Page 13 of Forgotten Greek Proposal
‘Yes. My island was inhabited many millennia ago and all that’s known of the islanders is that they worshipped Persephone—there are ruins of a monument to her on the south of the island—which is where the island’s name comes from. It seemed fitting to name my yacht after her too.’
‘Wasn’t she Queen of the dead or something?’ Lucie asked dubiously, thinking the last person she’d name a yacht after was someone who represented death.
‘Queen of the underworld, but she was much more than that. Hades was the god of the underworld and stole Persephone from her mother to live as his wife there with him, breaking Demeter’s heart. Demeter was the goddess of harvest and fertility,’ he explained. ‘After much bad blood, Zeus decided Persephone would spend six months each year living with Hades and six months living with Demeter. The months with Hades were months of desolation where the land became barren and nothing grew because Demeter’s heart was so desolate, but the months Persephone returned to her mother were months where Demeter’s happiness shone on the earth and blessed the land with an abundance of fertility, the months we know of as spring and summer.’
Her stare still glued to the yacht she was about to embark, a shiver ran up Lucie’s spine. For a split moment certainty gripped her that this was all a trick and she was about to be stolen away just like Persephone had been.
And then she felt the comforting solidity of Thanasis’s hand clasped around hers and shook the feeling away. Her mother would never win any parenting award but even she wouldn’t send her daughter off to a remote island with a man to be stolen away. In any case, there would be other people on the island, household staff—she didn’t imagine Thanasis had ever lifted a domestic finger in his life—along with all the people setting up for the wedding. And until they reached it, there was the crew of his yacht, a handful waiting patiently in identical uniforms of navy polo shirts and black shorts on the front deck for them to climb on board.
Most of all though, was Thanasis himself, and the intuition that had been in her since she’d first come round after the accident that he’d become a major part of her life. That they meant something to each other.
* * *
Thanasis’s yacht, Lucie had to admit, was a lot classier than Georgios’s. Georgios’s yacht, a vessel she’d spent many of the long weeks of school summer holidays on, was a real party palace with everything geared around all ages having fun. Thanasis’s, by contrast, brought to mind an ultra-luxurious spa with everything designed to aid relaxation, and she spent the six-hour journey to Sephone doing just that, mostly because she wasn’t allowed to do anything else. In Lucie’s case, relaxing meant sleeping, but that had nothing to do with thePersephone’s ambiance but was because of her jailers.
When Thanasis had said he wanted to ensure all her medical needs were taken care of, she hadn’t thought he’d meant turning a cabin of thePersephoneinto a hospital room with a doctor and two nurses in attendance for good measure. The cabin had a private balcony the strict medics grudgingly allowed her to sit out on, but she wasn’t allowed to stray any further.
Being so restricted meant boredom kicked in quickly, and while she’d slept enough for England and Greece combined these last five days, she ended up sleeping because there was absolutely nothing else for her usually active brain to do. She had no phone, no books to read and, having never been one for sitting down to watch films and binge on boxsets, no interest in her cabin’s television. Waking to be told by a nurse that they were minutes away from the island had her scrambling out of bed with an agility that was close to feeling normal. She was certain her earlier stiffness had come from her muscles not being used for days.
Released from her cabin, she was escorted by her jailers to a saloon with the same calming opulence that permeated the rest of what she’d seen of the yacht.
Thanasis, standing with his back turned at the far end of the saloon with a clear view of the nearing island, was discussing something with a member of his crew. There was something strange about his posture, but it wasn’t until he sensed or heard her presence and turned his head and the animation on his face fell and his hands dropped to his sides that she realised what the strangeness was. He’d been gesticulating.
Gesticulations were nothing out of the ordinary for the Greeks—in Lucie’s considerable experience, being expressive was part of the national DNA—but they were definitely out of the ordinary for the rigidly composed Thanasis.
There was a barely perceptible narrowing of his eyes and rising of his broad shoulders before his features relaxed and he headed towards her.
The same shiver of fear that had caught Lucie before she boarded thePersephonesnaked freshly up her spine and stopped her feet moving forwards to him.
She didn’t know this man.
Her bruised brain and Thanasis’s ridiculously gorgeous face and wondrous scent had bamboozled her into believing that she knew him, but she didn’t. He’d been hiding himself from her, and because of that, she couldn’t read him. She didn’t doubt her intuition that they meant something to each other but what was thatsomethingif he wouldn’t let himself relax around her? How could she trust thatsomethingwas a good something? It was absolutely in her mother’s interest for the wedding to go ahead. It was absolutely in Thanasis’s interest too. In fact, the only person in whose interest it wasn’t was her. Or hadn’t been. Lucie had led a fully independent life since finishing secondary school but the great job she’d adored and the funky flat she’d shared with three of her best friends were all gone. That all had to be the truth or why else would she be in Greece in July? No, make that August now.
He was only feet away from her.
Her heart thumped harder as his magnetic effect danced into her senses.
She was being irrational. What reason could Thanasis or her mother have to lie to her? She’d agreed to a marriage of convenience with him to save both families, so why embellish that?
He stopped before her and, his wondrous scent bamboozling her all over again, she suddenly realised just how big he really was, much more than she’d imagined from her hospital bed. He didn’t just top her five foot nothing height buttoweredover it. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder and that included her untameable mass of hair.
‘Good rest?’ he asked, his stare as serious and intense as ever.
Matching his intensity, trying without any success to see into his head, she nodded. ‘I think that was the most comfortable prison I’ve ever slept in.’
His forehead creased. ‘Prison?’
‘While you were having fun in the sun, my jailers refused to let me leave the cabin.’
‘I asked them to watch you closely.’
‘Did you impress upon them the need to watch me excessively closely?’
‘Of course.’ He folded his arms across his chest, biceps and pecs flexing with the movement. ‘You have suffered a nasty head injury and I make no apologies for wanting your recovery to be as smooth as it can be. If it is any consolation, I was working, not having fun,’ he added.
Trying very hard to concentrate on their conversation and not the swirl of dark hair visible through the opened throat of his black shirt, trying without any success to stop herself imagining those muscular arms enveloping her, Lucie lifted her chin and smiled sweetly. ‘No consolation at all. I find my work immensely fun.’
‘Then you,matia mou, are an anomaly. Work for me is work.’
