Page 8 of Forgotten Greek Proposal
He was frightened her amnesia would make her change her mind, she realised.
‘I know your mother has done her best to impress on you how far advanced our wedding preparations are, but I will understand if you want to postpone it and give your memories the chance to come back,’ he said quietly, her hand now swallowed whole inside both of his. ‘If you’d rather call the whole thing off…obviously it would make things difficult from a business perspective but that is the least of my concerns. You and your health are my primary concerns, so if you want to postpone or cancel altogether, do not be afraid to say. I only want what is best for you.’
A dizzying rush of blood filled Lucie’s head.
He really did have feelings for her. Feelings enough to take the pressure of the wedding off her shoulders and give her brain the chance to heal even though the consequences for his business would likely be disastrous.
Close to being overwhelmed with the emotions being evoked by this man who was a stranger and yet with whom… Her heart skipped as her thoughts jumped.
If she already lived with this man then she was already sharing his bed…
Heat to power a small house suffused her from the inside out.
She’d shared a bed with Thanasis. Made love to him.
Concern creased his forehead. ‘You are flush,matia mou. Are you in pain?’
But that only deepened the heat scorching her, and she gave a quick, frantic shake of her head. No way was she going to confess what was going on in her head, not to a stranger, especially not a male one. The embarrassment would kill her. Whatever intimacies they’d shared, she had no memories of them.
‘You are sure?’ he pressed.
She drew in a long breath as she practically pinned her thoughts into submission so she could think and speak coherently. ‘Thanasis, I have no recollection of anything about our engagement or wedding plans but I know in my heart that I did promise to marry you. I’ve never broken a promise before and I’m not going to start now.’
The corners of his mouth twitched. ‘I would understand if you wanted time to start over. You must feel at a great disadvantage.’
‘It’s frustrating more than anything,’ she confessed. ‘It must be frustrating for you too. You and I have a history together but my stupid brain is taking us back to step one in the getting-to-know-you stakes.’
He turned her hand and pressed his mouth to her palm. ‘I would rather be on the first step with you than no step.’
The whole of her body sighed, and as his face inched closer to hers and the connection of the lock of their eyes deepened, anticipation pulsed into life and she held her breath…
He gently released her hand and gave a rueful twist of his lips. ‘It is getting late,’ he said, inching his chair back. ‘I will leave you to sleep.’
If there was one thing Thanasis had learned in the two months he’d spent getting to know Lucie Burton, it was that she was incapable of hiding her emotions, and he felt a flare of satisfaction mingled with guilt to see disappointment flash over her face.
‘I will be back before you wake, but I haven’t been home in five days.’ He shook off the guilt. If Lucie had taken one damn minute to hear him out, none of this would have happened, but the pin on the grenade of her temper had spent weeks a hair trigger away from being pulled out. If it hadn’t been Athena it would have been something or someone else. Lucie’s mother had forced him into playing the role of loving fiancé but Lucie’s actions had caused the necessity for it. ‘You need to sleep and I need to make arrangements to get you safely to Sephone and ensure all your medical needs can be taken care of.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my body, only my head.’
There waseverythingwrong with her body, and it took every ounce of self-control not to let his attentive fiancé mask drop and his revulsion show.
The revulsion was entirely for himself.
Thanasis had prepared himself to loathe Lucie. He could forgive Georgios’s blood children for loving their father and being loyal to him but Lucie chose to love him. She’d voluntarily chosen to sacrifice her life in England to save his fortune. She’d freely given her love and loyalty to a monster, which to Thanasis’s mind meant she condoned the monster and so made her equally despicable.
His first meeting with her had been after the terms of the marriage had been negotiated and agreed between himself and Alexis. A marriage in name only, one that would last a few years before they quietly went their separate ways. Their fathers had been given no choice but to fall in line with their plan. With everything agreed, the only thing left to do…apart from arrange the wedding…was for Thanasis to meet his ‘bride’.
The meet had taken place in the neutral territory of an exclusive hotel’s bar. Alexis had made the call and minutes later a tiny waif with a mop of long black curls had appeared. Just one look had been enough for Thanasis’s heart to explode.
Dear God in heaven, it washer.
His mind had flown back six years to Leander’s party and the waif dressed all in black and with black hair piled on top of her head like a curly pineapple. A tiny, tiny creature with the most strikingly beautiful face he’d ever set eyes on.
It had been the only time in his life he’d experienced that ‘eyes meeting across the room moment’. Before he’d had the chance to cross the floor to her and introduce himself, her friend, a blur to his eyes like every other face in the apartment had been in that moment, had dragged her away, not just from the room they’d entered but from the apartment itself. She’d vanished.
He’d asked Leander about her but Leander hadn’t known who he was talking about. Neither had anyone else.
For months he’d been unable to drive or walk a street in Athens without casting an eye for a diminutive waif with black curly hair, but he’d never seen her again. In time, he’d convinced himself that he’d imagined her.
