Chapter Ten
CHAPTER TEN
‘W HERE ARE YOU ?’ Helena called out from the sun lounger on the main deck.
‘I’ll be there soon. Just wait.’
But she didn’t want to wait, she thought, and nearly laughed at herself. Had he cast some spell? Had they turned back time to when she was an infatuated teenager, desperate to get just one more glimpse of Leo Liassidis? Even though she knew it was more than an infatuation, she told herself that was what it was, what it needed to be. Because she was going to find it so hard to walk away when...
‘Ta-da!’
Leo loomed between her and the sun, casting himself and what he was carrying into shadow through her sunglasses. And for a moment it felt like a warning, the cut-out of where he would never be in her life.
She bit her lip, forced a smile to her face, took off her sunglasses and gasped when she saw the tray he was holding.
‘You made all this?’ she demanded.
‘Of course,’ he replied, as if outraged that she thought he wasn’t up to it.
The platter held bowls of beautiful fruits, yoghurts, nuts and seeds, golden and toasted, flutes filled with mimosas, and even two plates with delicious-looking omelettes.
‘Of course ?’ she repeated on a laugh. ‘You can cook?’ she asked, teasing.
‘Is this because I’m Greek or because I’m a man?’ he demanded, leaning into one hip and making her laugh even more as his outrage deepened. ‘Because I need to know which before I can be offended appropriately.’
‘Both?’
A string of Greek curses filled the air and she couldn’t help it. She threw her head back and laughed, a deep, stomach shaking, heart resetting laugh that she remembered from her childhood.
‘Stop laughing like that,’ he mock-complained as if she didn’t know how much he enjoyed seeing it.
Over breakfast they talked about what they would do that morning, for lunch, for dinner that evening, as if the spectre of Leander’s return didn’t hover over their shoulders. As if there would be a hundred tomorrows to come.
Swim, eat, luxuriate. It all seemed so easy and so free. So different to the way that she’d spent the years since she’d last seen him. From the moment her father had passed away, she’d been so focused on working with Incendia, on earning her degree, her master’s, on being the best that she could be, hoping, wanting so badly to be someone her father would have been proud of, someone that her mother could...could love.
And somewhere in that, she’d forgotten the girl she had used to be. The one that laughed and played in the sun and the sea. The one who had delighted in the teasing fun offered by the Liassidis twins as much as her father’s attention. And it wasn’t just she who was learning to relax in this moment.
The Leo she remembered from her childhood unfurled beneath the sun, the smile so far from his lips only a week ago nearly a constant. The heat in his eyes, the promise there, was entirely unfamiliar but utterly thrilling and it left Helena feeling so aware of herself and her sensuality—it was powerful and heady, and terrifyingly addictive.
Leo thrust out an arm to catch Helena around the waist, her skin slippery in the saltwater of the Mediterranean, the swimming costume high on her hips and low on her chest. He’d never forget this as long as he lived.
As he trod water, and ducked to avoid the splash she sent his way, he pulled her against him, his body delighting in the feel of her warmth, her skin, her . With the islands in the distance and the sea surrounding them, he racked his brain to find any moment more perfect than this.
He remembered seeing Helena at the bottom of the aisle of the church in her wedding dress. Before she’d seen him, before she’d realised that it wasn’t Leander waiting for her, there had been a moment—the length of a heartbeat—when he’d forgotten. Forgotten why he was there, forgotten that she wasn’t his fiancée, forgotten the feud with his brother... In truth, he’d nearly forgotten his own name.
She’d had a small smile on her lips, a Mona Lisa smile, hypnotic, cryptic, but alluring nevertheless, and when she’d looked up he’d thought, for just a second, he’d seen recognition in her eyes, delight, hope...before it had turned to horror.
‘Earth to Leo,’ she whispered into his ear as she twisted in his embrace, their legs sliding against each other as they navigated buoyancy together. ‘Come in, Leo,’ she finished, the simmering want in her gaze wicked and playful and everything he’d never thought he’d be lucky enough to ever have.
‘Well, your wish is my command,’ he replied as his fingers found the hemline of her costume at her hip.
She squealed in delight, and wriggled, pushing her body further against his, and curses fell from his lips before he claimed hers with his own.
‘This is impractical,’ he mock-complained against her lips and once again she undulated against him as his fingers found her clitoris. She moaned against him and no amount of cold water could hold back his erection.
‘Dangerous even,’ he weakly protested, as her head fell back and he anchored her to him and to the surface. He could watch her for ever. He could pleasure her for the rest of his life and it wouldn’t be enough.
‘Utterly irresponsible,’ he tried again as he teased her orgasm closer and closer.
The flush on her cheeks, the gasps of breath on the air, the way she was utterly lost to her own pleasure was almost enough to make him orgasm himself. Her cries grew higher and higher, more urgent, needing, wanting, and he had to try every single trick himself not to follow her over the edge just from watching her come.
Taut lines across her body melted away as she fell into her orgasm and he held her to him, keeping them afloat in the sea, shocked to his core by the single most erotic experience of his life in which he hadn’t even orgasmed himself.
Slowly, he drew them back to the boat, pulling her from the sea and into his arms, all the way back up to the main deck, where he washed the saltwater off their skin with the outside shower and wrapped a satiated and smiling Helena in a fluffy white towel.
He drew her to the sun loungers out on the deck. The soft canvas cushion over the wood was comfortable enough for a long laze beneath the rays of the sun climbing too far, too fast, into the sky.
He sat, drawing her between his legs and laying her back against his chest. He couldn’t stop touching her. As if his body knew that time was running out and it was desperately trying to take what it could get. All the feelings, all the scents, all the touches.
‘So, Ms Hadden,’ he began, unable to bring himself to call her by his name. His brother’s name. ‘Curious minds want to know—what is your five-year plan?’ he asked in a mock British accent, as if giving an interview.
Only a part of him was interested in the answer, because the other part just wanted to listen to her talk. Or at least that was what he told himself until she hesitated.
‘I know that I’m still quite young, and there’s so much I’d want to do with Incendia...’
If she managed to succeed in surviving the end of year financial review. He heard her doubt, he knew of her insecurities. But no matter what passed between them here, or in the future, he knew that she would do it. Knew it with a visceral belief in the woman in his arms.
‘But one day, in the not-too-distant future, I’d like a family,’ she admitted, scrunching her nose.
His heart stopped. Completely and utterly. The high-pitched whine in his ears was like that of a heart monitor flatlining.
‘Children. More than one,’ she said, her voice stronger the more she entertained her hopes for the future.
As she painted a picture of the family and the life she wanted one day, he forced his body not to betray the ice-cold hold that had taken him over. He, who had fought with his brother for fourteen years, who had immersed himself in work and business and meetings to fill days that had become increasingly empty the more he tried to protect himself, had never allowed himself to think of a future with a family.
And even if Helena hadn’t just ‘married’ his brother for all the world to see, would he have been able to give her that? The family that she had never had as a child, the kind of love and attention and focus that she deserved and needed? Could a man who had been so ruthless with his twin brother be capable of that kind of love?
‘I keep losing you,’ Helena complained gently, pulling his attention back to her.
And all he could think was that he’d already lost her.
‘What about you, Mr Liassidis? Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’ Helena asked, even though she knew that their hearts weren’t in the ‘game’ any more.
‘Oh, I think I’ll still be sitting at the head of the boardroom, commanding thousands of employees to do my bidding,’ he quipped, even though for Helena it was suddenly not at all funny.
His answer was telling, but it was also calculated, and that was what made it worse.
The moment she had told him she wanted a family she had felt something shift between them. Her first thought was that she shouldn’t have told him. Shouldn’t have confessed her dreams for the future. And then she got angry. Because it was what she wanted and it wasn’t unreasonable. She wanted the security and love that offered and she wanted to be able to give all the love she had to another human being. To pour it into them.
It wasn’t about getting something in return, getting that love back—the kind that she’d never received from her mother or her father—but she wanted so much to share what was in her. And there was so much love to give that it almost hurt.
But Leo’s retreat, emotionally if not physically, served as a painful reminder that he was not someone who was safe for her.
No, she didn’t think that he was the same Leo who had cut her from his life so easily all those years before. She knew—could see—the toll that the separation with his brother had taken on him, and she understood why he had protected himself by creating that separation. Because, deep down, she believed that Leo was just like her. He was someone who had so much love to give and nowhere, no one , to give it to.
But he was also very different to her. Because while she still had hope that things could and would be different, it was as if Leo had drawn a line and moved beyond that hope in order to protect himself.
The thought sobbed painfully in her chest. Because she loved him. She loved him deeply and truly and the thought that he wouldn’t accept that love, wouldn’t allow himself to feel that love was a visceral pain that rended her heart in two.
Forcefully, she pushed back that hurt. There would be time for that later, when Leo was gone and Leander had returned. For now, with desperate hands, she clung to the thread of the present.
She turned in his arms and craned her head to look up at him.
‘Kiss me?’ she asked.
Distract me. Make me forget that this ends tomorrow.
The staff returned to the boat late that afternoon, after Leo had reluctantly called them back. The car met them at the marina and their return to the villa on the Mani Peninsula was quiet, but the air was heavy with the unspoken words that lay between them.
Leo wanted to rub at his temples, to relieve the pressure that was building there, but didn’t want to show such a sign of weakness in that moment. There was a vulnerability between them and he didn’t know if it was his or hers.
All he knew was that there was this pressure filling him with a horrible sense of urgency but no direction to go in. Restlessness moved through his entire body, making him uncomfortable in his own skin.
The car took the coastal road back to the villa, each turn offering the most incredible view of the Mediterranean, the classic Greek shoreline, rich green foliage covering sandy white rock, stark against a blue that would remind him of Helena’s eyes for ever.
But beyond all the beauty he could see through the window, all he could hear was alarm bells. Ones that had been ringing in his ears ever since that afternoon. No. He couldn’t lie to himself, not any more. He’d been hearing them ever since he’d seen her that first time in the church, but they’d been getting louder and louder, warning of danger ahead.
The last time he’d felt like this, he’d ignored it. Ignored all the warning signs that his brother was unhappy. That his brother wasn’t as one hundred percent committed to their childhood dream as he’d once been.
Oh, he had done a very good job at convincing himself that he’d not known what Leander was going to do. That it had been such a complete shock to him. But could he still continue to do that? Especially now, when it seemed just as important, if not more so, than it had been then.
Back then, he had done absolutely nothing, because he’d needed to be wrong. Because he couldn’t have imagined life, or Liassidis Shipping, without his brother—his other half. And here he was again, feeling that same sense of something, someone slipping through his fingers unable to do a damn thing. That same sense of being unable to imagine his future without Helena in it. And that need, that desperation, scared the hell out of him.
The car pulled up outside the entrance to the villa and, not waiting for the driver’s help, Helena left the car without sparing Leo a backward glance, her body a study in taut lines and hard angles, as if she were trying with all her might to hold herself together.
Leo remained behind in the car, his jaw clenched and hands fisted. He needed to staunch the fury, the anger he felt...the fear that he wrestled with. It was as if they’d condensed an entire lifetime into a week, and only now was he becoming overwhelmed by the emotions. Only now, when he felt her slipping through his fingers.
He got out of the car, spurred on by that thought, slamming the door behind him, uncaring of who heard or what they thought. He stalked into the villa and found her staring out at the view from the living area. His heart raged in his chest, pounding furiously, protesting against the cage of emotions that had it in such a stranglehold.
For a moment they just stayed like that, Helena desperately holding herself together and Leo desperately holding himself back.
‘I think you should go.’
Her statement should have shocked him. Should have cut the ground from under his feet. But it didn’t. Just like it hadn’t that day when Leander took the money and ran. He’d known. All along he’d known. Then. And now.
‘We have time,’ he bartered as he looked at the clock. It was barely eight in the evening. ‘Hours even.’
She shook her head, her eyes still fixed on some invisible point on the horizon. ‘It’s better if you leave before your brother gets here, don’t you think?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he lied.
He couldn’t take it any more. Crossing the room, he came to her side and pulled her round to face him. Her arms stayed crossed around her body, in protection, in defiance, and it hit him hard.
She needed that? Protection? Against him?
‘We could find a way to make this work.’
The breath left her lips in a puff of air that sounded painfully like derision. And it cut him deep. Shaking her head, she stared at him, incredulous.
‘How?’ she asked hopelessly. ‘How would we make this work? Secret assignations? One weekend here, an evening there, hoping that no one will notice? Or we could wait, I suppose,’ she said, her words falling rapidly from her perfect mouth, one after the other. ‘Leander and I were going to divorce after a year and a half. What do you think is a respectable time to wait before I start banging the other brother?’
‘ Christós , Helena.’ He hated hearing the crass words in her soft English tones.
‘Oh, I think we both know that that is the least offensive way to describe what the world would be thinking and what the press would be printing,’ Helena replied, hating the words coming out of her mouth.
She was right. He knew she was right, so why was he fighting this?
Hope. That wretched thing that he had tried to sever all those years ago. Hope that things could be different. The same hope that drove almost everything that Helena did in her life. Somehow, it had sprung back into being, yearning for more than he could have.
He reached for her quickly, so that she couldn’t refuse him. The kiss was angry, furious, and all the more passionate for its desperation. He prised apart her lips, his tongue possessing her, taunting her, trying to claim her even as she would evade him. But she opened for him, as she always would. Welcomed him, his anger, welcomed it all and gave back her own desperate helplessness in return. She stroked his tongue with hers and he held her even tighter as she slipped through his fingers.
He stalked them back against the window, his body caging hers between him and the glass, his hands moving over her clothes, desperate to find whatever skin he could claim. Her moan of pleasure drove him wild beyond reason and into chaos. But it was the helpless whimper of need, of want, of so much more than he could give that yanked him back from the brink of madness. They broke apart, heaving breaths between them, Leo nearly buckling beneath the agony of losing her.
‘Don’t do this, Helena. Don’t push me away,’ he begged, even though he couldn’t offer her anything more than this.
‘Away from what?’ she pleaded. ‘I just married your brother!’
‘But you didn’t,’ he ground out through clenched teeth.
‘Do you think that matters? The press announced it across the globe, it made headlines in twelve different countries. How on earth could anything between us ever happen? You barely survived one Hadden. You wouldn’t survive this. Liassidis Shipping wouldn’t survive it.’
The look in his eyes was a shock. The fear, even the idea that he might lose everything he’d worked so hard for—she read it as if it were the lines of a book written on his soul.
It was a lightning strike right into her heart, burning a scar over already damaged tissues. It was the one thing she’d never wanted to see. She could have lived with her pain and her loss, telling herself that it was the situation that had come between them. That they had simply been star-crossed lovers. And then she could have still cherished the hope that what they’d shared had meant something, had meant enough .
But in that moment she knew. That was what she had been trying to protect herself from seeing. That nothing had changed. That she still wasn’t enough for him.
The blow to her soul was crushing. It stole the oxygen from her lungs and the ground from beneath her feet. She thought she might have swayed. Leo reached for her, but she batted his hand away.
‘Helena—’
‘Go. Go now,’ she said, shaking her head and turning back out to the view beyond the window, wishing she couldn’t see his reflection in the glass and hoping that he couldn’t see her tears.
‘Helena—’
‘No, Leo. It’s done.’
Helena held herself together as she watched Leo’s head drop. He had given up. It was what she’d expected, what she’d thought all along, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a stab to the heart.
Slowly, the shadowy image in the window turned, and she watched Leo Liassidis walk out of her life for the final time.
Helena woke up, not sure why and confused as to where she was. Her eyes ached from crying the night before and it took a while to prise them open. She was still in the living area. The sunrise must have woken her. Sleep had been her drug again and she should know better. She had barely eaten anything since the boat and that was more hours ago than she cared to do the maths on.
But an empty stomach was nothing compared to the agony in her heart. The force she’d needed to use to hold herself back as she’d watched him leave had bruised her chest. Every time she breathed the pain was a reminder of what had happened.
He’d gone. He’d walked away. She wasn’t enough. She never had been.
‘It needs to be enough for you, Helena.’
Her stomach clenched so viciously she rolled into a ball to protect herself from the hurt. She hated that he was right. Hated that he had been the one to say it. Nothing she did with Incendia would make her mother feel something she couldn’t. Her father was gone and would never be able to give her what she needed. She had to be enough for herself, but right now things were too raw and too painful from the loss of Leo for her to be able to consider it properly or even understand what that would look like.
A sound came from somewhere in the villa. The sound that had woken her.
She rolled her shoulders and swallowed. Leander was due back today. Perhaps that was him calling now, she thought, finally recognising the sound that had woken her as her mobile phone. She’d put it on silent when they were on the yacht, not wanting to have her last time with Leo interrupted by the outside world.
A tear escaped as her heart melted in a painful sob.
She couldn’t do this, she thought furiously. She wasn’t allowed to collapse, she wasn’t allowed to cry. She clenched her jaw and pulled herself up from the sofa.
In the shower she scrubbed every inch of her body and washed her hair, turning the water from scalding hot to freezing. Everything she could think of to give her body the jolt she needed to come back to the present. But somehow, despite everything she tried, she knew that she’d let part of herself, her heart, leave with Leo.
Dressed in a simple shirt dress, with her hair in a towel and her phone buzzing again , she finally went to retrieve it from beside her bed and gasped.
Thirty missed calls?
Some from unknown numbers, a worrying amount from Megan, despite the fact that it was six a.m. back home.
What the hell was going on?
Just then someone pounded on the door. ‘Helena? Are you in there?’
She walked towards the door on slow, jerky feet.
‘Is Leo with you?’
She pulled up short, eyes wide, body tense with shock.
‘Why is Leander in California, Helena, and who is the blonde with him?’ another voice demanded as someone tried to peer through the window.
Helena jumped back and then jumped again when her phone rang in her hand. She answered it without thinking.
‘Helena? Are you okay?’ Megan’s voice asked.
‘What’s...what’s going on?’
‘They know, Helena. They know that it was Leo with you, not Leander.’