Page 51 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
Saskia held her breath. Her hands moved to cover her mouth.
He cracked open the box and nestled there within it was an exquisite ring, a gorgeous diamond set with smaller ones all around it, and it shined so bright it was impossible to look at it andnotsmile.
“Marry me,” Thanasis said to her, and though his voice was deep it was a question, not a command. “Be my wife. The mother of my children. The light of my life. Because you are already the love of my life, Saskia. This is true when you lived, this is true when you died, and it is only more true now that you are mine again.”
He did not shift. He kept his gaze trained on her, with all their lost futures bright and shining there between them. “I cannot imagine a day without you. I have already lived too many of them and I do not wish to do it again.” His expression grew even more intense. “I am not ashamed of you. I do not want to hide you. And I will protect you from anyone who comes for you, whether it’s my father, my silly half siblings, or anyone else who is foolish enough to imagine that I will not use every last thing in my power to keep you safe, happy, and filled with as much joy as you can bear.”
“Yes,” Saskia whispered. “With everything I am, everything I was, and everything I hope we will be,yes, Thanasis. I can’t wait to marry you. I can’t wait to grow old with you. I can’t wait to live our whole lives together, the way we’re supposed to do.”
Then she sank down on her knees too, and cried without restraint or the faintest shred of shame when he slipped that ring on her finger.
And when their mouths finally met again, she knew at last that she was home.
Thattheywere home.
That this sweeping, life-altering, all-consuming kiss, made of fire and love and the rest of eternity, would always be the only home they needed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They did notstay in the flat, though they couldn’t bear to part with it. They moved instead into Thanasis’s beautiful house on Hampstead Heath, which reminded Saskia of a museum.
“Maybe a mausoleum,” she murmured, when he walked her through the marble halls and echoing rooms.
“Something like that,” he agreed, and then he showed her into a particular room that was all books and art, all arranged around one enormous canvas on the far wall.
Saskia recognized it at once. “It’s that painting,” she breathed, her hands over her mouth again, this time because she was laughing. “You went out and got that dreadful painting.”
He came and stood beside her, pulling her into his side because they liked everything better when they fit together like puzzle pieces.
“It is dreadful,” he agreed, gazing up at it. “I bought it shortly after we met, when that exhibition ended. It has not improved in all this time.” He smiled down at her. “But I find I cannot bear to part with it.”
She tipped her head back. “You’ve had it all this time.”
“You might not have been here,” he told her, his smile fading while the intensity in his gaze grew. “But there is no place I have ever been that you are not,fos mou.”
They married quietly and without fanfare, and spent that first night back in the flat, as if to finally christen the place withtheir legal union. As if that was the only way they could leave those rooms in Chelsea that had seen the whole span of their relationship.
Neither one of them wanted to get rid of the place even then, but they couldn’t go back after that. They cleared it out of everything that was theirs and leased it out.
Then they set about making his mausoleum into their home.
And every time the sun was out over London, Saskia would find a reason to sit with him in the mornings in their well-tested bed, gaze out at the sunrise, and think about this life she’d almost lost twice.
She only wished that Ffion was here to see it.
But I think that you see just fine from where you are,she would think.And I hope you know that I’m right where I belong.
Thanasis turned a little-used greenhouse and shed into an art studio, and insisted that she use it. Saskia felt like a fraud, and expected that she would waste her time the way she had when she was on the island.
But instead, she found that when she picked up a brush or a pencil, the lines seemed to form of their own accord.
Maybe, all along, her interest in art had been an attempt to use beauty to find safety. And now she was safe, and her life was more beautiful by the day, and at last she could let the art in her free.
It was a magical, creative, fertile time. In more ways than one.
They had their first baby nine months from that first night back together in the flat. She was a chubby, smiley girl, filled with life and love, and they named her Selwen Ffion, because it only seemed right.
“And because,” Saskia whispered to her daughter in the middle of the night, as the baby latched on and her husband laybeside her with his hand on her back so she wouldn’t be alone, “I think Selwen deserves a better life. And you’ll give her one, my darling girl. I know you will.”
