Page 31 of Penniless Cinderella for the Greek
‘For God’s sake!’ she snapped. ‘Your attitude is why I won’t want you involved. I don’t want my baby to grow up with a father who is only around out of a sense of duty. Children pick these things up. I always felt that my father didn’t love me, and I used to think I’d done something wrong.’
Guilt kicked Dimitris in his gut when he thought of the secret that Richard O’Neal had told him. He had to somehow persuade Savannah to talk to her mother about her father.
After what felt like several lifetimes the door opened and the doctor walked into the room. ‘The pregnancy test is negative,’ he told Savannah. ‘So we can proceed with the X-ray of your hip. The nurse will come to take you to the radiology department.’
‘Well, that’s that,’ she muttered after the doctor had gone. ‘I’m sure you must be relieved.’
‘Aren’t you?’ In fact Dimitris did not feel elated as he’d expected. But why on earth would he feel deflated by the news that he was not going to be a father? A baby was the last thing he wanted, he reminded himself. ‘An unplanned pregnancy would not have been ideal.’
‘Not ideal at all.’ She sounded brittle. Battered and bruised from her fall down the cliff, she looked infinitely fragile. He recalled her stricken expression when he’d challenged her about the pregnancy test that had fallen out of her bag. Shock had made him react badly.
He guessed she had climbed down the cliff because she’d wanted to hide from him as if he was an ogre. He blenched when he thought that she could have been badly injured or even killed and he would have been to blame. The guilt that had haunted him since he was fourteen reminded him that he destroyed everything good in his life. He wished he could put his arms around Savannah to comfort her and reassure himself that she was unharmed. But she was prickly and defensive.
She went with the nurse to be X-rayed, and an hour later she had been given the all-clear and insisted on walking to the car without help from Dimitris. They were both silent while he drove back to the villa. She spent the journey staring at her phone, and he wondered if it was a tactic to avoid conversation. A chasm had opened up between them and he did not know how to reach her, or if he should try. The truth, he had always known, was that she was safer away from him.
‘Go and rest while I make you something to eat,’ he told her when he ushered her into the villa. He could not help himself and ran his finger lightly down her pale cheek. A feeling of loss cramped in his gut when she flinched. ‘You’ve had a nasty experience and you are bound to feel the effects of shock,mátia mou.’
‘Stop.’ Her eyes were luminous with tears, but she spoke in a cool voice that chilled him. ‘I’m going to my room to pack. I’ve booked onto a flight to London tonight.’
‘Is this because I didn’t jump for joy about having a baby?’ His jaw clenched. ‘What did you expect?’
‘I should have expected you to react the way you did,’ she said flatly. ‘You told me that you can’t give me what I want. I guess I hadn’t realised until I did the pregnancy test how much I want to have a family one day. These past few weeks that we have spent together were fun, but we both knew our affair had an end date.’ She gave him a ghost of a smile. ‘We want different things. Nothing has changed from ten years ago. I’m looking for love, the deep, everlasting kind.’
The kind of love that ripped your heart out when it ended abruptly, like when his parents had died. Dimitris didn’t want to feel that intensity of pain ever again. He wished he could carry Savannah up to the bedroom they had shared for the past weeks and ignite the passion that always simmered between them. He wanted to show her how good they were together, without love and its associated emotions to create problems. But he couldn’t make love to her while she was so fragile and looked achingly vulnerable.
They were compatible physically, and in so many other ways. If only she would see that what they had was enough.Theós, he had shared more of himself with her than with any other woman. What more did she want from him? Babies, he thought grimly as he watched her walk slowly up the stairs.
When a taxi pulled up in front of the villa half an hour later, Dimitris stood on his balcony and watched Stefanos carry Savannah’s suitcase to the car. He fought the temptation to go after her and beg her not to leave. He was used to his affairs being on his terms. Women did not leave him. Except for Savannah, who had left him twice, a voice in his head taunted him as the taxi drove away.
She’d gone because he wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to be loved and it was not an unreasonable request. Her generosity of spirit and boundless compassion meant that she deserved to find love. But she deserved a better man than him. A man who was not afraid to admit his love for her openly and honestly, Dimitris thought bleakly.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AMONTHLATERDimitris acknowledged that he was not looking forward to the party at his publishers. His editorial team and the hierarchy of management were great people, the food was bound to be good, and the champagne would flow. But he did not have any enthusiasm for anything, not the party that would be the first of many during the festive period, nor Christmas, which he would be spending alone this year because Eleni had met a new boyfriend and was going to St Lucia with him. Dimitris had lost his zest for life and only his iron willpower stopped him numbing his pain with a bottle of single malt.
He stood next to the French windows in the drawing room of his house in Richmond. It was ironic that the house was called River Retreat when the river, swollen by the rain that had fallen relentlessly since he’d arrived in London three days ago, had breached the banks and flooded the lawn at the bottom of the garden.
The glorious weather on Australia’s Gold Coast had failed to lift his dark mood, and his jaw had ached from forcing himself to smile for the audiences who had packed theatres to watch his cooking demonstrations. At the end of the tour he had returned to Rhodes where the winters were mild. The sun had been shining in the blue sky, but the villa had been full of Savannah, although very much not full of Savannah. Memories of her were everywhere. Her collection of colourful cushions enlivened the neutral décor of the sitting room and her perfume lingered in his bedroom. He often woke in the middle of the night and reached for her, before he remembered that she’d gone.
He had tried to call her to check that there were no repercussions from when she’d fallen down the cliff, but her number had been unavailable. He knew he was fooling himself. What he really wanted to do was beg her to forgive him for behaving so badly when she’d thought she was pregnant and ask her if she could find it in her heart to love him. With a sickening lurch in the pit of his stomach Dimitris knew he was the greatest fool of all time.
He had come to England on a mission. Savannah had confided to him that her relationship with the man she’d believed was her father had been strained, and she’d felt unloved. Dimitris sensed that she was still affected by the rejection she’d experienced as a child. He hoped he could persuade Savannah’s mother to tell her daughter the truth that she deserved to hear.
Savannah had encouraged him to open up about the accident to his sister, and now he was closer to Eleni than ever, and slowly beginning to forgive himself and accept that he could not change the past or predict the future, but a life without love was no life at all. He just hoped he hadn’t left the discovery too late to stand a chance with Savannah.
November in England was grey. Grey skies and the dull gleam of rain on grey pavements mirrored Savannah’s bleak mood. Christmas was still weeks away, but the shop windows were decorated with festive scenes and the gaudily coloured lights on every high street failed to lift the blanket of misery that had swamped her since she’d left Dimitris.
She couldn’t contact him even if she’d wanted to. Somewhere on her journey from Rhodes to London she had lost her phone. It was an old device and because she hadn’t backed up her contacts she did not have Dimitris’s mobile number. She could probably reach him through his publisher if necessary. But why would she? It was over between them and the sooner she accepted it the better.
By now he would have finished his cooking tour in Australia and had probably returned to Greece, where the weather would be a lot better than in London. Savannah had spent the past weeks looking for somewhere to live and had finally moved into a tiny flat that cost a fortune to rent but was a ten-minute drive away from her mum’s nursing home.
She parked her car in front of Willow Grange and ran through the rain to the entrance. She went to her mother’s room and found her in bed. Evelyn looked fragile propped against the pillows.
‘I’m sorry you had to come out in this awful weather.’ To Savannah’s consternation, tears filled her mother’s eyes.
‘Mum—what’s wrong?’
‘Dimitris came to see me yesterday.’
