Page 37 of Greek's Temporary Cinderella

‘You can’t beat the French for breakfast in bed,’ he said, helping himself to yet another roll. ‘Though for a really substantial experience I’d always vote for a—what’s that expression?—a full English. Bacon and eggs, smoked kippers, devilled kidneys—the works!’ he said humorously.

He glanced at Eliana. She was more at ease now, he could tell, as if she was getting used to sitting here beside him. He wanted her to be at ease.

We’re starting afresh.

The words were in his head and he knew them to be true. Knew it with that same lightening of his spirit that had come as he had got out of bed, welcomed the new day, the new start.

What had gone before in their lives was still there—how could it not be? But last night had changed things. Though just how he still did not quite know for sure...

But he wasn’t going to work that out now.

For now, he was going to do just what he’d said—take the day as it came.

For now, that was all he wanted.

Eliana sat back on the padded seat on the deck of the river cruiser. They were heading down the Seine to Giverny, to see Monet’s famous gardens. The sun was warm on her, the breeze off the river as the cruiser gently made its way downstream pleasant on her face.

Outwardly, she and Leandros were spending the day much as they had the previous afternoon—sightseeing. And yet it felt fundamentally different. It was fundamentally different, she knew.

And it was not just because of what she had realised so undeniably the evening before, feeling Puccini’s heartrending music pierce her own blind heart, piercing so much repression and denial, declaring to her the truth about herself and about why she had agreed to come here with Leandros.

Yes, that had changed her completely—she knew it and accepted it.

But it isn’t just me who is changed.

Last night—as she had yielded willingly, wantonly, discovering in herself a passion and a sensuality to which she had given herself completely, knowing the truth about herself and accepting it, acknowledging it, instead of denying it and suppressing it—the revelation of her virginity had shocked Leandros to the core.

She bit her lip now, still troubled at how it had happened.

I didn’t think he’d find out—I didn’t realise just how...obvious...it would be!

Her marriage to Damian and the constrictions under which she had made it had no relevance to the truth she had faced up to as she’d sat in that loge at the opera and watched the two ill-fated lovers on the stage below, tormented and tormenting, destroying their own lives by the decisions they made. And yet, for all that, love had survived—even if the lovers themselves had not.

So it is with me.

She had given up on what she had once felt for Leandros six long years ago—buried it deep under the guilt she felt for what she had done. Yet it had survived despite what she’d done, despite the fateful decision she’d made all those years ago to abandon him, reject him.

Her eyes went to him now. He was standing a little way from her, but not far, leaning on the railing, looking out over the river at the passing scenery as Paris gave way to the countryside of Normandy. He looked relaxed, at ease, and she was glad—and grateful.

With feminine instinct and a little pang, she knew that his discovery that her marriage to Damian had been celibate had come as welcome news. That it had lessened, in some way, his sense of rejection by her when she had married Damian and not him.

Does he think it part of the retribution I deserved? To be denied a normal marriage with the husband I had chosen over him?

No—there had been no sense of that in him. And that knowledge, that certainty that came from somewhere she knew not where, warmed her.

Her expression softened as her gaze fixed on him, the breeze ruffling his sable hair, the sleeves of his jumper pushed up to show his strong, tanned forearms as he leant against the railing. And the way he was being with her now warmed her too.

He’d been different from the moment she’d woken. Woken from that dream—the sweetest dream in all the world. A dream that had, as she’d woken, suddenly been no dream. Leandros truly had held her close, protected her, all night long...

Emotion welled in her, but there was sadness too. Sadness for all that might have been in her life. It pierced her now, the knowledge that however last evening and last night had changed things between them, it could never make right all that had gone wrong.

But for now, in this moment, this day, during this time with him, given to her as a blessing that she had never thought could be hers, what she had was enough.

‘You can see why Monet loved his gardens so much,’ Leandros said. ‘Immortalising them in so many paintings.’

After the tour of Monet’s house and gardens, he had repaired with Eliana for a late lunch in a nearby restaurant with a vine-covered terrace, busy with other visitors. The day was still warm enough to sit out, though he was glad of his lightweight sweater. Eliana wore a short-sleeved top with a matching bolero-style cardigan around her shoulders, paired with a flared skirt—all part of the wardrobe he’d supplied her with the previous day.

His gaze lingered—and yet it was not the gaze of the previous day, veiled and assessing, holding at bay the part of his mind that was deploring the rashness of his decision to have anything to do with Eliana ever again, presenting her with an outward civility that masked the turbid, bitter emotions that warred with the driving desire for all that he sought only to sate and quench. To be free of for ever by indulging it. To taste and take the beauty that tormented him...

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