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The rest of the day had passed uneventfully enough: she’d had a nap and a bath while Leo had worked in his study. And at around dinnertime he’d knocked on her door and told her he was planning to order food in, asked her what she’d like.
It had reminded Margo painfully of the weekends they’d spent together in this hotel or that, drinking champagne and eating takeaway, making love. Weekends stolen from reality, and yet so precious to her. Weekends when she’d felt carefree and alive in a way she never had before—or since.
She’d thought those weekends had kept her safe, kept her from being emotionally engaged. Emotionally vulnerable.
Now she knew she’d been a fool. And she was still being a fool, because every moment she spent with Leo made her feel more raw. More afraid.
The meal they’d shared tonight had been utterly different from those earlier ones. They’d sat at either end of a huge dining room table, a modern-looking thing of carved ebony, and Margo had picked at her plain pasta while Leo had eaten souvlaki and answered emails on his smartphone. Neither of them had spoken.
This, then, was her future. Silent meals and endless tension.
Would it have been different if she’d said yes to Leo’s proposal? Or would they have ended up here anyway, because they’d never loved each other? At least, Leo hadn’t loved her. And what she’d felt for Leo had been only the beginnings of something, a tender shoot that had been plucked from the barren soil of her heart before it could take root and grow.
She hadn’t let herself truly love Leo because loving someone meant opening yourself up to pain, heartache and loss. She’d learned long ago that people left you. Her mother, her foster parents, her sister. Oh, God, her sister.
Margo closed her eyes and willed back the rush of memory and pain.
Leo wouldn’t leave her. He had too much honour for that. And as for this child... She pressed a hand to her middle and closed her eyes. Stay safe, little one, she prayed silently. Stay strong.
She made a cup of ginger tea, cradling the warm mug in her hands, and curled up on a window seat in the living room. The huge bay window overlooked Kolonaki’s wide boulevards and narrow side streets, now illuminated only by a few streetlights and a thin crescent moon high above. In the distance she could see the Acropolis, its ancient buildings lit at night, a beacon for the city.
She took a sip of tea and tried to settle her swirling thoughts, but they were like leaves in a storm and the moment she tried to snatch at one another blew away. She closed her eyes and leaned against the window frame, tried instead to think of nothing at all.
‘Is everything all right?’
Margo opened her eyes to see Leo standing in the doorway, dressed only in a pair of navy silk pyjama bottoms that rested low on his trim hips. The sight of his bare chest, all sleek rippled muscle, the sprinkling of dark hair veeing down to the waistband of his pyjamas, made her heart lurch and the breath stop in her lungs. She knew how hot and satiny his skin could be. She remembered the feel of that crisp hair against her seeking fingers. She knew the intimate feel of his whole body pressed against hers, chest to breasts, hips bumping, legs tangled.
She stared at him, willing herself to speak, not to want. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she finally managed, her voice coming out in little more than a croak. ‘I made some tea to help me settle. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’
‘I couldn’t sleep either,’ he said, and to her shock he came to sit down beside her on the window seat, his hip nudging her toes. ‘Why couldn’t you sleep?’ he asked quietly.
‘Why couldn’t you?’ Answering his question with one of her own was easier than admitting all the fears and worries that were tumbling through her mind.
‘It’s a lot to process,’ Leo said after a moment. ‘A baby, marriage... Just over twenty-four hours ago I wasn’t anticipating either.’
‘No, I suppose I’ve had more time to deal with it.’
He glanced down at her bare feet and then wrapped one warm hand around her foot. Everything in Margo jolted hard, almost painfully, at the feel of his strong hand curled around the sensitive arch of her foot, his fingers touching her toes.
‘Your feet are cold,’ he said, and drew them towards him, tucking them under his leg just as he had so many times before, when they’d been together.
Margo simply sat there, rigid with shock, with both of her feet tucked under his legs, everything in her aching.
‘When you found out you were pregnant...’ Leo asked slowly. ‘How did it happen? How did you feel?’
Margo tensed, wondering if this was some kind of trap. Was he attempting to remind her once again of how non-maternal she’d been? Because she knew that. Of course she knew that, and it fed her fear.
