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He passed the stall with the irritated mother and the lecherous businessman, and found his target. He stood directly in her line of sight.
‘Mademoiselle?’
‘À mon âge?’the elderly lady replied with a twinkle in her eyes, her hands shaking so that he worried for the contents of her purse.
Lykos nodded.‘Madam,’he corrected with a small bow of his head.‘Je peux?’he asked, tucking the fallen strap of her bag securely over the handle bar of her walking frame without her notice.
‘Mais oui. Merci.’
The businessman scowled at him and the girl at the kiosk counter’s eyes followed Lykos as he stalked off to the train to London,afterbuying the elderly lady’s magazine.
Marit found her window seat on the quiet train, casting looks up and down the carriage, still convinced the enigmatic Greek would come stalking down the train to snatch her back up. The overhead announcement warned passengers they had one minute before departure.
Her heart pounding in her chest, Marit slid into the window seat, putting her bag on the seat between her and the aisle, hoping that it would deter a stranger from taking it. She held her breath as she heard the beeps sounding that the train doors were closing. Her eyes drifted shut and she prayed.
Please. Just give me this. Then I’ll do what’s needed, I promise. Just this.
Her heart lurched forward with the sudden jerk of the TGV, adrenaline coursing through her veins along with a sense of victory. She had a feeling that fooling Lykos Livas wasn’t an everyday occurrence.
But now that the train was moving she allowed herself to think about her destination when she arrived in Milan. She reached into her bag for her music player, fitting the wireless pods into her ears and pressing play, letting the opening notes from one of her favourite songs slide over her, familiar and soothing.
She’d wanted to visit Sforzando for years, its reputation as the best blues bar in Italy unprecedented. Marit might have been given many freedoms over the years, but there were some her parents had still baulked at.
Don’t be silly, Marit. A princess can’t be seen in a blues club.
Piano lessons are fine, as long as you stick to classical pieces. But a guitar is out of the question.
A music degree, Marit? Really? Don’t be so naïve.
Fresh blooms of hurt sprang from the remembered words. What her parents—and even her siblings—had failed to understand was that it wasn’t just music, it wasn’t just part of some rebellion. It was so much more than that. Music had been her escape. It was a way for her to express emotions and feelings that she was unable to put to words. It had been an outlet for her anger before she’d known it was anger, loss before she’d realised she’d felt loss, and an expression of yearning before she’d ever known what she was looking for.
She looked out of the window, unseeing of the bricks and wires twisting in the shadows as the train left the station to the sound of a deep, constant, rhythmic guitar strum that was hypnotic. She frowned when she felt a presence standing in the aisle on the other side of the seat where her bag was. More than a little disgruntled that the fellow passenger couldn’t find any other seat to pick, she lifted her back and angled herself further away from the person, ignoring the way the man folded himself into the seat. Impossibly long legs looked almost comical pressed up against the back of the seat in front.
Just as her favourite singer proclaimed that she couldn’t find her way home, a stillness settled in the air between her and the passenger, Marit’s whole body filling with sudden tension as she slowly turned to find Lykos staring at her with a raised eyebrow.
Dammit!
She pulled the pod from her ear and he was momentarily distracted by the blush of anger forming on her cheeks, making those freckles even more golden.
‘Hello, Princess,’ said Lykos, leaning back against the seat, making a big show of getting comfortable, despite the way his pulse was racing from having to sprint to the train before it left. If he hadn’t caught sight of the particular shade of blonde of Marit’s hair from the corner of his eye as he took the escalators in the wrong direction he’d have completely missed her.
From the Princess’s scowl, she clearly didn’t realise how close she’d come to getting away with her plan, whatever that plan was. He shifted his shoulders, disliking the way that sweat stuck his shirt uncomfortably to his back, even as the youth in him delighted in the game, celebrated victory at having caught the Princess. It added a little flavour to the pounding of his heart in his chest.
‘How did you find me?’ she demanded.
‘I’m that good.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘You got lucky.’
It was an accusation that had been levelled at him again and again over the years. At least one of them had been delivered in a Russian accent. But each and every one of them had been an underestimation of the determination and power driving him forward; of the lengths he would go to, to leave the dirt of the streets of Athens behind him. Hadleftbehind him, he mentally corrected.
‘Luck is what you make of it.’ His father’s words were out of his mouth before he could pull them back, leaving teeth marks on his tongue and burns deep in his heart. As if the verbal slip disproved his assertion that he was no longer the same street thiefscrabbling for scraps. The sweat on his skin turned frigid and he wanted a shower to wash off the memories. Instead, he was leaving his apartment in Paris far behind him at a rate of knots.
‘Why did you run?’ he asked, rooting himself in the present. ‘We had a truce,’ he accused, the gravel in his voice vibrating from the distaste of a broken agreement.
‘Clearly, I have some...free time...before I am needed in Svardia. I thought I’d do a bit of travelling.’
Christé mou, she’d overheard his conversation with Aleksander. And must have heard what he’d said after.
