by Trish Morey
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ALEXIOS STARED UNSEEING out of his windows. What had he been thinking, to come up with this plan and to keep on with it, even after Stavros’s death? Why couldn’t he have let go, the scores settled? All bets and deathbed promises off.
Why hadn’t he walked away?
He looked up at the Acropolis, lit by a watery sun. The gods had decided Stavros’s fate. It should have been enough.
Why hadn’t he deferred to them?
Except then he never would have met Athena.
There was a double-edged sword. To find the perfect woman and then to lose her—and to know he had nobody to blame but himself. He wasn’t surprised she didn’t answer his emails or his calls.
But he couldn’t stop trying either.
Dark clouds that matched his mood hung broodily the sky. There would be more rain later. And then an empty evening to look forward to, like the empty evenings since she’d gone and taken their unborn child, and all the empty evenings in his empty life to come.
And it was no more than he deserved.
* * *
Athena was sitting alongside Loukas in his office, not only the paper they’d jointly prepared on the shipwreck, but a copy of the plans for Loukas’s wing now framed and added to the collection lining the walls. The plans were proceeding. That was something, but even that wasn’t enough to cheer her. Winter had taken hold in the last few days, and rain streaked the grimy windows, an old radiator battling to pump out enough heat to keep the office warm.
Her phone buzzed beside her on the desk. She swallowed when she saw who the caller was, closing her eyes against the first few words of his text, immediately switching it off and burying it in her jacket pocket. She should have blocked him. She would have to block him. And yet...
‘Who was that?’
‘Nobody.’
‘Oh, I thought it might be Alexios.’
She glanced up at him, started to hear his name. ‘Same thing, really.’
‘What did he want?’
‘To see me, same as every other time he messages.’
‘And will you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘And still he keeps messaging. Why do you think that is?’
‘Because he can’t take no for an answer. Because I am having his child and he can’t bear that for once he’s not in control.’ Because he wants me to thank him for the hefty deposits that were being made into her bank accounts. She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Perhaps you are right. And perhaps there is a another reason—have you considered that?’
She swallowed. ‘What reason?’ she said, her voice cracking.
‘That perhaps he truly regrets what happened. Because he really does love you.’
She snorted. ‘He’s got a funny way of showing it.’
‘Yes, it must seem that way. What he did was wrong. I am not excusing him. But from what I understand, what he planned was against the daughter of Stavros. She was anonymous, nothing more than a target to redirect his energies. It wasn’t personal, at least, not in the beginning.’
‘It sure felt personal.’
Her colleague reached for a jug of water, topping up both their glasses before removing his reading glasses and leaning back in his chair.
‘Have you ever asked him what your father is supposed to have done?’
‘He told me. But what difference would that make?’
‘Alexios saw his father suffer. Nobody wants to see their parents suffer.’
‘That doesn’t justify what he did to me!’
‘No, but it might help you understand why he was so driven. Rightly or wrongly, Alexios is not a man to turn the other cheek. He saw his father betrayed and mortally wounded, and he hit back in the only way he knew.
‘But he is also a man who knows when he has made a mistake.’ Loukas paused. ‘He took you to Argos and told you why he did what he’d done. Why would he have done that?’
‘Because he was proud of what he had done. I don’t know.’
The old man shrugged. ‘Or maybe because he wanted to lay all the cards on the table. To not go forward until the air was cleared.’ He paused. ‘Did anything happen that night, before he took you to Argos? Did something change in your relationship?’
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It was the gala dinner.’ But then she remembered the limousine, and asking Alexios to make love to her...
She looked up. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I don’t know. I’m an old fool, but maybe he was getting to know you. Maybe he was growing to love you?’
‘I don’t want a man who can do such awful things and then say he loves me.’
The old man nodded. ‘I understand. But consider this, which is the better man, the one who never puts a foot wrong, who never steps outside the bounds of what is right in society and law, or the one who straddles that line more widely, but who is strong enough to step back, and admit his mistakes, when he knows what he has done was wrong?’
‘But he deceived me. He tricked me. Why are you defending him?’
The old man rested one gnarled hand over hers.
‘It is neither my place to defend or damn him. My concern is for you. Have you asked yourself why you are so miserable lately?’
‘Because Alexios betrayed my trust! Because he hurt me!’
He nodded. ‘Yes. But is it also because you still love him?’
She wanted to say no. She wanted to scream it out loud so that the entire world could hear. But she couldn’t. ‘Oh, God, Loukas,’ she said, her grief bubbling up from a place deep down in her chest. ‘But I don’t want to love him!’
The older man sighed. ‘I turned my back on love and I lived to regret it. I don’t want you to make the same mistake.’
‘That was under completely different circumstances. You can’t equate the two.’
‘True,’ he acknowledged. ‘I’m just saying, be sure with whatever you decide, because the last thing you want to do is regret whichever decision you make for the rest of your life.’
He watched her, letting her think about that for a moment, before he added, ‘I know why you left him. I understand how devastated and hurt you must have been. But now that you’ve both had time to think about things, why don’t you meet with him? Just once. Listen to what he has to say and then decide. Where is the harm in that?’
Every cell in her body could see the harm in that. She didn’t want to meet with him. She didn’t want to talk with him. She couldn’t afford to.
Because she didn’t trust herself around Alexios. He had a way of finding the weak spot in her defences. He had a way of finding his way through the barriers she’d put up to protect herself. He’d proven that once before. And the walls she’d hastily re-erected after his betrayal were untested, cobbled together from the ruins, the mortar between them still drying.
She wasn’t sure they would hold. She wasn’t sure they could protect her.
Loukas was only right about one thing. She was miserable.
But now he’d planted a seed in her mind that was rapidly growing into a weed to rival Jack’s bean stalk. What if she had made the wrong decision and she regretted it and was miserable for ever? What if Alexios truly had wanted to marry her—not as one more part of his twisted plan for revenge against her father, but because he’d grown to love her?
She curled her hands over the curve of her baby bump. Her baby deserved more from her than that. Her baby deserved her certainty. If she’d done the right thing, she should be happy about it, not living this half-life she seemed to be living now.
But the worst of it was, there was only one way to be sure.
She sucked in a breath and pulled her phone out, called his number.
‘Athena,’ he said after the first ring, sounding strangled and breath
less and desperate. She squeezed her eyes shut, her heartstrings pulling tight at the sound of her name on his voice. How much she had missed his voice.
‘The café in Thera,’ she said, willing herself to stay strong. ‘The one where we met. Meet me there...’
He didn’t argue as she reeled off the details as dispassionately as she could. She didn’t expect him to.
But as she terminated the call, neither did she expect to find herself looking forward to seeing him again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HE SWIRLED THE cup in his hand, stirring up the thick dregs that echoed the thick dregs of his own life, bitter and undrinkable. Except his life was no cup he could push away when he’d had enough. He had to wake up to twenty-four hours of them every day.
Except now she’d agreed to see him. That was good, wasn’t it? She could have said no like the thousand times she’d said no to him before, but she hadn’t. This time she’d agreed to meet him.
Why? What did it mean? He wanted to think it was good, but what if he was wrong? He couldn’t bear it if he was wrong.
But then, maybe she just wanted to tell him to stop calling to his face. So he’d get the message once and for all.
The cold wind whipped up over the caldera, squeezing its way through the gaps in the blinds to find the gaps through his unbuttoned coat and scarf to inflict pain on any piece of exposed skin.
He didn’t shift when the icy fingers found the gap at his throat or at his ankles. Pain was good. It meant he was alive.
Strange though, when the rest of him felt as if he were dead.
* * *
She could tell it was him inside. He sat in the café looking out over the caldera as a rain cloud scudded across the sea, his tiny cup of coffee dwarfed in his hands. His hair was longer, wilder, his jaw unshaven, and his coat not buttoned up, as if he couldn’t be bothered getting properly dressed.
Oh, Alexios.
And even though she should be gratified he looked like rubbish, even knowing what he’d done—all the planning, the intent, the lengths he’d gone to—even in the wake of the anger she’d felt at his betrayal—the soul-destroying hurt—a part of her heart went out to him.
Why should that be so? Why wasn’t it possible to stop loving someone on demand? Why did they still claim a piece of you?
It wasn’t fair.
Her baby fluttered inside her, as if sensing its father was close. She put a protective hand over her belly, rounder now under the loose sweater and coat she wore against the winter chill. ‘It’s okay,’ she murmured as the wind tugged at her ponytail. ‘I’ll look after you.’ And she pushed open the door.
‘May I?’ she said, holding the back of the seat alongside him.
He turned suddenly, his dark eyes jagging with hers, bottomless calderas filled with a world of sorrow.
‘Of course,’ he said, and she looked away and sat down before they could read too much in hers.
‘How are you?’ he said, his eyes scanning her face before dropping to her belly.
‘I’m fine.’ She licked her lips as she pushed wind-blown tendrils of hair back behind her ears. She knew she had bags under her eyes and she knew it was all down to him, but damned if she was going to admit it. Not when it was so hard being this close and yet so distant at the same time. The scent of him made her want to lean into him. The shape of him made her want to reach out her arms and touch him. ‘The baby’s fine.’
He gave a sigh, and said, ‘That’s good,’ while his long-fingered hands toyed with the tiny cup, and she was instantly reminded of how they felt on her. Warm. Knowing. So easily able to cause ripple upon ripple of pleasure.
She felt it now, and shivered against the sensation, pressing her knees together under the table.
‘Would you like coffee?’ he asked, and he gestured for the waiter when she asked for herbal tea.
A fresh Greek coffee for him arrived along with a fresh glass of water and her tea. She allowed herself a moment to appreciate the sight of him nursing the tiny cup, raising it to his lips, and sipping of the hot, rich liquid. She was almost jealous.
‘You like your coffee strong.’
‘It helps me think.’
‘Thinking is good. But you also mustn’t forget to smile.’
He turned his face to hers and blinked, and she could tell he was remembering too, and playing back that first ever conversation. ‘I had something to smile at once, something so special I should have cherished it, but instead I destroyed it. There is little to smile at now.’ His eyes scanned her face. ‘Why did you ask to meet?’
She shrugged. ‘I wanted to better understand. Last time was so fast. So hard. I didn’t want to remember that as the last time we ever talked.’
He looked as if she’d delivered him a blow. ‘I don’t know if anyone could ever understand. I have no words that could make anybody understand. I was so hungry for revenge, I wanted to break Stavros—financially, mentally, any way I could. I wanted him to feel the despair my own father did—the despair that hounded him until his death. When Stavros died, I turned that hunger towards you. I wanted to break you.’
He looked away, sucked in air.
‘I thought it would be easy. I imagined it would be quick, over in a matter of days. But I didn’t know you then, and as our time together expanded, and the longer I was with you, the more I wanted to be with you and the less inclined I was to set my plan in process. I told myself it was so you would trust me more, and it would be all the harder for you when it happened. I actually believed it...’
He watched her face. Must have seen her swallow down on that unsavoury piece of information. ‘I know,’ he added. ‘When the longer I spent with you, the more I wanted it not to end. When it finally did, I had to remind myself why I was doing it. I’d worked towards it for ten years. It was all there was in my life.’
‘Are you saying I did mean something to you then?’
‘Theos, yes, you did and you do. So much, no matter how much I denied it. When I learned you were pregnant, it was just one more excuse to get you close. To have you near again. Because suddenly there was nothing in my life any more. My life was empty. Until you came back.’
She sucked in air. ‘That night, at the gala. I asked you to make love to me. Why didn’t you?’
He shrugged. ‘Because you needed to know, before I broke your heart again, what kind of man I am. Because one day you would have found out. And you would have hated me when you did, whenever that happened, and it would have been harder then. It would have been worse.’
She sat back in her seat, sucked in a breath, trying to digest all that he had told her.
‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘For now it is me who is broken, knowing what I did to you, knowing what I have lost. And it is no more than I deserve.’ He swilled the rest of his coffee. ‘Thank you for wanting to meet. It’s good to see you again. You look...good.’
She put her hand to his arm as he stood. ‘Alexios, wait. Don’t you understand why I’m here?’
‘To tell me you want me to stop calling you?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Because there was something I had to tell you. I wanted to hear your words first, but my words need to be aired too.’
He sighed and sat down again, looking resigned.
‘Because I wanted to hate you, Alexios. And I think I did—for a while. I hated you so much I wished the worst thing I possibly could for you.’ She hesitated. ‘At one time, I admit, I wished you dead.’ He flinched at that, but it was the truth, and they were words he had to hear.
‘But still you funded Loukas’s wing, even after I’d gone.’
‘How could I not, after what I’d done to you?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t expect it, that’s all.’
‘I promised you.’ He paused. ‘And I promised you, you would get your money
back.’
She nodded. ‘Thank you.’
He shook his head. ‘Never, ever, thank me. I don’t deserve it. I will never deserve it.’
She sniffed. ‘But don’t you see, it doesn’t matter.’ She placed one hand over her belly. ‘What matters is us. I can never condone what you did, and I can’t believe you ever thought it would make things right, but you’re the father of this baby, and I believe you changed your mind. Because you love me.’
His features were anguished. Sincere. ‘I do. Oh, God, Athena, I do love you.’
‘And that’s the crux of my problem, Alexios, because while I wanted to hate you, I still love you too.’
She dragged in a breath that smelt of the sea and salt and an island that would be here for ever, whatever disaster befell it. This island had started again, after a cataclysmic eruption that had failed to wipe it from the world, and now it was one of the most beautiful and sought-after islands in the world to visit. Could she and Alexios come back from disaster too? Could they recover and become something bigger too? Wasn’t it worth a try?
‘Could we start again, do you think?’ she said. ‘Could we try again, with no secrets this time, no secret agendas? Just love between us, and this child. Do you think we could make it work?’
His beautiful face crumpled. Athena had never seen a man cry with such sadness, but she witnessed it now, witnessed his tears as he nodded, his lips too twisted for now to speak.
‘I love you, Athena,’ he said, when his mouth had unclenched enough to speak, pulling her into his embrace. ‘I love you for ever.’
She sighed as she felt his arms around her. It was the only place she ever wanted to be, and it felt good. It felt right. ‘I love you, so much,’ she said.
They kissed as the wind buffeted the blinds, whipping through the gaps, cold and hard, but it was refreshing too, in its iciness, tugging at the memories of what had gone before, ripping them away, to leave only what mattered most.
Love.