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But that was easier said than done.
Eventually the three women finished their greetings and catch-up and turned to Margo.
‘Leo is a dark horse,’ Lindsay said teasingly. ‘I didn’t even know he was seeing someone.’
Margo’s insides tensed. ‘He likes to keep things quiet, I suppose,’ she said.
‘You’re one to talk, Lindsay,’ Xanthe said, grinning. ‘Antonios showed up with you with no warning whatsoever!’
‘That’s true,’ Lindsay agreed with a laugh.
Desperate to direct the spotlight away from herself, Margo said, ‘That sounds like there’s a story to be told.’
Lindsay agreed, and then told Margo how she and Antonios had met and married in New York City all within a week.
‘When you know, you know, right?’ she said, with a smile that Margo suspected was meant to create solidarity but only made everything inside her shrink with apprehension.
Lindsay made it sound as if everything was obvious and easy when you were in love, but Margo still felt so much uncertainty, so much fear. She wanted to embrace this new life, and yet still she was holding back, and Leo was too. Perhaps they always would.
It was certainly hard for her. Everyone had let her down at one point or another. No one had been there for her when she’d needed it. It was so difficult to let go of that history—not to make it affect her choices even now. Difficult not to brace herself for when Leo would fail her, or say he’d had enough, or just walk away. Everyone else had—why wouldn’t he?
Antonios and Leo finally came into the sitting room. Margo shot Leo a swift, searching look, but she couldn’t tell anything from his face and she wondered what had passed between the two brothers.
The conversation moved on to Parthenope’s family, and little Timon’s antics. Margo sat back and let it all wash over her; it felt good to be part of a family—even if she was just sitting and listening to everyone else. She caught Leo’s eye and he smiled at her, and the uncertainty that had been knotting her stomach eased a little.
It was going to be okay. She would believe that. At least she would try.
* * *
Leo sat on the settee across from Margo, barely listening to everyone’s chatter. The stilted conversation he’d had with Antonios out on the steps replayed in his mind.
It had been strange and unsettling to see his brother again, standing there in front of their childhood home, remembering the death of both of their parents, a decade of hostility and suspicion between them... Leo had felt himself tense, his hands ball into instinctive fists. He’d seen from the set of Antonios’s jaw and his narrowed eyes that he felt the same.
They could clear the air, they could forgive the past, they could say they were moving on, but the reality was that memories still clung. They still held power. And if he couldn’t move past things with Antonios, how could he with Margo?
He wanted to tell her he loved her, wanted to trust that what they had was real and lasting. But the memory of her last rejection still had the power to hurt. To make him stay silent. They’d had just over a month together...a few intense moments. Nothing, he acknowledged, that actually constituted a real, loving, trusting relationship.
‘How’s marriage?’ Antonios had asked as they’d stood outside in wintry silence.
‘Fine.’
‘I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.’
‘It’s not as if we keep each other up to date on our personal lives,’ Leo had answered. He’d meant to sound light, but it had come out terse and dismissive instead. ‘You’re one to talk, anyway,’ he’d added, trying for a joke, but it had fallen flat.
Antonios had just nodded, his jaw bunched, and they hadn’t spoken again until they were settled in the sitting room with everyone else—and then only about innocuous matters.
Leo’s gaze kept straying to Margo. She was listening to everyone, but he thought she looked tense, maybe even unhappy, and he wished they could be alone. Wished he could be sure of her feelings...and of his own.
* * *
‘Is everything all right between you and Antonios?’ Margo asked as they got ready for bed that evening.
They hadn’t spoken much during the day, busy as they’d both been with their guests. Margo, Leo noticed now, looked pale and tired, with lines of strain around her eyes.
‘As well as they can be, I suppose,’ he said as he stretched out on the bed.
Leo still kept his clothes in the adjoining room, but he’d brought a few things into Margo’s bedroom: his books, his reading glasses, his pyjamas. Small yet intimate things that spoke of building a life together. But lying there he felt as if his presence in Margo’s life, in her bed, was transient.
