Кристина Холлис – His Chosen Wife: Antonides' Forbidden Wife / The Ruthless Italian's Inexperienced Wife / The Millionaire's Chosen Bride (страница 23)
“Just be sure that’s all you do,” PJ warned his grandmother. He dropped another kiss on her forehead, then with a quick smile at Ally, went out the door, yelling for Elias.
They both watched him go. Then as she cleaned her hands and began to layer the filo and melted butter with the honey mixture, PJ’s grandmother said something in Greek.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t understand,” Ally said, coming closer and picking up the brush to help butter the layers as
“I said,”
She smiled fondly out the window where they could both see PJ rescuing his older brother who was being used as a human climbing frame by his toddler-aged twins. “All of my grandchildren I love,
“I don’t say that to anyone else,” she went on. “But I know. He knows. He is the most like my dear Aeneas. Strong and gentle like his grandfather. He makes me laugh. He makes me happy. He is a good man.”
“Yes.” Ally knew that. She’d always known it.
“A man who deserves to be happy, too,”
“Yes.”
“He says he is.”
“I hope he is,” Ally agreed quickly, then felt more was needed. “I want him to be happy,” she said fervently. And that was the truth. “I know he was happy to come home for the weekend.”
“Now that you are here and his father knows what he says is true. But that is not what I mean. He says he is happy, but I wonder …” Her voice trailed off and her gaze turned to the windows again as she watched PJ and Elias on the lawn playing with the little boys. They all were laughing.
“He looks happy,” Ally said stoutly.
As tough as the old woman was, Ally liked her.
She felt guilty for not confessing her plans. But she’d promised PJ she wouldn’t mention the divorce. And the truth was, even if she hadn’t promised, she wasn’t sure she could have got the words past her lips.
It felt like a sacrilege to even think it, much less bring it up. And she completely forgot about it after another ten minutes of conversation, during which PJ’s grandmother changed the subject and asked about her art and her retail business.
Her questions weren’t casual. They demonstrated she was not only knowledgeable but that PJ had obviously told her a great deal about what Ally did.
“He is very proud of you,” she said.
“He made it possible.”
But before she could figure out how to respond, PJ’s grandmother said, “Here comes Martha. You will love Martha.”
And as she spoke, the door from the deck swung open and Martha stuck her head in. She carried her toddler son on her hip.
“Oh, good, you are here,” she said to Ally. “I’ve been looking for you.” Then, “Can you spare her,
When they’d first met, Martha had simply beamed and kissed her. Was she now about to grill Ally the way PJ’s grandmother and Cristina had?
But before she could demur,
“God forbid.” Martha laughed. “Come on,” she said to Ally. “We’ll go down on the beach. Eddie can eat sand.”
She led the way and, bemused, Ally followed.
“I saw one of your murals at Sol Y Sombra,” she told Martha. “It was amazing.”
And any concern she might have had about Martha’s reaction to her relationship with PJ evaporated right then. Martha’s face lit up. “You were there?” And when Ally explained, her eyes widened. “Gaby’s showing your work, too?”
She was clearly delighted and peppered Ally with a thousand questions—about her art, about her shops, about her focus. And she was absolutely thrilled to meet PJ’s wife.
“Dad didn’t think you really existed,” she confided. “It’s so cool to discover you do. And even cooler that I like you!”
If Cristina had been suspicious, Martha was just the opposite. She was eager to welcome Ally into the family. She practically danced along the beach as they followed Eddie from one pile of flotsam and jetsam to another.
“We’ll have to get together. Maybe in Santorini—or we could come to Hawaii sometime, Theo and Eddie and I,” she said, eyes alight with possibilities. “Theo would love that. He sails. He and PJ bonded over PJ’s windsurfer. They have a lot in common. And apparently we do, too.”
And what was Ally supposed to say? No, they didn’t?
“That would be fun,” she managed. And she was telling the truth when she said it. It would be absolutely wonderful, if only …
Something of her hesitation must have shown through, because Martha immediately said, “Don’t let me bully you into it. Theo is always telling me I shouldn’t just assume.”
“No,” Ally said quickly. “I really would love it. I just … We don’t know what we’re doing yet, PJ and I. We have to … discuss things.”
“Of course,” Martha said quickly. “It must be so weird, getting back together after all these years.”
Ally nodded. “We don’t really know each other …”
“Why did you stay away so long?”
And how, Ally wondered, could she even begin to answer that?
“There always seemed to be things to do,” she said, “and PJ married me so I could do them.” She knew that all the Antonides clan had heard the story of her grandmother’s legacy by now. But she didn’t know how much else any of them knew. She shrugged and turned to stare out to sea. It was easier that way than when she had to look into Martha’s face. “And once I finally got going, I was a success. I ended up on a fast track. Doing what he’d expected me to do. And—” she shrugged “—as that was what we’d married for, I just … kept doing it. I guess I thought he would have moved on. Got a divorce.”
“Could he?”
Ally nodded. “If he had filed and I didn’t respond, yes. He could have got a divorce without my ever having to sign anything.”
“Bet you’re glad he didn’t. Bet he is, too.” Martha shook her head. “Wow. What if you’d come back and found out you were already divorced? What if he’d married somebody else?” She looked appalled at the thought.
And Ally had to admit to a certain jolt when she thought about it, too. Of course it would have been easier. She could have married Jon without any of this ever happening.
“You wouldn’t be here now,” Martha said, making almost exactly the same mental leaps. Then she laughed. “And PJ would be facing a weekend with Connie Cristopolous.”
“She’s beautiful,” Ally protested.
“But not PJ’s type.”
Ally wasn’t sure what PJ’s type was. But before she could ask Martha’s opinion, the other woman went on, “So how did you find him?”
And Ally told her about going back to Honolulu, about her dad’s heart attack, about looking for PJ. “I thought he’d be there still,” she admitted. “But he wasn’t.”
“And so you had to track him down! How romantic is that?” Martha was clearly pleased.
Cristina thought PJ was the romantic. Martha thought she was.
“Eddie! Ack, no. Don’t put that in your mouth!” Martha swooped down and scooped her son up, taking whatever he’d been about to eat and tossing it into the water. “Kids! What will I ever do when I have two of them?” she moaned.
“Are you …?”Ally looked at Martha’s flat stomach doubtfully.
But Martha nodded happily. “Not till January, though. What about you guys? Have you talked about kids?”
“Not … much.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie. They had talked about children—the ones she hoped to have with Jon, the grandchild she wanted to give her father.
But now in her mind’s eye she didn’t see a child she might have with Jon. She saw PJ as he had been with Alex that evening at his house in Park Slope or, for that matter, PJ now. He had one of Elias’s twins on his hip while he tossed a football with his brothers.
Martha’s gaze followed her own. “Well, it’s early days yet. You will.”
Ally didn’t reply. Her throat felt tight. The glare of the sun made her eyes water. She swallowed and looked away.
As a child, Ally had been a reader.
From the time she had first made sense of words on a page, she’d haunted the library or spent her allowance at the bookstore, buying new worlds in which to live. And invariably the worlds she sought were the boisterous chaotic worlds of laughing, loving, noisy families who were so different from her own.
Oh, she was loved. She had no doubt about that.