Page 28 of Forgotten Greek Proposal
He needed to keep Lucie at a physical arm’s length until they married. Just a few more days, that was all, and then the truth would be revealed.
It was even possible that she would forgive him.
‘I can’t say anyone has said that to me before,’ he murmured.
‘You must hide that part of your nature really well. Weren’t you tempted to build your villa up there?’ She indicated the slightly higher of the two mountains.
‘That is where I originally wanted the villa built, yes. The only thing that stopped me was the terrain—it would have been too dangerous for the building crew. There is a particular spot up there where you can watch the sun rise and set. It is the only vantage point on the whole island better than what we have here.’
‘Will you take me there?’
‘When you are better.’
She pulled an unimpressed face.
‘The golf buggies can’t reach it so you have to walk, and it’s a long, often steep walk,’ he explained. ‘Give yourself a few days to fully rebuild your strength.’
She eyed him for a moment and then grinned. ‘Okay. But only if you get Elias to make me more of those delicious keftedes for me to build my strength with.’
He couldn’t stop himself from grinning back. ‘You have a deal.’
But a deal he absolutely would not seal with a kiss.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CHAPEL WASmuch bigger than Lucie had anticipated from her vantage point on Thanasis’s balcony, but it was too hot to goggle at it from the outside and she practically threw herself through the arched door.
It was every bit as cool inside as she’d hoped.
‘Better?’ the hulk who’d entered the chapel with slightly more decorum asked drily.
On this, Lucie’s second full day in Sephone, she’d woken early again and had swum round to Thanasis’s east-facing balcony. He’d been waiting for her by the pool steps.
She’d grinned up at him. After all, he hadn’t actually made her give the promise not to swim unsupervised again.
He’d shaken his head in mock disappointment and handed her a towel to dry herself. And then they’d sat on his balcony sofa and watched the sun rise together over coffee andbougatsaas if it had all been pre-planned.
‘Much.’ She fanned herself with the back of her hand to rid her face of the last of the perspiration that had broken out on it during the short buggy ride from the villa. ‘I spent every summer in Greece during my schooldays. You’d think I’d remember how hot it gets here.’
‘When was your last summer spent here?’
‘When I was eighteen. Full time work unfortunately does not allow for long, lazy summers.’ Or didn’t. She didn’t have a job any more. Of all the things she’d given up to marry Thanasis and save their two families, her career was the only one she felt real pangs of regret over. Of all the memories lost, her resignation was the one she didn’t want to come back. She had a feeling it would be a scene too distressing to want to relive. In her six years there, the Kelly Holden Design team had come to feel like family. It was a family she’d gate-crashed her way into but still a family. Or a version of one.
No point harking back to something that was already done, she told herself resolutely, and craned her head around at the vast space with its high, ornate pillars and frescoed ceiling in which she and Thanasis would soon marry. It really was the most incredible and awe-inspiring of spaces, like someone had Greek-ified the Duomo, shrunk it to vaguely manageable proportions, and transported it to Sephone.
A thought struck her and she whipped her stare to Thanasis. ‘How can this be here if the island was abandoned millennia ago? I didn’t think they had chapels back then?’
‘I had it built alongside the villa.’
‘Wow. So it’s less than ten years old? It could have been standing for centuries.’
‘That was the feel I was aspiring to.’
‘You’re religious?’
‘Not particularly. It was for my mother. Church is a regular feature of her life. She always suffers guilt if she misses Sunday mass.’
‘I think that has to be the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever heard of,’ she said, astounded.
