Kostas's Convenient Bride by Lucy Monroe

Author:Lucy Monroe [Monroe, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarlequinUKLtd
Published: 2018-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE CAROUSEL CAME to a complete stop. Somehow, Andreas made sure she came off her horse on the side he stood on and her body pressed against his. “My mother loved the carousel in Portland. She took me often as a child.”

Kayla found herself mesmerized by the look on Andreas’s face as well as the glimpse into his childhood before the Georgas debacle that seemed to define so much of his adult endeavors.

“Are you sure it was your mom who liked the carousel?” she forced words past a suddenly dry throat to tease. “And not a small boy named Andreas who liked riding the horses?”

Andreas’s smile was something so special, Kayla could barely breathe. “It may have been. And now you have another secret of mine to keep.”

She met his gaze, imbuing her own with as much sincerity as she could. “Your secrets are safe with me.”

“Even my intransigence with my family?”

“Even that.”

“Do you want to try to find your family?” he asked.

It wasn’t a new question, not that he’d ever asked it, but she had asked herself that very thing many times. And she still didn’t have an answer, so she remained silent as they left the carousel and started walking again.

“I don’t know. She abandoned me at a truck stop, you know?” Kayla finally broke the silence between them. “Why would a mom do that? I wasn’t a baby. I was three years old. I was never adopted, Andreas.”

“I know that.”

But did he understand what it meant? Not only had Kayla not been a child worthy of a family taking on permanently, but her long-term residency in foster care meant her own mother had never come back for her. “She could have found me, through social services, until I was eighteen. If she’d wanted to.”

“No doubt the woman who gave you birth is a lost cause.” Andreas’s face reflected a ruthlessness few saw, but which she knew didn’t bode well for whoever was on the receiving end of that look. “You might have more family besides her, though.”

“If I had grandparents, aunts or uncles, wouldn’t she have left me with them?”

“I do not think you can make assumptions about that, Kay-love. I have many Kostases and Georgases in Greece and while not one of them lifted a hand to claim me, to help my mother in all the years she worked so hard on her own, you cannot be certain your own mother even told her own relatives about you. They could be decent people.”

Or they could be just like the woman who’d abandoned her. That was what had prevented her from hiring a private detective to find what family Kayla might have, the fear of more rejection. “So could yours.”

“For me, it does not matter,” Andreas dismissed. “I do not want family that rejected the woman who gave everything for me.”

“Do you think they ever regretted it? Your mother’s parents, I mean. They must have, after she died.”

Andreas shook his head, his expression tolerant. “Your heart is so tender for a computer geek.

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