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‘My ex-fiancé.’
‘I gathered that much, Célia.’
She inhaled the tense air between them, trying to fortify herself. ‘I met Marc at boarding school. He joined when we were sixteen and was...charming and playful. Fun. He could have had his pick of any of the female students, but he was only interested in me,’ she concluded with a shrug. ‘I was surprised, but flattered. I enjoyed his attention.’ It had been a gift even then, before she’d realised just how distant her father was and how desperate it had made her for affection. ‘He ended up at the same university as me and Ella. He’d wanted me to move into an apartment with him, but Ella and I had always talked about living together so I said no. But we went out, restaurants, clubs, parties. I didn’t really enjoy it—’ she could see that now ‘—my course required a lot of work, but he always seemed so disappointed when I would say no. Only after did I realise that the restaurants were always booked in my name, the VIP sections in clubs, the party invitations.’ And she felt like such a fool.
‘Over the four years we’d been together, he’d spent quite a bit of time with my family. He seemed to get on with my father, more than I did at least. He made a monumental effort with him. And I thought it was for me. Until I broke ties with my father. Until I changed my name. And somehow in his eyes, that made me a changed person. He refused to understand why what my father had done was wrong. Insisted that I try to make it up with him.
‘When I refused, he began to retreat. Telling me I’d changed, telling me that I wasn’t fun any more. He made me doubt myself, and it hurt to force myself to be with him, to keep a smile on my face I didn’t feel surrounded by people I didn’t know. Because I didn’t want to lose him too.’ She felt the ache building in her chest. Hating to admit such a thing, feeling so very vulnerable to tell Loukis this. But she knew that he deserved what little she could tell him. ‘Slowly, bit by bit he removed himself from my life. I didn’t notice at first, but then it would be days, or a week that I wouldn’t see or hear from him. Ella convinced me to have it out with him, if anything just to let him know how I felt.
‘It was awful. He said it was all my fault. The time and energy he’d put into me wasted. How he didn’t want agirlfriend—you see, I’d been relegated by that point—who couldn’t...givehim anything. What use was I if I was not perfect?’
In that instant, she realised the truth of the past. As if saying it out loud had somehow conjured the shocking revelation that she had never been wanted. Not for herself. Only for what she could do and be for someone. She had been used by her father, by Marc...and each time she had failed to live up to their expectations, had failed to be what they wanted and in that moment she felt that she had never felt truly loved.
Loukis pressed a drink into her hands and she realised she was shaking.
‘And I demanded the same,’ Loukis said softly into the silence.
‘Non,’she replied, shaking her head. ‘I knew what you expected from the beginning. You didn’t...’
‘Lie?’ he said, letting loose a curse that surprised her.
Loukis let out the burst of air locked in his lungs, trying to marry the two vastly different aspects of her personality—the technical expert and the head of a humanities charity—and make them somehow fit with the guilt stirring in his veins. Guilt because, no matter how much she might try to absolve him, he had taunted her with perfection. With the need to be everything that her father and ex-fiancé had unfathomably found wanting in her. Guilt because, even as he knew how much it cost her, he still needed that perfection. For Annabelle. And that scoured his veins and struck his heart. Because it was a hurt that called to him. A hurt that he recognised so painfully as a mirror reflection, in some ways, of his own.
His father had never disapproved of him, nor his mother—they had both been so preoccupied with each other, he had barely even been a consideration. Oh, his father had tried after the divorce, but he’d never been the same, just a shell of the man he once had been.
But he did know how that affected him. It had seen him spiral into a level of selfishness that had him desperate to indulge in every whim, every pleasure, everything he felt had been denied him in his childhood. Looking back now, he could see the mask that had hidden that childhood hurt. The rakish playboy, the careless façade had created a barrier between him and the world...him and hurt.
But all the while he had been indulging, had been consumed by satisfying his wants and needs with a selfishness that shamed him now, Célia had chosen a different path to direct her energies. He wanted her to see that. Wanted to help her realise that she was so much more. So worthy of more than whatever pittance her father had meted out.
‘You know that what you’ve achieved since then is incredible.’ It was a statement. A reassurance. ‘You did it without the backing of a name and an existing company, which is far more than I’ve ever done.’
She turned aside, as if not even wanting to accept the compliment.
‘Célia, look at me,’ he commanded, bringing her face round to his with the crook of his finger at her chin. He took in her large, molten amber eyes, the same fiery colour shining from her hair. The pale, creamy skin blushed by a tint of peach, sweet enough to want to...
He stifled the wicked sensual pull he felt, the desperate urge to taste more than the simple starter he had experienced the night before, to delve into everything she had to offer. None of which he could do, or even entertain the thought of. Bringing anything more into the precarious agreement they had could bring the whole thing crashing down about them. As if torn between reluctance and the desire to touch, he reached his arm out around her shoulders and drew her to him, the action soothing something within them both.
‘I mean it. You should be incredibly proud of what you’ve achieved. Yalena—’
‘Was only interested in me because of you,’ she interrupted.
‘Yalena,’ he pressed on, ‘wouldn’t have agreed to partner with you had it not been because you are worthy of it. She’s a great friend, but she wouldn’t even do that for me. You are the head of a company that has seen great success in the first three years because of the drive and determination you have brought to it and that should not be dismissed. You have a power that it pains me to see you don’t realise. And no one, not your father, nor some stupid ex who didn’t realise what he had before throwing it away, norIcan take that away. Only you can do that to yourself. And until you cast that aside, you won’t realise just how much more you can achieve.’
As Célia felt the words settle about her, she began to feel it. The power that he had talked of, the pride that he had shown her through his eyes. It soothed, and it helped. But she couldn’t deny that she still felt...still felt that she wanted more. More from Loukis.
‘What happens now?’ she asked, her voice still a little shaky from emotion.
‘Now? Now I need to know how quickly you can plan an engagement party.’
Célia had laughed at the idea that an engagement party would distract the press enough from her notorious father’s identity. But the moment it was announced, they had behaved exactly how Loukis had promised they would.
Célia felt a fresh wave of goosebumps crest across her skin. Not from the fresh sea-salt-laden air, but the nervousness for what was to come. Standing on the deck of the most luxurious yacht she’d ever seen, she couldn’t quite believe that all of this was for her.For them.
The first guests were due to arrive any moment now and she felt poised on the brink of something she couldn’t put a name to. In the last week, since the night of the press furore, things had been...easier between her and Loukis. She had feared that sharing a bit of her past would disappoint him, or disgust him. But it had been freeing. A weight had lifted. Not all, but some of it. She had taken his words that night to heart. Allowed them to settle around her and drawn strength from them.
She refused to turn for the sound of Loukis’s footsteps making their way towards where she stood at the balcony of the yacht, looking out over the port of Piraeus. The sun was hovering halfway between the zenith and the horizon, bright and still powerful even at this time in the afternoon.
She was amazed that she didn’t flinch when she felt Loukis draw the silk scarf that had fallen into the crook of her arm upwards over her shoulder. All these little touches, the sheer proximity of him, sent a thrill through her, as if the power of them had built over the last few days. Something she had come to long for, as if the dizzying rush of adrenaline and desire had become addictive to her, and she just about managed to stop herself from leaning into him.
