Page 55 of Her Secret Heir
Ava had her arms wrapped around her waist and was staring at him in a way she never had before, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Even that day at the school when he’d come back into her life, she hadn’t looked like this.
“Ava—”
“Don’t try to sugarcoat this or explain your actions. I made it clear that I needed your trust on this issue, Christos.”
“I know that. I do trust you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. You can’t carry it off.”
Her arms dropped to her side. “I’ll be whatever I like. I’m the injured party here.”
He shook his head at her. “Put yourself inmyshoes, Ava. I saw you and Stavros together. Nikki knew he was sleeping with another woman that summer and you were the only one near him.”
Those were images he’d never been able to get out of his head. Though they were fading with time.
“Put yourself in my shoes, Christos…you give your virginity to a man you think you love and your boss comes on to you and you end up losing the man you love, your job and your family.”
“I’m sorry that your family didn’t stand by you,” he said, unable to fathom her family abandoning her, because his never would. Even when he was at his wildest his father had still kept in touch. And he’d always had Guillermo and Tristan, who were like brothers to him.
“Their rejection I expected. I never fitted in at home and knew they wouldn’t want anything to do with me or Theo. Your rejection hurt a lot.”
“I never intended to hurt you,” he said, thinking about the pain he’d carefully disguised as anger when he’d caught her in his brother’s arms. The anger that he’d used to mask the vulnerability he’d felt at having trusted her.
“Of course, you didn’t. Now that you know Theo’s your son, is everything magically fixed in the past?”
He didn’t hesitate, because the one time he had, with her, had brought them to this moment. “I had the test performed, but I haven’t read the results.”
“Then why have the test done?”
“I needed proof on this so that I could trust you.”
“You neededproof? Trust doesn’t work that way. Relationships are built on a belief in the other person, not facts and tests, and I can’t live with a man who doesn’t trust me.”
“Are you threatening to leave?” he asked. He wanted to toss her over his shoulder, take her up to his room and lock her in. Ensure that she could never leave. But on the outside he struggled to play it cool.
“You sound as if it doesn’t matter to you,” she said.
“Hell, yes, it matters to me. But I’m not going to beg you to forgive me for something that was necessary.”
She shook her head. “What do you mean necessary?”
“You wanted me to trust you, to believe in you and I wanted to give you that. To be able to love you the way you deserve…”
“And the only way you could do that was to go behind my back and have Theo tested?” she asked.
He took a step toward her, because this time she hadn’t sounded defensive or angry. She’d sounded confused.
“You wanted something from me that I’m not capable of giving.”
“What do you think I want from you?”
“Blind trust.”
“I didn’t want blind anything, Christos. I wanted love. Full-on, head-over-heels love. The kind of stuff that you read about in old epic tales.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the tension there. “That’s not realistic.”
