She gasped. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘Life’s not fair. Get over it, Athena, and come home. Princess.’
Nicky had been listening on the sidelines, troubled, not understanding but trying. ‘You said my son,’ he pointed out, trying to be helpful. ‘Did you mean your daughter?’
Nikos nodded. Grave as Nicky. ‘I must have,’ he agreed. ‘But I’m a bit upset right now. I need your mama to come back to the island where she was born.’
‘You called her a princess.’
‘She is a princess.’
‘She’s my Mama.’
‘She can be both. I bet your mama says you can be anything you want if you try hard enough.’ He turned and faced Athena straight on. She was lovely, he thought. In her casual sweatshirt, her jeans, her tumbled curls tied back with a piece of red ribbon…She was a mature version of the girl he’d fallen for ten years ago. Longer. The girl he’d loved for ever.
He couldn’t think that.
‘Your mama can do anything she wants,’ he said to Nicky, but he kept right on looking at Athena. ‘I think it’s time for your mama to do just that. Because I think she wants the island of Argyros to be safe just as much as I do.’
CHAPTER THREE
SOTWO weeks later…Maybe she was out of her mind, but she was going back to a place she’d thought she’d never set foot on again. Argyros. The Silver Island of the Diamond Isles.
If Giorgos had had a son this never would have happened.
Generations of islanders had ached for the islands to revert to the three principalities they had once been. Now with Giorgos’s death, they had.
‘But why did it have to happen on my watch?’ Athena muttered as she stood on the deck of the Athens-Argyros ferry and watched her island home grow bigger.
Beside her was Nicky. He was practically bursting with excitement. He should be in school, she thought. How could he get into the college of his choice if she kept interrupting his education?
That was only one of the arguments she’d thrown at Nikos during the tense phone calls that followed his visit. But always it had returned to the bottom line.
If she backed away from her role as Crown Princess then Demos would open all six diamond mines.
Whereas Nikos had a very different proposal—to open one mine, avoiding mess and with minimal effect on the island’s environment. Profits to go into the island’s infrastructure and the island could prosper.
Nikos had told her all of this by phone, talking of nothing but the island, making no mention of how these children had happened, how Nicky and Christa affected their future—nothing, nothing, nothing.
Apart from that one outburst in the park, he’d contained his rage.
As she’d contained hers. We’ve been civilised, she thought, and tried to feel proud of herself.
Instead she felt small. Belittled by the latent anger she heard behind Nikos’s civility. Frightened of what lay ahead.
‘How long will we stay?’ By her side at the rails, Nicky suddenly sounded as scared as she was. ‘For ever?’
‘I’ve taken a month’s leave. I’m hoping by the end of the month Nikos should be able to take over the running of the place.’
‘Running?’
‘Like…the government. If I can organise things then Nikos will be the government when I leave.’
‘Are you the government now?’
‘Technically, yes. Though my cousin has been filling in.’
‘We don’t like your cousin Demos?’
‘I’m not sure we do,’ she said. ‘Nikos says he’s greedy. But let’s just see for ourselves, shall we?’
‘Okay,’ he said and tucked his hand into hers, with the infinite trust of childhood.
She needed someone to trust too, she thought. What was she letting herself in for?
‘We’ll just slip in quietly, do what we have to do and leave,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping we’ll hardly be noticed. I’ll show you the places where I swam and played when I was a little girl. I’ll figure how to stop Demos digging his great big diamond mines. Then we can go home, with as little contact with the locals as possible.’
‘So we won’t see Nikos and Christa?’ He sounded astounded. More. Sad.
‘I guess we will,’ she said and he lit up again.
‘Good. I like them. Christa likes Oscar.’
‘Oscar.’ She glanced down at the dog on the deck beside her. Crazy. Coming all this way and bringing a dog.
But she needed to. She needed as much family as she could get. Nicky and Oscar were it.
We slip in quietly, do what we need to do and leave, she said to herself again, as she’d told herself countless times before. I’ll give Nikos the authority he needs and leave.
But what about…Nicky? The small matter of Nikos’s son.
It can’t matter, she thought. Yes, Nikos was angry—maybe he even had a right to that anger, but there was still the matter of Christa, conceived three months before Nicky. When he and she…
It didn’t bear thinking about.
‘We’ll get in, do what we have to and get out again,’ she said again to Nicky. ‘No fuss. Nothing.’
And then the boat passed the headland and turned towards the harbour. And she discovered that no fuss wasn’t in the island’s equation.
She’d come. Right up until now he’d thought she’d back out. But he knew she’d boarded the ferry in Athens. Short of jumping off, she had to be here.
So he’d let it be known. Demos had been acting Crown Prince. If Athena arrived on the quiet, as if she didn’t want the Crown, it would give everyone the wrong idea. The islanders were terrified by Demos’s plans. They needed Athena.
And…they knew her.
The only child of a lone and timid mother, home schooled because the King didn’t want her to mix with the island children, Athena had every reason to be isolated and aloof. But Athena had been irrepressible. Born a tomboy, she’d declared, aged eight, that Nikos was her very best friend and whatever he did was cool with her.
As children they’d roamed the island, looking for mischief, looking for adventure, looking for fun. Tumbling in and out of trouble. Giving their respective mothers cause for palpitations.
He’d
