Chapter Seven #2
Athena wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed that Grace was already in the car, seated beside Draco, when she climbed in. She was still trying to work out if she was relieved or disappointed that Draco hadn’t got out of the car for her.
She’d woken at seven with a buzz in her veins and a weight in her stomach.
To distract herself from thoughts of Draco and thoughts of her family celebrating her nephew’s christening that very day without her, and especially to distract herself from emotions she couldn’t begin to dissect, she’d spent the intervening hours doing her laundry, a task she’d hated when she’d first had to do it—alas, her salary did not stretch to dry-cleaning bills—but now found quite soothing.
As a result, she’d been waiting outside her apartment block with her luggage when Draco’s car pulled up.
She’d thought someone would be impressed at this exemplary show of effort and timekeeping, but no.
It was almost as if her being ready on time was the bare minimum expected!
‘Sure you packed enough stuff?’ Draco’s PA asked archly, referring to the four large suitcases the driver was wrestling into the boot.
Athena plonked herself opposite the woman who seemed to hate her more than anyone outside of the Tsaliki family and gave her best Athena-everyone-loved-to-hate smile. ‘I can always go shopping if I run out.’
‘This isn’t a holiday. There will be no time for shopping or hairdressing appointments or beauty treatments or any of the other frivolous things you like to waste money on.’
Athena pouted. ‘That’s such a shame—I was going to surprise you with a girly day out.’
If Grace hadn’t then given her a look that quite clearly said she’d rather spend the day in a car filled with hornets, there was a slim chance Athena wouldn’t have then said, ‘I had it all planned. I was going to take you shopping and then find a decent beautician to sort your moustache out.’
‘Ladies, that’s enough,’ Draco interjected before Grace could launch herself off her seat and rip out Athena’s hair. ‘Athena, apologise.’
Scowling, she folded her arms. ‘Why?’
‘Because that was rude and because I said so.’
She puffed out a breath. So what if she’d been rude?
Grace despised her and never missed an opportunity to put her down.
If the lunch Grace gracelessly threw on her desk every lunchtime wasn’t prewrapped, Athena would assume she’d laced it with arsenic.
But this was Draco asking and she could deny him nothing…
even if she couldn’t currently look him in the eye.
Lifting her chin, she flashed her teeth in her latest nemesis’s direction. ‘Sorry for being rude, Grace.’
Grace just stared at her mutinously.
‘Grace, you need to apologise too.’
Grace looked as startled at that directive as Athena felt. ‘For what?’
‘I saw the look you gave Athena and all the other looks you’ve given her these last few weeks, and I’m not going to spend the next week with you two at each other’s throats. Athena doesn’t know any better but you do, so lead by example.’
‘I do know better!’ Athena said indignantly.
The piercing blue eyes she’d been avoiding locked onto hers, the left eyebrow raised. ‘Are you really admitting that?’
The warmth that filled her… It stained her skin and expanded her chest, flying out of her throat as a short laugh. ‘No.’
His lips twitched. The lips that had kissed her senseless. But his eyes…they danced with meaning and for that one tiny beat of a moment it could have been just the two of them in the car’s cabin.
Her chest swelled so hard and so fast that the stain on her skin deepened.
Feeling her tongue starting to tie itself, she swallowed and turned to Grace, leaning across to take her hand.
‘I really am sorry. I’m a defensive, prickly pear and I say mean things, not always without thinking, but you didn’t deserve that and I promise to make more of an effort not to be a bitch to you this week. ’
Not for Grace’s sake but for Draco’s. Because he’d asked.
But then Grace’s eyes softened, only a tiny amount, but it was a definite softening, and she gave a tiny squeeze of Athena’s hand, and a different kind of warmth filled Athena’s chest that made her want to cry and laugh all at the same time.
They were met at the airport by Theodore and Stav, the remainder of Draco’s core entourage who, with Grace, worked across all of Draco’s businesses.
One day, Athena thought, she might get around to finding out what they actually did.
But not today. Today, her stomach was too knotted to do much more than arrange her face and stop herself from continually seeking out Draco’s gaze.
She had nothing to distract her. Nothing physical.
Not on a fourteen-hour flight where even Draco didn’t pretend to have any work for her to do and she’d packed her drawing stuff in one of her suitcases.
Every time their eyes locked it felt like an explosion in her heart.
Although there was nothing physical to distract her, she still sought a means to occupy herself.
Draco’s plane was as big as the family jet her father used to pile the Tsaliki brood into whenever they travelled, Athena and her siblings all having their own private space with a bed.
While there wasn’t much real private space on Draco’s plane, the interior designed around business rather than pleasure, the ten seats in the main section all reclined into beds and all had their own privacy screens.
With Draco and his entourage busy discussing business in the conference area and none of them bothering with the charade that her presence was required, Athena swiped a notepad and pen from the stack on the table and settled on the reclining seat she’d taken for her own.
Draco had taken the space across the aisle from hers.
He’d placed his overnight case on the seat that reclined into a bed closest to hers before his gaze had glanced across hers, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment that had sent her pulses haywire.
Drawing with a pen was good practice, she decided after she’d been scribbling away for an hour.
Being unable to erase and refine made her decisive about each stroke.
And being decisive meant concentrating harder than ever, which meant no time for seeking out eyes of blue so bright they made the summer sky seem dull.
It meant, too, that she didn’t have to think about the significance of Draco placing his overnight case on the seat that reclined into a bed closest to hers.
Dinner was shared with the others at the oval dining table, a five-course feast she struggled to finish.
‘Are you not going to eat your baklava?’ Grace asked when Athena pushed her dessert plate to one side.
It was right on the tip of Athena’s tongue to say, And you shouldn’t either, not with your acne, but there was only hungry interest in Grace’s voice and no snideness, and so she bit the rudeness back and pushed the plate Grace’s way. ‘It’s all yours.’
Grace smiled. ‘Thank you.’
She had a pretty smile, Athena realised, having never been on the receiving end of one before. ‘You’re welcome.’
She only just resisted seeking Draco’s gaze.
He was seated opposite her, a huge contributory factor in her lack of appetite.
One kiss, the first kiss of her whole life she’d felt in the whole of her body and not just in her lips.
She’d wanted it to go on for ever. And now she was all knotted and coiled, half in fear of it happening again and half in fear of it never happening again.
Draco had never struggled to concentrate before.
Not like this. Although Athena had disappeared to her seat, leaving them to finish their work, he was as aware of her presence as he’d been when they’d been eating, and when he sensed movement he was unable to stop his head from turning.
He caught a sweep of her blonde hair before she slipped into one of the bathrooms.
Stav said something to him. Draco asked him to repeat it.
The discussion continued, Draco present but not there, his antennae on alert for the bathroom door opening.
After what felt like an eternity, she reappeared.
Her eyes found his.
His chest expanded.
God, she was beautiful. He could still taste her kisses.
Still feel the compression of her mouth against his.
And now here she was, dressed in another pair of those disgustingly awful grandmother pyjamas, her face scrubbed of make-up, and he allowed himself to see what he’d never allowed all those early mornings—that even in those disgustingly awful grandmother pyjamas he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone.
He watched her raise her pretty heart-shaped face and fix the smile to her face he knew was the smile she wore as armour. ‘I’m going to get some sleep,’ she called over to them. ‘Don’t miss me too much and don’t work too hard!’
‘Goodnight, Athena,’ Grace called back, and then Stav and Theodore followed suit.
Draco, his throat suddenly too tight for words, inclined his head.
Her gaze locked on his one last time before she returned to her seat and raised her privacy screen.
The reclined seat made such a comfortable bed that even people with back problems would wake up refreshed.
There was no reason Athena couldn’t fall asleep.
She was a master of sleeping on planes. Master of tuning out noise and falling into slumber at will.
It was waking up she’d always struggled with!
The noise from Draco and the others was so low as to be hardly audible. She had to strain to hear them.
It was only when she heard footsteps coming towards her and her breath caught in her throat that she understood that this was why she’d not yet fallen asleep.
The footsteps passed her. More footsteps came and went.
Snuggling tighter under the duvet, she rolled over and squeezed her eyes shut.
There were ten reclining seats on the plane in pairs of two. Enough for them to have two beds each. Just because Draco had put his overnight case on the seat closest to hers didn’t mean he’d settle in on it, and even if he did, the aisle would separate them. And besides, her privacy screen was up.
Movement close by had her eyes springing open and her heart jumping into her throat.
Sitting up, she heard the low buzz of the privacy screen closest to hers rising.
Nothing more. Once her heart rate had reduced from a Speedy Gonzales level to a mere canter, she lay back down.
Her eyes refused to close. However hard she willed them and however stern a talk she gave them, they stayed stubbornly open.
Another low burr, this time of a seat in recline, sent her heart from a gentle trot to Speedy Gonzales-on-steroids in a beat.
She tried to breathe, spent an age trying to concentrate on feeding herself air and not thinking of Draco lying so close to her, but the growing ache inside her made that impossible, and she wished she could live that moment of waking in his arms again, a moment she looked back on with regret for not savouring it while she had it.
He’d saved her and protected her the whole night through. No one had ever done anything like that for her before, and though she’d been drugged, there had been such a sense of safety in his arms, and she longed to feel it again almost as much as she longed for the man who’d provided that safety.
But how could it be? she despaired. How could she take from him without giving anything of herself?
She’d always worn her selfishness with pride, all part of the Athena everyone loved to hate persona, but she didn’t want to be selfish with Draco.
She just didn’t know how to be any other way and didn’t know how to give of herself either.
She’d thrown the duvet off, swung her feet to the floor and opened her privacy door before she could question what she was doing.
Draco’s privacy door was only a step away. Heart pounding, she took the step and lightly tapped her fingers to it.
The roaring in her ears was so loud she only just heard the low, ‘Come in.’
She pushed it open a fraction. Her heart stopped and then exploded before the rest of her senses took in the hulking bearded figure lying on the narrow bed.
She opened it some more. In the dim lighting, their eyes locked.
Without saying a word, he lifted the duvet in invitation.
Maybe if he hadn’t been wearing grey pyjama bottoms and a white T-shirt, she would have frightened herself into backing away. She would never know because he was wearing them. And so she slipped into his private space and closed the thin door.