CHAPTER 20

          Rejection, instant and powerful, speared through Nikolas. Memory sifted in him from long, long ago. He could scarcely remember Demetrios’s mother from when she had been his babysitter, but he could remember a softness about her, a gentleness.

          When he had fallen, she’d picked him up and hugged him. She’d sat him on her lap and sung funny English nursery rhymes to him, songs that had clapping games in them, and she had laughed and smiled. He had missed her when she’d gone…

          Cheryl will be like her, warm and loving, gentle and caring. What else does a child need? And as for himself… Well, as a mother to his child, he would have no complaints about Cheryl. As a woman for his bed… again, he could hardly complain. And as a wife by his side, through the long years to com