Chapter Nine
CHAPTER NINE
T HE DRIVE TO the mountain and to the point where the buggy could go no further took only twenty minutes. They were twenty of the longest minutes of Lucie’s life, and when Thanasis pulled the buggy to a stop in a natural clearing, her heart was still beating erratically.
Asking him to put the sunscreen on her had been necessary, but also a fun way to needle the man who’d developed a rigid determination to keep his hands to himself. She hadn’t anticipated that the dial of her longing for him, carried in every fibre of her being, would turn even higher. From the tension vibrating from the powerful frame sitting so closely beside her, and the clipped way he spoke when describing features of the mountain they were about to climb and talking about the natural fauna they were driving through, Thanasis for once being the one to drive the conversation, it was a suffering that was shared.
She could still feel his lips on her ear.
First removing two bottles of water, one of which he passed to her, he shrugged the huge backpack onto his back with the same ease Lucie slung a handbag over a shoulder. ‘Ready?’
Lucie looked up. The natural trail Thanasis was going to lead her on to the top of the mountain didn’t look too difficult to manage, at least not yet. The high trees surrounding them looked as if they would provide welcome shade from a sun still blazing its rays on the island. If they kept a steady pace, they’d reach the summit within the hour.
Feeling more able to breathe properly now she wasn’t trapped on the buggy with his giant body so close to hers and his body language telling her loud and clear not to even think of breaching the tiny distance between them, she looked back at him and nodded.
‘Then let’s go. Stay close.’
She snorted. ‘That’s the last thing you want me to do.’
He fixed her with a stare. ‘No, the last thing I want you to do is fall and hurt yourself. Or get bitten by a snake.’
‘There’s snakes?’
‘If snakes frighten you, tell me now and we will go back to the villa.’
The last of the tight angst she’d been carrying inside her melted away. She grinned. ‘You’re not getting out of this that easily. I’m not scared of snakes, I was just surprised when you mentioned them. I’ve never seen a snake in all my years visiting Greece.’
‘Snakes tend to avoid Athens and I can’t see them sneaking onto your stepfather’s yacht,’ he commented drily. ‘Here, in the mountains, it is different. Tread carefully, especially in non-shaded areas—they like to sunbathe.’
‘Lazy so-and-sos.’
To her delight and relief, Thanasis’s tight features relaxed into amusement and with a spring of happiness in her step, she set off beside him.
‘Do you do much hiking?’ she asked as they started up a shaded, gentle incline.
‘I used to. Not so much now.’
‘What kind of answer is that?’
He cast her with a swift glance. ‘Are we playing your game again?’
‘Too right. So proper answers, thank you.’
‘When I was at university a group of us would go camping at weekends and holidays and find new places to explore.’
‘You, camping?’ Much as she tried, she could not imagine Thanasis squeezed inside a tent.
He laughed. ‘I cannot say I enjoyed that aspect quite so much, but the camaraderie and adventure made it worth it.’
‘And the beer?’ she guessed.
‘That was part of it,’ he agreed. ‘We still try to meet up a few times a year but I’ve not been able to join the others for the last two trips. I missed a week hiking in South California earlier this year.’
‘All the stuff with the business?’
‘Yes. It has taken every minute of my time.’
‘Well, hopefully our marriage will go a long way to putting all your business troubles behind you, and you can start living your life properly again.’
‘That is mine and everyone else’s hope, and when we are all able to start living properly again, Antoniadis and Tsaliki, it will all be thanks to you.’
‘You know me, here to help,’ she jested.
He came to a sudden stop. ‘No, matia mou , do not try to downplay what you are doing. If not for your agreement to marry me, both businesses would be lucky to still be clinging on. Your selflessness has ensured our survival.’
‘Hardly selfless, and you agreed to it too.’
‘I agreed because it was the only hope we had of clawing our way out of the mess. You agreed knowing you would gain nothing from it.’
‘Other than my stepfamily’s survival,’ she pointed out.
‘That is my point. You entered into our agreement for everyone else’s sake when you didn’t owe anybody anything.’
‘Apart from a lifetime of being loved by them, that’s absolutely spot on.’
Thanasis had to bite his tongue and swallow back his anger. If there was any love on the Tsalikis’ part for Lucie, they had a strange way of showing it.
They set off again. ‘How did your stepsiblings get on with your mother when you were growing up?’
He knew his question had him skirting dangerous territory but that was a risk he was willing to take. Lucie needed to be prepared in some small way for what was coming when the truth came out.
‘They all got on fine. They’d had so many stepmums by the time she came along that I imagine they took her presence in their stride. She never tried to mother them so that probably helped. Saying that,’ she added with a cackle of laughter, ‘she never much tried to mother me, either.’
Another bite of the tongue and the swallow back of anger.
Thanasis had never imagined he could despise someone more than Georgios Tsaliki but his fourth wife roused a different, colder kind of loathing in him, and he had to bite his tongue another time to stop himself from pointing out that Athena and Stelios had never had another stepmother before Rebecca Tsaliki usurped their own mother.
They’d reached a steep incline that required concentration to navigate despite the rope he’d had put along its edge for support, and they didn’t speak as they made their way up it. To reach the top of the incline you had to climb a sheer drop that was only six foot and which Thanasis could manage easily, but when you didn’t quite reach five foot it meant you needed help.
‘I will lift you,’ he said with an impassiveness only his racing pulses would prove was a lie.
He shrugged off the backpack then stood behind her. ‘Ready?’
‘Yep.’
He put his hands securely to her waist and lifted her until her bottom, clad only in a pair of black denim shorts, was face high to him and Lucie was waist high to the ledge and able to swing herself over. The last he saw of her was the black boots that had earlier given him a cold case of déjà vu before her face peered over the edge and she grinned down at him. ‘You coming up?’
* * *
Lucie thought she might just have discovered heaven on earth.
The top of the mountain was ruggedly sparse of vegetation but the thickness of the picnic blanket Thanasis had spread out stopped the rocks and prickly plants beneath them from jabbing into their skin and allowed her to do nothing but marvel at the scene unfolding before her. Oh, and eat the delicious spread of food Elias and his assistant had whipped up for them, of which she’d stuffed as much as she could manage into her belly. Stretched out on his back beside her, propping himself up on his elbows having eaten his fill too and playing the most major part in the heavenly scene, Thanasis.
‘Thank you for bringing me here.’ She turned her stare to him with a smile. She had never in her life seen such a spectacular vista, similar to the view from their balconies but so much, much more. The setting sun was not yet low enough to melt into the sea but its reflection had turned the Aegean’s horizon a golden orange, the distant islands darkening and becoming all the more striking for it.
The man who outshone the vista in the beauty stakes responded with a smile that crinkled the lines around his eyes. ‘Parakalo.’ After a beat, he added, ‘I brought my sister here once. She spent more time complaining about the patchy phone signal than admiring the beauty nature has to offer.’
‘I guess the world would be very boring if we all liked the same things.’
‘I don’t think Lydia and I have ever agreed on anything that we both like,’ he commented drily. ‘If she didn’t have so much of both our parents in her, I would believe she was adopted.’
She laughed and studied the piece of pottery Thanasis had found when they’d reached the summit and he’d been deciding the perfect place to lay the blanket. Faded black paint with what could possibly be the tip of a pair of wings painted in faded gold on it, the relic measured roughly ten inches by five inches. Its concave shape suggested it had once been a pot and Thanasis’s casual dating of it as ‘probably being two, three thousand years old’ would have blown her mind if she had any mind left to blow. With the benefit of hindsight, Lucie realised learning she was engaged to Thanasis Antoniadis had been peak blowing of her mind. Everything else would always be lesser in comparison.
She had yet to reach peak awe over his devastating good looks though, and she carefully laid the piece of pottery down and stretched herself onto her back beside him. Wriggling her bare toes—they’d both removed their footwear—she gave a contented sigh. Her feet were a bit sore from the trek and there were a few cuts on her thighs from where spiky plants had decided to scratch her, but she didn’t care in the slightest. She thought this might just be the happiest she’d ever been.
‘Are you okay?’ he murmured, resting his head on the blanket next to hers.
She sighed again and turned her face to the glory of his. ‘I’m just perfect.’
An assessment Thanasis found himself struggling to disagree with, although she hadn’t meant it in the way his brain was interpreting it.
He didn’t know if it was Lucie’s goddess powers coming to the fore again and giving her the ability to read minds, but when she broke the comfortable silence by saying, ‘What do you like about me?’ he came close to laughing.
It was a laughter that would have died before it had formed for she rolled onto her side and tucked an arm under her head to cushion it, her face so close he could see the flecks of gold dancing in the black eyes now glued to his. Any comfort at being with her vanished as the awareness he’d been controlling with sheer brute force snaked its way back through his veins.
‘Getting to Know You time again,’ she said with a soft, spellbinding smile, ‘so full and honest answers.’
Turning his stare to the darkening clear sky, Thanasis hooked an arm above his head but, such was the force of the spell she was casting on him, couldn’t bring himself to move any further away from her. ‘You want to know what I like about you?’ he clarified carefully.
‘I want to know what it was that turned your feelings for me from what I’m guessing is resignation at the situation we’d found ourselves in, into something more.’
‘I don’t know. It just happened.’ He couldn’t stop a quick turn of his face to her. ‘Like magic.’
‘I can believe that.’ She lifted her chin onto her forearm and inched a little closer. Her smile had a dreamy quality to it. ‘But there must be something specific you like about me. I mean, I really like catching your flashes of humour, and I really like that you love your mum enough to build a chapel for her, and love your family enough to build multiple swimming pools when you never swim, and I like that when you talk about your sister, you sound both proud and indulgent, like she’s someone you really love and respect even if you don’t particularly understand her.’
Thanasis only realised his quick turn of face towards her had become a full-blown roll of his body when he released the curl he’d taken hold of and pulled straight without any awareness of doing so. It pinged straight back into its original ringlet form in the same way his lust for Lucie could only be suppressed into a form of stasis until one look or word or inhalation sprang it back into its natural state.
‘There are many things I like about you,’ he said quietly, capturing another curl. ‘I like your hair and the way the curls never look the same from one day to the next. I like the way you smile with your whole face. I like your addiction to cheese and I like that you treat all the food you eat with reverence. I like the way you stand up for yourself. I like your independence of thought and I like the way you always try to take other viewpoints on board. I like that I can bring you to a view like this and know you will appreciate it as much as I do.’
It came as a shock to realise that there was nothing about Lucie that he didn’t like.
Nothing at all.
Lucie found she could no longer breathe. Her heart was thumping loudly in her ears.
The green eyes gazing at her were staring as if seeing her face for the very first time.
Silence more complete than any she’d ever known had enveloped them, the air charged with an electricity she felt in every cell of her body.
A trembling finger traced a line over her shoulder and down her arm, heated vibrations from the powerful body so close to hers the tips of her breasts were brushing against his chest, buzzing deep into her skin.
His breath swirled against her mouth and the ache she’d carried for days between her legs, so subtle she’d been barely conscious of it, throbbed like a pulse of fire.
Fingers wrapped tightly around her wrists and then the heat of his breath became the heat of his mouth, an unmoving, lingering, barely controlled fusion that ended with a deep groan and one hard sweep of his tongue into her mouth before he rolled onto his back and expelled a breath so long and so hard he could have been breathing out for her too.
Hoarsely, he said, ‘You cannot know how badly I want you, but, Lucie, we can’t.’
Frustration came close to making her scream. Lifting herself onto her elbow, her heart smashing so hard against her ribs it was as if it were trying to escape and cling to him, she pressed her hand to his cheek. ‘Why not?’
Snatching hold of her hand, he inhaled as if breathing in for them both too, his green stare as intense as she’d ever seen it. ‘You know why not. Believe me, I would give anything to make love to you but…’
He cut himself off with an oath and hoisted himself up, bowing his head and dragging his fingers through his hair with the same fury she’d witnessed before.
She couldn’t just see the torture he was putting himself through, but feel it too, as deeply as she felt her own torture, and when she placed a hand to his back, could feel the heavy thuds of his heart. ‘What if my memories never come back? We’re getting married in three days, Thanasis. Are you really suggesting we could spend a whole life together in separate beds?’
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
He tilted his head and slowly rolled his neck. When he finally spoke, his voice was more moderate. ‘We wait until the wedding. If on our wedding night you still want to make love to me, then, believe me, you will never find a more willing groom.’
Only the finality in his tone stopped her arguing further.
* * *
It was when Lucie was climbing into bed much later that night that her first concrete memory came back. It wasn’t much, just a whisper, but it was something solid. Being in Thanasis’s apartment. His back had had that rigidness to it that she recognised from her time in hospital and when she’d first been discharged.
They’d been arguing, although what the argument had been about remained a mystery, but he’d walked out of the living room without a backward glance at her.
It was the same room that had been in her dream when Athena had spoken so cruelly to her.
* * *
‘Hi, Gracie, how are things?’ Lucie asked the youngest of her two English half-sisters the next morning, and was rewarded with a grunt that might have been Good, thank you , but was probably just a grunt.
In seconds, her stepmother had taken the phone from her. Charlie, Vanessa said in reference to Lucie’s father, was in the shower and would call her back if he had time before he left for work. After assuring Lucie that everything was all set for them to join her for the wedding, and that it was something they were all very much looking forward to, Vanessa disconnected the call. She must have forgotten to ask how Lucie’s head injury was, so her pre-prepared airy, ‘I’m absolutely fine’ was entirely wasted.
‘Your father is busy?’ Thanasis guessed shrewdly.
‘I knew he would be,’ she admitted. ‘It is a work day and he has his routine to keep.’ Her father thrived on routine and order. Which was probably why he’d always found Lucie so trying. She dredged a bright smile so as not to show her dejection. ‘I would call my mum but she’s probably asleep in her coffin.’
He laughed and stretched his long legs out. ‘She didn’t sleep in her coffin when she was watching over you in hospital.’
‘Yeah, but I bet she got them to feed the donated blood to her.’
‘She did disappear a number of times.’
‘See, told you.’ She passed his phone back and tried not to show her fresh dejection when he took care not to let their fingers touch.
They were eating breakfast on the balcony again, enjoying a few moments of peace. The wedding was only two days away now, and activity levels on the island had gone through the roof, the workers busy setting things up through the night so that any outdoor work could be avoided in the scorching heat of the day.
There was nothing enjoyable about this torture for Lucie that early morning. She’d slept badly, oscillating between sexual frustration, something she had never suffered from before in her life, and trying to force more memories, trying to at least expand the one concrete memory that had come to her.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘You don’t seem yourself.’
She shrugged and kept her moody gaze on the rising sun. If he could read her so well that he could see through her fake bright smiles, then he’d probably hear any lie in her voice.
Lucie had assumed she would tell Thanasis about the memory that had come back to her, but now found something holding her back.
Why couldn’t her first real memory of those missing months have been a good one? Why couldn’t it have been of them laughing or, even better, making love, not of the aftermath of an argument where he’d walked out on her and she’d been fighting back tears she would never let him see.
Why wouldn’t she have wanted him to see her cry? She’d never been much of a crier but she’d never been ashamed of her tears the few times they’d leaked out over her life.
And why was she too frightened to ask him about it?
But she needed to say something. ‘When we were living in your apartment… Did Athena visit much?’
There was only the slightest hesitation. ‘A few times that I know of. What makes you ask?’
‘A dream I had.’ That much she could tell him, and now she did look at him.
He’d raised an eyebrow in question.
‘The other night,’ she explained. ‘I thought it was a dream but now I think it might have been a memory.’
‘And you think that because?’
She kept her stare on him, wanting to gauge his reaction although she didn’t quite know why she wanted to gauge it. ‘Do you have black leather sofas and a glass coffee table?’
His face moved a little closer to hers. There was the slightest flicker in his eye. ‘You remember them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything else?’
She chose her words carefully. ‘Nothing specific, but in my dream Athena was laughing at me, which is nothing unusual for her but the way it made me feel in the dream was unusual. Normally whatever she says to me rolls off—the only way to deal with her is to be Teflon coated—but whatever she said had really upset me.’
There was a tightness in his voice. ‘Can you remember what she said? What she was laughing about?’
‘No. Is it real, then, the dream? Did I discuss it with you?’
‘No, but, Lucie…’ His features loosened a touch. Slowly, he reached for her. Suddenly she found herself holding her breath as his thumb traced over her cheek. ‘Athena has always been poisonous to you. She is poison. If you remember nothing else, remember that.’
The small, tender act of intimacy was over before she could take a breath. Before she could even open her mouth to speak, he expelled a short decisive breath and, with a rueful smile, got to his feet. ‘I need to get changed. My helicopter will be landing shortly.’
She stared at him dumbly. ‘You’re going somewhere?’
‘I have business in Athens.’
She stared even more dumbly. This was the first she’d heard of it. ‘Can I come?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s business and I need you here to supervise the wedding preparations.’
‘That’s what Griselda’s paid to do.’
‘We are marrying in two days, matia mou . One of us needs to be here, to be on hand if anything important crops up. You might be needed for another dress fitting too.’
Then, as if her morning for shocks wasn’t already complete, Thanasis pressed a hand to the side of her head and swooped a kiss to her mouth. Green eyes glimmering, he said, ‘I will be back before you have time to miss me.’ And then he kissed her again, a hard, almost possessive kiss that left her seeing stars long after he’d disappeared into his room.
* * *
It was as she was swimming back to her own room that another concrete memory hit Lucie. It had to be the day she’d met Thanasis for the first time because he’d been standing with Alexis by a dark hotel bar. Other than the bartender, they’d been the only people in there. Both had been watching the door, waiting for her arrival.
She remembered the smell of the bar. Wine. A subtle but significant difference from the scent of stale beer she’d grown used to during her nights out in her six years living permanently in London.
She’d been excited to meet him. She remembered that too. Could feel the fizzing anticipation that had filled her as she’d walked through the door to him.
And she remembered how their eyes had locked together and the stunned flare of recognition on his face. The fizzing joy had almost spilled out of her to realise he too remembered that chance brief encounter from six years before. That he remembered her .