Chapter Nine #2
Hope put out her hand and let Axel pull her up. She was becoming very proficient at the doggy-paddle and had managed to swim a whole length of the pool at the villa unaided. But she hadn’t been in the sea, apart from at the very edge. The waves terrified her slightly.
But the waves at this beach were more gentle.
Axel led her into the water and it was deliciously cool on her hot skin.
The water got higher and higher and she felt nervous.
‘Axel, I’m almost out of my depth.’ It occurred to her that that was true for her emotions as well. She pushed that revelation aside.
He turned to face her. ‘OK, so start swimming. Follow me.’
Hope’s mouth opened. ‘Just…start?’
Axel let her go and floated onto his back, chest gleaming under the sunlight. ‘Come on, follow me.’
Hope took a breath and let the buoyancy of the water help her to become weightless and at first she panicked, scrabbling into doggy-paddle and splashing water everywhere, but Axel said, ‘You’re doing great, just slow down—you won’t sink.’
Hope did and realised that she was managing to float without much effort. She experimented with trying to put her feet down and couldn’t touch the bottom. She felt that momentary panic again but used her arms and legs to propel her back towards Axel.
She finally caught up to him and he reached for her and she clung to him with arms and legs around his waist. He grinned at her. ‘You did it.’
The beauty of the surroundings and the fact that this man had taken the time to teach her rudimentary swimming skills made her chest swell so much that she pressed her mouth to his to try and contain the feeling.
He kissed her back, long and luxuriously, and then Hope forgot why she’d kissed him in the first place.
They floated in the sea for a while, hands linked. And then Axel said, ‘We should get out. I don’t want you to burn.’
Hope rolled her eyes. He’d made sure she was so slathered in factor fifty that she was fairly sure she was safe, but she let him tow her back in by her hands.
When they returned to the villa later that afternoon, Axel disappeared to make some calls and Hope went to shower.
Her skin felt like silk after the natural exfoliation of the sand.
When she looked at herself in the mirror there was an explosion of freckles across her nose and cheeks.
She grimaced. She looked like a wholesome country farm girl, not the sophisticated, elegant girlfriend of a billionaire.
She sighed. There wasn’t much she could do about that. Nor Axel. They were bound together now after those photos had hit the papers. She’d seen them online when she’d checked the news sites on her phone.
She felt as if people wouldn’t really believe they were together. And yet those photos from the market showed them looking at each other as if no one else were around. It had looked so cringingly obvious to her how fascinated she was by him.
It had made her think of that night in Manhattan, after the event where she’d met his parents, when he’d undressed her and washed her and put her to bed.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the tenderness Axel had shown and the generosity, giving her pleasure but taking none for himself.
It meant nothing, she’d told herself stoutly the morning after.
But in these last few days in his idyllic place, and after seeing a different side to Axel—more relaxed, open—she couldn’t help but fantasise that maybe their time together was changing him.
Changing his perspective. Making him want more…
making him want her, outside this whole arrangement. This situationship.
Hope knew that was a very dangerous line to follow so she put it all out of her mind now and changed into a loose maxi dress and went downstairs to see what could be cobbled together for dinner.
But deep inside, a little flame of hope had been lit and, with the best will in the world, she couldn’t snuff it out.
* * *
‘Baros has obviously seen the pictures online,’ Michalis said approvingly. ‘His people have been in touch to make sure you’re coming to his party. He’s carved out time to talk to you. This is it, Axel, it’s working.’
Michalis’s voice came over speakerphone into the room. Axel waited for a sense of triumph and anticipation to hit him and it did…but it felt lacklustre. As if he couldn’t care less.
Michalis continued, ‘Are you coming back soon? I mean, it’s working, whatever you’re doing, but you’ve never been anywhere with a woman for a week.’
Axel didn’t need that reminder. He’d been losing track of time and days, indulging in a wholly new experience of abdicating all responsibility. He’d come back into the villa home office to find emails and missed calls. Mostly from Michalis.
He said a little tetchily to his friend and advisor now, ‘That was the aim here, to show Baros that I can settle down.’
‘And are you? With Hope Smith?’ Michalis’s tone was sly.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ Axel responded quickly.
Too quickly. ‘She’s completely inappropriate for the long term and for continuing the Drakos line.
’ But even as he said that, Axel felt acid reflux inside him.
Everything he’d based his existence on—making sure his brother’s struggles hadn’t been in vain, and shoring up Drakos Solutions and making it more successful than ever—suddenly felt as if it was starting to crumble.
‘Well, for what it’s worth, the results of the investigation came back and nothing else turned up. She’s clean as a whistle.’
Axel felt a pang of guilt at the reminder that he’d asked Michalis to look into Hope again. He’d forgotten all about it.
‘But,’ Michalis went on, ‘I’ve been compiling that list of potential wives to take Callista’s place and I think we have some good options. We can get into it after the Baros event, when you’ve won the man over.’
Axel terminated the call and heard a sound behind him. He turned to see Hope framed in the doorway in a long dress in vibrant turquoise. No other adornment. No make-up, just fresh sun-kissed skin. Her hair was damp. She looked so beautiful that his breath caught.
And then he noticed her face was pale and the wounded expression told him she’d overheard that conversation, but when he opened his mouth she held up a hand and said, ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you had me investigated. After all, a guy like you has to be careful.’
The guilt was like bile in Axel’s gut. ‘Hope, it’s pretty much standard. You looked me up, remember?’ Not the same, and Axel knew it, to his shame.
Hope didn’t pursue it. She said, ‘You’ve never been anything but clear about this…whole arrangement and I’ve never suggested for a second that I want anything more so you really don’t need to tell anyone how inappropriate I am. I’m well aware of that.’
Axel cursed under his breath. He’d reacted defensively to Michalis because his friend had touched on a nerve.
‘That really wasn’t meant as an insult, Hope, believe me. I wouldn’t wish becoming my bride on you. It’s not the life you want.’
‘No, it’s not,’ she agreed. ‘Because I want a real family some day. Not a family genetically engineered to keep some ancient bloodline intact. I want love, Axel.’
Hope looked at him with something like pity. ‘You’ve already told me you don’t believe in it, but it does exist.’
‘What does?’ But he knew.
‘Love.’
‘It doesn’t. Not for me.’
‘Yes, it does.’
Axel frowned. ‘What do you mean?’ She’d met his parents!
‘You loved your brother, still love him, I’d wager. And your sisters, even though you’re not in each other’s lives. The irony is that I’ve never experienced any kind of unconditional love but I still believe it can exist for me. You’ve turned your back on it.’
Axel felt a lurching sensation inside him.
He had a moment of realising just how far off track his ordered world had strayed.
Off track and into another dimension. With this golden-haired sprite at the centre, looking at him as if he were a whole person, when he knew he wasn’t.
He’d talked to her about things he’d never discussed with another person.
Hope moved into the room and put a hand out. ‘What’s the point of having a place like this if you can’t fill it with joy and love? Share it?’
Tension filled Axel’s body. ‘That is not why I bought this property.’
‘Why did you, then?’
Because of her, because she’d inspired him.
Exposure skated over Axel’s skin. That halcyon image she described…
of a place like this filled with shouts and laughter and love—all the kind of things he’d never had himself…
seemed utterly preposterous. And, frankly, a little terrifying, because if he hadn’t managed to protect his own brother, or be there in a meaningful way for his sisters, how could he hope to protect anyone else he cared about?
‘It was a transaction, pure and simple. A charitable investment. Nothing to do with love.’
Hope’s eyes were huge and very blue and filled with something that made Axel feel volatile. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Hope.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like you pity me.’
She shook her head. ‘Why would I pity you? You have it all. You’re the most self-contained person I’ve ever met. The most capable. Successful.’
‘Don’t mock me either.’
She ducked her head and looked back up. ‘I’m sorry, that’s not fair. I just…there’s so much more that you could have. You deserve it.’
No, he didn’t. That was the fundamental truth here.
But he had that sense again that what he’d been working so hard for was somehow…
futile, in spite of achieving the success he had.
That dream of including his siblings in the business felt far too nebulous.
And did he really want to hand this toxic chalice on to another generation?
He’d ruled out any other options so long ago that he genuinely couldn’t see a way out…
And now Hope was reaching right into him where all these thoughts were tangled up and getting tighter and tighter, drawing into knots in his gut.