Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
S EPHONE WAS THE one place Thanasis had ever felt a true sense of peace. Growing up, life had always been busy even during times of relaxation. Each evening, the family had congregated around the dining table to feast on the delicious food cooked fresh by the staff; grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins frequent guests at the table along with numerous workers and business associates his generous parents would invite to break bread with them. The business had been central to Antoniadis life, an extension of their family, and it had always felt like Thanasis’s family to him. He would never say it had been his destiny to one day run it, but it had never crossed his mind to do anything else.
It would never have crossed his mind to purchase his own island either, if he hadn’t visited his friend Leander’s island for a weekend of partying and found himself struck with the solitude one early morning while everyone else slept off the night before’s excess. By the time the others started surfacing, he’d already determined to buy his own island and create a sanctuary for himself. Within two years, his sanctuary had been found and bought and the domed villa designed and built. It had been worth every cent of the vast sum spent on it, something his family and close friends agreed with as they all made liberal use of it too.
This was Thanasis’s first visit to his sanctuary since the press had first splashed on just how toxic and dangerous the rivalry between his father and Georgios Tsaliki had become. He’d been in damage limitation mode ever since, barely coming up for air as he’d juggled investor concerns with stepping into his father’s shoes and keeping an eye on his immediate family who were all suffering under the enormous strain of it all. And then there had been his need to be publicly visible with his new ‘fiancée’ to cement the idea of their ‘love’.
It was the presence of his ‘fiancée’ that had stopped his lungs opening wide as he’d stepped off the Persephone and stopped the long exhalation that usually followed as all the pressures of his life lifted from his shoulders. The knowledge, too, that at the rear of the villa an army of people were transforming his landscaped garden into a wedding venue and that, dotted around the island, luxury yurts were being put up to accommodate the guests who wouldn’t be travelling to the island on their own yachts and who there wasn’t the room to accommodate in the villa.
But mostly it was Lucie herself. He’d never been able to breathe properly in her company. Always that cramped tightness in his chest, and as he did his best to compose himself in anticipation of her joining him at the poolside dining area, he took a long drink of his wine in another effort to wipe the taste of her from his mouth, and closed his eyes to wipe the image of her face as he’d last seen it.
She’d been as affected by those two barely-there kisses as he’d been.
Damn it.
Those two kisses had been too fleeting for any of Lucie’s essence to seep into him but seep into him she had, a dark sweetness of breath that lingered, and he drained his wine, glancing at his watch. Two more minutes and she would be with him and he would have to pull himself together and carry on with the charade.
He’d had to kiss her. He’d read her surprise at their separate rooms. Read too her relief…and that flare of disappointment. He’d needed to placate her and stop doubts about their relationship fermenting, and he’d done it successfully. He should be in self-congratulatory mode because this was how it had to be, something he grimly reminded himself of as he refilled his glass. Whatever vulnerabilities Lucie might currently be suffering, that didn’t change that this whole situation was of her making. She was the one who’d refused to listen, hadn’t even let him explain. She’d seen what she’d wanted to see because it had suited her. She’d wanted out of their agreement and had run at the first opportunity, something else he needed to remind himself of if guilt at how he was playing her should bite a little too sharply.
She hadn’t officially ended the engagement. That was yet another thing to remind himself of. As far as he knew—and he hoped like hell that his gut was correct on this—she had confided nothing about ending their engagement with anyone. For all he knew, if she hadn’t crashed his car she might have let off all her steam thrashing it around and then come back home, thrown her Medusa glare at him, thrown some more choice insults at him and then carried on as if nothing had happened. God alone knew they’d had enough white-cold rages between them that had ended in that way. Always there had been the unspoken agreement that whatever their personal feelings for each other, their respective families and businesses were bigger than those feelings. It was the only thing apart from their mutual loathing of the press that they’d ever agreed on.
Some internal antennae lifted a moment before the bespoke French doors slid open and Lucie stepped out onto the patio.
The sun was giving its last goodbyes for the evening but even with little natural light to see by, he noted the slash of colour stain her cheeks as their eyes met.
She bit into her bottom lip and tentatively raised a hand. ‘Hi.’
The beats of his heart strangely weighty, he exhaled slowly before rising to his feet. Theos , she looked stunning.
‘Kalispera, matia mou.’
The beautiful smile she’d spent two months determinedly not bestowing on him lit her face, and she walked to the table, the stiffness of earlier much lessened. It wouldn’t be long, he judged, before the bounce in Lucie’s gait returned and she returned to full, glowing health.
She’d changed into another of her favoured black dresses, a strapless, floaty number that perfectly suited her tiny, slender frame. Her black, curly hair had been piled on top of her head in the style he so loathed because he was incapable of looking at it and not wanting to pull out the clip holding it together just to watch it all tumble down. When she slipped into the chair he held out for her, he wasn’t quick enough to stop his face twisting in fresh loathing as the scent of her perfume engulfed his senses.
Thanasis despised all of Lucie’s perfumes but this was the one he’d once considered stealing out of her bedroom and incinerating. Only his absolute refusal to enter her private space had stopped him acting on this urge.
This was the perfume, more than all the others, that amplified her natural scent and gave off a sensuous, musky aroma that made him want to bury his face into her neck to inhale it deep into his lungs. It was the scent that turned sexual awareness into a charge so strong that he became unable to stop all the heady fantasies hovering beneath his consciousness from rising up and tormenting him with their vividness.
It was the perfume that turned his hunger into a craving.
* * *
Lucie had barely taken her seat before two members of staff appeared with a variety of mezes for them to dive into. While they fussed over both her and the table, placing the dishes into a perfect diamond formation between her and Thanasis whilst pouring her water and offering her a variety of alcoholic drinks that she thought it best to refuse considering the current state of her head, Lucie took the opportunity to regain the composure that had come within a whisker of being blown to smithereens with one look at Thanasis.
Heavens help her, he did something to her, and in less than a week she was going to be married to him. In a life she had no memory of, they’d made plans to spend the rest of their lives together, and all she really knew about him was what he’d chosen to show her, and all she really knew for certain about them was that her pulses were still racing and lips still tingling from those fleeting kisses barely an hour before.
But she had learned something concrete about him that day. She’d learned he was a gentleman. You only had to look at him…although she wasn’t quite certain how looking at him allowed her to determine this…to know he was a highly sexual being. Despite Thanasis practically oozing testosterone and sexuality, he’d guessed that she’d geared herself up for sharing his bed and guessed too how frightening a prospect it had been for her, what with him being a stranger to her, and so had reset things between them to put them on an equal footing. So that made him a gentleman, and it made him empathetic. More proof, not that it was needed, that he wasn’t the monster she’d been raised to believe him to be.
Could that be the reason for his rigidity around her? she suddenly wondered. While he was understanding of the loss of her memories, he still had his own, and she took a moment to put herself in his shoes. If their roles were reversed and she was the one who had not only all the memories of their time together but all the feelings too…
To unexpectedly find mutual love with someone and then find that person’s love for you had been wiped out as if it had never occurred? Oh, but it must be one of the most awful things in the world.
‘Are you okay?’
Thanasis’s voice pulled her out of her latest batch of rambling thoughts.
The intense green eyes were watching her closely.
‘You looked lost in your thoughts,’ he said with a half-smile.
She couldn’t help but smile at how unerringly accurate this observation was, even as her chest filled with a fizzing emotion for this stranger who knew her so, so well.
‘I was thinking about you,’ she admitted.
He raised an eyebrow in question.
‘I was thinking how hard this whole situation must be for you. I don’t know how I’d cope if I were in your shoes.’
Pale green gaze boring into her, he said, ‘All that matters is that you are here, and if having you here means you and me starting over then that is better than any alternative.’
The fizzing in her chest spread up and into her throat, and suddenly she recognised truth and sincerity in his stare, the first time she’d been able to accurately read him at all, and the relief that came with this reacted to the fizzing in her chest and throat, and shot out of her mouth as a burst of joyful laughter.
Bemusement playing on his dreamy face, now both of his dark eyebrows rose in question.
She leaned forwards. ‘I know I’ve thanked you before, but I’m going to thank you again, for being there for me while I was in hospital and for being here for me now, and for all the accommodations you’re making for me. Thank you.’
The guilt that lanced Thanasis’s guts at this was so sharp and unexpected that it took him a moment to respond. ‘It is nothing you wouldn’t do for me,’ he lied.
But he hadn’t lied about Lucie being here being all that mattered. That was the greatest truth of all because the alternative was the destruction of everything and everyone he cared about, and the destruction of everything and everyone she cared about too. When the truth was revealed after the wedding, he would make her understand the lies were for both their benefit.
Her black eyes shining, her heart-shaped lips pulled into a smile softer than he’d ever have imagined Lucie Burton capable of pulling. ‘I’m starting to believe that.’
Internal alarms ringing at the direction Lucie was steering the conversation—there were lies and then there were damned lies—Thanasis straightened his spine and pulled a smile of his own. ‘Eat, matia mou . My chefs have been busy creating all your favourite dishes.’
One thing he had learned through all their torturous meals out together was that Lucie had a particular addiction to cheese. All cheeses. And so it came as no surprise at all when she loaded her plate with keftedes, Kalamata olives, sliced vine tomatoes and tzatziki, and sprinkled what had to be half a block of crumbled feta over the whole lot of it before happily diving in.
At her first bite of the keftedes, her already shining eyes shone even brighter. ‘Wow,’ she said once she’d swallowed it. ‘These are amazing. Forget falling in love and all that business stuff—I’d marry you for your chef.’
He couldn’t help but laugh, even as he remembered her once telling him the only worthwhile thing in his whole rotten life was his head chef. That had come off the back of Thanasis icily telling her when she’d unexpectedly joined him for dinner in his apartment, that he preferred to dine alone than have his meal spoilt by her presence. He would eat with her in public as part of the whole performance but in the privacy of his apartment, he wanted solitude. Unfortunately, solitude and Lucie did not go together. Her husky voice followed him everywhere, even when he was on the other side of the four thousand square metre space from her. The bounce of her footsteps echoed through the walls. There were nights when he swore he could hear her breaths of sleep.
‘Let’s play a game,’ she said once she’d demolished her first course and was steadily working through their main course of spanakopita—another Lucie favourite—served with roasted vegetables.
‘What kind of game?’
She stabbed her fork into a mound of roasted aubergines and peppers. ‘Getting to Know You. We play it at work with all the newbies, but obviously, as it’s just the two of us, we’ll have to adapt it. It’s literally a game of asking each other questions that allow you to get to know someone better.’
‘What kind of questions?’
‘Any kind. Favourite colour. Favourite film. First kiss. What car you learned to drive in. Anything, really. The only rule is no closed questions or answers—basically, nothing that can be answered with a yes or no, oh, and as you already know me and I’m the one with the big memory hole, I think it’s only fair that I get to ask you three questions to each one of yours.’ She popped the fork into her mouth.
That worked for him. He didn’t want to get to know Lucie any better than he already did, and, watching her devouring her food, said, ‘Where do you put it all?’ It was one of the many questions that had built up during their two-month engagement. Their tortured public meals together had been spent with fake smiles, fake conversation, and Lucie eating everything put in front of her and more.
She caught his eye and grinned. ‘Is that your first question?’
‘I suppose it must be.’ A nice, neutral question that would reveal little to nothing about her.
‘I have a fast metabolism, but you must already know that.’
‘I know you have more energy than the average person.’
‘I just get bored sitting around and doing nothing, that’s all. Maybe that does help with my metabolism, but seeing as I inherited it from my mum and she’d be happy spending her whole life on a sun bed, I don’t think that’s the full explanation for it. My turn—when’s your birthday?’
‘February the nineteenth.’
‘Ah, so that must make you a Pisces.’
‘I believe so… Do you believe in that stuff?’ For all the dark, bohemian flow of the clothes she wore, this surprised him.
‘Not in the slightest, but I went through a phase when I was fourteen of obsessing over it and wanting to know everyone’s star sign, and the nosey part of me still likes to know. So, Pisces is a water sign… You like swimming?’
‘No.’
‘Closed answer.’
‘It was a closed question.’
‘Fair enough. I’ll rephrase it—why don’t you like swimming, and, seeing as you don’t like it, why on earth do you have a swimming pool?’
‘I don’t like swimming because I nearly drowned as a child. I have a swimming pool because my friends and family like to make use of the island and they all like to swim.’
‘Oh, blimey, that sounds terrible,’ she said, clearly shocked. ‘How old were you? What happened?’
‘That is another two questions.’
‘No, they’re follow-ons because you didn’t answer fully.’
He shook his head in mock disappointment. ‘You didn’t say that was in the rules.’
She fluttered her eyelashes. ‘I forgot. I’m telling you it now.’
He laughed at her chutzpah. ‘I dive-bombed into the pool when I was four. I couldn’t swim and didn’t realise the danger of what I was doing. One of the gardeners pulled me out—I was lucky that he was pruning the poolside flowers and heard the splash I made. I suffered no long-term trauma other than a dislike of my face being submerged. I did learn to swim, just to prove to myself that I could do it, but I’ve never taken any enjoyment in it. Is that a satisfactory answer for you?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Hmm…’ And then she gave a decisive nod. ‘Yes, that’ll do. Moving on, what—?’
‘You’ve had your three questions,’ he interrupted.
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Yes, you have. Birthday, whether I like swimming and why I have a swimming pool.’
She pouted in mock outrage. ‘No fair—the two swimming ones were linked.’
‘Linked but separate, which means it’s now my turn.’
Her scowl was completely negated by the glee in her eyes.
‘When was the first time you got drunk?’ he asked as she dug into a thick slice of sticky walnut cake he couldn’t even remember being put in front of her. There was a slice in front of him too. He had only the vaguest recollection of their main course being cleared away.
‘When I was fifteen. I would like to point out that it was also the last time I got drunk.’
‘Elaborate,’ he commanded.
She spooned another huge mouthful of cake into her mouth. After swallowing it, she gave a dreamy sigh. ‘Would you object to me snogging your chef? Because this is seriously good cake.’
‘And you always “snog” people who make good cakes?’
‘Never had the urge before, but this is seriously, seriously good. I bet they serve this on Mount Olympus…that is where the Greek gods live, isn’t it?’
‘Correct.’
‘I’d lock your chef up in case Jupiter tries to nab him from you.’
‘I think you mean Zeus—Jupiter was a Roman god.’
She shoved another spoonful of cake into her mouth with a this-cake-is-far-too-good-for-me-to-care shrug.
‘But I will be sure to pass your compliments to Elias…and pass on your wish to “snog” him.’
Chewing contentedly, she stuck a thumb up.
‘In the interests of employer and employee relations, I should warn you that if he objects to being objectified for his cake-making skills, then I will have to put the brakes on any form of “snog” or we run the risk of him leaving and never making another cake for you again.’
Eyes wide with alarm, she spooned in yet more of her rapidly disappearing cake and frantically shook her head.
‘But if he agrees to your objectification, then a “snog” will be fine. Out of curiosity, will there be tongues involved?’
She frowned and shook her head again, turning her thumb down for good measure.
‘ Kalos. And now that that is resolved, you can elaborate on your one and only drunken escapade.’
She made him wait until she’d finished the last of her cake before answering. He didn’t mind. Watching Lucie devour every last crumb had an erotic appeal that evoked fantasies about taking a masterclass in sticky walnut cake making and then spooning it into that delicious mouth himself.
Theos , the joy she took from food was something else. He could watch her eat all night. Watch those perfect heart-shaped lips…
‘Athena stole a whole bottle of ouzo from her dad and the two of us thought it a brilliant idea to drink shots of it until the bottle was empty,’ she finally said, cutting through his wayward fantasies. ‘Alexis and Constantine found us in the garden and had to carry us to bed because neither of us was capable of walking…’ Her voice trailed off, eyes narrowing again but this time with concern. ‘What’s wrong?’
Thanasis drained the last of his wine and shook his head. ‘Nothing. Just trying to picture the scene.’
‘It wasn’t a pretty one,’ she admitted, features loosening a touch, as if only half convinced by his explanation.
He could hardly tell her the truth, that the moment Athena’s name had come out of Lucie’s mouth, the erotically charged lightness of his mood had extinguished.
He’d forgotten who he was talking to. Forgotten why he was there. Why they were there.
For a few brief moments Lucie had stopped being Lucie Burton, stepdaughter of Georgios Tsaliki and daughter of Rebecca Tsaliki, and just been the beautiful, sexy, amusing woman sitting across the table from him sharing a delicious and increasingly flirtatious meal in the warm open air.
Their first meal alone together with no public watching them and he’d got caught in a moment he’d spent two months fighting tooth and nail to never be captured in.
He had to clear his tightened throat to ask the most natural follow-on question. ‘You got into trouble for it?’
‘Nope. It was put down to teenage high jinks, plus I think the general feeling was our hangovers were a worthy punishment—honestly, we were both as sick as dogs the next day.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ he murmured.
She grinned. ‘I well and truly learned my lesson from it. Athena didn’t though, but never mind, I’m sure she’ll learn it one day. Anyway, my turn to ask a question.’
‘Tomorrow.’
Her face fell.
Theos , he had to fight to make his voice sound normal. ‘The medical team need to do all their checks on you.’
‘But I feel fine,’ she protested.
‘I know, but for my peace of mind, I would like you to let them do their job. You’ve suffered a significant head wound, matia mou —you were only discharged this morning into my care on the promise that you would take things easy.’
She eyed him in silence for the longest time before giving a slow nod. ‘Okay, I’ll be a good girl and go to my room and let the medical team poke and prod me, but only for tonight. From tomorrow, I’m in charge of my own care.’
His heart nearly thumped out of his ribs when she reached across the table to cover his hand.
Her voice softening to match the softness in her black eyes, she said, ‘I know your heart’s in the right place and I can only imagine how hard these last few days have been for you, but I don’t need or want you to make decisions for me. I’ve lived independently since I was eighteen, answerable to no one but myself. I’m not a child, Thanasis, so please don’t treat me like one.’
He looked down at their joined hands with thick blood roaring in his ears. The sensation of Lucie’s skin against his was like being marked by Aphrodite, the goddess whose seductive charms few men could resist, and it was taking all his strength not to twist his hand and wrap his fingers around hers.
Too much wine, he thought dimly. It had seeped through his system to dismantle the guard he kept fully raised around her, and only when he was confident that he could look at her without losing the last of his guard did he raise his gaze and hoarsely say, ‘Message received and understood.’
She smiled tremulously and moved her hand away, pressed her fingers to her mouth and then leaned forwards to press them to his lips. ‘ Kalinychta , Thanasis.’
He could do nothing to stop his lips kissing the delicate fingers. ‘Kalinychta, matia mou.’