Heat lasered from his eyes to her skin, and she tried to ignore the explosion in her heart and deny the depth charge rippling through her.
Time. All she needed was time to get used to being with him again, and then she could get these feelings under control. She bit down on the pie, and tangy cheese with piquant herbs melted in her mouth.
“Good?” He whispered.
“Mmmmm.” It was all she could manage.
“Try one of these olives.” His bicep stretched, the thin cotton of his T-shirt clinging to the taut, well defined muscle, as he reached for another bowl. “Petro pickles them himself.”
“You said you’d lost your sense, even your desire, for taste and smell.” She reached into the bowl before he could pull one out for her, at the same time trying to quell the shaking of her hand and the shiver in her heart. She couldn’t avoid this sort of time with him, and she needed to train herself to ignore the reactions of old and focus on the practicalities of the future.
“It’s come back in the last couple of weeks.” His voice was still low, and Liv had to use every ounce of willpower not to meet his gaze. “Came back just as quickly as it went away.”
She took a bite of the tangy olive and ordered her body to pull itself together and stop giving off unwarranted signals.
“I’ll be able to start making the vanilla essence soon.” She turned to him, straining to have the sensual spell broken for a moment so her giddy mind could get back on track. “If that works out, I could try and use some of the other plants you’ve got in the garden, and maybe we could plant some bergamot and chamomile.”
They were both quiet for some time, and Liv started to relax as she let her senses be filled with the food in front of them, the wafts of lavender and orange blossom from the garden, and the rhythmic hush-hush of the waves on the sand below. It was like so many nights they’d spent in the past, bathing in the beauty of things that surrounded them. But this time they were friends. Friends with a shared purpose who just needed to learn how to communicate to be together again.
Finally, Markus broke the silence. “Is there something you wanted to ask me?”
Liv turned her head toward him, perplexed. “What do you mean?”
“You started asking about Polly. About what I thought when she contacted me out of the blue. Did you want to know what Polly and I spoke about?” He cleared his throat. “Before she died. I’ve wanted to tell you, but I wasn’t sure how raw all of it still was for you or how much you’d want to know.”
Liv pressed her spine hard into the back of the chair and rubbed her hands across her eyes. She did want to know what Polly had been feeling and thinking in her last days.
“I suppose.” She tried to keep her voice steady. “I mean . . . it doesn’t change anything.” She made her words sharper in an effort to cover the emotion that was building inside. “I know how much Polly loved me and how hard it must have been for her that I couldn’t find her, couldn’t get to her in time.”
Markus shifted his whole body until he was facing her. “She’d hesitated about telling you she’d come to Cyprus—didn’t want the fact that she’d been talking to me upset you. She was going to text you on the day she became so ill but obviously didn’t get the chance. Do you want to know what she said about you and me?”
Raw emotion took over before Liv had a chance to disguise it. No, her heart said, but “Yes,” her mouth blurted in a jagged whisper.
He was silent for a moment, and the only sounds were the fall of the waves in the distance and the scrape as he moved his boot backward and forward on the decking. He cleared his throat. “She told me what she thought of us breaking up. Said what she thought of me.”
A grin tugged at Liv’s lips as she imagined Polly being blunt with Markus about what had happened between them. Polly had always believed in the truth, in calling a spade a spade. Life had been tougher for her than for most people, and she didn’t believe in wasting time on pleasantries and platitudes. “What did she say?”
Markus stared out to sea. “She said if I’d really loved you, I’d have made you change your mind.”
His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. “She said if I didn’t follow you, didn’t beg you to come back when you left, if I wouldn’t move heaven and earth for you, then maybe it wasn’t real love.”
Liv gasped. “Oh, Markus.” Her words left her lips in a whisper. “Why would she have said that? Why would she think you could change things?”
He didn’t answer; his gaze fixed on the table in front of them.
“What did you say to her?”
Why didn’t you fight for me?
Maybe if he gave her the answer to that question, she could truly move on.
“I said she was wrong. I said I loved you as deeply as I could, but it wasn’t enough.” His gaze flicked up to her. “Now I know that’s not true.”
Her chest hollowed. “What’s not true?”
He clenched a fist on the tabletop. “What I thought I had with you was an illusion, and now I’ve seen the real thing I can’t believe I was so blind.”
She shook her head, praying he wouldn’t say any of this, but desperate to hear it anyway.
His tone remained low and sensual and it purred through her body. “Let me explain it another way.” He nodded out to sea. “Do you know the legend of the rocks?”
Relieved to be pulled away from the intimacy of the conversation, Liv managed a shaking smile. “Yes, you said that Aphrodite was born from the foam around the rock.”
“But I didn’t tell you the rest.”
He paused then, and his hot stare burned a trail over her skin, heating her blood. As if he held some magnetic pull for her—she had to look at him. “So, tell me.”
His eyes held her. No light sparked from them, just deep, dark mystery and passion dredged from their depths. “Legend says that if you swim three times around it naked at the full moon, you’ll have everlasting love and everlasting life.”
Despite the serious way he watched her, Liv bit her lip and raised an eyebrow to try to suggest a calm detachment, but in truth it was as if her insides had liquefied. “Polly would’ve loved a story like that.”
“On full moon nights like this,” he said, innuendo dancing around them, “if you make the swim, you’re guaranteed Aphrodite’s protection.”
She couldn’t help imagining Markus’s hard, wet body pulling muscular strokes through the moonlit water while an image of her danced in his head. “But it’s so big, that rock,” Liv said, trying to slow her heart. “You’d be exhausted.”
“No.” He leaned his forearms on the table. “You’ve made the classic mistake. And this is what I’ve learned since you’ve been here.”
She still didn’t understand. The intensity of his gaze sent a shiver skating across her skin, and although her mind warned against hearing more, she had to ask him. “What do you mean?”
Markus turned and stared straight ahead. “What makes you think the largest rock is Aphrodite’s?”
She tilted her head and tried to get him to look at her. “I don’t know.” She laughed, intrigued that she’d jumped to conclusions. “I guess I thought if it’s a landmark, and if the goddess of love was born from it, then it made sense it was the biggest one.”
“All the tourists think so too.” Finally, he turned his face to her, but there was no amused expression or teasing smile. His face was serious intent laced with unmistakable desire. “I see them down there, posing in front of the huge rock, when in fact many locals believe the real Aphrodite’s rock is a tiny one, almost hidden in the middle of the bay.”
Liv swallowed. She knew what was coming, but she asked the question anyway. “Why are you telling me all this, Markus?”
“I want you to understand how I feel about you now, Liv.” The light, deep in his eyes, burned brighter as he spoke. “I thought what we had back then was real. I thought I loved you in the right ways, the ways that really counted. But how could it have been real if I was
n’t listening to what you needed? I wanted children with you but didn’t see that I had to change before that could happen.
“When you left, I believed you didn’t have the capacity for love and commitment because you weren’t listening to what I needed. If I’d known what was closest to your heart all along—the desire to show love and commitment in a safe and stable environment—things could’ve been different.”
The look in his eyes ignited her skin, and the ensuing heat was pushing into her core as he continued. “We’ve come such a long way, Liv. Things can be different this time.”
She couldn’t speak, was too busy trying to ignore the effect his honesty was having deep within her. Did he really mean this, or was it just more of the same to get her to stay?
“Since you’ve been here, I’ve seen your capacity for love every day. When I watch you being a mother to Phoebe and Zoë, it does something to me that I’ve never experienced before.”
“So, you trust me now?” she asked, her heart lurching. “You think I have what it takes to be here for the girls forever?”
“If I’d truly understood why you walked out before, if I’d understood how selfless you were being in the past, I would never have had those doubts.”
Each muscle in Liv’s body released the tension she’d been carrying since she’d arrived here. “I’m so glad, Markus,” she said, her voice quavering as she looked at him. “It’s important to me that you believe I’ll be a good mother and that we can put our old feelings away and concentrate on forming a whole new relationship.”
His spine straightened. “I didn’t say anything about putting old feelings away.” His voice was as low and dangerous as it had been the day he’d brushed his lips across hers and she’d succumbed . . .
She bit her lip, not wanting to break the spell of this vision, but needing to put a stop to any expectations. “Old feelings have to be put away, Markus. You don’t have to pretend anymore. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve already told you that I don’t have faith that anything could be different between you and me in the future, and I’m not prepared to ever risk the girls losing another parent.”
“You’d sacrifice your happiness for the belief that you and I couldn’t make a relationship work?”
“I’ve done it before,” she said, trying desperately to keep a distance. “And the result was that you and I didn’t bring a child into the world who might have lost a parent the way I did.”
“You don’t love me?”
Four stark words flew across the table and wrapped tight around her as Markus reached a hand out and placed it inches from her own fingers. The air pulsed and burned with his anticipation of an answer.
“You can look me in the eye and say that kiss we shared in my office wasn’t real? That when I felt you melting in my arms it wasn’t because you wanted me?” His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “That since you’ve been here you haven’t imagined us making love, being together again in every way?”
His questions hummed inside her head, and in a panic, Liv willed herself to respond so he wouldn’t have any doubts about what she could give him in their future. For the very first time since she’d arrived here, she was beginning to wonder if his feelings for her were real after all. And it scared the life out of her.
She let her gaze meet his and held firm. Her heartbeat spiked as she rehearsed in her head the words that had to be said, and then she willed her voice to be strong. “Of course, I love you, Markus. I’ve always loved you. But love’s just not enough.”
“Love is enough.”
His pupils dilated and his body tensed, as if he was about to move toward her, but she carried on so that this time he’d understand her completely. This was the point of no return, the moment they both had to live through before their past could be put behind them forever.
“We’ve been in love before, and it wasn’t enough to overcome the doubts we had about each other. And now we have another two people in the mix. Two little people who don’t deserve for us to try and fail. The fundamental thing that will always overshadow that love, always override it, can never be undone. I left you when things got tough in our relationship, and you’d have every right to wonder when I would do that again. And to be honest, I’d wonder if I’d do that again. We need to acknowledge that and accept it, but we also need to turn it into something that’s going to make our lives, and the lives of the girls, all the richer.”
She stood, wanting to put some distance between her words and the deep desire in his eyes. She moved away from the table and across to the edge of the decking. The heat in his gaze melted the skin on her back.
“You’re not ready,” he said quietly from the table. “I understand that.”
“It’s not that I’m not ready, Markus,” she said, turning back to him. “It’s that I’ve made a conscious decision that a relationship with you can’t be a part of my being here. My being married to you for the girls’ security won’t be a trial or an experiment. It will be me making a commitment forever, so I can be a mother to the girls forever. And I can’t have old desires jeopardizing that.” Oh, god, how she wanted to turn and run from the doubt in her heart and the pull of his body. Why did this have to be so hard? So impossible?
He was quiet.
“Do you understand what I mean?”
“Of course, I do.” He sat back a little. “You’re making the girls your priority, as you should, but in time I know you’ll acknowledge the feelings you still have for me.”
Liv closed her eyes. “What makes you believe in us so much, Markus? Why do you have such faith that I’ll come back to you? That I’ll put all my pledges to the girls aside and say I want to try again?”
When she opened her eyes, the burn of his stare sizzled on her cheeks. “You really want to know?” Sensual confidence melded with his words as he stood and took a step toward her.
“Yes,” she said, feeling the sweet threat of him moving closer. “I don’t understand why you feel this way when I’ve given you no encouragement.”
He said nothing as he took another step closer, so he was only a touch away. Slowly, he lifted his hand and grazed it the length of her arm.
The shiver reached the deepest organs in her body, and it didn’t escape Markus’s notice. “There,” he said, pointing to the soft hairs on her arm that had risen under his touch. “That’s how I know you’re not telling the truth. Those tiny bumps up your arm tell me it’s all still there; the way you feel about me is all still real.”
He moved closer and she tensed her body, determined that once she got through tonight, proved to him that her reactions didn’t matter, that he didn’t need to do this to make her stay here, then this would never happen again. “That’s not enough of a reason,” she said, her voice fracturing.
“Then maybe you need another.” He stepped infinitesimally closer so that the heat from his body surrounded her and the scent that had the capacity to calm was now sending her nerve endings into overdrive. He leaned his face closer, until the warmth of his breath played across her cheek, and she gasped.
He moved his face away, but he trailed a finger down the cheek his breath had caressed. “Your skin was pale a moment ago,” he said softly. “Now it’s pink, and I can imagine how that color’s traveling down your neck, across your hidden skin . . .”
Liv pulled in a breath but couldn’t make herself meet his gaze. “You’re not playing fair, Markus. You’re not thinking things through.”
“Still not enough proof?” he asked. “I know I said I’d wait until you came to me, but if you really want evidence then I’ll have to show you.”
His heated whisper was warm against her neck seconds before he bent his head and pressed his lips to hers, and despite the agreement she had with herself, despite knowing this could put everything in jeopardy, she couldn’t stop herself melting into his kiss.
Drugged by the release of her body, her limbs turned liquid as Markus trailed his hands up her bare arms, leaving goose bumps in t
heir wake, and then pulled her to him. “I know how hard it’s been for you. I know the last thing you wanted was to see me again . . . but I’ve never stopped loving you, Liv. And now that I know what really happened to us back then, I know that love is enough to get us through.”
He drew her around until she faced his warm, broad chest, and then he lifted her chin with a finger. “I know you still feel the same about me because I can taste it in your kiss.”
He kissed her again, and this time the kiss was an affirmation, a salve for the confusion racing around Liv’s head. A groan, more primal than sensual, left Markus’s throat, and he leaned into her until their bodies joined.
He trailed a line of kisses from the corner of her mouth down to the hollow of her throat, until a fire began there and rushed to her core, causing a rope of breath to leave her lips.
But just as the fire inside her was taking hold, he stopped and looked her straight in the eyes. “That kiss is why I know we’ll be together, Liv.”
13
She could’ve pushed him away then, held his face softly in her hands, eased him from her, and said this was far enough, that letting things progress from here would be a monumental mistake.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she twined her fingers through his glossy black waves and held his face, before guiding his lips across her skin. Letting every cell of her body that had been aching for him since she’d arrived here have its release. The moist warmth of his lips on her hungry body mirrored the burning racing through her veins, and she leaned into him desire building as she melted.
“Liv, Liv.” He whispered her name between kisses as he traced a finger along the top of her dress then teased across her shoulders, pushing the straps down as they got in his way.
His gaze burned into hers, before she dragged him to her once more and kissed him hungrily. She pulled his T-shirt from his pants and ran her fingers across the warm skin at his waist. Memories of making love to him rocketed through her and the muscles low in her abdomen pulled tight. His smell, his warmth and the firmness of his kiss were all just as she’d remembered and ached for so many times.
A Family for Good : A sweet, small town, second chance romance (Tall Dark and Driven Book 6) Page 16