Page 64 of Greek's Temporary Cinderella

‘Marry me, Eliana—marry me this time around. With all the past cleared out of the way! Paris proved it to us both!’

His voice dropped, filled now with an intensity that reached into her very being.

‘It proved to me that I have never, never stopped loving you. I tried to—tried to kill it, poison it, defile it. But in Paris it broke free of all that. Even if I still hadn’t realised it, every night with you proved it—every day! And if—oh, dear God—if, my most beloved Eliana, in that heart of yours which has made you make such sacrifices, you can find a grain, a seed, a crumb of what you once felt for me, then... Oh, then I will spend all my life—all my life!—growing it in you.’

Her vision was clouding. There was an upwelling within her that was unstoppable.

‘You don’t have to do that, Leandros,’ she said. Her voice was almost a whisper, broken in its intensity. ‘Because it’s there—it’s always been there. Always! I thought it had gone—told myself that the only reason I’d agreed to go to Paris with you was because I owed it to you after all I’d done to you. But it was a lie! Oh, it was a lie. And when...when we came together, in each other’s arms, then I knew what the truth was. I was with you, in your arms, for one reason only—because I still loved you. I love you and I always will, Leandros... Always and always and always...’

Her vision had gone completely. Tears were running down her cheeks. Her heart was turning over and over within her.

She clutched at his hand and he lifted it—lifted it to his lips, crushing it with his kiss. She gazed at him with her obliterated vision, tears still streaming. Her heart overflowing even more than her eyes.

A discreet cough sounded beside her. She looked dimly in its direction. Their waiter was silently offering her a stack of paper serviettes. She gave a laugh—a broken, emotional sound—and grabbed them, using one, then two and three, because her tears would not stop. They would not stop for there were six long years of tears to shed...

She heard Leandros speak—but not to her. He was addressing the waiter.

‘I think,’ he was saying, ‘that she’s giving me a positive answer to my marriage proposal...’

The waiter was nodding. ‘Oh, quite definitely. My wife cried all day when I asked her to marry me! It’s their way of showing happiness, you know,’ he said kindly.

He disappeared, and Eliana went on crying. She could not stop. Leandros was crushing her hand, and she was clinging to it. Clinging to it as if were life itself. Which to her it was.

Then the waiter was there again, a bottle in his hand.

‘Compliments of the house, the chef says. He’s the owner, so what he says goes.’

He put the bottle on the table. It was sparkling wine, a popular Greek domestic variety, and he was removing the cage, then easing the cork. He poured them two glasses—wine glasses, meant for the wine in the carafe. But that was fine by her, because everything was fine by her—everything...

‘Congratulations!’ said the waiter, and disappeared again.

Leandros was picking up his glass, tapping it against hers. So she picked hers up as well.

‘To us,’ he said. ‘And to you, Eliana, the heart of my heart, whom I let go and have grieved for ever since. And now I claim you again—with all my heart.’

He clinked his glass against hers again and shakily, tearfully, she raised hers to her lips.

‘To us,’ she echoed.

For finally, after six anguished years, there was an ‘us’.

It was finally true.

And now it always would be.

Always.

Hand in hand, they strolled along the wide Thessaloniki seafront. They were not the only ones to do so, but to each other only they existed. A great peace filled Leandros. A peace of the heart, and of the mind, and of the soul itself.

Regret filled him, yes, and he knew it always would—for what he’d done six years ago, to himself and Eliana. Condemning them to the wasted years between. And yet for all that, far more overwhelming was the thankfulness that poured through him.

He paused, turning Eliana towards him now.

‘There’s a line somewhere in Shakespeare’s Othello, about how Othello “threw a pearl away”—and that is what I did. I threw you away...let you leave me without a fight...because I did not trust you—did not trust the love I knew you felt for me.’

He drew a breath, his eyes holding hers. They would never let her go again. ‘But I will trust it for ever now—and you, my heart, my love, can trust for ever, and for all eternity, my love for you.’

In the lamplight, he could see tears welling in her eyes, and he bent to kiss them away. Then he kissed her mouth as well. She slipped her hand from his, but only to wind it around his waist, strong, possessive.

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