Page 52 of Greek's Temporary Cinderella

Her heart was thudding, her hand still splayed across the door-jamb, clinging to it for support.

‘It doesn’t matter where. Or why.’

He took a step towards her and she threw up a hand, as if to ward him off.

‘Leandros, it doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter where I’m going, or why. It isn’t...it isn’t anything to do with you.’

He stared at her. ‘You say that to me,’ he said slowly, ‘after Paris?’

Her face contorted. ‘Leandros—Paris was...was... Well, what it was...’ How could she tell him what it had been to her? ‘But it was never going to last—and you didn’t want it to either.’ She shut her eyes a moment, then sprang them open again. ‘Oh, Leandros...’ Her voice had changed...she heard anguish in it. ‘I know why you took me there. I know the memory of what I did to you six years ago has haunted you—poisoned you. At first I thought that I owed you Paris, and I was prepared to go through with it. But then... Well—’ she drew a ragged breath ‘—things changed. Maybe...’ she half lifted a hand towards him, then let it drop away ‘...even healed,’ she said. ‘Or...or something like that. Whatever it was, it was...good.’ Her voice dropped. ‘But it could never have lasted. It just couldn’t.’

‘Did you not want it to?’

His voice was hollow, as if something had been emptied out of it.

He stepped towards her. ‘Eliana, what happened in Paris—it was good! You know it was good. We made it good. I said to you that we could change, and we did—both of us!’ His voice was vehement—urgent. ‘Why lose it? Why walk away from it?’

How could she answer? It was impossible.

She took another ragged breath. ‘I wish you hadn’t come here...chasing after me. There’s no point.’

‘So where are you going? Why? And why do you not answer what I’ve asked you?’

She could see a nerve working in his cheek, the starkness in his face as she stayed silent.

Then suddenly, he gave an oath, his expression changing completely. ‘You’re going to someone else—’

There was no emotion in his voice, yet it chilled her to the core. Chilled her—and handed her what she desperately, despairingly, needed.

‘Yes,’ she said.

For one unendurable moment his eyes held hers, and in them was what she had seen only once before, on that unbearable day she’d handed him back his ring. Then, without a word, he walked past her.

Out of the apartment.

Out of her life—a second time.

She closed her eyes, hearing his hard, heavy footsteps on the stairs heading down. As hard and heavy as the hammer-blows of her heart. Slaying her.

Leandros was in his office, but he was not working. Work was impossible, though it was piling up. Over and over in his head he could hear a replay of his last exchange with Eliana.

‘You’re going to someone else.’

And her one-word answer.

‘Yes.’

One word—one single word—and it damned her. Damned her to hell. But he didn’t want her in hell. Hell was where he was—and seeing her again would be another circle of hell for him, another agony.

How could she be going to someone else? How could she be leaving him? After what they’d had in Paris?

After what we claimed for ourselves.

‘Healing’, she’d called it, and the word blazed in his head now. Yes, that was exactly, totally what it had been. He felt it now, the truth of it filling him.

I found her again—the woman I once loved.

But now he had lost her again.

---