Page 30 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
“I will have a plane there within the hour,” he told her. “Meet it on the tarmac.”
When he rang off, she looked around at the things that she was packing up. Things that belonged to a traumatized Welsh girl who didn’t know who she was, who had picked a name that started with anSbecause that had felt right.
But she didn’t need the things Selwen did. She wasn’t the woman Selwen had been, lost but determined to do what her only friend had wanted her to do. In the end, she took onlythe things that Ffion had given her, tucking them away in her shoulder bag.
And then, unencumbered by the rest of the things Selwen had gathered, she walked out to meet her past.
Saskia again, at last.
CHAPTER SEVEN
By the timethe plane landed in the United Kingdom, Saskia felt like herself again.
Notcompletelyherself, of course. It was complicated. There were those five years in Wales to come to terms with, not to mention her remarkable decision to marry a man like Pavlos. It was going to take her some time to unpack that.
Maybe a lot of time.
But once she was back in London, she felt as if she could take a full, deep breath for the first time in a long, long while.
The funny thing was, she hadn’t even realized that she wasn’t doing that already. She would have sworn that she had never felt more relaxed than she had on Pavlos’s island, but her body told her a different story now. She felt herself truly, deeply relax. She felt her shoulders creep down from her ears and her spine melt against the seat.
Like her body remembered London all on its own. And was happy to be home.
Thanasis’s plane landed in the same private airfield he had always used when she’d flown with him all the time. Saskia braced herself as the plane taxied to a stop, expecting to see him now that she knew who he was to her…and then disappointed when he wasn’t there.
“You need to get a hold of yourself, madam,” she muttered to herself as she exited the plane and climbed down the steps to the tarmac.
She was beckoned into the back of a waiting town car and offered the usual refreshments, which she waved away. The car started moving and she sat back against another cozy leather seat, feeling her body relax even more. Like this car was a spa.
It was so easy, this life. The part of her that was still Selwen, who’d imagined herself a practical and deeply unfancy Welsh girl, was awed at the matter-of-fact luxury she’d already experienced. Unlike Pavlos’s island, there was very little pressure here. No need to perform. No need to show up at endless dinners filled with glittering enemies. And yet she could now remember exactly how frustrated she’d become with it.
Just as she could remember the beautiful simplicity of her life as Selwen. It had been such a quiet life. Such a good one. Ffion had cared deeply for her and she had showed it every day. Selwen had been able to share her own affection in return. And it was only now, in full possession of all her faculties and memories, that she understood why this had been so important for her.
Because all the people she had loved had died, and usually while she wasn’t around. Her parents. The vicar. They’d all died while she was off doing something else and none of them had ever been replaced. She been entirely on her own in the world until she met Thanasis.
Ffion had found her. Ffion had taken care of her. Ffion had made that lost child inside of Saskia whole.
She had been the family Saskia had always wanted.
And when the time had finally come, Saskia had sat at her bedside. She’d held Ffion’s frail hand between hers and told her in every way she could that it was all right for her to go.
It’s time now,she had told her dear friend.You have places to be, Ffion. And lots of loves waiting for you, I warrant. I will be perfectly fine, this world will go on turning, and I will honor you with every breath. I promise.
Ffion hadn’t opened her eyes again. But Saskia could still remember the clasp of the hand she’d held in hers, how Ffion had gripped her just the slightest bit harder—one last goodbye—and then had slipped away.
It was a beautiful thing, Saskia thought as the town car navigated its way through the wet and crowded London streets. It was a beautiful, terrible, and lovely thing indeed to hold space for a loved one’s death. To honor someone who had done so much for her by witnessing her departure on her last final journey.
She wouldn’t take that back. Not for anything.
Those were sacred years, she thought as they sat in the usual London traffic. For all that she hadn’t known who she was, she’d known that Ffion loved her. And that had been enough. And now that she knew the context of those years, and what had come before, she knew that she’d never felt she had an opportunity to simply…scrounge around in clothes that didn’t make the most of her looks in any of her previous incarnations. She’d learned early on in care that she could use the fact the adults found her pretty to her advantage. It had been the same later, at university. It was amazing the things that people would do for her, or help her with, just for a smile.
When a person had nothing, she used the tools she had.
Then there been Thanasis, coming out of nowhere when she hadn’t even been looking for a man, or anything resembling a man, because she’d had work to do. Saskia had never been in the slightest bit of doubt that he found her ravishingly beautiful. He’d told her so all the time.
What she hadn’t known, as time went on, was whether or not that was the only thing he valued about her.
And she couldn’t really say that experiencing him as Selwen had changed that much. Or at all. Because she’d been there when he’d first clapped eyes on her in the villa’s grand hall. She’d seen the shock on his face, then the recognition, then all of that fire.
