Shackled by Diamonds

This time it was her voice that had an edge in it.

‘Thee mou, of course I don’t think that of you! No gold-digger gives a man as hard a time as you gave me!’ He shook his head in sorry memory. ‘So, any more objections, matias mou?’

But her expression stayed troubled, despite the lightness of his tone.

‘Leo—we come from very different worlds. I was brought up in a two-up, two-down next to the gasworks. Whereas you—’

He placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘So now you think me a snob, do you?’ He sighed. ‘Anna, my family fled Turkey in the 1920s with nothing. They lived in the slums of Athens for years. It was my late grandfather and my father who made the Makarios fortune—it’s all new money.’

‘But there’s so much of it!’ she wailed. ‘And you keep making more!’

He gave a laugh and dropped his hands.

‘Anna Delane, you’re the only woman I know who’d worry about that.’ He replaced his hands on her shoulders and looked at her, the expression in his eyes serious now. ‘If you’re worried I’m going to be the kind of husband who spends all his time in the office, obsessed with making money, you couldn’t be more wrong.’ His dark eyes searched hers. ‘I’ve got enough, more than enough, for the rest of my life—and for our children and their children. I want to be there for my children—our children—as my parents were not for me. So I’m not wasting any more of my life getting and spending—I’ve got two holes in my chest to remind me that life isn’t for ever.’

Anna clutched at his arms, her eyes stricken.

‘Oh, God, Leo. I’m so sorry for—’

He placed a hand over her mouth.

‘I cannot believe,’ he told her, ‘that I used to have fantasies about you saying sorry to me. It’s the biggest bore in the world!’

She flushed and pushed his hand away.

‘But it’s all my fault that you—’

He lowered his mouth and kissed her.

‘There’s just no stopping you, is there?’ he asked rhetorically.

‘No,’ she said.

And kissed him back.

Then, reluctantly, she drew away.

‘Leo, I still don’t think you should marry me. We could just—well, you know.’

‘Live in sin?’ His voice was wryly caustic.

‘Yes. You see…’ She gazed up at him earnestly, her eyes troubled. ‘None of this was meant to happen, was it? You only really wanted a night with me—maybe one or two, whatever else any other woman you went after got. It was only because you wanted your pound of flesh after the stupid rubies, and then all that nightmare with the gunmen, and you nearly dying, and—well, all that stuff. Otherwise it would have been over ages ago. I think we’re really still in post-traumatic shock—well, you mainly, I guess—and it’s making you a bit doolalley. Thinking about weddings and stuff like that. If you waited a few weeks you’d be back to normal again, I’m sure.’

Leo had taken a step backwards. An expression of outrage was gathering strength on his features.

‘I have taken,’ he said grimly, ‘everything I am going to take from you, Anna Delane. You have been absolutely nothing but trouble since I laid eyes on you. But this—this is too much. You actually dare to stand there and look me in the eyes and tell me I must be insane to want to marry you. Good God, woman,’ he roared, ‘I love you! Do you understand? Yes, I was a fool, a total idiot, thinking it was just sex I wanted. But I’ve wised up now. It took a couple of bullets to wise me up, but I have. And so have you. Now we both know it’s love, not just sex. So from now on that’s what we both do. Love each other. For ever. All our lives. You see that sun out there, Anna Delane? It shines out of me. Understand? You’d better because I can tell you it damn well shines out of you. Now—’ he heaved a big breath ‘—I don’t want to hear any more of this. Understand?’

‘Yes, but I—’

He silenced her with a kiss.

‘Stop arguing,’ he told her.

‘But I—’

‘Stop—’ he kissed her ‘—arguing.’

When she surfaced, after a long, long time, she gazed up at him. He was right, damn it, she thought.

The sun really did shine out of him. It was infuriating. But it was true.

He read her expression, eyes twining with hers.

‘It’s the same for me, Anna,’ he told her softly. ‘It really, really is.’

She went on gazing up at him adoringly.

Leo let her do it, and did it back, because he was helpless, quite helpless to do otherwise—all his life. For ever.