Sale or Return Bride

She took a few sips and then flopped back against the pillow, totally drained.

‘I’m sorry—’

Laden with guilt that she was the one apologizing when it had been he who’d thrown her in the water, Sebastien raked shaking fingers through his still-damp dark hair.

‘I’m the one who’s sorry,’ he said stiffly, unaccustomed to apologizing but determined to do so at the earliest possible minute in the hope that the incredible discomfort inside him would ease. ‘But why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t swim—?’

She closed her eyes. ‘I didn’t go near the water—’

He gritted his teeth. All right, so he should have noticed that fact. ‘It just didn’t occur to me that it was because you were afraid—’

Her eyes stayed closed. ‘Doesn’t matter now.’

It mattered to him.

Driven by a need to put right a wrong, Sebastien disposed of the glass and scooped her on to his lap. ‘I wish you would stop shivering,’ he groaned but no matter how tightly he held her the shivering continued.

‘Sorry—’

‘Stop saying that,’ he breathed in a raw tone, stroking her damp hair away from her face. ‘I’m the one who is sorry but you should have told me how you felt. That first day when you were so afraid. I thought it was the flying, but I was barking up the wrong tree, wasn’t I? It was the water—’

Her teeth chattering, she gave a reluctant nod and he cursed softly.

She closed her eyes. ‘I’m being stupid—’

‘You are not being stupid,’ he said quietly. ‘You are clearly reacting to something that happened in your past. I want to know what it was.’

There was a brief silence.

‘I was on the boat—’

Sebastien tensed, unsure that he’d heard her correctly. ‘What boat?’

‘Your father’s boat. The day it exploded. I was there. I almost drowned.’

Shattered by her unexpected confession, Sebastien found himself lost for words. ‘That’s not true,’ he said finally, his voice sounding nothing like his own. ‘There were no children invited on the boat that day—’

‘I wasn’t invited.’ Still shivering, Alesia huddled deeper in the blankets, her blue eyes blank of expression. ‘I went on board only moments before the explosion. I was supposed to have stayed at the hotel in Athens with my nanny but I was desperate to show my mother a new doll I’d been given.’

Memories crowded into his brain. A young child badly injured—

‘You were on board when the boat exploded?’ His voice was hoarse and she lifted her head and nodded, her beautiful heart-shaped face so white that Sebastien momentarily toyed with instructing his pilot to return with the doctor immediately.

‘I’d barely set foot on the boat,’ she said softly, ‘and my parents didn’t know that I’d arrived.’ She swallowed. ‘I don’t remember much, to be honest. I was only seven. I just remember standing on the gangplank one minute and then being plunged into water. It was everywhere—I thrashed and thrashed.’ Her fingers clenched into her palms and she had to force herself to stay calm. ‘I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t find air, felt terrible pain and then everything went black.’

Sebastien’s breath hissed through his teeth and his face was pale under his tan. ‘Someone rescued you—do you know who?’

‘No.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘It was just a deckhand.’

‘You were the only child on the boat that day—?’

She frowned. ‘Yes—I suppose so.’

‘Theos mou—’ His voice was hoarse and he raked an unsteady hand through his glossy dark hair. ‘I didn’t know—’

‘Didn’t know what? What difference does it make?’

‘You were injured? And you lost both of your parents.’

Her gaze slid guiltily away from his. ‘I’m fine now.’

Sebastien surveyed her in frowning contemplation, sure that she wasn’t telling him the truth. But why would she lie? Having confessed as much as she had, why would she now choose to conceal the truth about the accident?

‘Sebastien?’

Aware that her teeth were still chattering, Sebastien’s frown deepened. ‘What?’

‘Could we just go to bed?’

Faced with a potential solution which was well within his sphere of experience, Sebastien seized on the suggestion with enthusiasm and immediately lifted her into his arms.

‘I could probably walk,’ she murmured into his neck and he tightened his grip.

‘Probably is not good enough,’ he growled, lowering her on to the bed as if she were made of something extremely fragile and covering her with a sheet.