Page 3 of Greek's Temporary Cinderella

She was talking to someone else—an older couple, whom he took to be the bride-to-be’s parents. He turned away, letting more guests approach the engaged couple, heading for the bar. He needed a drink—a stiff one. Then he’d get out of here.

As for Eliana—

He blanked his mind—blanked her name. Blanked her very existence. Just as he had for six long years. As he would go on doing. Because anything else was unthinkable.

She’s out of my life—and she’s staying out.

But as he knocked back his shot of whisky at the bar he could still see her, imprinted on his retinas.

As beautiful as ever...hauntingly beautiful...

He slammed the empty glass down on the bar. He needed another shot.

Eliana stepped inside her room at the small two-star hotel which was all she could afford with a sense of shuddering relief. She stripped off her evening gown—a leftover from the days before her marriage. Her hands were shaking, heart hammering painfully. Weak suddenly, she sank down on the bed.

Oh, dear God, she had seen him again! Seen Leandros!

She had not set eyes on him since that hideous day when she’d slid his ring from her finger, told him she was not going to marry him, and walked away from him.

Gone to the man she was going to marry instead.

Shock broke over her at what had happened this evening, delayed and all the more devastating for it. She felt her tremors increase, the hammering of her heart become more painful yet.

To see Leandros again and to know...to know...

That he hates me with as much hatred as he ever did! That I am as loathsome to him now as then!

He held her in contempt, and she deserved it—that was the hardest thing to bear. To bear as she had had to bear it for six long years. Since she had walked out on him, rejecting him for another man. A man she hadn’t loved—a man she had married only for his money.

Guilt bit at her for what she had done to Leandros—the man she had once loved, whose love for her she had destroyed with her faithlessness.

And she felt guilt of another kind too—survivor guilt. For the man she had married instead of Leandros was now dead—smashed to pieces in a fatal car crash eighteen months ago.

Well, she was getting her just deserts now. She’d married for money, but widowhood had taken that away from her, reduced her to the poverty she had married to avoid. A poverty she deserved, and to which she was now condemned, eking out what little she had. And even that small portion came with a claim on it she could not refuse...

As her thoughts went in that direction they gave her a crumb of comfort. If there was anything to salvage from the wreck she had made of her life, it was that.

As for seeing Leandros again, feeling his scorn, his contempt for her as stinging as it had been six years ago, she must just put it behind her. She did not live in Athens. She would not see him again. Tomorrow she would be heading back to Thessaloniki, the city she’d lived in since her marriage. Back to the life she now led—had to lead—leaving Athens far behind as she had done before, when she had ruined her own life.

And broken her own heart.

Leandros stood out on the terrace of his house in the wealthy Athens suburb of Psychiko, a whisky in his hand, his mood as dark as the night around him. He had left that benighted party as soon as he decently could, wanting only to put it behind him—to wipe the image of the one woman he wished to perdition from his mind.

But she would not go. She was still there, imprinted balefully on his retinas in all the beauty that had once so captivated him. And he saw her here, too—as if she were with him out on the terrace, gazing up at him with those wide-set eyes. And in them was all that he poured down into hers.

He’d kissed her here, on this very terrace, her lips like velvet beneath his, her heart beating like a wild bird as he held her in his arms.

She’d been like no other woman he’d ever found. Till then he’d enjoyed all the privileges of his family wealth and his own good looks, knowing that any female he smiled on would be only too keen to get his interest.

But Eliana was shy—hesitant. Even though her beauty was a loveliness that stopped me in my tracks.

For the first time in his life he’d fallen in love. Determined to win her—overcoming her shyness, the hesitancy born of the sheltered upbringing she’d had—he’d wanted to see in her beautiful blue-grey eyes fringed with smoky lashes all that he himself felt for her. And when he’d asked her to marry him he had seen just that. She had given a little cry and come into his arms, as if she had belonged there all her life—as if she would never leave him.

But leave me she did.

She had walked out on him—gone to another man. Married him instead.

And it was his father who had told him why—who had warned him from the start.

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