Now she glared at him, and he could tell she was biting back whatever acerbic rejoinder had fired in her brain.
“May I call Elizabeth?”
The stone in his gut twisted anew. “Here.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and handed it to her. “Do you want a drink?”
She shook her head, and as he moved towards the kitchen, she called, “You’re not going to stay and listen to my end of the conversation?”
He didn’t respond, but something like regret danced along the edges of his mind. It was stupid – he’d done the right thing. The night before, he’d been so close to speaking about his family, about his life, and he’d wanted to. He’d wanted to open up to Eleanor in the same way he’d been compelled to reveal all his secrets to her once before.
But it was beyond foolish to expect he could do so and not suffer the consequences.
So now he could speak freely, and it would be just like it used to be. But better. Because there’d be more intimacy, more honesty, and a lot less trust.
*
“Nell? I thought you were getting back this afternoon?”
Eleanor tossed a glance over her shoulder. Apollo was mixing what looked to be a martini in the kitchen. He wasn’t paying any attention to her but, as a point of pride, she slipped out of the lounge area, moving to the terrace and sitting on one of the sun loungers near the pool.
“I got another assignment,” she said. “I’m going to be away a bit longer. How are you?”
“Another assignment? That’s great! Where are you?”
“Um, in Europe,” she said. “I’ll be home in a week or so.” She frowned. “But it’s hard to reach me here, so if there’s an emergency…” she stopped talking. If there was an emergency, what? “You’ll have to email me, and I’ll try to check it every few days. Okay?”
“Where in the world are you that you can’t be reached on your phone?”
“My phone… died,” she said lamely. “I’ll deal with it when I get back to the UK. For now, stick to email. How’s Josh?”
It was the one subject guaranteed to distract Elizabeth’s proudly maternal heart. “A little tornado,” she laughed. “He’s just in the tub. Want to say hi?”
“Of course I do,” Eleanor lay back on the lounger, closing her eyes and imagining that she was in their small flat. She could perfectly picture Joshua. He loved bath time, and always had. He was a water baby, always splashing and laughing.
“Okay, he’s listening,” Elizabeth said, the phone obviously on speaker mode.
“Hey, Joshy,” Eleanor grinned. “Are you having a bath?”
“Nell! I miss you!”
Her heart squeezed painfully. “I miss you too, buddy.” She swallowed hard and fast. “Are there bubbles in your bath?”
“Pink bubbles.”
Eleanor laughed, and her heart gave a little lurch of homesickness. Elizabeth loved to put food dye in with the bubbles – it kept Josh happy for longer and gave her a few extra minutes of reprieve.
“And do you have Mr Duck?”
“Quack Quack! And Baaa.”
“Oh, Mr Sheep is with you as well? I hope they’re being nice little friends.”
Silence. Then, “Sheeps and ducks are friends. And cows too.”
Eleanor and Elizabeth laughed. “I’d better go, before he soaks the phone.”
“Yeah, okay.” Eleanor gripped the mobile tighter.
“Nell? Is everything okay?”
“Oh, absolutely,” she smiled brightly. “I’m fine. I just… I was distracted. I love you, Ellie. Give Josh a squish from me.”
“Consider him squished,” she said. “Come home soon. We miss you like crazy.”
“Right back at you.”
Eleanor sighed as she disconnected the phone. She replaced it on the table beside her and stared at the pool, tears inexplicably dancing on her eyelids. It was absurd to be homesick. She travelled for work often enough for this not to be a new experience.
But everything was new, that was the problem. Seeing Apollo again, sleeping with him, realizing he’d never trust her, never forgive her, when she would have trusted him with her life.
She stood warily, lifting his phone and holding it in her hands. He was still in the kitchen and, despite her demurral, he’d mixed her a drink as well.
She ignored it, and him, simply placing his phone down on the bench before retreating from the kitchen. She slipped inside her bedroom and shut the door. There was no lock, but she figured a closed door spoke volumes.
Her mind was completely focused on Apollo – there was no sense pretending otherwise – but she took up a book and made herself read the words, even though very few found purchase in her brain.
Not quite an hour later, a firm knock came on her door. She ignored it.
A moment later: “Eleanor?”
She thought about ignoring him, but it was churlish and she refused to let any more of her pride go. So she stood, placed the book on her bed and moved to the door.
He’d changed into jeans and a t-shirt – and looked utterly breathtaking. She tried to ignore the way her body responded to his proximity.
“Did you need something?”
His expression was rueful. “Yeah.”
“What?”
“What do you think?”
Colour stained her cheeks pink. “You’ve got to be kidding! Last I checked, getting someone to sign a confidentiality agreement was hardly a prelude to foreplay.”
His eyes sparked with hers and the air around them seemed to thicken. “Damn it, Eleanor, I want you. I want this. But I have to look out for the future as well. I can’t just ignore what happened before, nor pretend there aren’t other people’s lives at stake here. Surely you can see that an NDA was a good precaution…”
She crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at him. “I can see that you don’t, and will never, trust me.”
A muscle throbbed at the base of his jaw. “Do you blame me?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. But it doesn’t make me like you. It doesn’t make me want to ignore how hurtful that was, and go back to normal. Or whatever we were last night.” She dropped her eyes to the floor, mortified to feel the sting of tears on her lashes. “I just want to go home.”
CHAPTER TEN
“GOOD MORNING.” HIS EYES ran over her face. She looked terrible. Exhausted, actually, and pale. His gut twisted.
“Hello.”
So she was still pissed, then. He gestured towards a tea pot in the centre of the table; she ignored it. Her eyes didn’t meet his. “I’m going for a walk.” The words were said so stiffly she could have made a board out of them.
“Great. I’ll come with you.” It was a snap decision, but as he stood, he knew it was the right one. They were at an impasse, and he had to find a way through it. That was all.
“Apollo,” she said his name with a downward twist of his lips and something inside of him snapped. He rounded the table with urgency and caught her face in his hands and then he kissed her, holding her close to him, tormenting them both by keeping the kiss gentle, soft.
She lifted her hands to his chest and perhaps she’d intended to push him away, but her fingers curled in the fabric of his shirt and then she made a soft moaning noise. He deepened the kiss, and when she didn’t pull away, he dropped his hands to her waist, holding her tight to his body, as though he’d never let her go.
But then, she was ripping away from him, pulling her head back and glaring at him with a mixture of outrage and surprise. Her lips were swollen, her eyes huge, her cheeks pink.
“Don’t do that.”
“I can’t kiss you?”
“Don’t use this,” she gestured to their bodies, “to make me forget.”
“I don’t want you to forget,” he said, keeping her locked against him. “I want you to understand. This is hard for me. I feel like every second we’re together is a betrayal to my father, my sister. I swore I’d never speak to you again and I can’t stop thin
king about you. I want you to know that this isn’t perfect for me but that I’m here anyway.” And he kissed her again, needing her to feel his sincerity.
“I told you…”
“I deal in absolutes,” he said, and now he stepped away from her. “That’s who I am. I like black and white, facts. The one time I forgot that was with you and I’ve had a million opportunities to regret that since. I can’t do it again, Eleanor. I trusted you more than I’ve ever trusted another person. I told you things I’ve never discussed, even with my closest friend. How do you think it felt to see the stories spread out on the front page of a damned tabloid?”
She sucked in a breath and nodded slowly, but damn it, he was hurting her still. There was nothing for it – he needed to get through to her.
“You’ve signed it now; it’s over. Can’t we just ignore it?”
“More pretense?”
He stiffened, her words lashing him for a reason he couldn’t fathom. “There’s nothing pretend about this,” he contradicted.
But she was pulling away from him emotionally. He’d done it enough times to recognize the way she shifted her expression, locking a bland mask in place.
“Fine,” she said, with a small shrug of her slender shoulders. “Let’s go.”
It was what he’d wanted and yet he felt no satisfaction. She was closed off to him and he wanted, more than anything, to peel the layers of her reserve away.
She’d asked about the island at dinner two nights ago, and he’d clammed up, because he hadn’t wanted to risk telling her more about himself than he already had. Well, the non-disclosure agreement took care of that.
“Come with me,” he said, weaving his fingers through hers, locking their eyes together, glad when she didn’t try to look away. “I want to show you something.”
*
His ‘something’ was only a short distance from the house, and they walked in silence, for which Eleanor was grateful. She was in turmoil – made all the worse by the fact she’d forced herself to admit, in the early hours of the morning, that regardless of his arrogance and the damned confidentiality agreement, there was nowhere else she would choose to be.
Her problem was that he spoke of what they were doing in terms of time. He said ‘a week’ as though that wasn’t slamming into her chest cavity and ripping her to shreds. He spoke of ‘after’ like it was a deadline he accepted, and she knew it would be worse than the fires of hades. Because she’d been through ‘after’ before. She’d seen what it was like to have been loved by Apollo and then let go, and she needed to protect herself better this time around.
“This was always my favourite place,” he said, with the kind of boyish grin that would undo all her good intentions not to get hurt. She stifled any kind of reaction and simply nodded instead.
“You’re better to take your shoes off here. It’s easier to navigate.”
“Easier to navigate what?”
He grinned, and nodded his head forward. There were steps carved into the rock face, she saw now, and he was right, they were almost like a ladder. He kicked off his own shoes and then stepped down. Holding her hand, he went first, leading the way, pausing every minute or so to check on her, until eventually there were no steps left. They stood on a level of rock, low enough to the ocean to see its glistening surface, and the water was so blue that Eleanor gasped.
“What is this place?”
“Just a bay,” he said, but with wonderment, showing that he was as enchanted by this scene as Eleanor. “Ready?”
“What for?”
“To jump.”
She pulled a face. “Haha, very funny.”
“I’m not kidding. It’s not so far down.”
She peered over the ledge. “Sure. Show me how it’s done,” she entreated with a roll of her eyes.
And the next moment, he did just that, diving seamlessly off the edge of the rock, straight down into the water.
“Apollo!” She called after him, her heart racing for an entirely different reason now. In that instant, she glimpsed true fear – worry – agonizing, so that it sheered her in two, before she remembered that this was Apollo Heranedes, and he was utterly indestructible.
He surfaced seconds after hitting the water, his smile broad. “Come on.” He gestured with his hand, but she shook her head.
“You’re not afraid, are you?”
Was she? She was a confident swimmer, and the water wasn’t that far down. No further than a high diving board.
“Move out of the way then,” she called, nudging herself closer to the edge of the rock. She looked over her shoulder at their discarded shoes, then down at her dress. It was a beautiful dress, definitely designer, and definitely expensive, and she didn’t much fancy ruining it with an ocean dip. But more than that, she wanted to tease Apollo, to punish him for hurting her. So she lifted the dress off in one fluid motion and walked back towards the steps, casting the dress up to land softly with their footwear.
When she returned, his eyes were glued to her, and even at this distance, she could appreciate the glimmer in his eyes. It sent a frisson of awareness dancing down her spine.
“I’m coming in!” She called, and before she could second-guess herself, she did just that, leaping off the rock and balling her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them so that she ‘bombed’ into the water, making a large splash which hit him squarely in the face.
She sunk into the water and then arched out into a straight swimming position, diving deep into the water before changing trajectory and shifting towards the sunlit surface.
She broke through the water a couple of feet from Apollo, to find him watching her, his lashes clumped by the water, his smile contagious, so that she returned it from deep within her soul, even when her brain was telling her all the reasons she should be mad with him.
“And you thought I was chicken?” She demanded, treading water with ease.
He shrugged his broad, tanned shoulders, displacing rivulets of water with the small gesture. “Apparently not.” She stroked through the water, moving away from him, towards the rock face. On two sides they were surrounded by rock, on the third by crisp white sand, and on the fourth, by more water – the inlet gave way to ocean and the colour changed from sparkling, vibrant blue to a green that rivalled his eyes.
“This place is kind of magical,” she called across the water, as she reached one of the rock faces and ran her hands over its ancient indentations.
He was right behind her. She felt the ripples he made beneath the water’s surface and they were echoed by the shifts within her.
“You said you came here when you were little?”
“I’ve always come here,” he agreed.
“I can see why. It’s like paradise.”
He nodded. “It’s private.”
“Unlike the rest of the island?” She drawled with a lifted brow.
“There are staff here. Carlotta, Diego, Theo, and many more. Here – there is no one. Not a soul.”
Eleanor nodded. “You hate being in the public eye.”
“I’m not really.” His smile was an uneasy one and she understood that. They were drifting into choppier conversational waters – moving closer to the article and the attention it had dumped in his lap.
“You’re a well-known business figure. Plus, you date supermodels and insanely glamorous actresses so you’ve got that added human interest.”
He lifted his palm to the rocks, following the same crenulations as she had, until his much larger hand folded over hers. “Who have I dated like that lately?”
Eleanor frowned. “I … don’t know.”
“I thought I was a matter of human interest? You haven’t seen my photo in the papers? Read about me in gossip blogs?”
Eleanor withdrew her hand, flashing him a smile that felt stitched onto her face. “I make a point of not reading about you.” She pushed away from the wall, floating in the water, staring up at the sky.
He followed, swimming l
azily beside her. “You’re not interested in what I’ve been doing since that day?”
“Since the day you tore shreds off me and told me to get the hell out of your life?”
She spun in the water, pushing to standing so she could see him properly.
“Since the article came out,” he reminded her gently. But she didn’t need reminding. That day was one enormous monstrosity in her mind – a volcanic disaster she did everything she could to avoid remembering.
“I’ve wondered about you a lot,” she contradicted. “But no. I’m not interested in seeing pictures of you and whoever it is you’re sleeping with at the time.”
He pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her waist, holding her to his body. “What if I told you there’s been nothing to see?”
She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“What if I told you there’s been no one else?”
Eleanor’s blood hammered through her body, so hard and fast that she couldn’t hear anything above its raging torrent. “I…” the word was a croak. “I’d say you’re lying.”
“Why?”
“It’s been three years!”
“So?”
“So! You’re… Apollo Heranedes. I’d stake my life on you having been with many women since you knew me.”
“You’d be staking it on a losing cause.”
“Wait a second. Are you actually trying to tell me you’ve been celibate for three years?”
“My father died,” he said with a tight lift of his shoulders. “I’d always been active in the company but after Stavros passed away, there was a lot to take on. I’ve been busy.”
“So you’ve been too busy for a girlfriend?” She pushed, wondering at the sense of deflation that crept through here.
“Yes. I’ve been busy, agape. I single-handedly control a multi-billion pound corporation.”
She nodded. It made sense – sort of. Except that she didn’t think Apollo was the kind of man who could go a week without sex, let alone three years.
The Greek's Virgin Captive: She was wrong for him in every way but one... (Evermore Book 2) Page 11