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He scooped her up in his arms and gathered her close to his cooling body. He carried her to the bed, laying her down and falling on top of her.
They paused for a minute or two, catching their breaths and enjoying the delicious side by side of their bodies.
‘You didn’t open your present,’ he told her in a breathless voice.
‘I don’t want presents,’ she told him.
‘Okay,’ he said and sat up. ‘I’ll open it.’ He picked up the box and showed her. ‘I have very good taste, by the way.’
‘Good for you.’
‘Platinum,’ he said, ‘because I don’t like gold jewellery. I really do need to lose that watch—God, I wish someonewouldsteal it!’
She felt the stretch of a tiny smile, but she did not dare to hook her heart onto his words.
Except...
‘I had Leo speak to a local jeweller whoknows. Because I wanted a sapphire the colour of an Anapliró sky at midday, which is the closest I can get to describing your eyes.’ He took her left hand and found her ring finger and said simply, ‘I need you to marry me, Mary.’
‘Costa...’
‘Be with me.’
‘But Roula...?’
‘We are friends. I have told you that,’ he said, but she felt her eyes filling. ‘Always just friends...’
‘It’s not that.’ She and her father were finally close again. She could not abandon him now.
‘I’ve spoken to your dad.’ Costa’s voice slipped into her despair. ‘I visited him.’
‘You’ve met him?’
‘Yesterday. I asked his permission to marry you.’
Her heart flooded then, because her father had lost so much pride and Costa had given him a piece of that back.
‘We spoke about you, about your mother, and I told him about the moment I knew I was in love with you.’
‘When?’
‘You asked for scooter helmets and I laughed—and then I thought of him, of the agony of playing a part in the death of his wife, in the death of his daughter’s mother. I could have taken you up that hill and been every bit reckless as he...’
‘No.’ She shook her head.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Right or wrong, I would never have forgiven myself, and I knew then that even if it went against all my plans to be free, I was in love.’
‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’
‘I didn’t know what to do with those feelings,’ Costa admitted. ‘So I decided to wait until after Yolanda’s birthday...maybe in Athens...’
Mary lay there, spinning.
‘I didn’t tell your father this,’ Costa said, ‘but that man needs a good lawyer. And whatever happens from here, I shall make sure he gets one.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I swore him to secrecy.’ Costa frowned then, for ever the cynic. ‘You really had no idea I was going to ask you to marry me?’
