Page 41 of Virgin's Night with the Greek

She frowned. ‘I see.’

‘Is wanting to help you such a bad thing?’ he asked with an assessing tilt of his head.

‘It’s a very bad thing.’ The helping, the caring, the knowing that if she had this month she might crave another, and another... None of it was good.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t want a knight in shining armour,’ she said as much to remind herself of the fact as inform him of it. ‘I never have. If I stay here, you’ll see me at my worst. If I let you close enough to rub my back and run me baths, I may forget that this fling of ours was only ever supposed to be temporary, and that simply can’t happen.’

‘Why not?’

She had to tell him. She had to make him see that she could not and would not indulge his hero complex this time. ‘When my mother died, my world fell apart, but I gradually put it back together again. My father didn’t. He loved her so much that losing her has virtually destroyed him. He doesn’t live. He just exists. He’s not there for me. Or anyone. I will not put myself in that position. I will not put anyone else in that position should something happen to me. That’s why not.’

‘I am not going to fall in love with you.’

Her chest tightened for the briefest of seconds. ‘Are you sure about that?’

He nodded. ‘Quite sure.’

‘Because I’m nothing like the type you usually go for.’

‘It’s not just that,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen how destructive love and the lack of control that goes with it can be and the chaos that can cause. I won’t allow it to happen to me. I won’t be that weak.’

She wished she had his confidence. ‘But I might fall in love with you.’

For a moment he didn’t respond. The frown deepened. A muscle hammered in his jaw. ‘All right,’ he said decisively, clearly having given that unwelcome thought due consideration. ‘I won’t rub your back or run you baths. I won’t come anywhere near you if that’s what you want. But give me a list and I will get what you need. I can feed you. Bring you drinks. What Ican’tdo is let you walk out of another of my properties alone and in pain. That simply isn’t the man I either am or want to be.’

‘This isn’t about you. It’s about me.’

‘You don’treallywant to go to a hotel, do you?’

An image floated into her head of her in some small, unfamiliar room, alone, again, robbed of the positivity she fought so hard to maintain, and the ache that throbbed in the pit of her stomach—now more emotional than physical—was so powerful it vaporised her inhibitions. ‘No,’ she admitted on a sigh.

‘So take one of the spare rooms,’ he said, unsurprisingly seizing advantage of the vulnerability she’d exposed by her confession. ‘Keep the door closed. Message me if and when you need something. You will barely notice I’m here.’

Willow’s defences, weakened by the pain, the demoralising knowledge of what was to come and the yearning she was struggling to keep suppressed, were no match for such persuasive arguments. Deep down she didn’t want to have to go anywhere. She longed to be looked after, just once, and here Leo was offering her his support.

He was strong enough to handle the days to come, surely. She wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking his assistance was anything more than it was. She’d be too preoccupied with managing the pain behind a closed door to think of anything. And when it was over, she would leave and she’d never have to see him again, which was just how it had to be.

‘Are you going to counter-argue my every point?’ she asked as the last of her resistance crumbled and she gave in to the inevitable.

‘Yes,’ he said, proving it with the faintest of smiles.

‘Fine.’

Five long days later, nursing a large whisky, Leo sat on the terrace and stared out into the dark, warm, quiet night. Lights twinkled in the distance. Waves lapped gently at the beach below. In marked contrast to the peace and tranquillity of his surroundings, his head pounded and his stomach churned.

When he’d offered Willow his services, the thought of her being alone and in pain unbearable, the need to keep her close too fierce to deny, he had not imagined the depth of her suffering. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the sight of her doubled up in agony or curled into a ball in the centre of the bed. It had been unexpectedly harrowing. How she dealt with it, month after month, on her own, he had no idea. She was unbelievably tough, but the mental toll had to be immense. He’d experienced a mere five days of it, on and off, as an occasionally useful bystander, and that was bad enough.

He hadn’t enjoyed seeing her vibrancy diminished, her light out. Her distress had struck him square in the chest. No one deserved to live with that degree of discomfort and at one point, when she’d been feeling well enough to come downstairs for a couple of hours, he’d asked her if there wasn’t anything she could do to alleviate her symptoms.

‘The contraceptive pill would make things more manageable,’ she’d told him, ‘and God, it would be good to have a reliable time frame to work with, but it’s possible it contributed to the arterial blood clot that my mother went into hospital to have removed. I just can’t bring myself to take it and expose myself to the same sort of risk. It was supposed to be a simple operation, but she had a bad reaction to the anaesthetic and that was it.’

‘What about surgery?’ he’d asked, completely understanding the influence of the past on the present.

‘I’ve also been told that in my case—which is mild even though the pain is excruciating—that would lessen the symptoms considerably. It would also increase the chances of having a family, which I’d like at some point, so on paper it’s a no-brainer. But the thought of an anaesthetic terrifies me. What if I too go to sleep and never wake up? What would that do to my father? Look.’ She’d held out a trembling hand. ‘Even the mention of one makes me panic. And it’s not just one operation. It could be many.’

Leo had taken her hand in his and held it until it had stopped shaking, itching to research the hell out of anaesthesia and then promise her the best medical treatment money could buy. Was there anything he could do to encourage her to have the surgery? he wondered now, turning his glass in his fingers as he continued to stare out into the distance. Her fears had to run very deep for her to favour the pain.

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