Page 44 of Forgotten Greek Proposal
She rammed her fist into her mouth to smother the scream fighting to break free.
Oh, God, how could she face seeing him again?
Shehadto face him. There was no other choice.
When she finally left the bathroom, he’d thrown on a pair of shorts and was sitting at the end of the bed rubbing his head.
She sank her weak legs onto an armchair facing him and forced herself to meet his gaze. ‘Was any of it true? You and me? The great unexpected romance?’
There was a bleakness in his stare. ‘No. None of it was true. It was a lie we fed you to stop you leaving me again.’
She gripped hold of her knees and hung her head in an effort to fight against a world trying to spin itself off its axis around her again. ‘Again?’
He gave a taut nod. ‘I hated you. I made your life a misery.’
She turned her face away, his blunt admittance slicing like a knife through her heart.
The spasm of pain on Lucie’s face lanced him. Drawing in a long breath, Thanasis filled himself with resolve.
She deserved the truth.
And he deserved whatever retribution came from it.
Especially now.
God forgive him.
‘I hated your entire family. I agreed to the marriage because it was the only viable way of saving my business and saving my family from destitution, but I hated you before I even set eyes on you and when I did set eyes on you and realised you were the woman from the party I’d searched the streets of Athens for, I made damned sure that you hated me too.’
Her gaze turned back to him, her distressed black eyes wide.
‘Oh, yes,’ Thanasis said grimly. ‘I was deliberate about it. I had mentally allocated two years of my life to our marriage, and then it would be dissolved and I would find myself a real wife to build my real future with. Georgios Tsaliki’s stepdaughter was never going to be that woman.’
God that he could take it all back. Rewind to when he’d opened his bedroom door to find her naked and tell her the truth then, before he’d lost himself to the heat of his passion for her and shared the most incredible and fulfilling emotional and physical experience of his life with the woman whose heart had connected to his and which he now needed to break.
He could only pray that Lucie could find it in herself to forgive him. He would never forgive himself.
‘In my wildest, most secret dreams, the woman I would build my future with was the tiny waif with a mass of black curly hair who’d captured a piece of my heart all those years ago…’
Her chin wobbled. She made the smallest of whimpers.
God that he could lift all her pain from her. He would not close his eyes or his ears to it.
‘And then I found she was you.’ His mouth twisted in self-loathing. ‘I cannot tell you how much I hated you for being her, or how much I hated myself for still wanting you. I even hated you for your selflessness—you were giving up your life and independence to save the fortunes of a monster and getting nothing in return. You asked for nothing in return. Nothing.
‘You and I spent two months in a war I instigated and fed. I treated you despicably and in turn you treated me with loathing and contempt, but to reiterate—it all came from me. You’d been prepared to give me a chance… I’d seen it in your eyes and I hated that about you too. This was all on me. Everything that was toxic about our relationship came from me, and I will regret my behaviour and the way I treated you for the rest of my life.’
She closed her eyes.
Theos, she looked so small. So lost. The towel she’d wrapped around herself was swallowing her up.
If only she would let him reach across…
Her eyes opened and clamped onto his. ‘What happened at the end?’
His stomach lurched. He pulled his lips together.
‘What else?’ she said, her voice hardening. ‘I know there’s something else and I know it involves Athena.’
