nights of my life, Stephanie. Your sweetness is like these gardenias and I’ll never forget you. Unfortunately, I’ve had to leave the island because of an emergency at my work that couldn’t be handled by anyone else. Enjoy the rest of your trip and be safe flying back to Crystal River. I miss you already. Dev.
Stephanie sat there and felt the blood drain from her face.
Her spring idyll was over.
He’d already driven to the airport to catch his flight to New York. Of course he hadn’t left her a phone number or address, nor had he asked her for the same information. On purpose he hadn’t given her a shred of hope that they’d ever see each other again.
She had to be the biggest fool who’d ever lived.
No, there was one other person she knew who shared that honor. Her mother, who’d died from cancer after Stephanie had graduated from college. Twenty-four years ago Ruth Walsh had made the same mistake with an irresistible man. But whoever he was hadn’t stuck around once the fun was over, either. Stephanie didn’t know his name and had no memories of him, only that her mother had said he was good-looking, exciting and an excellent skier.
He and Dev were two of a kind.
Stephanie closed her eyes tightly. How many females went off on vacation and supposedly met their soul mate, who swept them off their feet, only to abandon them once the excitement wore off? It had to be in the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions. Stephanie, like her mother, was one of those pathetic statistics who’d gotten caught up in the rapture.
White-hot with anger for being in her mid-twenties before learning the lesson she should have had memorized early in life, because of her birth father, Stephanie shot out of the chair. As she passed the waiter, she gave him a couple dollars and told him to get rid of the things she’d left on the table.
Stephanie didn’t know about her friends, but she couldn’t possibly stay on the island for the last four days of their trip. Tomorrow morning she’d be on the first plane back to Florida. If a man was too good to be true, then shame on the woman who believed she was the first female to beat the odds.
Dev was so attractive there had to be trails of broken-hearted females around the scuba diving world who knew exactly what it was like to lie in his arms and experience paradise, only to wake up and discover he’d moved on.
He’d told her that scuba diving was his favorite form of recreation. What he hadn’t mentioned was that womanizing went hand in hand with his favorite pastime. It was humiliating to think she was one of those imbeciles who didn’t have the sense to take one look at him and run far away as fast as possible.
Too furious for tears, she returned to the condo, thankful her roommates were still out. They’d probably gone into town to party with some of the other tourists staying at the resort. That gave Stephanie time to change her flight reservation and pack without them asking a lot of questions.
By tomorrow afternoon she’d be back on the job. Stephanie loved her work. Right now she was planning on it saving her life.
If she let herself think about those long walks with Dev, past the palms and Casuarina trees while they were entwined in each other’s arms, she’d go mad.
July 13
“Captain Vassalos?”
Nikos had just finished putting on the jacket of his uniform—the last time he would wear it. Steadying himself with his crutches, he looked around in time to see Vice Admiral Eugenio Prokopios of the Aegean Sea Naval Command in Piraeus, Greece, enter his hospital room and shut the door. The seasoned Greek naval hero was an old friend of his father and grandfather.
“This is an honor, sir.”
“Your parents are outside waiting for you. I told them I wanted to come in first to see you. After your last mission, we can be thankful the injury to your spine didn’t paralyze you, after all.”
Thankful?
Nikos cringed. His last covert operation with Special Forces had wiped out the target, but his best friend, Kon, had been killed. As for Nikos, his doctor told him he would never be the man he once was. His spine ought to heal in time, but he’d never be 100 percent again, and couldn’t stay in the Greek military as a SEAL, not when he would probably suffer episodes of PTSD for a long time, maybe even years.
He’d been getting counseling and was taking a serotonin reuptake inhibitor to help him feel less worried and sad, but he’d had several nightmares. They left him feeling out of control and depressed.
“Now that you’re being released from the hospital this morning, it won’t be long before you won’t need those crutches.”
Nikos hated the sight of them. “I’m planning on getting rid of them as soon as possible.”
“But not until you’ve had a good long rest after your ordeal.”
“A good long rest” was code for one reality. The part of his life that had brought challenge and purpose was finished. Only blackness remained.
“I don’t expect it to take that much time, sir.”
After a two and a half months’ hospitalization, Nikos knew exactly why the vice admiral had shown up. This was his father’s work. He’d been thwarted when Nikos had joined the military, and expected his son to return to the family business. Now that he was incapacitated, his father had sent his good friend Eugenio to wish him well with a pep talk about getting back in the family fold.
The older man eyed him solemnly. “Our navy is grateful for the heroic service you’ve rendered in Special Forces. You’re a credit to your family and our country. Your father is anxious for you to resume your place with your brother at the head of Vassalos Shipping so he can retire.”
His father would never retire.
Vice Admiral Prokopios had just let Nikos know—in the kindest way, of course—that though his military service was over, the family business was waiting to embrace him again. Of course, the older man knew nothing about Nikos’s history with his father, or he would never have said what he did.
Until after Nikos was born and turned out to be a Vassalos, after all, his father hadn’t believed he was his son, all because of a rumor that turned out to have no substance. The experience had turned him into a bitter, intransigent man. The damage inflicted on the Vassalos marriage carried over to the children, and had blighted Nikos’s life.
The navy turned out to be his escape from an impossible situation. But ten years later it was back in triplicate.
He was thirty-two years of age, and everything was over.
Sorrow weighed him down at the loss of Kon Gregerov. Nikos’s best friend from childhood, who’d come from a wonderful family on nearby Oinoussa Island, had joined the navy with him. The man had been like a brother, and had helped keep Nikos sane and grounded during those tumultuous years while he fought against his father’s domination, among other things.
He and Kon had plans to go into their own business together once they’d retired from the military, but his friend had been blown up in the explosion that almost killed Nikos.
It
