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She sounded so lost he wanted to help. Needed to.
‘How did you find the map and the key?’ he asked, genuinely curious.
‘There were coded messages in the journal entries we discovered, and the last message said,You will find them when the map and the key are brought together. Which is fine, but we don’t have the time to wait. If the diamonds are here then Ishouldbe able to find them. Yet I’ve been through the passageways and the journals and I can’t see where they might be hidden. Catherine writes so much about faith and love and truth, andtrust, but...’
‘That is not quite your area of expertise? Because you like touching and knowing and understanding?’
She looked up at him as if surprised that he recognised that about her, but then his words incited a different understanding. Her cheeks heated, raising his own temperature, the pulse of desire catching and flashing the entire length of his body.
Mine.
But it was more than desire. It was more than recognising someone as sexually compatible. This time it was primal, animalistic. He’d never felt anything so powerful in his entire life. She was his and carrying his child. The cry of possession, loud, insistent and undeniable, tolled through his entire body.
The fierceness of it scared him. Because already to want that much, to need it...it was spinning out of his control and he wasneverout of control. He’d never been out of control. Before her. He drew in a lungful of air to stop the way the ground seemed to shimmer beneath his feet.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said, rising as he spoke, surprising them both. His skin itched and he felt half suffocated by his thoughts and by this estate.
‘That wasn’t my fault,’ Theron growled, wondering how quickly he could book a dental appointment back home. His molars were getting a pounding from the clench of his jaw.
Beside him in the car, Summer slowly exhaled. ‘That was mostdefinitelyyour fault. You’re too far out in the road.’
‘What road? It’s little more than a dirt track,’ he replied, outraged.
‘Do you want me to drive?’ she asked, not wholly sarcastically.
Theron actuallyfeltthe look of utter disbelief on his features and tried to ignore the way she bit her lip to stop herself from smiling.
Following the satnav directions on the postcode he’d plugged in, he tried not to become distracted by the slashes of verdant green stretching along the horizon in ways he’d never seen before. But from the corner of his eye he could see Summer’s fingers twisting in her lap.
‘I want to apologise.’ The words fell from his lips urgently, before he could change his mind.
Summer flicked a confused glance at him. ‘What for?’
It was a valid question. There were quite a number of options. He saw her bite her lip just before he returned his eyes to the road.
‘The way I...behaved,’ he said, the words twisting, hot, guilty and painful, in his gut. ‘The way I treated you in Greece.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry doesn’t change it, but I am very and truly sorry.’
He felt the press of her gaze against his skin, checking the road before turning to look at her, hoping that she saw the truth of his words. But it cost him dearly, because he saw the depth of her hurt from that day. He turned back to the road only after she nodded.
‘Where are we going?’ Summer asked after a few minutes. ‘Only I don’t like being away from the estate too long.’
Theron paused for a beat. ‘When was the last time you actually left the estate?’
She pressed her lips together and looked out of the window. Clearly she hadn’t left. He frowned. From what she had said, they had arrived for the funeral nearly two months ago and her sisters had left nearly one month ago. All that time with nothing but searching for the diamonds to distract her from her worry about her mother.
Waiting for the inevitable, hoping for a miracle.
He knew that feeling well. It had been written on his soul during the days he’d spent with Kyros beside Althaia’s bedside in the hospital room as the monitors beeped down to a flat line. Theron had hurt with Kyros, cried with him, paced with him and held both his and Althaia’s hands. He’d realised in that hospital room that Kyros and Althaia had been in his life longer than his own parents had. The love he had borne witness to in those weeks, and over the years, had made it so hard for him to believe what Summer had told him in Greece.
How ironic then that as he looked at Summer now he suddenly saw Kyros in her. It wasn’t the mole on her collarbone or the shape of her face. It was her eyes. The way that she faced the future with a sense of inevitability. As if braced for hurt.
He remembered that feeling. Waiting for the next blow, emotional or physical, it didn’t matter. He’d had to cut himself off from feelings, he’d had to embrace a numbing to live through that and he didn’t want Summer to experience that. He wouldn’t let that happen.
He turned off the main road and cut down a track, wincing as the car’s suspension took a pounding. Perhaps he should have rented a four-wheel drive.
He was focused so hard on the road and the car that he hadn’t looked further until he heard Summer gasp. Having grown up in Piraeus, practically on the beach, Theron was faintly dismissive of her reaction to what was presumably a small strip of blue. Until he looked up.
‘Oh.’
