Ever Fallen in Love Page 17

  I didn’t hear the noise until Richard shouted my name.

  “Huh?” I sat up, pushing my hair out of my face. Next to me, Peter was still sleeping, his warm body smooshed up against me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Kiera where are you—oh, thank God. Get the baby. Anne, grab the things he’ll need. Where’s your bag?”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, panic filling me at the sight of Anne’s tight expression. She dashed for the baby’s room. I picked up Peter, my flight instinct riding me high, turning as I tried to figure out where I should run.

  “Melanie!”

  She ran into the room and took Peter from me, murmuring something about getting his favorite blanket.

  “Someone please tell me what’s happening!” I almost screamed, desperate, frightened, and confused.

  “Is this yours?” Richard asked, throwing my duffel bag on the bed.

  “Yes. Why am I packing? Is it the bugout bag thing—” I paused, listening to an unfamiliar noise overhead. “Is that a plane?”

  “Yes.” His face was grim as he ran to the window to try to peer up.

  “Are they ready?” John appeared at the bedroom door, a phone in his hand.

  “A plane.” It took me a minute before I realized the significance of that. A normal plane wouldn’t put everyone into a panic, but a plane that was clearly buzzing the island ... it had to be Misha. I didn’t bother wasting time talking; I jerked open the drawers where I’d just put my things away an hour before, and threw them all into the bag, dumping the sand of my Zen garden into the trash, and flinging the tray and rocks, along with my paperbacks, into the bag before running to the bathroom. In two minutes, all my worldly possessions were in the bag in the living room, while Anne, Melanie, and I tried to pick the most vital of Peter’s items. George just about had a hissy fit at the giant kiwi bird, but grabbed it with one hand, and the giant wheeled suitcase that we’d filled with as much of Peter’s clothing, toys, and care items as we could fit.

  Richard emerged with an identical bag containing some of Theo’s things.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, flinching when the whine of the plane Dopplered, the sound increasing as it returned for another pass of the island. “One of the boats?”

  “It’s not safe enough. If he has firearms ...” George glanced at Peter, held in my arms.

  I fought the nausea that rose with that unfinished sentence. “Then what are we doing?”

  “Theo’s on his way, Kiera,” Anne said, an arm around me. “And he’s bringing the police. They’ll scare off that bastard, and he’ll take you to the airport.”

  “He’s sending me away?” I asked, my heart feeling like it was going to break. Was Theo moving himself and Peter to the mainland while I went elsewhere? I didn’t want to leave him and the baby, but that was just selfishness. I had to go. I couldn’t blame Theo for getting rid of me, but it hurt nonetheless.

  “You’re all leaving. Did you get their passports, Rich?” Anne asked.

  “Right here,” he answered, giving them to George.

  “We’re all going? Theo, too?”

  “Yes,” Anne said, patting me on the arm. “It’ll be all right, Kiera. Just you see. Theo is very resourceful.”

  The whine of the plane grew louder and louder as it approached, leaving me with a ridiculous need to duck. Paul entered the house, gesturing everyone away from the windows.

  “Just in case,” he said.

  Just in case of what? I wanted to ask, but simply clutched a half-asleep Peter, taking comfort in the baby smell of him. He was warm, sleepily draped on me, sucking slowly on a clump of my hair.

  It was a hellish nightmare of a half hour before Paul and John—who had been skulking around outside watching the plane, which was clearly trying to both intimidate us and look for a place to safely land—called George. He returned a minute later. “Two choppers are coming in now,” he told us. “One is the police. Everyone stay here. No one leave the house. Do you understand?”

  He looked at me as he spoke.

  “There is nothing I want less than to risk this baby’s life,” I told him.

  “Good. Keep that as your goal, and you’ll be fine.”

  He disappeared while the Darts talked quietly to themselves. I listened hard for the sound of the rotors, but when the wind was blowing to the south, it carried the sound away. I wondered what was going on up there. Would Misha try to enact some sort of air battle? Or would the presence of the police cause him to slip away? Normally, he gave the police a wide berth, but if he was feeling safe because of any police buddies he had, who knew what he would do?

  I paced back and forth with Peter, now fully awake and fussing to be let down, but I couldn’t seem to let go of him. A gust of wind whirled into the room, and Theo was there, holding us both, murmuring words of love and comfort, his arms hard around us.

  I wanted to sob at the joy of seeing him hale and hearty, and clutched his sleeve with one hand. “Did the police—”

  “Scared him off.” He turned to George, nodding at him. “We’ll be off. Did you get everything gathered?”

  “Yes, sir. Your man there accessed your safe and pulled the things you wanted.”

  “Good.” He turned me, his hand on my back. “We’ll leave before he thinks it’s safe to come back.”

  “Go where?” I asked once we were seated in the copter, George riding shotgun, and Theo back with Peter and me. I didn’t know how John and Paul were to get off the island, since there were only four seats, but I decided they were more than able to take care of the Darts should Mikhail return.

  He looked like he didn’t want to answer for a minute, then said, “Greece. We’re going home.”

  THIRTEEN

  The last thing Theo wanted to do was to go crawling to Iakovos admitting that he couldn’t take care of his own family, but his pride was easily sacrificed in order to keep Kiera and Peter safe.

  “What do you mean you’re in Greece?” Jake’s voice all but snapped at him from his mobile phone. “It’s five o’clock in the morning!”

  “We had a hell of a flight. The baby and Kiera ate something in Australia that didn’t agree with them, and puked all over the jet I booked. The baby, not Kiera, although she puked, too—she just kept hers confined to the toilet. I think Peter’s teething again, because he barely slept and didn’t seem to like the flights, which is odd because he doesn’t mind the copter rides at all, and Kiera’s knee flared up again despite her running like the gazelle she is, and she swore it was fine until that bastard started buzzing the house, and she tripped and fell going to the copter, and it made the knee bad. Kneeling at the toilet repeatedly to vomit didn’t help either. We’ve had ice on it.”

  There was a moment’s silence. “On the toilet?” Iakovos asked.

  “What? No, I’m talking to him now. You still look green, sweet. It’ll be just one more short flight; then you can die in peace. Hello, Iakovos? You there? Kiera is still feeling poorly, and I think the baby just shat himself again. We’ll be there in an hour, God willing.” Theo hung up in order to take Peter from Kiera after seeing her face, ignoring the foul smell that emerged from the diaper, hauling the baby into the bathroom to clean him up.

  Theo mused on the short flight from Athens that he always had an image of how he wanted to return to his brother—triumphant at his ability to make his own fortune rather than working as Iakovos’s flunky, with a gorgeous woman on his arm, one dripping in diamonds and gold, enough to choke a horse ... and, more important, impress Jake with his ability to survive just fine on his own, thank you very much.

  Iakovos was at the dock on the island he owned, ostensibly to greet him, but Theo knew the real reason he was there was to see just what a mess Theo had made of his life.

  And there his brother was, waiting for them, a tall, imposing man who had a few inches on Theo, his arms crossed over his chest while he watched impassively as the boat that had picked them up on the mainland tied up. Theo smiled wanly
at his brother, all the fantasies of arriving on a yacht of his own, an elegant, jewel-clad woman at his side, dissolving into the wind. He held Peter with one arm, all too aware that his attempts to clean the baby in the men’s room at the small airport a half hour’s drive away were more than a little lacking. Peter was red-faced and snotty, puke stains down his front, his no-nos coming with indignant wails, punctuated with little snot bubbles that Theo desperately wiped on the tail of his own shirt, since he had quickly run through all the wipes they’d packed.

  “Sorry about the early morning arrival,” Theo said, feeling like he was a good hundred years older than his thirty-four years. “It just seemed best, given the situation. This is my son.”

  Iakovos stared in horror as Peter, with a wet, angry hiccup, opened his mouth and vomited, the stream narrowly missing Iakovos’s shoes. “Oh God, he’s at it again. Kiera, he didn’t keep the apple juice down. This is my wife,” he added when Kiera lurched forward from where she’d been hunched over a bucket that had obviously once contained chum, her face pale, wan, and with a faint green cast that exquisitely highlighted the black circles under her eyes. Her hair, normally a long curtain of shiny silk, was now hanging in lank clumps, and as he put out a hand to help her from the boat, he noticed with alarm that a section of her hair on the side was matted together with what looked like dried baby vomit.

  “Hi. Nice to meet you. Theo has told me absolutely nothing about you. Do you have a quiet room where I might die in peace?” Kiera asked, clutching the bucket.

  Theo would say one thing about his brother: when faced with an emergency, Iakovos didn’t waste time. “I am delighted to meet you and Peter,” he told Kiera. “I am sorry to see you are feeling unwell. I have an exceptionally nice room for you to rest in peace, although I hope not permanently so. Theo—” Jake’s eyes raked him over. “You look like hell. Come along, let’s get you all sorted.”

  Harry bustled out just as they reached the house, her eyes alight with pleasure until she got a good look at his face. Or it might have been Kiera’s. Perhaps it was the fact that they had to stop and let the baby retch up the last of the apple juice they’d tried to give him to keep him from being dehydrated. Regardless, she took one look at Kiera, and after merely kissing Theo’s cheek, she took the baby, not even once wincing at the smell coming from him.

  “Kiera, is it? Iakovos said something about you and Peter having food poisoning. It’s absolutely the worst thing, isn’t it? Come along this way. We’ve kept Theo’s rooms, and I’m sure you’ll be very comfortable in there. And don’t worry about your baby—we have four children of our own, and the things Matilda—she’s our nanny—has had to put up with would boggle your mind. She’s a godsend, and worth her weight in gold.”

  Theo wanted to droop with relief when Harry rallied the staff into caring for Kiera and Peter. Kiera opted to forgo a shower in favor of lying on his bed and moaning softly to herself. It was only with an effort that he managed to get the chum bucket away from her, giving her instead a small, clean trash basket.

  “I’ve called the doctor,” Iakovos told him when he left Kiera after having peeled her clothes off her and poured her into his bed. “I’m surprised you didn’t do that yourself.”

  Theo held up a hand. “Could you save the judgments until later? I’ve been awake over thirty hours taking care of Kiera and Peter, and trying to get us all out of Australia without anyone knowing where we’re going. Oh, would you send the boat back in an hour or so? Our security detail was following, but they had to catch a later flight.”

  “Security detail?” Iakovos asked, stopping Theo en route to the set of rooms now known as the nursery. To his surprise, Iakovos enveloped him in a bear hug, thumping him on the back before releasing him as he said, “Christ, you smell rank.”

  “It was Peter. He shit all the way up his back, and there was nothing to clean him with. Remind me to send an apology to the airport later.”

  “You have had a time of it,” Jake said, the two of them entering one of the nursery rooms. A middle-aged woman stood with Harry, Peter now naked and being carried over to a bath.

  “The baby has not eaten anything solid?” the woman asked him in Greek.

  “No. We tried juices, and he kept some down, but the latest came up as soon as we got here.” Theo felt so tired, he wondered if his limbs had turned to lead. It was almost too much of an effort to speak.

  The nanny nodded, and quickly washed Peter, getting him dried and into a onesie that Theo didn’t recognize. “We will give him ice chips first, then a little juice if he keeps that down. The doctor will tell us if he needs medicine.”

  Theo was so grateful to have Peter in the hands of an expert, someone who knew what she was doing and didn’t feel utterly and completely helpless, that he just nodded, feeling tears form in his eyes.

  “Don’t worry, Theo, Matilda is a miracle worker,” Harry said, giving him a squeeze on the arm. “Why don’t you lay down for a bit? We’ll take good care of Peter.”

  “Thank you,” was all he could say. He didn’t like the way his voice sounded, thick and awkward. It was all so unlike the impression he wanted to make for his brother, but he simply had no energy left to care.

  “Satisfied?” Jake asked him, gesturing toward Peter.

  He nodded again, and let his brother escort him out of the nursery and back to his bedroom.

  “I should explain—” he started to say once he reached his door.

  “Later,” Jake said, giving him a little push into the room. “You look almost as bad as your wife. When did you get married, by the way?”

  Theo rubbed his face and tried to count the days. His brain refused to budge. “Don’t remember. Days ago.”

  Iakovos gave him a long look. “Get some rest.”

  Theo summoned up the last few remaining wits, saying, “Don’t let anyone on the island who you don’t know.”

  Iakovos shot him a piercing look. “Why?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you later.” Theo stumbled into his room, barely having the strength to close the door and kick off his shoes before he collapsed down onto the bed next to Kiera. She had fallen asleep with the trash can clutched in her arms.

  He sank into the bed, rolling over until he was spooned up behind her, and immediately fell asleep.

  He woke up briefly to find a young woman giving Kiera a shot for her nausea, assuring them both that the baby was doing much better, and had taken some liquids and was holding it down. She told them that sleep would do much that medicine couldn’t, and he let himself drift back into the exhausted sleep filled with hellish images of the last thirty-six hours.

  When he woke again, it was evening, and the bed next to him was empty. He used the toilet, and flinched when he got a glimpse of himself in the mirror, wondering where the man who Kiera thought was too handsome for his own good had gone. He showered, managed to scrape a razor across the grisly visage that was his face, and pulled on clean clothes before going in search of his wife and child.

  He found them together, sitting in the nursery, Kiera on the floor with Peter, who sat between her legs, no-no-ing loudly while banging a plastic cup on Kiera’s leg.

  “You look a hundred times better,” Harry said, getting up from where she was sitting with Jake on a couch with one of their girls, watching Kiera and Peter. She hugged him, giving him another kiss on the cheek just before she whispered, “I like your wife a lot, but I’m going to give you holy hell later for getting married without letting us know.”

  He kissed her back, nodded to Jake, who sat with a girl of about four on his lap, and knelt next to where Kiera sat. He eyed her. “You’re not green anymore.”

  “No, thank God. Whatever was in that shot the doctor gave me was a miracle. Peter’s feeling much better, too, aren’t you?”

  Peter babbled his agreement and climbed over her leg to bang the cup on Theo.

  “I don’t think you’ve met our youngest, Theo. This is Rose,” Harry said, brushing a hand t
hrough the girl’s dark hair. She went a little shy at the attention, turning in her father’s lap and hiding her face against his chest. “Yacky insisted she be named for me.”

  Kiera’s eyebrows rose as she glanced at Theo.

  “When Harry met Iakovos, she couldn’t say his name. She called him Yacky,” he explained.

  Iakovos rolled his eyes. “She could say it perfectly well. She just chose not to.”

  Harry giggled.

  “But Rose ...” Kiera still looked confused.

  “Her name is really Eglantine,” Iakovos said. “Which is French for Rose. Since she threatened to geld me if I insisted our daughter have that name, we settled on Rose.”

  “Tell me,” Harry said, getting on the floor to take Peter from Theo, holding him up so he could bounce. “How long did it take you to spell Papamoomoo? Please tell me it was months, because otherwise, Yacky and the girls will give me hell.”

  The twins and the boy Theo remembered last as a baby burst into the room, their arms full of toys that they said they had rounded up to donate to Peter.

  “He has a mega crap-ton of toys,” Kiera told them, “but I’m sure he’ll like to play with these while we’re here.”

  “And with that opening,” Iakovos said, prying his daughter off his chest, placing a kiss on her head before giving her a little shove toward where the other children were trying to get Peter to crawl over to them, “I believe we adults should have a little talk. And food, if you can stomach it.”

  Kiera looked pained. “I think I’m going to pass on that offer, although the doctor said I should push fluids, so if I could get a pitcher of ice water, that’ll do me just fine.”

  Theo hesitated for a few seconds, then got to his feet and held out a hand for Kiera. “If you don’t want to leave him, we won’t,” he said softly in her ear.

  She gave him a wide-eyed look, then tipped her head toward where Peter was happily no-no-ing his cousins as they took turns showing him the toys. “He’s having fun, Theo. I don’t know if he’s been around other children, but socialization is very important for babies. It teaches him how to interact, and to learn about social mores and values, and how to deal with expectations that do not fit in with his personal view of the world.”