Page 17 of Forgotten Greek Proposal
Thanasis’s voice pulled her out of her latest batch of rambling thoughts.
The intense green eyes were watching her closely.
‘You looked lost in your thoughts,’ he said with a half-smile.
She couldn’t help but smile at how unerringly accurate this observation was, even as her chest filled with a fizzing emotion for this stranger who knew her so, so well.
‘I was thinking about you,’ she admitted.
He raised an eyebrow in question.
‘I was thinking how hard this whole situation must be for you. I don’t know how I’d cope if I were in your shoes.’
Pale green gaze boring into her, he said, ‘All that matters is that you are here, and if having you here means you and me starting over then that is better than any alternative.’
The fizzing in her chest spread up and into her throat, and suddenly she recognised truth and sincerity in his stare, the first time she’d been able to accurately read him at all, and the relief that came with this reacted to the fizzing in her chest and throat, and shot out of her mouth as a burst of joyful laughter.
Bemusement playing on his dreamy face, now both of his dark eyebrows rose in question.
She leaned forwards. ‘I know I’ve thanked you before, but I’m going to thank you again, for being there for me while I was in hospital and for being here for me now, and for all the accommodations you’re making for me. Thank you.’
The guilt that lanced Thanasis’s guts at this was so sharp and unexpected that it took him a moment to respond. ‘It is nothing you wouldn’t do for me,’ he lied.
But he hadn’t lied about Lucie being here being all that mattered. That was the greatest truth of all because the alternative was the destruction of everything and everyone he cared about, and the destruction of everything and everyone she cared about too. When the truth was revealed after the wedding, he would make her understand the lies were for both their benefit.
Her black eyes shining, her heart-shaped lips pulled into a smile softer than he’d ever have imagined Lucie Burton capable of pulling. ‘I’m starting to believe that.’
Internal alarms ringing at the direction Lucie was steering the conversation—there were lies and then there were damned lies—Thanasis straightened his spine and pulled a smile of his own. ‘Eat,matia mou. My chefs have been busy creating all your favourite dishes.’
One thing he had learned through all their torturous meals out together was that Lucie had a particular addiction to cheese. All cheeses. And so it came as no surprise at all when she loaded her plate with keftedes, Kalamata olives, sliced vine tomatoes and tzatziki, and sprinkled what had to be half a block of crumbled feta over the whole lot of it before happily diving in.
At her first bite of the keftedes, her already shining eyes shone even brighter. ‘Wow,’ she said once she’d swallowed it. ‘These are amazing. Forget falling in love and all that business stuff—I’d marry you for your chef.’
He couldn’t help but laugh, even as he remembered her once telling him the only worthwhile thing in his whole rotten life was his head chef. That had come off the back of Thanasis icily telling her when she’d unexpectedly joined him for dinner in his apartment, that he preferred to dine alone than have his meal spoilt by her presence. He would eat with her in public as part of the whole performance but in the privacy of his apartment, he wanted solitude. Unfortunately, solitude and Lucie did not go together. Her husky voice followed him everywhere, even when he was on the other side of the four thousand square metre space from her. The bounce of her footsteps echoed through the walls. There were nights when he swore he could hear her breaths of sleep.
‘Let’s play a game,’ she said once she’d demolished her first course and was steadily working through their main course of spanakopita—another Lucie favourite—served with roasted vegetables.
‘What kind of game?’
She stabbed her fork into a mound of roasted aubergines and peppers. ‘Getting to Know You. We play it at work with all the newbies, but obviously, as it’s just the two of us, we’ll have to adapt it. It’s literally a game of asking each other questions that allow you to get to know someone better.’
‘What kind of questions?’
‘Any kind. Favourite colour. Favourite film. First kiss. What car you learned to drive in. Anything, really. The only rule is no closed questions or answers—basically, nothing that can be answered with a yes or no, oh, and as you already know me and I’m the one with the big memory hole, I think it’s only fair that I get to ask you three questions to each one of yours.’ She popped the fork into her mouth.
That worked for him. He didn’t want to get to know Lucie any better than he already did, and, watching her devouring her food, said, ‘Where do you put it all?’ It was one of the many questions that had built up during their two-month engagement. Their tortured public meals together had been spent with fake smiles, fake conversation, and Lucie eating everything put in front of her and more.
She caught his eye and grinned. ‘Is that your first question?’
‘I suppose it must be.’ A nice, neutral question that would reveal little to nothing about her.
‘I have a fast metabolism, but you must already know that.’
‘I know you have more energy than the average person.’
‘I just get bored sitting around and doing nothing, that’s all. Maybe that does help with my metabolism, but seeing as I inherited it from my mum and she’d be happy spending her whole life on a sun bed, I don’t think that’s the full explanation for it. My turn—when’s your birthday?’
‘February the nineteenth.’
