Page 20 of Forgotten Greek Proposal
Too much wine, he thought dimly. It had seeped through his system to dismantle the guard he kept fully raised around her, and only when he was confident that he could look at her without losing the last of his guard did he raise his gaze and hoarsely say, ‘Message received and understood.’
She smiled tremulously and moved her hand away, pressed her fingers to her mouth and then leaned forwards to press them to his lips. ‘Kalinychta, Thanasis.’
He could do nothing to stop his lips kissing the delicate fingers.‘Kalinychta, matia mou.’
CHAPTER SIX
ON HER FIRSTmorning in Sephone, Lucie woke to the rising sun and to the remnants of a dream where Athena had been cruelly laughing in a strange yet somehow familiar living room. The unsettled, almost sick feeling the dream had set off in her was countered by the lack of waking fuzziness in her head, and she climbed out of bed with the spring in her step that had been missing since the accident.
Making herself a coffee from the posh machine in her room, she was about to carry it through the arched glass door that led out to her balcony when a tap on her bedroom door stopped her in her tracks.
Her heart tripling the rate of its beats, a wide smile had formed before she opened the door, a smile that faltered when she found one of the nurses standing there and not the man who’d been lodged in her mind as she’d fallen asleep and still been firmly ensconced there when she’d woken. The nurse must have stayed awake all night with her ear to the adjoining wall listening out for movement.
After whispering refusals of painkillers and all the health checks that apparently werestillcompletely necessary, and insisting she was completely fine, Lucie softly closed the door on the poor nurse and padded outside.
Just as the villa itself was uniquely beautiful, her balcony was too, gentle steps leading down to a comfortable seating area fronted by a narrow swimming pool that appeared to snake the entire upper perimeter in a touch of aesthetic genius, winding through the adjoining balcony to her left… Thanasis’s sprawling balcony.
She only needed to think of his name for her pulses to go haywire.
Was he awake yet, an early riser like her, or was he like the majority of her step and half-siblings and a bear with a sore head if woken before midday? She’d caught a glimmer of the real Thanasis Antoniadis during the meal when he’d finally relaxed around her, and what she’d discovered had delighted her. He was on her wavelength! He hadn’t taken her silly comment about wanting to snog his chef seriously but had played along with it and while this was just a silly, minor thing it meant so much because there was nothing worse than having to explain a throwaway jest, something Lucie had way too much experience with as her humour often went over people’s heads, but Thanasis had got it and played along with it, and it had been wonderful.
Oh, but there were so many things to learn and discover about him, and she longed to knock on his door and continue all the learning and discovering, but it was too early for most humans to rise.
Close to giddy with anticipation for the day to begin, she decided to take a swim and hurried to her dressing room in search of a swimsuit, hoping whoever had packed for her had thought to pack beachwear.
Result!
Modest black one-piece squeezed into, she finished her coffee, grabbed a towel from her bathroom and bounded back outside.
Lowering herself into the cool water, trying especially hard not to give her usual squeak when the water level reached between her legs so as not to wake the rest of the household, soon she was at the pool’s edge gazing over the clear blue Aegean and the islands dotted in the distance.
Thanasis really had found paradise here. She’d never known such stillness before. Always there was noise in her life. Always. Here on Sephone, she could hear the birds singing their early morning chorus and the only sound to cut through it was the gently lapping sea rather than never ending traffic. The air felt cleaner, the sky crisper… She sighed with the pleasure of it all. Bliss.
Time to see if the pool really did snake the whole perimeter, but which direction to take? The route that took her past the bossy medical team’s room or the one past Thanasis’s? Decisions, decisions. She had the strong feeling that if either caught her, she’d meet disapproval, what with her ‘condition’ and all that. With at least one member of the medical team already awake and Thanasis likely still sleeping, her choice was made.
Swimming her preferred breaststroke, she set off with slow, lazy movements and made a studious effort not to turn her head to peek into Thanasis’s room. Her peripheral vision showed that his balcony was vastly bigger than hers, the far end formed of its own half-dome with panoramic views that provided shelter from both the sun and the minimal rain the island was subjected to.
The pool wound round, intermittent narrow bridges to swim under and a new vista for her eyes to feast on of high rugged terrains and the undulating verdant greens of the island’s olive groves and vineyards, and then she rounded yet another bend to the rear of the villa and hooked her arms over the pool’s edge to take it all in.
Dinner had been eaten at the main poolside’s dining area. She could just about make it out from her vantage point, but what she could see clearly now and had failed to notice the night before was the sensational sprawling grounds that had to be Thanasis’s garden. He must have used a landscape gardener of equal renown to his architect, she thought, awed at what had been created out of nothing and so cleverly and sympathetically designed that unless you knew better you’d assume you’d fallen into the Garden of Eden. This Garden of Eden had a giant marquee in its centre and hiding just behind it—although she knew it was an illusion and really it was situated a long way behind it—a solitary domed white chapel, identifiable by the giant cross sticking out of its white roof.
Her airwaves suddenly tightened, white noise filling her ears in a rush.
That chapel had to be where she and Thanasis would marry. That marquee had to be where they would host their wedding reception. And those sleepy-looking workmen traipsing across the lawn carrying long poles over their shoulders had to be part of the crew tasked with transforming the garden into a fairy-tale wedding venue designed to convince the whole world that the bride and groom were destined to live happily ever after.
Their marriage was no abstract thing. It was real. In less than a week she would be a married woman and she had absolutely no idea if the sudden rabid fluttering in her stomach was an indication of excitement or terror.
‘Please, tell me I am hallucinating.’
Still struggling to breathe, Lucie whipped her head round. Finding Thanasis by the side of the pool, all tousle-haired and stubble-faced and wearing a pair of baggy canvas shorts, made the struggle a whole lot worse.
He could have stepped off Mount Olympus for an early morning walk with the mortals.
Back off, Adonis, she thought dimly.Your replacement has arrived.
Adonis would take one look at Thanasis and retire on the spot.
She’d known he had a great body but even her vivid imagination had failed to paint it in all its glory. Thanasis had the broad muscularity gym bunnies around the world worked their socks off to sculpt their bodies into, but there was none of the bulging veins Lucie’s nose always wrinkled at. Instead, it was as if Mother Nature herself had decided to bless him with perfection, from the deep olive hue of his skin to the smattering of fine dark hair that covered his defined chest and abdomen.
