Page 4 of Forgotten Greek Proposal
Wow. He’d been sitting in that hard armchair the whole time?
And then Lucie remembered Thanasis had told her she’d been in a car accident. Funny how she’d been too engrossed in listening to his voice to bother listening to his words. And then she’d been too engrossed in discovering she was supposed to be marrying him to worry about the fact she was lying in a hospital bed feeling as sick as a parrot and with a seeming head injury.
‘Am I very badly hurt?’
The nurse gently squeezed her hand. ‘There are concerns but all your vital signs are looking good. I have paged the doctor—it is for her to explain what has happened to you.’
‘My head?’ she guessed, a guess greatly aided by Thanasis’s earlier observation that her head hurtingwas to be expected. And also aided by her memories being wiped. She wondered if it accounted for the dreamlike state she was in or if that was the result of whatever drugs were being fed into her.
But maybe this wasn’t just a dreamlike state but an actual dream, she wondered again, and as she thought this, Thanasis came back into the room, all tall, dark and brooding, accompanied by a woman whose demeanour immediately identified her as a doctor, and Lucie’s mother.
One whiff of her mother’s overpowering perfume was all the proof Lucie needed to know that this was no dream.
* * *
Lucie had to wait until Thanasis left the room to make some business calls before she could speak to her mother privately. She was exhausted, her stomach still unsettled, and all she really wanted to do was sleep, but this was too important to wait.
‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘Did I really agree to marry him?’
Her mother’s perfectly painted lips smiled. ‘Yes, my darling, you did, and I cannot begin to tell you how proud and grateful we all are for the sacrifices you’re making for us.’
But Lucie’s head was too fuzzy to think about sacrifices, even when her mother airily mentioned Lucie resigning her job so she could move to Greece. The few short hours she’d been awake had been like waking in some kind of twilight zone where up was down and left was right. She had a diamond ring on her finger given to her by a man who when she’d last fallen asleep had been her stepfamily’s enemy. And, she supposed, by extension,herenemy.
‘Mum…how do Thanasis and I get on? The nurse seems to think…’ But it was too incomprehensible to vocalise.
‘Seems to think what?’ her mother prompted.
She had to drop her voice to a whisper to actually say it. ‘She thinks he’s in love with me.’
The black eyes Lucie had inherited flickered. There was a long hesitation before her mother said, ‘It has been obvious to us all that strong emotions have developed between you.’
‘So he does love me?’
A shorter hesitation. ‘I am certain of it.’
‘And am I in love with him?’
This time there was no hesitation at all. ‘Yes, my darling, I do believe you are.’
* * *
Thanasis strode to the end of the corridor by the fire exit, checked no one was within earshot, and made the call.
Alexis answered on the second ring. ‘Is it true?’
‘Yes. She has amnesia.’
‘How long until her memories come back?’
‘Unknown. Could be days. Could be months. They might never come back.’
‘Who knows what happened between the two of you?’
‘You, your father and Lucie’s mother.’
‘Not your parents?’
‘Obviously they know about the accident but not what went on before. Have you told anyone else?’
