CHAPTER 24

"He seems to have things to prove to himself," Ash said carefully.

This time Zoe's sigh carried a wealth of sadness. "Yes. He wishes to prove he got nothing bad from his father. My papa, he was a good man, but he was hard. He made Nikos to think he was responsible for things that he had no control over. Papa said nothing good about the young boy I loved, but he was good. Too young to be as strong as he needed to be maybe, but he was good."

"Do you ever tell Nikos that?"

"I tried, but while Papa lived, it would have been disrespectful to say his words were not all truth. By the time he died, his beliefs were settled so deeply inside Nikos, I could not sway them. And part of me…I blamed Jake for never coming back. There were things I did not know at the time. I now regret never speaking against my father's words."

Ash reached out and touched Zoe's arm. "It must have been hard for you."

"It was. I was raised to be a good girl…to hold my innocence for marriage, but the love I had with S

Nikos' father…it was overwhelming. I have never known anything like it since. You will think me a fool, but he has always been the husband of my heart."

"I don't think it is foolish at all. I've heard of love like that." And for the first time, she wondered if she really wanted feelings that deep with a man.

That kind of love had always been her idyll, but now, seeing Zoe's pain, the hurt in those beautiful brown eyes so fresh it could have happened yesterday, Ash's own heart twinged with both sympathy and fear. Compassion for the other woman filled her along with a terror that Ash's own feelings were already as at risk as Zoe's had been.

She was no naïve seventeen-year-old with her first lover, but she had a suspicion that the kind of love Zoe was talking about transcended age and even experience.

Zoe's smile wiped the pain from her eyes as they glowed with a remembered feeling so powerful it could still bring her joy as well as hurt. "To feel it is beyond any other riches this world has to offer. To have it returned, a gift of unimaginable pleasure. We both felt it. He loved me as much as I loved him."

"Yet he left." Ash didn't say it because she doubted Zoe, but because she could not understand walking away from something so special. Still, belatedly, she realized, she should not have said the words aloud. "I'm sorry. I should not have said that."

"Why not? It is the truth. But only part of the truth. Papa caught us together and he beat my love until he could not get up." Tears filled Zoe's eyes. "I tried to stop him, but Papa slapped me hard and Jake told me to leave. He could not stand for me to be hurt. I would not listen to my papa, but I listened to Jake. It wounded his pride for me to see him beaten like that also, I could tell. He would not raise his hand to my father, so he had no defense. Papa thought it was his right to do what he did, but he drove Jake off the island."

"So, he didn't leave you voluntarily?"

"No. He had no way of knowing I had become pregnant. He was only a teenager himself. A young boy on holiday with his friends. He tried to see me once after that."

Ellie's insides clenched. Did Nikos know that?

"I did not know he had done so until after Papa's death. I found the letter in his bureau. At first, I did not tell Nikos because he was already grieving the loss of his grandfather, but later…I did not know what purpose it would serve. It had been so long and I had convinced myself Jake had married and had more children. Nikos already struggled with so much, to expose him to such a situation would have hurt him even more I thought. And he was bitter toward his father. I thought to wait would be best."

"You were probably right."

Zoe's eyes filled with doubt. "I wonder. I never married. I had opportunity, but I had no desire. Was it the same for my Jake? I had to choose between using the money I got from selling my family home and possessions for Nikos's schooling or to search out his father. I made my choice, but I often wonder if it was the right one."