Page 33 of Forgotten Greek Proposal
‘That is my point. You entered into our agreement for everyone else’s sake when you didn’t owe anybody anything.’
‘Apart from a lifetime of being loved by them, that’s absolutely spot on.’
Thanasis had to bite his tongue and swallow back his anger. If there was any love on the Tsalikis’ part for Lucie, they had a strange way of showing it.
They set off again. ‘How did your stepsiblings get on with your mother when you were growing up?’
He knew his question had him skirting dangerous territory but that was a risk he was willing to take. Lucie needed to be prepared in some small way for what was coming when the truth came out.
‘They all got on fine. They’d had so many stepmums by the time she came along that I imagine they took her presence in their stride. She never tried to mother them so that probably helped. Saying that,’ she added with a cackle of laughter, ‘she never much tried to mother me, either.’
Another bite of the tongue and the swallow back of anger.
Thanasis had never imagined he could despise someone more than Georgios Tsaliki but his fourth wife roused a different, colder kind of loathing in him, and he had to bite his tongue another time to stop himself from pointing out that Athena and Stelios had never had another stepmother before Rebecca Tsaliki usurped their own mother.
They’d reached a steep incline that required concentration to navigate despite the rope he’d had put along its edge for support, and they didn’t speak as they made their way up it. To reach the top of the incline you had to climb a sheer drop that was only six foot and which Thanasis could manage easily, but when you didn’t quite reach five foot it meant you needed help.
‘I will lift you,’ he said with an impassiveness only his racing pulses would prove was a lie.
He shrugged off the backpack then stood behind her. ‘Ready?’
‘Yep.’
He put his hands securely to her waist and lifted her until her bottom, clad only in a pair of black denim shorts, was face high to him and Lucie was waist high to the ledge and able to swing herself over. The last he saw of her was the black boots that had earlier given him a cold case ofdéjà vubefore her face peered over the edge and she grinned down at him. ‘You coming up?’
* * *
Lucie thought she might just have discovered heaven on earth.
The top of the mountain was ruggedly sparse of vegetation but the thickness of the picnic blanket Thanasis had spread out stopped the rocks and prickly plants beneath them from jabbing into their skin and allowed her to do nothing but marvel at the scene unfolding before her. Oh, and eat the delicious spread of food Elias and his assistant had whipped up for them, of which she’d stuffed as much as she could manage into her belly. Stretched out on his back beside her, propping himself up on his elbows having eaten his fill too and playing the most major part in the heavenly scene, Thanasis.
‘Thank you for bringing me here.’ She turned her stare to him with a smile. She had never in her life seen such a spectacular vista, similar to the view from their balconies but so much, much more. The setting sun was not yet low enough to melt into the sea but its reflection had turned the Aegean’s horizon a golden orange, the distant islands darkening and becoming all the more striking for it.
The man who outshone the vista in the beauty stakes responded with a smile that crinkled the lines around his eyes.‘Parakalo.’After a beat, he added, ‘I brought my sister here once. She spent more time complaining about the patchy phone signal than admiring the beauty nature has to offer.’
‘I guess the world would be very boring if we all liked the same things.’
‘I don’t think Lydia and I have ever agreed on anything that we both like,’ he commented drily. ‘If she didn’t have so much of both our parents in her, I would believe she was adopted.’
She laughed and studied the piece of pottery Thanasis had found when they’d reached the summit and he’d been deciding the perfect place to lay the blanket. Faded black paint with what could possibly be the tip of a pair of wings painted in faded gold on it, the relic measured roughly ten inches by five inches. Its concave shape suggested it had once been a pot and Thanasis’s casual dating of it as ‘probably being two, three thousand years old’ would have blown her mind if she had any mind left to blow. With the benefit of hindsight, Lucie realised learning she was engaged to Thanasis Antoniadis had been peak blowing of her mind. Everything else would always be lesser in comparison.
She had yet to reach peak awe over his devastating good looks though, and she carefully laid the piece of pottery down and stretched herself onto her back beside him. Wriggling her bare toes—they’d both removed their footwear—she gave a contented sigh. Her feet were a bit sore from the trek and there were a few cuts on her thighs from where spiky plants had decided to scratch her, but she didn’t care in the slightest. She thought this might just be the happiest she’d ever been.
‘Are you okay?’ he murmured, resting his head on the blanket next to hers.
She sighed again and turned her face to the glory of his. ‘I’m just perfect.’
An assessment Thanasis found himself struggling to disagree with, although she hadn’t meant it in the way his brain was interpreting it.
He didn’t know if it was Lucie’s goddess powers coming to the fore again and giving her the ability to read minds, but when she broke the comfortable silence by saying, ‘What do you like about me?’ he came close to laughing.
It was a laughter that would have died before it had formed for she rolled onto her side and tucked an arm under her head to cushion it, her face so close he could see the flecks of gold dancing in the black eyes now glued to his. Any comfort at being with her vanished as the awareness he’d been controlling with sheer brute force snaked its way back through his veins.
‘Getting to Know You time again,’ she said with a soft, spellbinding smile, ‘so full and honest answers.’
Turning his stare to the darkening clear sky, Thanasis hooked an arm above his head but, such was the force of the spell she was casting on him, couldn’t bring himself to move any further away from her. ‘You want to know what I like about you?’ he clarified carefully.
‘I want to know what it was that turned your feelings for me from what I’m guessing is resignation at the situation we’d found ourselves in, into something more.’
