Chapter Five #2
Athena, her throat suddenly tight, had a sip of her water. Hardly able to raise her voice above a whisper, she said, ‘Did she ever see the blossoms?’
‘She has visited Japan every spring for fifteen years.’
She closed her eyes. Athena had watched Cora drive away, knowing she would never be allowed to see her again, and then spent the next twenty-one years doing her best to forget. Twenty-two years now, she supposed.
‘I’m glad.’ She pulled in a long breath and forced herself to meet his piercing stare. ‘What I said about her that time… I’m sorry. It was cruel of me.’
The piercing eyes held hers. ‘It was,’ he agreed in a far more reasonable tone than she deserved.
‘She was always…’ she swallowed ‘…very good to me.’ Suddenly, she couldn’t stand the tension or the memories or the feelings churning inside her a moment longer, and pulled herself to her feet.
‘I’m sorry, Draco, but I can’t eat any more.
I can never thank you enough for what you did for me last night, but I need to go home.
If you can tell me where my bag and boots are, I’ll get out of your hair. ’
‘You’re not in my hair and you don’t need to leave.’
‘That’s very nice of you to lie to me, but I do need to leave. I’ve encroached on your time quite enough.’
‘Athena, you haven’t…’
‘I have.’ If he could be firm then so could she.
She needed to be firm, not for him but for herself, otherwise she’d allow herself to take words intended to soothe and read more into them than was there.
No one in their right mind ever wanted her to stay, but this was the first time in over two decades her heart had tugged with a wistful hope that could never be realised.
Draco Manolis was a good man, possibly the best man she’d ever met, and he would no more throw an injured sparrow out of his home than he would a broken Athena.
And she was broken. She knew that with a clarity she’d never allowed herself to acknowledge before, and she suspected those piercing blue eyes could see it, too, which made her feel a thousand times more vulnerable for reasons she would never be able to understand.
‘I thank you again, but I’m going home. I promise you, I feel much better. I don’t need any more nursing.’
The piercing blue eyes held hers a fraction too long before he bowed his head in agreement. ‘I’ll take you back.’
‘No. This is your weekend.’ She dredged up a smile and managed to inject a modicum of breeziness into her tone.
‘You have to put up with me all week without having me gatecrash your weekend, too, but I’ll gladly take a lift off your driver—I bet he really misses my scintillating company at the weekends. ’
His gaze held hers for another long moment before his handsome rugged face broke into a half-smile. ‘Okay, you win. I’ll get Deacon to drive you home. But I want you to promise me you’ll take it easy and that you’ll call me if you start feeling worse.’
She saluted. ‘I promise on my honour.’
He feigned amazement. ‘You have honour?’
‘When it suits me,’ she confirmed, her airiness driven by and laced with relief that the weighty tension had lifted. ‘But don’t tell anyone. I have a terrible reputation to protect.’
Lying on her belly drawing, Athena was lost in her own little world when the incessant ring of her doorbell penetrated her consciousness and sent her heart into a triple salchow.
There was only one person who rang her doorbell like that—okay, only one person who’d ever rung her doorbell—and she’d slammed her book shut and bounded to her feet and was halfway to the front door before sanity could ask what she was playing at and tell her to slow down.
He was probably here out of some warped sense of duty. He’d saved her from those awful predators and now felt the same sense of responsibility to her that he’d feel at the sparrow who flew into his window.
Her heart thumping so hard it was painful, she fixed her brightest smile to her face and yanked the door open with a flourish. ‘Hello, boss. Are you lost?’
‘I think I must be,’ he riposted drily. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes, but only for a minute. I’m extremely busy.’
‘I’m sure you are.’ Firm lips twitching, his gaze flickered over the pyjamas she’d already dressed herself in after a bath that hadn’t helped her melancholy, especially when the hot water ran out whilst filling up so the long, lovely warm bath she’d been looking forward to had turned into a short, crap, tepid one.
She had no idea how to fix the hot water situation.
Her call to the building’s maintenance man had gone to voicemail with the message that he’d be back on duty on Monday.
Which was no good as she’d be in California with this man.
‘You’re looking better,’ he observed.
Standing aside to let him in, she smiled, lifted her chin and swished her hair. Might as well get the practice of normal Athena behaviour in. It was the only way to build herself back up. She might not have had the bath she longed for, but physically she felt much, much better.
‘Where are you off to dressed up like that?’ she asked, sashaying to the kitchenette to fix him the coffee he was bound to want: she was quite certain that if you cut Draco Manolis he would bleed coffee.
He’d changed out of the casual clothing he’d been wearing when she’d left his home into a sharp charcoal suit paired with a white silk shirt he’d left unbuttoned at the throat.
‘Dinner. And you’re coming with me.’
She whipped her head round to stare to him. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m taking you out to dinner.’
‘You are not.’
‘I am. You had a horrific experience last night, and this is my way of putting something good back in your life—a good memory to counter it.’
How she maintained her smile was a mystery to be solved in another life. ‘That’s very sweet of you, but I’m not a charity case. Go and take your girlfriend out.’
‘I don’t have a girlfriend, but if I did she could take herself out. I’m taking you out for dinner and I’m not taking no for an answer, so take yourself off to your bedroom and get changed into something more Athena—not even my grandmother would wear those pyjamas.’
‘They are extremely comfortable.’
‘They are extremely ugly. Now, do as you’re told.’
Suddenly she found she didn’t have to do any work to maintain her smile. Grinning, she saluted, ‘Yes, boss,’ and practically danced to her bedroom.
Draco watched her dance away, shaking his head with a smile.
He’d known the moment she opened her door that she was feeling better. He could see it in her posture and the strength with which she held herself. If he’d had any doubt she was up to going out he’d have ordered a delivery for them.
What he did have doubts about was her emotional recovery, and it was this aspect that had seen him pacing his home for what had felt like hours, resisting the growing urge to call her oldest brother and tell him to get his backside back to Athens and take care of his sister.
But, as strong as the urge had been, what good would it have done?
If Alexis or any of the other Tsaliki offspring gave two shits about Athena they would have remembered her birthday.
Yes, she was an acerbic madam, but they’d left her all alone on her birthday.
They’d forgotten her. Even her mother, who, despite not having been a Tsaliki for over twenty years, had flown to Sephone with the rest of the Tsaliki family and forgotten her daughter.
When it came to Tsaliki family gatherings, everyone, even ex-wives, was included.
Everyone but Athena.
Athena was all alone and far more vulnerable than she wanted anyone to believe.
Draco had needed to satisfy himself that she was as fine as her replies to his messages made out.
Whenever he remembered how she’d walked out of his home barefoot, hugging her knee-high boots to her belly, his heart constricted.
He didn’t see her as a charity case as she’d suggested, but he’d developed a weird sense of protective responsibility to her, and responsibility, too, to his mother and her insistence that the acerbic, quick-witted, vivacious nightmare called Athena had once been a sweet, angelic, loving child.
She’d clung to him like a trusting child. She’d cuddled into him in her sleep like a child. But she was all woman. Beautiful, sexy woman. Beautiful, sexy, vulnerable woman.
The longest night of his life had been spent hardly able to breathe.
It was only as the long night had gone on that it had come to him that there had never been any physical contact between them before.
Not even a brush of an arm or the brush of a finger when cups of coffee were exchanged.
They’d both maintained that distance, he realised.
The woman who flirted like she’d taken a master’s degree in the subject and who was forever picking off bits of fluff from the clothes of colleagues brave enough to go near her had never allowed her flirtations with him to become the slightest bit physical.
Athena had been keeping her distance as he had, wary of the attraction that flickered between them.
Which begged the question, though he knew he shouldn’t let it, of why.
He knew why he had to keep her at arm’s length, but Athena’s affairs, incredibly short though they all were, were legendary.
She was never shy about showing off her latest lover.
If she wanted someone, she pursued them until she got them.
There had been no paparazzi shots of her falling out of nightclubs either alone or with a lover since she’d started working for Tsaliki Shipping.
None of his business, he reminded himself firmly. Theirs was an attraction that would forever go unacknowledged, and whatever reason Athena had for refusing to acknowledge it would forever remain a mystery, because that was how it had to be.
She’d cleaned the kitchenette, he observed as he made them coffee.
Spotting a pair of rubber cleaning gloves, his heavy mood lifted and he grinned, picturing Athena wrinkling her nose as she slid her pretty hands into them.
This was better. Think of Athena as she was, not as the vulnerable woman she’d been asleep in his arms.
Still grinning, he took his coffee into the living area. The boxes were exactly where he’d stacked them that first day. He’d come to the point of thinking she never used the living area because it never changed from day to day, but that day there was an A4-sized book and a pencil tin on the floor.
Curious, he picked up the book and flicked through it. Then he blinked, closed it, and reopened it at the beginning.
Taking a seat on an ancient sofa that almost sagged to the floor under his weight, he went through the book carefully, page by page, filled with an emotion like nothing he’d felt before.
When he heard the door handle turn, he quickly placed it back where he’d found it with a thumping heart, suddenly certain that what he’d been looking through was intensely private to her, and then when she appeared before him his chest managed to tighten and swell all in one motion.
There was a faint stain of colour on her cheeks as she did a twirl for him. ‘Better?’
‘Much.’ He swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat.
‘Much more Athena.’ Inimitably Athena. Only Athena could get away with wearing a hot pink jumpsuit with red, purple and white swirls covering it in paisley fashion.
But unlike the canary yellow one she’d worn the night before, this jumpsuit was neck-high and long-sleeved, the short shorts displaying her fabulous legs but with more modesty, the hem an inch longer than she normally wore.
She’d kept her honey-blonde hair loose but had brushed it until the silky tresses shone, her make-up lighter and fresher than she usually applied it, enhancing her beauty all the more.
She might not be an angel but she had the beauty and glow of one. And, God, she could draw like one.