Page 13 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

Cameron laughed again. “You could not have arranged that if you’d tried.”

Apollo leaned back in his chair, surveying his friend’s castle. It was all a far cry from squatting in vacant buildings in Edinburgh. “When I move, the universe orients itself around me, or did you not know?”

“Your ego is doing well despite the rest of your mood.”

He let silence reign for a moment.

“Hannah has become difficult.” He shouldn’t tell Cameron this. But Cameron was truly the only friend he had in this world.

“Oh, the adult woman whose life you’re still in charge of? Imagine that.” Cameron’s amusement outraged him.

“I did not create the set of rules surrounding the guardianship,” he said. “She acts as if I’m the enemy too. And I did not create the situation. I neither wrote the will nor got myself killed in a canoeing accident. That was her mother and father.”

“I imagine it doesn’t much signify when you are the object blocking her from the things that she wishes to do and have and be.”

“I am doing nothing of the kind. I guided her. Through high school, through college. She has a degree, she could get any job she wished. She could get a job at her father’s company, and then when the restrictions on her lift in three years she will take an executive position. She’s going to be in control. It will be hers.”

“Three years when you’re in your twenties is an eternity. And after all these years of being under your iron fist.”

Cameron had no right to comment. He hadn’t been present for any of this. “I resent that. I have been fair. I have been good.”

“Of course you have.”

“Cameron, you are a pain in my ass.”

“I have been for more than twenty years. Why stop now?”

“I do not know what to do with her.”

“Give her what she wants. Give her the respect that she is due.”

“I worry for her,” he said. Because it was true. Though mostly, perhaps he worried that he wouldn’t be able to keep his promise to her father, which would be unacceptable. A failure. And if he put his foot on that path, what then?

“Let her have her freedom. You can stick to the terms of the will, and you can make her happy.”

“What makes her happy right now is going to clubs and dancing with strange men.” The way he’d felt when he’d walked in and seen that man, with his hands on her, had made him feel a violent surge of possessiveness. It was, he told himself, because she deserved better. That man transparently wished to use her for her body and Hannah deserved more.

The thought of her being used in that way made his lip curl. Made him think of the dark things behind him.

“Sheistwenty-two,” Cameron pointed out. “There’s nothing wrong with going out, dancing...having a bit of casual sex.”

“You can say that after the life we led?”

“Apollo, for most people, this time of their life should be carefree. You and I know nothing about that. My dear Athena knows nothing about that. She was a prisoner, her father kept her from living the life that she truly wanted. Is that what you want to be for Hannah?”

“I am not like Athena’s father. I did not kidnap Hannah from her rightful family and then attempt to sell her into marriage after hiding her away for her entire life.”

“No of course not. But I’m only saying... There are normal lives to be had out there. Just because we didn’t have them doesn’t mean Hannah can’t.”

“But the world is...”

“Dangerous,” Cameron said. “Horribly so. But you will be there. To protect her. If she truly needs it. Don’t be a monster in the meantime. That really is stepping on my territory.”

He pondered his friend’s words, even as he went back to Greece.

He moved back to Greece after Cameron’s accident because it had felt... It had felt like something he should try. An attempt at finding some of himself. He hadn’t found it. At least he didn’t think. There was no point going over the past. There was only moving forward. And he was intent on doing that with Hannah.

He arrived home, expecting to find the place turned inside out. Expecting that she would have thrown a party to get revenge on him.

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