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‘Then marry me,’ he said, his hand squeezing gently, his fingers setting up a gentle massage. ‘I’ll make it up to you. I’ll show you how sorry I am for causing you such pain.’
A chill iced her veins. With a quick twist she ducked away from his hand, putting distance between them on the terrace.
‘No!’
‘No?’
She pulled open the French doors and stepped from the terrace into the sitting room, unwilling to share this conversation with the entire neighbourhood and knowing without doubt that he would follow her inside. ‘No, I won’t marry you. Why is this offer any different to the offer you made before I left LA? You wanted me to stay then because you felt bad about what you’d done. Because you felt bad.
‘And now you’re here, hounding me to marry you, for heaven’s sake, on the basis that you can show me how sorry you are. What do you think I am, Loukas, your responsibility of the week? Someone to make you feel better? To make you feel useful?’
‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Come on. You know you have an over-active sense of responsibility—look how you protected your sister, and fought to seek justice for what had happened to Zoë. And now Pia is safe, and you’ve avenged Zoë, so you need another cause—you need another responsibility. You want to save me from my disappointment, save me from my hurt, and you think marrying me will be a convenient way to do that and absolve your guilt!
‘Well, I don’t want to be your next project, thank you very much. And I certainly don’t want someone to feel like he should marry me to make up for the past.’
He stared at her across the room, his dark features shadowed in the low light. ‘But that’s not the reason I want to marry you.’
She blinked, waiting. ‘It’s not?’
He was shaking his head, moving closer. ‘Although I can see why you might think that.’
‘But you said you wanted to make it up to me.’
‘And I do.’ He stopped in front of her and reached a hand out to cup her cheek, holding her face in his hand. ‘I want to take years and years to make it up to you. I’m planning on making it up to you for a very long time.’
‘But then…why?’
His eyes held hers and she saw something new there, something deep and wonderful and powerfully magnetic that drew her closer.
‘Because I learned something after you’d gone.’ A second hand joined the first and she felt his fingers caress her skin, spreading their tingling heat to every part of her. ‘I recognised at last that all along, all the time I’d been thinking I was in charge, I had been falling further and further out of control.
‘I acted crazily because I was crazy. I was angry with you because I wanted you, and knew you would never want me after what I’d done; I dragged you to the beach house in a pretence of protecting my sister’s privacy because I couldn’t bear to let you go, and I asked you to stay because I was afraid I’d never see you again.
‘And it only occurred to me once you’d left why I was so desperate to keep you.’
She held her breath as she still waited, afraid to break the spell of his eyes on hers, afraid to break the magic sound of his words.
‘I was mad with grief after you left. And I tried to forget you, telling myself that I’d get over you, that you hated me.’ His eyes searched her face. ‘You don’t hate me, do you?’
Her lips stretched tight. ‘Oh, I tried,’ she admitted. ‘I truly wanted to at times—but, no, I don’t hate you.’
His features relaxed and he let his hands slip to her shoulders, his fingers hypnotically stroking her nape. She watched his mouth, now so close, as she breathed in his scent, everything working together to intoxicate her senses.
‘Good,’ he said, ‘because I couldn’t get over you. And then finally I worked out why.’ His hands slipped down her arms until he had each of her smooth hands in his own and he wove their fingers together.
‘Because I fell in love with you. And I fell so hard I didn’t even see what hit me. But I think I knew from the first moment we met that you were the one.’ He pulled her closer so that they were almost touching, his lips to her cheek, her mouth against the seductive rasp of his chin.
