into tears.

“You know how much that spicy attitude of yours turns me on. Flirt.” He threw off the covers and rose from the bed. “I need to swim.”

She sat up, instantly gripped by apprehension. “Don’t—”

“I’ll leave the doors open,” he muttered as he tapped the panel to disable the alarm.

He pushed the doors out and his footsteps faded down the outside steps. Seconds later, she heard the splash as he hit the water.

* * *

The cool water of the pool doused the worst of his sexual frustration, but Spiro’s mind kept churning with the stroke of his arms through the water.

Maybe he wasn’t back to his old self if he was making impulsive decisions around something as profound as having a child.

It felt right, though. And it was very normal for him to take action based on gut instinct.

Now he tried to parse through why it felt right. Was a desire for sex what had really prompted his offer? Was he that base?

No. It was more than that.

He was inordinately proud of what he’d made of his father’s business. It had actually been a small repair shop when his great-grandfather had started it. It had grown with each successive generation and there was a very patriarchal part of his ego that wondered what his offspring could make of it.

And there was that stubborn, angry son in him who loathed the idea of the family business winding up in the hands of someone like Lambros, who only wanted to squeeze what he could out of it.

Which wasn’t a reason to become a father. Spiro knew that. He certainly shouldn’t become one if all he wanted was to impose his own expectations on his child. That was his mother’s brand of parenting, the kind that left a hole inside a person.

Being a good father meant loving your child unconditionally, the way their father had loved him and Khristos. Nemo Mylonas had been a busy man, but weekend afternoons had always been reserved for his sons, either sailing or working on the craft itself.

Khristos had still been young and rather ambivalent about woodworking and tools, but Spiro had loved all of it. When he thought about guiding a small hand with a sanding block or demonstrating a proper cleat hitch, something welled within him. Want. It didn’t make sense to him to suddenly want a child. Maybe his near-death experience had flicked a biological switch in him, but the desire was there, awake and undeniable, if tentative. He didn’t know what kind of father he’d make, but he wanted to be one.