by Pippa Roscoe
She peered around the pillar that had been her protection until now, looking up at the large, sprawling family, all talking away and creating more noise than she could have expected for such a solemn event. Seated at the front, beside Eleni and her husband, was Flora with Amalia, happily babbling away with the older woman.
This was why she was marrying Dimitri. Not because of flowery words and promises she would neither have trusted, nor believed. Happy-ever-afters were for other people. Anna was making a life for her daughter, providing her and even her own mother with a security that she was simply not capable of by herself. This was what forced her to put one foot in front of the other as she began the long walk down the aisle to the man she would spend the rest of her life with.
* * *
As Dimitri saw Anna walk towards him, something stirred within his chest. She looked...alone. She had no one to walk with her, no one amongst the guests. Had he done that to her? Guilt poked and prodded painfully somewhere deep within him. She had no one to protect her...protect her from him. He had told himself time and time again why he was doing this, why she had forced him to do this.
But could he blame her? Her actions and decisions had been in defence of their child. Protecting her from a man who had been imprisoned, and was then said to have fathered a whole brood of illegitimates across the globe. Would he have not chosen to cut a person like that from his daughter’s life? Within his own realisation, he could only hope that one day she too might understand what had brought them to the altar.
Now, seeing her make slow and steady progress towards him, he made a silent vow. The moment his ring was on her finger, she would be his to protect, just as he protected their daughter. The weight of that silent promise was heavier than anything he’d ever experienced. And for a moment he thought he’d felt it settle about his shoulders like a physical thing. Until he realised that it was Danyl, his best man, standing beside Antonio, his other best man, having thrown an arm about his shoulder.
‘She is a thing of beauty, my friend.’
Yes, Dimitri acknowledged, she really was. The low neckline of the dress, exposing the deep tan of her skin, teased and hinted at a sensual promise that she had yet to offer him. The swirls of lace detail covering her chest and arms drew his gaze across her upper body, and the soft silk skirts kicked out each time she took a step closer to him. Desire pooled low in his stomach. The dress hugged every curve of her body, clinging tightly to her chest and arms, but the low neckline made his hand itch to slip beneath the fabric and feel the softness of her breast. She was the last woman he had touched, and she would now be the last woman he would ever touch. And he would touch her. He would have her. But only when she came to him.
The light caught on the tiny diamond earrings in her ears, making them sparkle in the setting sun. That was how he had imagined her during those dark days in prison, the light that pierced the darkness around him, the one memory he had clutched to him. If he had imagined her wearing a white dress, about to take his ring, he had purposefully removed the thought from his mind the day he’d thought she’d used him for money.
As she drew level with him he caught a momentary look of uncertainty, of doubt, but it was replaced with determination in a heartbeat. He knew the strength of will required to force away demons, and that called to him.
* * *
As the priest began, Anna turned to Dimitri, hoping that her eyes expressed the thanks she felt at the service being conducted in English. But as the words wrapped around her heart, she felt full of a kind of sadness rather than joy. Dimitri’s voice rang with such sincerity as he promised to love her, to honour her above all else, and she wondered whether that could ever be true.
Lost amongst the words and her feelings, she almost missed the moment when the priest pronounced them man and wife. Dimitri turned then, giving her one last breath before his head lowered to hers and his lips claimed her for eternity.
The kiss was everything, overpowering and all-consuming. His lips unlocked hers, and the moment she felt his tongue against hers she was lost. Her arms came up around his neck of their own volition, clinging to him as if he were her only lifeline. Desire drenched her from head to foot as he brought her body against the hard muscles of his chest, pressing her breasts against his steel torso. She felt his thighs against hers, through the thin material of the silk skirts, and the evidence of his own desire pressed between her hips, shocking her, making her lose her breath to his mouth, the kiss, to him.
She was oblivious to everything but Dimitri...until the first spattering of something hit her back and caught in her hair. Then another wave of the tiny little bullets pelted her arms and back again. That was when she heard the cries from the guests and looked up to find rice caught in Dimitri’s thick, dark curls.
‘Did no one warn you?’ he asked, his eyes serious, belying his playful tone.
For a second she thought ‘no’. No one had warned her about such a kiss. The kind that battered away the walls around her heart, the kind that destroyed her promises not to share his bed.
And then she realised he meant the rice. She’d helped Flora, Eleni, Nella and many more female family members fill hundreds of little bags full of rice rather than confetti. She hadn’t expected them all to be used, but the rice was working its way under the lace, catching in her hair as much as Dimitri’s. His dark, midnight-blue suit had little white dustings from where the rice had been slung at him.
In a second she was caught up by the wave of emotions coming from the guests—the joy and happiness was palpable on the air. Through the noise she heard Amalia squealing with delight and turned to see her scooping awkward fistfuls of rice and raining them down on Flora’s skirts. The laugh she couldn’t prevent fell from lips still bruised from Dimitri’s kiss, and she realised that she was still encased in his arms.
‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh since that night three years ago, agapi mou,’ he said for her ears only. The laughter subsided and she looked at him with sombre eyes, until another wave of rice hit them yet again, and Dimitri raised his arms about her as if to protect her from the onslaught. That one small action touched Anna more than she could ever have imagined, soothing some of the ache that lay in her heart.
* * *
The chaos from the dance area of the incredible hotel holding the reception was something to behold. Dimitri looked on as Antonio stood with his phone pressed to his ear, presumably whispering sweet nothings down the phone to his fiancée, who had been unable to make the trip. Danyl looked bored as he entertained yet another hopeful candidate for the position of his wife. The dark-haired woman beside him looked more interested in Dimitri’s cousin than Danyl, he thought ruefully.
The place beside Dimitri at the head of the table was empty, his father having made his excuses to leave almost the moment dessert had been served. Anna was just bidding his stepmother a surprisingly fond farewell, Eleni’s fingers brushing over the pearl bracelet Anna was wearing, a smile in his stepmother’s eyes Dimitri had never seen before. Eleni caught his gaze just before she left, nodding at him in a way that poked at something in his chest.
All the guests seemed to be having a wonderful time. Flora was at her table with the now sleeping Amalia resting against her shoulder. It reminded him that Anna had no one for her here and prompted his question to her.
‘Would you have wanted your mother to be here? Or, your...?’ He trailed off, realising how crass it was to bring up her father.
Anna turned to him as surprise was replaced by the heavy sigh that escaped her lips. ‘My mother would have probably made a scene, and... I made my peace with my father’s absence three years ago.’
He frowned at the timing, but her words provoked a different thought.
‘Is that why you didn’t try harder to tell me about Amalia?’ He knew his angry words were wrong the moment they left his lips. Hurt slashed her cheeks pink.
‘I thought we put all this behind us when I agreed to marry you. If not—’
‘No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,’ he admitted. ‘Please, we were talking about your father...’
‘The night we met, I had just come back from trying to find him.’
The woman he had met that night in Ireland had been... He’d thought she was resolved, absolutely sure of herself. Had he got it wrong? Had that night been one in which he’d seen what he wanted to see, rather than the truth? Had the woman he’d sought to exorcise his own demons been already shattered by those of her own? A woman defined by his needs rather than hers? He was almost afraid to find out.
‘About three weeks before we met, I’d found some letters that were kept in the attic I was hoping to renovate for the bed and breakfast. All had been returned to the sender. Recognising my mother’s handwriting, and the first name on the envelope, I realised the letters must have been written by my mother to my father.’
‘Did you read any of them?’
Anna frowned, taking a sip of water from the glass in front of her before answering. ‘I didn’t feel that I could. These were my mother’s letters. If they were full of hate and anger, I didn’t want to read them. If they were full of love and need, I couldn’t read them. But I had my father’s full name and address. I used them to find that my father owned a small restaurant in London. It had recently won an award, which was why it was so easy to find.’
Her eyes had lost some of their sparkle, and she gazed over his shoulder as if seeing some imaginary scene.
‘Without telling Ma, I booked myself a flight to London, using some of the savings my grandmother had left me—those Ma hadn’t been able to drink away,’ she explained sadly.
‘It didn’t go well?’ Dimitri asked, pulling her back to the present.
‘I went there believing that if he saw me there would be some kind of innate biological recognition. In my head, he would start to cry, embrace me, take me back to his home, perhaps even find a way to help me to help Ma.’
The pain in her voice as she expressed such simple hopes from her father cut through him like a knife. Anna looked out, seemingly unseeing of the guests, of the night sky that had descended to cover the deep sea beyond.
‘He was busy. The restaurant was packed full of people, and the staff, clearly members of his family—his new family—were run off their feet. He glanced at me briefly, not really taking me in. Just trying to find somewhere out of the way to put a single diner. The ease he had with the people around me, his distraction... I didn’t feel able to speak to him. I just... I sat where he directed me to sit and watched them together. Laughing, joking, shouting even, as someone got an order wrong from the kitchen. But I was on the outside looking in. I didn’t even order any food. They’d forgotten about me in the busyness of the restaurant and I just...slipped away.
‘By the time I got back to Ireland, my mother had convinced herself that I wasn’t coming back and had drunk her way through most of the bar. That was why I was wearing her shirt the night you came to the bed and breakfast. I wasn’t supposed to be working, but she was in such a state that I couldn’t have let her anywhere near the guests. I’d just welcomed the last couple when you arrived on the doorstep. I nearly didn’t let you in,’ she added ruefully.
He looked at her, unable to voice the fear that he’d taken advantage of her that night, but he didn’t have to. Yet again, she read his thoughts as if he’d said them out loud.
‘Don’t look at me like that. I knew what I was doing that night. It was reckless, and foolish, but I wanted it. You. That night, I wanted you.’
That night. Not now. But in that moment he could tell that they were both imagining what their lives might have been like had she not let him in. But Anna seemed to skip over the thought quickly.
‘I feel so stupid for thinking that my father might have been able to recognise me on sight. I suppose that it’s a childish fantasy,’ she said, and because she’d turned her head away he nearly missed the question that fell from her lips. ‘Is that how you felt when you first saw Amalia?’
Dimitri could tell that she was both hopeful and fearful of his answer. And he wasn’t sure how to reply. Saying yes would acquit him in her eyes but would damn her father. And he couldn’t bring himself to do such a thing on their wedding day.
But it was too late. She’d seen it in his eyes, he could tell.
‘I’m pleased you had that. It’s an incredible moment when you see your child, hold her for the first time, recognise that burst of love that tells you that you would do anything, anything to protect her. That your world has irrevocably changed and there is this little person in the centre of it all. That the purpose of your life is now them.’
‘Do you understand, then,’ he pressed on, ‘why I did what I did? Why we needed to marry?’
‘I understand it,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘But I will never forgive you for doing it the way you did.’
The cool night air bit into her arms as the boat took them back from the hotel on the mainland to Dimitri’s island home. Little lights marked the jetty for the boat and the wind loosened tendrils of hair about Anna’s face, causing her to hold them back so she could see her footing.
Flora bid them goodnight, but she was still holding Amalia in her arms as she made her way back to her small home at the foot of the hills beneath the sprawling mansion that was to be their home.
‘Where is Flora taking Amalia?’ Anna asked Dimitri, a sense of dread pooling in her stomach.
‘Back to hers for the night. All the bedding and things that Amalia will need was moved this morning.’
Fury cut through her. ‘Without consulting me? You arranged for my daughter—’
‘Our daughter,’ he cut sternly into her sentence.
‘To spend the night somewhere else, without my knowledge?’
He stopped in his tracks and turned back to her, standing steady on the wooden jetty, being gently rocked as the boat made its way back to the mainland shore. ‘What outrages you more? That you weren’t consulted on the whereabouts of your daughter, or that you no longer have a barrier to stop you from acting on your desires?’
His taunt was as cruel as it was accurate.
‘Don’t change the subject. You failed to consult me on where our child would spend the night. You can’t do that.’
‘And how,’ he said, running a hand over a face that suddenly seemed exhausted, ‘do you think I felt, about all the decisions you kept from me?’
‘But this is new for you!’ she cried into the night. ‘I’ve been doing everything on my own, every day, because you went to prison, because your assistant led me to believe that there were hordes of women out there like me.’
She gulped in a breath of cool air and that was all the time he needed to undo her completely.
‘There is no one out there like you.’
‘Because I’m the mother of your child?’ she demanded, both terrified of and eager for his answer.
‘No, not just that.’
For just a moment, he loomed over her in the darkness, blocking out the light of the moon until all she could see was him. All she could see was the desire in his eyes. And then he turned and left her standing on the jetty, watching his white shirt disappear over the crest of the hill that led to the house.
Damn him.
* * *
By the time she had summoned the courage to return to the house, she had realised the truth of his words. The courage she had needed was not for fear of him...but of herself. Of just how much she wanted to give in to her desire for Dimitri, to relish the pleasure she knew he could give her.
Dimitri was at the drinks cabinet, his tie hanging loose at his neck, the glass of amber liquid nearly to his lips when he turned to look at her.
‘Did you want one?’ he bit out reluctantly.
‘I don’t.’
‘Because of your mother?’ he asked, curiosity ringing in his tone.
‘Haven’t we had enough of my personal life for one day? I’m going to bed. Alone,’ she tossed at him over her shoulder.
‘Not interested in consummating the marriage, then?’
‘You’ve blackmailed me into wearing your ring. Now you want to blackmail me into your bed?’ she demanded, turning back to him, still dancing around the edges of want, need and self-denial.
‘I told you before, I wouldn’t have to.’
‘You’re arrogant.’
‘And you’re stubborn,’ he threw back at her.
His eyes locked with hers and she felt it, that thread of electricity that joined them, that cried to the world of their attraction.
‘There you are, standing as if full of anger and righteousness. But it’s neither of those things, Anna, is it?’ he demanded. At his very words she felt the cords that tied her to those feelings begin to fray, slowly breaking, thread by thread. ‘Inside, you’re quivering with desire.’ He took a step towards her, only increasing the tremors she felt break across her skin. ‘Your pulse is racing, not with injustice, but need.’ She tried to slow her breathing, but the flutter she felt at her pulse points was undeniable. ‘Your cheeks are flushed, not with fury, but arousal. There,’ he said, his fingers hovering above the lace that barely covered her breasts, ‘your own body is straining towards me, desperate for my touch.’
She batted away his hand, but her heart wasn’t in it.
He looked at her with assessing eyes, as if not quite understanding why she would fight this so much, why she would deny them both the pleasure they so desperately wanted.