Irresistible Bargain with the Greek

But her arm was caught.

‘Talia, we need to talk—’ Luke’s breath caught. ‘Especially now.’

She stared at him. Exhaustion, both of her body, from her long sleepless vigil by her mother’s side, and her spirit from seeing Luke again, consumed her.

She shook her head wearily. She wanted to pull away from him, but she had no strength left. Numbly, she let him lead her out of the hospital and walked beside him, saying nothing, down to the sea front.

He sat her down on a bench on the promenade and then joined her. She moved away from him, to the end of the bench. It was an automatic gesture. To be here at all with him was hard to bear. To be close

to him would be impossible.

Everything to do with him was impossible.

Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.

The word echoed in her head—useless and pointless.

He doesn’t see who I really am so everything is impossible.

She couldn’t look at him—could only stare out over the promenade. The beach below was starting to fill up, parasols unfurling, tourists settling in for another carefree day of their holidays.

‘Why,’ she heard Luke ask, his voice grim, ‘did you never tell me about your mother?’

Talia glanced at him, and then away. ‘What relevance does that have?’

‘That,’ he retorted, ‘is what I want to know.’

‘It doesn’t have any relevance,’ she said.

‘Did you know her heart was weak?’

She looked at him again. ‘Yes.’ Her eyes went out to the sea, so calm and still at this hour of the morning. ‘It’s why I wanted us to stay on at the Marbella villa for longer. She’d already been taken ill when I had to tell her we’d lost that, as well. She found it...difficult to cope.’

Her voice was stilted, reflecting her reluctance to speak. But she just didn’t have the strength to oppose Luke right now. Exhaustion was uppermost in her mind. And an overwhelming level of emotion that she could not cope with. Not now.

She heard Luke swearing. It was in Greek, and it was low and vehement.

‘And why,’ he asked, ‘did you not tell me that when you came to my offices to beg not to be evicted?’

Her head twisted. His voice was cold. Cold with anger. But anger was in her, too.

‘Tell you what?’ she spat. ‘That the wife of the man you’d reduced to bankruptcy wasn’t taking it too well? That she didn’t like the fact that she wasn’t going to have a lavish budget for topping up her designer wardrobe any longer? That she’d been reduced to nothing more than an eight-bedroom mansion with ten bathrooms, a swimming pool and a gourmet kitchen, on a millionaire’s estate in Marbella, which she couldn’t—oh, dear me, no—just couldn’t bear to leave? Why didn’t I tell you that?’

She saw his expression close at the violence of her tone.

‘And what would you have done, Luke, if I’d told you all that? You’d have told me to get real. That our days of being pampered pets—her a queen and me a princess—were over! I knew that. But—’ She stopped short.

She turned back to stare sightlessly over the Mediterranean Sea, dazzling in the sunlight, too bright to behold.

‘But my mother couldn’t face it. She was still clinging to hope. Still deluding herself with pointless illusions about my father sorting it all out and coming back to save us.’

And Mum’s thoughts were as pointless as the illusions I wove about you, Luke—the illusions you tore to pieces when you made it clear what you thought of me.

She wrenched her mind away. What use was it to remember the illusions she’d so stupidly had about Luke? Clumsily, she got to her feet. She stood looking down at him where he sat, hands held loosely between his thighs. His head lifted. His expression was unreadable.

She gave a heavy sigh. It was all too much right now. Last night her mother had nearly died... And the man who had put the ‘nearly’ in that sentence was before her now. He deserved her gratitude, no matter how he had treated her.

‘Luke, thank you. Thank you for what you did for my mother...’ She took a difficult breath. ‘At the café.’