Page 15 of Forgotten Greek Proposal
‘Only if I manage not to kill you.’
There had been countless times after when a look alone from Lucie would have sufficed to kill him stone dead.
There was no look like that or any kind of glare on her face now. Colour had returned to the cheeks made pale by her injury and there was a lightness in her expression, as if this whole thing was one big adventure for her and he was the man joining her on it. It was much like the shine that had been in her eyes when she’d bounced into the hotel bar, before his coldness had wiped it clean away. Much like the shine he’d gleaned when their eyes had met across the room all those years ago, that long, unbidden moment that had captured them tightly enough that they’d both remembered it years later.
* * *
Lucie gazed around at the most stunning room she’d ever been in. It was like she’d stepped into an airy white cave carved into paradise. Light poured in from multiple angles, bathing the enormous bed in golden light. She let her stare linger on it only a second before her heart turned over and she hastily looked anywhere else.
She wasn’t ready to think of sharing that bed with Thanasis, especially not when she could feel him watching her reaction to their room with that intensity she felt like a physical touch.
How were you supposed to behave around someone you were marrying in a week’s time and who you’d already shared months of a life building a relationship with, but who you had no memories of? The few displays of affection Thanasis had shown while she’d been cocooned in hospital had felt natural and thrillingly wonderful, but she’d been doped up to her eyeballs on drugs. It all felt very different and real now she was back out in the real world with nothing in her system to pollute her feelings or reactions, and she wished there were an instruction manual available to help her navigate it all so it didn’t feel quite so terrifying.
‘Seriously, who was the interior designer for this? Because I want to kiss them,’ she said brightly, going into jocular mode to cover the disquiet that felt like no disquiet she’d ever experienced before at being alone with Thanasis in a bedroom for the first time, even though she knew this wasn’t the first time because he’d been at her hospital bedside all that time, but that had been completely different because it was a hospital room, and that was not forgetting—even though shehadforgotten—that she’d been sharing a bedroom with him for weeks and weeks, and now even her thoughts were going haywire and were on the cusp of making her head explode. ‘This is amazing.’
‘Helena Tatopoulos.’
‘Can you give me her number so I can ask for a job?’ she said, only half in jest.
He gave the flash of a grin. ‘After the wedding.’
‘Invite her to it so I can badger her there.’
He adopted a stern expression. ‘No business talk at the wedding.’
She made a pffting sound. ‘But business is the wholepointof the wedding.’
Laughing lowly, he reached out to smooth down one of her curls sticking up at the ceiling, and her heart went haywire to match her thoughts even though he wasn’t really touching her, well, not any part of her that was living, because hair wasn’t actually alive, was it?
‘I am the last person to forget that.’ He released the curl and stepped back. ‘I will leave you to settle in. Does dinner in an hour work for you?’
‘The sooner the better—I’m starving.’ Or had been. Nerves had kicked in big time. Or what felt like nerves. Right behind Thanasis was the sprawling bed they’d be sharing and because her eyes were currently glued to his gorgeous face with a special focus on his full lips…oh, but the way they moved when he spoke sent her pulses as haywire as her heart and thoughts…the bed was in her peripheral vision, and with the way the falling sunlight shone through the multiple windows casting both Thanasis and the bed in its golden glow…
Soon, very soon, those full lips would press against hers in that very bed…
Oh, God, her efforts not to think of the bed she’d very soon be sharing with him had become a dismal failure because now it was all she could think of, and suddenly she realised that all the things she’d wondered about in her hospital bed would be wonders no more but her reality, thatthiswas her reality, her and Thanasis, committed lovers, and as all these thoughts collided a glow began to build inside her, flutters of deep, pulsing warmth that had her clutching at the material of her dress around her stomach even though she didn’t know what she was clutching it for.
‘Good,’ said the full lips containing such sensuous promise that she was now caught on a tightrope between yearning for them to justkissher, and wanting to throw herself out of a window to escape a fear she didn’t even understand. ‘Make yourself comfortable. Everything’s been unpacked for you but if anything’s been forgotten or there’s anything else you need, tell any member of staff. If they don’t have it, they will get it couriered over. If you feel unwell, the medical team are based in the room to the right of yours—pressing the green switches by your bed and dressing table sends an alert directly to them. There is also a switch in your bathroom.’
Lucie nodded as if she’d been paying attention to his words and not lost in fascination and fear at the movement of his mouth, and then realised exactly what he’d said and blinked. ‘Isn’t this our room?’
The mouth she’d been lost in fascination with twitched. ‘No,matia mou, this is your room. My room is to your left.’
Her heart and stomach shrank and plummeted as full comprehension hit her. ‘Oh, I thought…assumed…’
Assumed this wastheirroom, words that went unsaid but which still echoed between the walls and between them.
Although Thanasis didn’t move—how could someone so big be sostill?—she sensed a shift within him, sensed him again reining in his composure to give nothing of himself away, and yet somehow the intensity of his stare increased, giving the sensation that he was searching inside all the compartments in her brain and plucking out the files hidden from herself and reading them.
‘I am thinking only of you,’ he murmured. ‘The reset between us that’s come about because of your injury…’ Exhaling through his nose, he closed the distance he’d created between them and gently captured her chin. The probing green eyes beginning to swirl. ‘I know you feel obliged to marry me,matia mou, but the last thing I want is for you to feel any other kind of obligation. That would be unconscionable of me.’
Heart caught in her throat, trembling inside and out and captured in a stare she couldn’t have pulled herself away from if she’d tried, Lucie held her breath as the mouth she ached to feel closed in on hers.
The warmth of his breath danced over her lips and then the soft and yet, oh, so firm mouth brushed over hers in a lingering featherlight caress that left her close to sagging with disappointment when he pulled away from it.
Catching a locket of her hair, he rubbed the tip of his nose against hers. ‘Let us be on an equal footing and start over as if we were both strangers to each other, and take our time in getting to know each other without any pressure or expectation.’ With a glimmering smile, he brushed another featherlight kiss to her mouth and huskily added, ‘There is no need to rush anything. I can wait for as long as you need me to, and I know the wait will be worth it because we have our whole life together to look forward to.’
And then he released the curl and stepped back, stealing the warmth she’d been barely aware of bathing in, leaving Lucie gaping at him, the fleeting kiss having struck her dumb,
