Chapter Fourteen #3
She’d never looked more beautiful.
She broke the lock first, turning to another guest.
He took a deep breath. He needed to play this right. He couldn’t go charging to her and throw himself at her feet. Not yet.
Draco and his guests circulated and greeted each other a while longer until everyone was invited to take their seats.
It was nearly time.
Whoever had done the seating plan deserved to be shot, Athena thought miserably.
The way the round tables had been set out meant she could have been placed anywhere and facing any direction.
Instead, she’d been placed directly below the top table where Draco, Cora, her father and stepmother, and the seven other most honoured guests were seated, her view a direct line to Draco.
Not even seeing the expressions on her father and stepmother’s faces at their recognition of Cora could lessen the sting.
She picked at her food, made small talk with the rest of the table, and willed time to speed up. As soon as the speeches were over, she’d be gone.
Time, however, refused to play ball, crawling torturously.
Every time she glanced Draco’s way, which was roughly every three seconds as she was helpless to stop herself looking at him, her eyes would catch his.
She didn’t feel dead inside any more. Now she felt only despair.
Finally, the desserts were finished. Merciful escape was only a speech away.
Soon, the scent of coffee filled the air and Draco took to the stage. Chairs scraped as everyone angled themselves for a face-on view.
‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, tall and heartbreakingly handsome in his hand-stitched tuxedo.
‘Thank you for joining me this evening as we celebrate my acquisition of Tsaliki Shipping. As you will all know, it’s been three months since I bought the company and, so far, it’s been one hell of a learning curve. ’
There was a small outbreak of laughter.
‘When a new owner takes control of a company, change is always inevitable,’ he continued. ‘And it’s no different for me. Effective immediately, Tsaliki Shipping as an entity no longer exists.’
There was no laughter this time. Only hushed silence.
A projector light shone on the heavy stage curtains behind him, and without warning a white screen filled with the image of a female goddess wearing an ancient Greek chiton. She was standing in front of a cherry blossom tree and had a spear in her hand and a warrior helmet on her head.
It was the goddess Athena.
The words beneath her read Corathena Shipping.
The room was spinning around her so hard Athena didn’t even think to look at her father or Rebecca. Even if she had thought to look, she wouldn’t have been able to see them, not through the tears streaming down her face.
‘I chose Corathena to celebrate the two people who I love more than anyone—my mother Cora and the woman I hope will agree to be my wife, Athena Tsaliki.’
There were audible gasps. She barely heard them over her thrashing heart.
Corathena…
She wiped her tears and clutched her burning cheeks as the magnitude of what Draco had done sank in.
The magnitude of what it meant.
His stare landed on her.
His chest rose. ‘I love you, Athena. Now and always. Please marry me.’
Five hundred pairs of eyes were fixed on her but Athena felt none of them. The only face she saw was Draco’s.
She rose unsteadily to her feet.
‘What do you say?’ he whispered, dropping the microphone that was no longer needed because the silence in the ballroom was absolute. ‘Will you do me the biggest honour of my life and be my wife?’
Feeling like she’d fallen into a dream, she glided to him.
He stepped off the stage and stood before her.
Not speaking, she placed a trembling hand on his cheek…he was trembling too…and rubbed her palm into the soft stubble of his beard, her heart swelling as if all the helium in the world had been funnelled into it.
His piercing eyes glistening with unshed tears, he rested his forehead to hers and drove his fingers through her hair.
‘You are everything to me, Athena. Everything. You are my sun and my moon and all the stars in the sky, and worth more to me than all the gold in the universe. I’m sorry for being such a fool… ’
The tenderness of his touch spread through her, flooding her with a warmth she’d never believed she would feel again, and she covered his mouth with her fingers. ‘No apologies. You never wanted to hurt me.’
He gently moved her hand. ‘But…’
Closing her eyes, she wound her arms around his neck and silenced him with a kiss, holding her mouth to his and filling herself with the scent and taste and everything that was Draco.
‘Draco, you didn’t just save me from those men, you saved me from myself.
Your love set me free from the chains I’d put around myself, and my heart and my life belong to you.
I would marry you this minute if it was possible. You’re my heart and I love you.’
There was a groan from his throat before his lips parted against hers and he was kissing her with the same desperate need for her that she’d carried all those long weeks for him.
‘I love you, Athena,’ he murmured passionately. ‘I will be yours for ever.’
When they finally came up for air, it was to a roar of cheers and applause, and when Draco produced an oval diamond engagement ring from his pocket and slid it onto her finger—it was perfect!—five hundred camera phones caught the moment.
They were pictures neither of them ever grew tired of looking at.
Later, cheek to chest and fingers threaded tightly, Athena and Draco moved as one slowly on the packed dancefloor. Her engagement ring gleamed as brightly as the gleam in her heart.
Dancing close to them, Lucie and Thanasis, and Alexis and Lydia.
Her other siblings, who she hoped with all her heart would one day find love, too, were hidden in the crowd, but they were there, and that made her happy.
It made her even happier that they’d all chosen to continue working for Draco under the Corathena Shipping banner.
Even her father and Rebecca had stayed to party.
As selfish and vile as her father could be, Athena still loved him, and his tight embrace and whispered congratulations had meant more than she’d thought it would.
A fresh start for all of them.
In the periphery of her vision was Cora, in deep, animated conversation with a suave German shipping magnate.
As if she felt Athena’s stare, she turned her head and caught her eye.
And then she smiled and raised her champagne flute, and Athena was thrown back in time to when she’d seen a photo of Cora’s adolescent son and determined to marry him so she could have Cora as her mother.
Some wishes did come true.
Draco had made all her secret wishes come true.
She would love him for ever. And he would love her for ever too.