“I am looking out for your well-being,” his father had replied. “Besides,” he’d added scornfully, “it’s not as if you have any pressing demands on your time. Work, for example?” A bitter smile had touched Stavros’s features. “God forbid.”
Nikos hadn’t replied. There was no point. Stavros had long ago decided that he was a good-for-nothing. It was Nikos’s greatest joy to do his best to confirm his father’s estimation.
“It’s time you settled down,” his father had gone on implacably. “Until you are able to drive away under your own power, you will stay here.”
And there was no arguing with him. No going around him. No convincing anybody to spirit him away. He was stuck until he could drive—with his father and his father’s notion of how things ought to be done.
It was exactly what his father had been angling for. It had been the subject of their quarrel right before Nikos’s accident. It had been the subject of the quarrel they’d had last week.
Stavros had come to the cottage to try to badger Nikos into studying the company prospectus. “Learn about your inheritance,” he’d demanded.
“I know all about my inheritance,” Nikos had retorted bitterly, and he’d tossed the prospectus aside.
“I’ll shape you up if it’s the last thing I do,” his father had vowed, glowering down at Nikos who had stared insolently back.
Nikos’s jaw tightened. “I’d like to see you try!”
“Would you?” Stavros went very quiet. “Fine. Count on it.” He’d turned on his heel and stalked out. The door shut quietly, ominously, behind him.
Nikos had ignored it, ignored him. He’d been enormously pleased that, for the last five days, the old man had been avoiding him completely. So he wasn’t counting on Stavros being able to “shape him up.”
He was counting on getting out of here—away from his father, away from all the demands and distrust, away from the bitterness and the battles and the disappointment they’d been to each other for all of Nikos’s thirty-two years. He didn’t need it, God knew.
Let Alex have it—all of it—and the grief that went with it.
He looked at the woman sitting primly on the sofa now. She did look like a nanny. Or a nun.
Poor Alex.
She must have impeccable credentials, Nikos thought. He paused and corrected himself—must have had impeccable credentials. His father wouldn’t have picked anyone less worthy than Mary Poppins to look after the likes of master Alex.
“Sorry about that,” he said with a repentance he didn’t feel. In fact, he was still grinning.
She wasn’t. “It’s not funny. I have a reputation to uphold. Standards to maintain.”
“I wouldn’t give you a nickel for your reputation now, sweetheart,” Nikos said cheerfully. “Or your standads. ”
“Mr. Costanides will be upset.”
“I devoutly hope so.” He wondered if the old man was even now bearing down on the cottage, determined to rescue Mary Poppins from his grip.
“He expected me at three. It’s important for me to arrive on time,” she said. “To be punctual. To be fair. To be strict. Mr. Costanides says his son needs that.”
Did he? Nikos didn’t know Alex well enough to say. Certainly the kid wasn’t as headstrong as he’d been.
“Punctual. Fair. Strict. You must be a regular paragon. I’m sure you’ll impress the hell out of him,” he said lazily. “What other virtues do you have?”
“I don’t use profanity,” she said.
Ah, so she could sting when she wanted to. Nikos grinned. “Little brat getting out of hand? Don’t want him turning out like his big brother, do we?”
The nanny looked perplexed. “Big brother? Are there two children? Mr. Costanides didn’t mention a brother.”
“I’m not surprised,” Nikos said drily.
“But, yes,” Miss Mari Lewis went on quite sincerely, “he did say Nikos had been giving him some problems.”
“What?”
His yelp caused her to jump. But instead of answering him, she folded her hands in her lap, pressed her lips together, and looked like he’d have to torture the information out of her.
“What did you say?” Nikos demanded again.
She gave a quick determined shake of her head. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Not about the child—or his behavior. It’s indiscreet. Improper. It’s entirely between me and my employer.”
But Nikos wasn’t listening to her babbling. “The boy,” he demanded, hobbling close, glowering down at her. “What did you call him?”
Mari Lewis blinked at him like some near-sighted owl, but he wasn’t ruffling her feathers. She lifted her chin, as if to tell him he wasn’t going to intimidate her. Then, “Nikos,” she said, exactly as he’d thought she had.
His teeth came together with a snap. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No,” he said again. “His name is Alexander.”
“No,” she replied just as firmly, “it’s not.”
She reached down and picked her bag up and pulled out a contract. She held it out toward him. “See for yourself. It says right there. His name is Nikos. I might have got the wrong cottage, but I have not got the wrong child!”
Yes, she damned well had!
But, from his father’s standpoint, obviously, no, she had not.
The old man hadn’t been apoplectic at all. He might have been a little astonished when Nikos had hauled Mary Poppins into his arms and kissed her, but ultimately he would have been amused—and justified.
His son’s flagrant disregard for propriety, his inappropriate kissing of a total stranger would have only underscored Stavros’s notion that he had done the right thing.
The old rogue had hired a nanny to straighten him out!
Far from running down here to rescue her, the old man was probably standing up on the deck now, congratulating himself—and laughing his fool head off.
Nikos’s teeth came together with a snap. His headache returned with a vengeance. He dropped his head back and shut his eyes, his mind whirling furiously. And furious was the operative word.
“I’ll shape you up if it’s the last thing I do. ” His father’s words came back to haunt him. To mock him. To humiliate him.
It was Stavros Costanides, down to the ground.
“Mr....er...I’m
