Page 29 of Forgotten Greek Proposal
‘She’s my mother,’ he said matter-of-factly before pulling a musing face. ‘And it has come in handy for our purposes.’
‘There is that,’ she agreed. ‘Did you imagine you would marry in here when you built it? Or did it just work out that way when we settled on marrying on the island?’
He took a while to answer, and when he spoke, his words were slow. ‘When I saw it completed I knew it would be where I marry.’
‘Bet you never imagined it would be with me,’ she jested, and was rewarded with a short, non-committal laugh. ‘So who’s marrying us? Do you have a permanent priest here?’
‘No. There is a semi-retired priest in Kos who travels over whenever my mother’s here. He will be officiating.’
‘I assume the ceremony will be conducted in Greek?’
‘You assume correctly.’
‘Good.’
He raised an eyebrow.
‘It’s fitting,’ she said. ‘It would be sacrilegious to have the service in English. This chapel, this whole island, it’s Greek to its core… What time are we actually marrying?’
‘Six p.m.’
‘Is that to escape the worst of the heat?’
‘Partly, but mostly because when the service is finished we will have the photos taken on the stretch of beach where the sun sets.’
‘So we’ll have the sunset as our background?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Sounds perfect and extremely romantic. The media will lap it up.’
He grimaced. ‘That was the idea behind it.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she assured him. ‘First and foremost, this marriage is for business purposes and there’s no point pretending otherwise. That anything else has come out of it is just sheer good luck—let’s face it, it could have gone completely the other way. Can you imagine how awful it would have been if we’d hated each other?’ She imagined it would have been unbearable. Lucie always felt awkward and prickly when in the company of people who disliked her. Whenever Athena had gone through her spates of being mean to her, Lucie had always coiled into herself and grown defensive spikes. Thank God Thanasis had been prepared to give her a chance and not park her in the camp of being his enemy.
But his family hadn’t been prepared to do that. Strange how this hadn’t bothered her when she’d first guessed it but now, just a day later, it made her chest tighten. She supposed it was the fact of their wedding no longer being an abstract thing. She was here, in the thick of all the preparations and glued to the side of the man who would soon be her husband… Well, glued as much as he would allow.
There had definitely been a shift for the better in the way Thanasis was around her. There was a greater sense of looseness about him, not just in his frame but in his speech, less of a sense that he was weighing each word carefully before allowing himself to speak, more gesticulation and more glimpses of the good-humoured man she’d dined with her first night on the island. She was growing to like a lot about him. She liked his patience, of course…that had already been established. Liked that he was happy to play Getting to Know You for hours even though he must already know so much about her and had probably relayed many of the stories she’d coaxed out of him before. Small, mostly insignificant stories that built a picture of a man from the loving, stable background she’d once longed for. A man for whom family was everything, and she had the strong sense that once this controlled bear of a man loved you, there would be nothing he would not do for you and nothing he would not do to protect you, and Lucie supposed it was a sign of his love for her that he was trying to protect her from herself.
Because what she didn’t like was the physical distance he’d imposed between them. Even the small signs of affection had gone. If she stood or sat too close to him, he’d visibly stiffen and edge away. When she’d covered his hand over lunch he’d gently but firmly moved it away. When their ankles had brushed under the dining table he’d adjusted his position so his long legs were aimed in a different direction.
His control was impressive and infuriating because that heady, passionate kiss had unleashed something in her, an ache she carried everywhere, in every cell of her body. There was not a minute spent in his company when Lucie didn’t long for him to just touch her, a longing made worse knowing it had unleashed something in him too. She could feel it like a vibration, the tempered desire beating beneath the powerful body, and she could see it too, a dark pulse in his eyes before he snapped it away with a blink.
She knew he’d imposed this physical distance for her sake, and while she appreciated his reasonings, she would look around his glorious garden and the romantic fairy tale it was being transformed into for their wedding day, and experience that thrilling rush of emotions, and it all felt soreal. Her and Thanasis. And if they were real then it meant the fact that his family hated her was real too.
Another family she didn’t fit in with.
She would make them like her, she decided resolutely. Well, try. After all, she’d had nothing to do with the war between the two families. In reality, only Georgios and Petros had. Everyone else was just a bystander. Collateral damage.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Thanasis asked, cutting through her ruminations.
‘Everything.’ She laughed and shook her head, wishing she could wrap her arms around him and breathe in his gorgeous scent. Wishing, if she did that, he would wrap his arms around her and not stiffen and then politely extract himself from her hold.
‘I was thinking about your cynicism about our two families ever truly burying the hatchet. I think it could happen.’
‘Our families have been at war for decades,’ he reminded her. ‘Too much has happened for it to be forgotten. The bad feelings run too deep.’
‘I know, but if you and I were able to see past all that and build something together…’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘There has to be hope the rest of our families can build bridges too, because otherwise what’s the point?’
