The Secret Behind the Greek's Return

by Michelle Smart

  Her hands full with feeding Niki, she couldn’t wipe the tears away, and she turned her face to the window to stop them falling onto him and tried her hardest to get control of herself. She didn’t want her devastation to feed into Niki’s developing emotions. She must keep hold of herself until she was in the security of her home and the privacy of her bedroom. She could fall apart then, just as she’d done during those desolate months and months spent believing Nikos to be dead. Pack her emotions back inside her.

  ‘Are you okay?’ One of the cabin crew was hovering beside her, clearly concerned.

  She gave a jerky nod, and something she hoped was a smile, but couldn’t open her mouth for fear the anguish would pour out of it.

  Turning back to look out of the window, she saw through the film of tears clouding her vision something large and black approaching.

  She blinked vigorously then found herself freezing when her vision cleared enough to recognise the object. It was a car. One of Nikos’s cars.

  She blinked again to see him jump out of the front passenger seat before the car had even come to a stop.

  His long legs sped in a blur towards the plane.

  Moments later and he was in the cabin and striding over to her.

  His eyes locked straight onto hers. His Adam’s apple moved up and down his throat repeatedly before his lips finally parted.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ he said in a hoarse voice.

  She could only stare at him. Was this really Nikos? Was this wild-eyed, dishevelled man the same perfectly groomed and contained man she’d left only an hour ago?

  His frantic eyes held hers. There was a sheen in them...

  And then she remembered what an excellent actor he’d already proved himself to be and turned her face away. ‘Go home, Nikos. I’ve already said we can make an agreement for custody that’s fair to all of us. You’ve nothing to worry about. I won’t stop you seeing Niki.’

  ‘This is nothing to do with our son. Please, Marisa, I am begging you... Don’t go.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked tonelessly.

  ‘Because I can’t live without you.’

  Thinking she might be sick at the new lows he’d just plumbed, she snapped her face back to him. ‘You sick, lying bastard.’

  Nikos winced but accepted the deserved blow. ‘I am a bastard. I’ve treated you appallingly but I’m...’ He took a deep breath and pulled viciously at his hair. ‘Can you give Niki to one of the crew? There are things I need to say that I don’t want him to hear.’

  Her red eyes—Theos, his cruelty had caused that—narrowed but after a moment she rose from her seat and carried Niki to the door behind which the cabin crew stayed.

  Nikos sank into the seat opposite the one she’d been sitting in and bowed his head, scraping his nails over the back of his skull, trying to gather his thoughts before she returned.

  His thoughts were still splintered when she sat down again.

  He lifted his head.

  Her legs were crossed, spine straight, an imperious expression on her blotchy, tear-stained face. He recognised that expression. It was the one she’d used in the weeks after he’d broken her heart when he’d brazenly confessed to having had no intention of telling her to her face that he was alive. Why hadn’t he recognised her stance as a protective shield?

  ‘My grandfather told me earlier that I lack empathy,’ he said slowly, the answer to his own question coming to him.

  ‘He is not wrong.’

  ‘He is. To a degree.’

  She arched a brow in response.

  ‘I learned at a young age to block feelings.’

  ‘I’ve already guessed that. And you have my sympathy for the reasons behind it.’

  ‘I don’t want your sympathy.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  ‘I can stop my heart from feeling. Turn it to stone.’

  ‘To stop yourself from being hurt again. You don’t need to be Freud to understand that, Nikos.’

  He nodded his agreement. ‘It stops me being hurt but it also stops me being able to recognise other people’s pain.’ He grimaced and corrected himself. ‘Rather, it enables me to ignore their pain, even the pain of those who are close to me.’ He gave a grunt of gloomy laughter. ‘Not that I have let anyone get close to me, not even my grandfather—even from him I can separate my heart. I lived in England for seven years and barely thought of him. Can you believe that? That man saved me, put up with all my rebellions and I treated him like that?’

  ‘You’ve made up for it with him.’

  He felt a tiny release of the pressure on his chest at this slight softening.

  ‘And then I met you.’

  She stiffened.

  ‘Marisa... You...’ He pinched the bridge of his nose and swallowed. ‘I don’t know why it was different with you but there is something about you I reacted to more strongly than I have ever reacted to anyone before. I have never craved someone’s company before and it was never just about the sex, even if I did try to kid myself that that’s all it was. I told myself your words of love to me were just words. How could you love me, someone so inherently unlovable his parents let him go without a fight?

  ‘But you would put your cheek to my chest and I’d know you were listening to my heartbeat. You wanted to feel my heartbeat. No one had ever done that before. No one had ever got close enough to. And I would feel your heartbeat against my skin too and the warmth of your body and just want to stay there and never let you go.’

  The imperious expression on Marisa’s face had gone.

  ‘I think I fell in love with you a long time ago and didn’t know it. But even if I had, I would have fought it and the outcome would have been the same. I would have still faked my death without telling you and with no intention of resuming our affair because it was safer for me. You’d got too close... Every day of our affair lived in me the fear that you would see whatever was rotten in me that my parents had seen and push me aside without another thought.

  ‘When I found that photograph of you in the pile of photos of my lawyer’s dead body...’ He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. ‘That was the first time I’d felt real terror since I was taken from my parents and it was a thousand times worse. That was the thing that pushed me over the edge into faking my death. I needed to protect you. I insisted on daily reports about you. I could only sleep at night if I knew you were safe. When I learned what had happened to your father... Theos, my terror for you...’

  Her eyes glistened. Her chin was wobbling, throat moving.

  ‘Once it was all over, I never wanted to see you again. You’d made me feel things, agapi mou, and that terrified me. Feelings leave you vulnerable. It’s perverse logic, I know, but subconsciously I knew if I pushed you away first then you couldn’t leave me. You couldn’t hurt me.’

  A tear rolled down her cheek. He wanted so badly to press his thumb to her cheek and brush the tear away.

  ‘I tried to stay away from you. I even told myself the day I waited outside your estate that all I wanted was one last glimpse as a private goodbye. If it hadn’t been for Niki, you wouldn’t have seen me again but he was the excuse I needed to justify throwing myself back into your life and even then I fought it. I fell in love with our son and I could accept that love because he was an innocent child who could never hurt me, whereas you... Marisa, you have no idea of the power you have over me. You have no idea how much it tortured me to imagine you with Raul. I thought you’d moved on—how could you not? How could I be special enough for anyone to grieve?

  ‘But I never moved on from you. It was impossible.’

  The beats of Marisa’s heart were so strong the echoes thrashed in her dazed, barely comprehending head. The desperation with which she wanted to believe him...

  But the fear.

  She shrank back as he slid onto the floor to kneel befo
re her and shrank into herself when he took her hand. She tried to block her ears to his words, deny them their power.

  ‘There is only you,’ he said quietly. ‘And I can’t fight it any more or deny it to myself. I love you. You have turned my stone-cold heart into something that beats freely with love for you. It’s you I need to be with. You I need to spend my nights with. You I trust with my life, my soul and my heart. Please, give me one more chance, let me prove myself to be the man you deserve, I beg you, and not for our son’s sake but for mine because I can’t live without you. I’ve tried and every road leads back to you. Let me earn your love and your trust. I swear on our son’s life that I will never betray it again. I swear.’

  Marisa barely noticed her fingers had laced into his. The seams of her ripped, damaged heart were threading hesitantly back together and, finally, she dared to look at him. ‘When I agreed to marry you, it was for Niki’s sake.’

  He breathed deeply. ‘I know.’

  ‘Everything I’ve done since I learned I was pregnant has been for him.’

  His voice became a hoarse whisper. ‘I know.’

  ‘But you...’ She leaned forward, closer to him. ‘You brought me back to life. You made me remember that I’m not just a mother but a woman with needs of her own. And that woman loves you,’ she whispered. ‘She’s always loved you.’

  His throat moved. ‘I never deserved it. But I will. If you’ll let me.’

  Hands shaking, she cupped his cheeks and stared deeper into his eyes. The look she saw in them sewed the last piece of her heart back into place.

  ‘Yes.’ Unable to contain the feelings a moment longer, she brought her face to his and kissed him. ‘Oh, Nikos, yes.’

  He made a sound like a prayer and then his arms wrapped tightly around her and she was enveloped in his arms so tenderly and lovingly that her mended heart soared into song.

  Nikos stared into Marisa’s eyes, filled to the brim with emotions. And when she smiled and said, ‘Let’s get our son and go home,’ he knew he would spend the rest of his life worshipping her and thanking God every day for bringing her into his life and setting him free to love. To love her.

  EPILOGUE

  NIKOS STOOD BACK and admired his handiwork. He’d spent the weekend in his ‘man cave’, as his wife called it, sanding and repainting his childhood ottoman. It looked brand new. He liked to think his son would be thrilled with it but knowing Niki, he would think of it only as an excellent new space for when he played hide-and-seek with his sister. And that was okay. More than okay.

  Childhood was precious and his children would one day grow into adulthood with the happiest of memories to look back on, and this ottoman that had witnessed so much trauma would now be nestled in a home filled with love. It had been reborn, just as he had been.

  The man cave door opened and Marisa appeared. She slipped an arm around his waist and pressed herself close to him. ‘You’ve done an amazing job,’ she said softly. ‘Are you pleased with it?’

  He kissed the top of her head and pressed his cheek into her hair. ‘Yes. Thank you for not letting me set fire to it.’

  She squeezed her arms around him. No further words were needed.

  He remembered how she’d found him months after their wedding, about to place it on the fire-pit, thinking it needed to be done to set the past free in its entirety. How she’d wrapped her arms around him, much as she was holding him now, and quietly asked if he was sure he wanted to burn the only solid reminder of his mother’s love for him.

  ‘For all her sins and neglect, she did love you, Nikos,’ she’d said. ‘And if you ever still doubt that, look at this ottoman and remember that deep in her heart, whether she acknowledged it to herself or not, she couldn’t bear to lose all of you. She kept a part of you with her. Now it’s for you to keep a part of her with you.’

  It had taken a further four years for him to set to work on it. Four years of unconditional love from the woman he would give his life for. Four years of happiness that had flushed the pain of his childhood from him until all that was left was a rare kernel of melancholy.

  For a long time they stood in silence, doing nothing but stare at the object of his past brought into their present to be a part of their lives for ever.

  ‘Mama, Mama!’

  The voice of their son carried through the air and they left the man cave to find five-year-old Niki racing to them. His three-year-old sister, Rose, ran after him, cheeks puffing, arms pumping as she tried valiantly to keep pace with her adored big brother.

  Niki’s light brown eyes were alight as he breathlessly said, ‘Aunty Elsa and Uncle Santi are here.’

  Golden-haired Rose threw her arms around Nikos’s knees and stared up at him with the same bright-eyed excitement. ‘Baby Marco here too!’

  Holding their children’s hands, they headed off to welcome their house guests and fill their home with even more love and laughter.

  * * *

  Wrapped up in The Secret Behind the Greek’s Return?

  You’re sure to love the first instalment of the Billion-Dollar Mediterranean Brides duet The Forbidden Innocent’s Bodyguard

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  Available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from A Bride for the Lost King by Maisey Yates.

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  A Bride for the Lost King

  by Maisey Yates

  CHAPTER ONE

  “WHICH SWORD SHALL I take with me to meet your brother, Highness?” Agnes examined her wall of weapons critically.

  She was the sworn protector of Lazarus, King of the secret kingdom at the center of the Dark Wood, in the country of Liri. A fairy tale, she would have said, something out of a picture book, until she had been brought to see it with her own eyes.

  A country within a country, comprised of a village that looked as if it were part of another time, and a palace that was set deep within a mountain.

  Of course, there were modern conveniences, even if hidden. Access to internet via fiber-optic cables, hot water and toaster pastries—which were her favorite.

  The people in the wood were safe, kept so by the legends that surrounded it.

  And outside was Liri.

  Liri, ruled by King Alexius, Lazarus’s brother. The brother he’d been separated from when he’d wandered into the woods as a boy and been half savaged by wolves, saved by Agamemnon, the ruler of the woods at the time.

  In Lazarus he’d seen greatness. In him, he’d seen the salvation of his people, occupied and kept down by the Lirians, before they were driven to the brink of extinction.

  As far as all the world knew, their kingdom did not exist.

  And until a few weeks ago, the world had not known Lazarus existed.

  He had traveled freely, under an assumed name, and no one had ever suspected he was the long-lost prince thought long-ago dead.

  But Lazarus had been planning revenge against his family for years. In fact, he had been intent on stealing his brother’s fiancée. Literally stealing her. Right from the woods, until an interaction between the two of them had stayed his hand.

  He had promised the previous leader, Agamemnon, that he would avenge the people. For as she was sworn to Lazarus, so was he to the previous leader of the people. He had promised that he would return their people to th
eir rightful place on the throne. For it was not Lazarus and Alex’s family who held that right, but the people of the trees. They had been killed. They had been weakened and shunted off into the forest, but they had not diminished. No, there they had grown. She was not of them. Not by blood. But it didn’t matter. Not to them. It was the outcasts that they took. Those who were left to their own devices. Those who were in need.

  Like her.

  “You shall not be bringing a sword, Agnes.”

  When Lazarus made a pronouncement, in that deep voice like velvet dipped in gold, she never argued.

  She liked the way he said her name. Ah-nes. As if she were something exotic and not something neighboring an agate. Which was how she always thought of her name.

  But she did not like what he’d just said.

  “I cannot travel without a sword, Highness, for it is my sworn duty to protect you. A blood oath bonds us.” She tilted her chin upward, meeting his gaze.

  Lazarus was tall, over six-five, with the sculpted face of an avenging angel. At least in part. It was his scars—deep, lashing and cruel, covering half of that face—that gave him the manner of devil. Dark eyes, hard as obsidian, and a mouth that turned over into cruel with the slightest curve. He was not a man who looked as if he needed protection.

  But in her world, in their world, in the wood, when a person was saved from death, they swore fealty to their savior. As she had done to Lazarus when she was just sixteen, and in the eight years since.

  They were bonded by something deeper than blood. He had risked his life to save hers. Her blood, her very breath, belonged to him.

  Though she needed a sword if she were to be effective.

  “Bringing a sword into the palace is an act of war, Agnes,” he said, as if she did not know.

  “It is an act of caution. You do not know your brother well.”

  Agnes could not deny that she felt a slight bit of relief hearing him speak in a way that seemed to indicate he would not be waging war.