Page 51 of Greek's Temporary Cinderella

I took the ‘now’ that was offered to me knowing that it could not last. And now that ‘now’ is gone.

Regret mingled with guilt—a familiar toxic mix. But now it was not for the past of six years ago. It was for the past of only the day before yesterday. But there was nothing she could do about it. Only endure it. Endure it as she had before—six years ago and every year since then. And now once more.

This time it was more unbearable. More agonising.

To break her heart a second time...

The taxi pulled up outside the run-down apartment block and Leandros got out, his face set. Why had he come here? He should have stuck to writing Eliana out of his life—again. But after one sleepless night in Athens he had flown up to Thessaloniki.

Wanting answers.

She owes me that.

The words of the totally inadequate note she had left incised in his brain.

Why? Why did she have to come back? After what we had in Paris...

Someone was coming out of the block, and he used that opportunity to get into the shabby lobby. The elevator had a notice on it saying it was awaiting repairs—the same notice as last time—so he vaulted up the stairs, chipped and stained.

He gained Eliana’s floor. Rapped on her door.

Demanding entrance.

Eliana paused frowningly in the act of closing her suitcase. The landlord’s agent? Come to inspect the premises before she left?

She went to open the door, not wanting a confrontation, but steeling herself for one all the same.

It came—but not with the landlord’s agent.

She gave a gasp.

Leandros strode in, turned. But not before he had seen the suitcase on her bed, the larger one already closed and standing by the door. He took in the stripped bed, the absence of any of her belongings. His eyes swept back to hers. Skewered them.

‘Moving out?’ he said.

His voice was calm, but it made a hollow inside her for all that.

He filled the room—filled so much more. She hung on to the door-jamb, just to give her strength. A strength that was ebbing away like ice on a hot stove, just as swiftly. Her mouth had dried, but she had to answer him.

‘Yes,’ she said.

His skewering gaze pinned her. The planes of his face were stark. Only once had she seem him thus—when she had slid his ring from his finger and walked out of his life.

‘I...I have to go,’ she said.

He frowned suddenly. ‘You’ve been evicted?’

She shook her head. ‘No... I’m just...just moving somewhere else.’

Weakness was flooding through her—and something quite different that had nothing to do with the dismay that was paralysing her. A longing so intense she felt faint with it. But it was a longing that had no place in her life.

‘Where?’ he demanded.

‘Just...somewhere else.’

She knew there was evasion in her voice. He’d heard it, she could see. See it in the sudden icing of his gaze. The narrowing of his eyes. The starkness of his cheekbones.

‘So tell me where.’

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