Hot Picks: Exotic Propositions

Lukas arrived by helicopter just a few hours later. Rhiannon watched from her window, Annabel playing at her feet. He went straight to his father; she heard his quick footsteps on the stairs. She wondered when—if—he would come to see her.

He’d left the island to escape her. She doubted he was in any hurry to see her again now.

‘You shouldn’t have come back.’

Theo’s voice was thready, weak, and Lukas tried not to let his shock show on his face. His father looked half the man he had been only a day ago as he lay in bed, his usually thick shock of white hair thin and flat against his head.

‘Of course I should have,’ he replied evenly. ‘You’re my father.’

‘I’m fine.’ Theo spoke in fits and starts, his voice slightly wheezy. At times he struggled for over a minute for a certain word or phrase.

It made Lukas ache to hear his father like this—to see a man who held the deeds to the most desirable real estate in all of Greece in one triumphant fist reduced to such weakness and misery.

‘There was business to attend to,’ Theo continued with effort.

‘I’ve seen to it.’ Lukas stared blindly out of the window. ‘Is the doctor acceptable? We can hire a nurse, of course. One of the best from Athens.’

Theo shook his head.

Lukas heard the movement, the rustling of covers, and turned. ‘What?’

‘I have a nurse.’

It took a moment for him to realise, and then he stared at his father in surprise. ‘You mean Rhiannon?’

Theo nodded. ‘She suits me.’

It was the last thing he’d expected his father to say. To admit.

‘And,’ Theo continued in a stronger voice, ‘she suits you too.’

This shocked Lukas all the more. His face went blank and he turned back to the window. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You do.’ It was all Theo could afford to say, yet somehow it was enough.

Lukas was silent, but a familiar restless energy was now pulsing through him. She suits me. Yes, she did. All too well. Yet he could not give in to the desire, the need. He knew where that led, had seen the destruction.

The weakness.

‘Marry her, Lukas.’

He swivelled, stared in shock. ‘What? You are joking.’

Theo shook his head. ‘No.’

‘You know I’ve said I’ll never marry.’

‘I know. But now…Annabel…she needs a family.’

‘She’ll have one—’

‘Not some patched affair!’ Colour rose in Theo’s gaunt face. ‘A real family. I’d rather pass this company on to a girl who grew up in a loving home than to a drunken lout like Christos. Marry her, Lukas.’

Lukas shook his head. ‘But it would not be a loving home.’

Theo’s eyes brightened shrewdly. ‘Wouldn’t it?’

He stiffened, turned back to the window. ‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

The room was silent save for Theo’s laboured breathing. ‘I can’t allow…’ Lukas stopped, shook his head. He wouldn’t go there. Wouldn’t admit the truth. ‘Because she wouldn’t have me,’ he finally said, shrugging carelessly.

‘What?’ Theo was so surprised he laughed. ‘What—what woman wouldn’t have you? You, the most desirable bachelor in all of Greece? Pah. Of course she’ll have you.’

‘You don’t know her.’

‘I don’t need to. If not for you, then for Annabel. She’ll do it for the child.’

The child. Would she? Instinctively Lukas knew she would…if she were given the right incentives, the right words.

He could have her.

It was too tempting, too dangerous. Too possible.

And yet…he wouldn’t love her. Wouldn’t allow himself that luxury, that weakness. But he could have her, enjoy her, and make her life better than whatever pathetic existence she’d had in Wales.

It could happen. He could make it happen. He saw his father watching him with bright, shrewd eyes and he jerked his head in the semblance of a nod.

‘We won’t talk about this again.’

‘As you wish.’

Rhiannon scrambled up from the sand as Lukas approached. Annabel was playing happily next to her with some new toys, but she clapped her hands in delight when she saw Lukas’s long-legged stride down the beach.

‘You saw Theo?’ Rhiannon asked, and Lukas nodded.

‘Yes.’ He paused, his mouth a hard, unwilling line. ‘He’s not well.’

‘No, he isn’t.’

‘I didn’t expect…’ He shrugged. ‘Thank you for your care of him.’

‘I was glad to do it.’

‘My father has taken a liking to you,’ Lukas said. ‘He would like you to continue as his nurse, as time allows.’

‘I would be happy to,’ Rhiannon replied, and realised she spoke the truth. Caring for Theo would give her a purpose on this island besides waiting for results. Answers. Perhaps it would extend her stay?

‘This…changes things,’ Lukas said slowly. ‘As long as my father has need of you I would like you to stay.’

‘Of course.’

‘Perhaps…’ He spoke carefully, choosing his words. ‘Perhaps it will give us time to think of alternative solutions.’

‘I have thought of something—’

Lukas held up one hand. ‘We will discuss this later. The doctor is coming back tomorrow. I’ve arranged for him to take a sample of Annabel’s blood for the paternity test. I know it’s only a matter of form now, but it’s still necessary.’

Rhiannon nodded. ‘Fine.’

Lukas dug his hands in his pockets. ‘When does Annabel nap?’

‘After lunch. Why…?’

‘We’ll talk then.’

After Annabel had been settled in, Rhiannon found Lukas in his study, half buried in papers. He looked up as she peeked cautiously around the door.

‘Rhiannon!’ His smile was, quite simply, devastating. Rhiannon wasn’t used to such a fully-fledged grin, showing his strong white teeth and the dimple in his cheek. For a moment he looked happy, light, without care.

Then the frown settled back on his mouth, his brows, and on every stern line of his face. It was the look she was used to—the look she expected. Yet for one moment she hadn’t seen it, and now she wanted it banished for ever.

The thought—the longing—scared her with its force.

‘I have asked Adeia to watch Annabel,’ he said, and Rhiannon blinked in surprise.

‘Are we going somewhere?’

‘Yes. You’ll need a hat…and a swimming costume.’

Rhiannon’s brows rose. ‘I thought we were going to talk!’

‘We are, but I’d much prefer to do it in pleasant surroundings, enjoying ourselves,’ Lukas said. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

Yes, she would. Even if it was a mistake. A temptation. ‘All right. I’ll get my things.’

Her heart was fluttering with a whole new kind of fizzy anticipation as she slipped on a bikini and topped it with the yellow sundress Lukas had bought her. There was a wide straw hat to match the dress, with a yellow ribbon around its crown, and strappy sandals that were practical enough to manage the beach.

Rhiannon didn’t know where they were going, what they would do—what would happen—but she liked feeling excited. The prospect of an afternoon with Lukas seemed thrilling, even if they were going to have that dreaded ‘talk’.

‘You look lovely,’ Lukas said when Rhiannon returned downstairs. He gestured to the picnic basket on one arm. ‘I had Adeia pack us a hamper.’

‘All…all right,’ Rhiannon stammered, suddenly unnerved by what looked like all the trappings of a romantic date.

He led her not to the beach, as she’d anticipated, but to the dock.

Along with a speedboat for travelling to the nearest island, an elegant sailboat rested there. It was this craft that Lukas indicated they should board.

‘We’re going to sail?’ Rhiannon said dubiously. ‘I’ve never…’

‘Don’t worry.’ Lukas’s smile gleamed as he stretched out one hand to help her on deck. ‘I have. And we’ll stay away from the press.’

He certainly had sailed before, Rhiannon thought, when she was perched on a seat in the stern of the boat, watching with blatant admiration as Lukas prepared the sails and hoisted the jib. Every time he raised his arms she saw a long, lean line of rippling muscle that took her breath away.

This felt like a date, she thought, as Lukas smiled at her over his shoulder. Lukas was relaxed, carefree, a different man.

Why? Was she paranoid to be suspicious? To doubt this change in events, in mood?

She didn’t want to doubt. She wanted to enjoy the sun, the afternoon. Lukas.

‘What are you thinking?’ Lukas asked as he came to sit next to her once the boat was cutting a clear path across the blue-green sea.

‘How we both need this,’ Rhiannon admitted. ‘A day away from the stresses and troubles back home.’

‘Home, is it?’ he murmured, without spite, and she flushed.

‘For now, I suppose.’

‘What was your home like growing up?’ As always he’d switched topics—and tactics—so quickly Rhiannon could only blink in surprise. ‘I know you were adopted, and it wasn’t very happy, but…’ He trailed off, spreading his hand, one eyebrow raised. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘There isn’t much to tell,’ Rhiannon replied, careful to keep any bitterness from her voice. ‘I was abandoned when I was three weeks old. Left on a church doorstep, actually. My mother—my adoptive mother, I mean—arranged flowers for the church and she found me. I’d only been left a little while, she said, or she would have been afraid of what the squirrels might’ve done to me.’

Lukas’s lips pursed briefly in distaste before he continued, ‘Did she make any effort to find your mother or father?’

‘No. Mum always said anyone who would leave a baby like that didn’t deserve to have one. I used to dream…’ She hesitated. ‘I used to imagine them coming to look for me. I had all sorts of reasons why they might have abandoned me.’ She smiled ruefully; it hurt, so she shrugged. ‘Anyway, she and Dad adopted me—Social Services were happy to comply. Mum and Dad were upstanding members of the community, so everything was in order.’

‘But you never really felt they wanted you?’ Lukas finished, and Rhiannon flinched.

‘I’ve never said that!’

His tone was gentle, his eyes soft and silver with compassion. ‘You’ve never needed to.’

Rhiannon looked away, across the flat surface of the sea, glittering as if a thousand diamonds had been cast upon its waters. She hunched one shoulder. ‘They were older when they adopted me. Late forties. They’d never expected to have children. Mum couldn’t.’

‘All the more reason to be overjoyed when they were given a chance with you, I would have thought.’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose by the time I came along they were well set in their ways. A little toddler can be a burden, I know.’

‘And you felt like one?’

‘They never said it,’ Rhiannon protested, almost desperate to exonerate their memory. ‘It was just…there.’ She paused, remembering all the moments, the pursed lips, the disapproving looks. The feeling that if she could just act as if she wasn’t there, perhaps they’d love her.

Silly to think that way now, she knew. Yet that was how she’d thought when she was six, twelve, twenty-two.

‘I remember one time,’ she began, the memory rushing back with aching sorrow, ‘I was hungry. Mum strictly forbade snacking between meals, but I’d missed lunch at school for some reason—I can’t remember now. She was out at a flower guild meeting, and I made myself a sandwich. I cleaned up afterwards, so she wouldn’t even know, but there was a drip of brown sauce on the worktop, and she was…furious.’ Rhiannon managed a rueful smile. ‘No dinner for me that night.’

She was surprised to feel Lukas’s hand on her shoulder, slipping up to cup her cheek. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ She leaned against his hand; she couldn’t help it. The strength, the security radiating from him, from that simple gesture, were overwhelming. ‘It was a long time ago.’

‘But the scars are still there?’

‘Yes, I suppose they are.’ She thought of her mother’s pain-worn face on her sickbed, of how she’d cared for her endless day after endless day. Her mother had accepted those ministrations with pursed lips and hard eyes, glaring resentfully at the daughter whom she somehow blamed for her reduced circumstances.

She’d asked her mother once, right before she had died, if she’d loved her.

Her mother’s mouth had tightened as she’d admitted unwillingly, ‘I tried.’

Tears stung Rhiannon’s eyes, surprising her. She was past tears. These were old memories, and she didn’t like Lukas bringing them up.

She moved away; Lukas dropped his hand. ‘Tell me about yourself, Lukas. You mentioned that you clean up after other people’s messes. What’s that about?’

His face blanked for a second, and she was afraid he wasn’t going to tell her, that this wonderful moment of intimacy—an intimacy she’d never expected to share with him—was over. Then he shrugged.

‘My mother left my father when I was five. She fell in love with another man—someone totally unsuitable. A racing car driver. And he lived life like he raced cars. Fast.’

‘And?’ Rhiannon prompted softly.

‘They were killed in a car crash when I was nine. It taught me a lesson.’ He could still hear his father’s hard voice. See where giving in to desire leads you. See what happens when you believe in love rather than duty.

And he could hear his mother—her careless, mocking voice. He could hear his own pleas and they shamed him.

‘What lesson was that?’

‘She followed her own selfish desires—didn’t think about what her responsibilities were to her husband, her children. Look where it led her.’ He held up a hand to stop Rhiannon’s comment. ‘And my three older sisters have followed her path. Antonia, Christos’s mother, is divorced, she’s been in rehab half a dozen times, and is a wreck. Daphne is single, miserable, parties too much and is constantly getting in trouble with the press. And Evanthe, the youngest, is anorexic and has been suicidal in the past. All because of giving in to desire. Lust. What they call love. It made them weak, pathetic.’ As he had once been, and would never be again. He shook his head in disgust before glancing at Rhiannon. ‘Now do you see?’

‘I see,’ Rhiannon answered quietly. What she saw was three women desperate for love, who’d looked for it in all the wrong places. If she’d been given the chance, if her life had gone differently, perhaps she would have been the same.

Was that what she was doing here?

The question came so suddenly that Rhiannon jerked back in surprise.

No, surely not? Surely she wasn’t falling in love with Lukas? Surely she wasn’t so pathetic, so foolish, so naïve?

So desperate.

Yet she realised she was desperate. Desperate for love, for affection, for touch. All the things she’d never had from her parents. All the things she’d known she wanted somehow, some way. With someone.

Just not Lukas. Not from a man who prided himself on being emotionally unavailable, who saw love as a needless, harmful emotion—a selfish whim! Lukas only saw in terms of black or white, duty or desire.

There was no in-between, no room to negotiate, and certainly no room to fall in love.

‘What?’ Lukas raised one eyebrow, and Rhiannon realised that she had an appalled look on her face. ‘What is it?’

She tried to relax her face into a smile. ‘I’m sorry for your family,’ she said after a moment. ‘There has been a great deal of sorrow.’

‘Needless sorrow,’ he said, his tone hardening, and Rhiannon was reminded of the untold part of Lukas’s story. His sisters might be desperate for love, but then, as a boy, surely Lukas had been too?

He’d learned to ignore it, to disregard it. No doubt his father had drilled into him the wastefulness of his mother’s and sisters’ lives, the importance of duty.

As he’d already said, he was still cleaning up their messes. No doubt running interference with the press, paying debts, trying to keep the Petrakides name untarnished.

All by himself.

Her heart ached—ached for the boy he had been, watching his mother leave him at only five years old, and for the man he’d become. A man who couldn’t love, couldn’t trust, because he was afraid.

The idea of Lukas being afraid of anything seemed ridiculous, laughable, and yet in her heart Rhiannon knew it was true. He was afraid to love, afraid to be vulnerable, afraid it would lead to ruin.

‘Enough of this sad talk,’ Lukas said. He reached for the hamper Adeia had packed. ‘I didn’t come here to talk about the past, but the future. First we eat.’

Rhiannon was glad for the reprieve. The sea air had whetted her appetite, and she wasn’t quite ready to jump into a talk about the future—especially when their discussion of the past had brought so many uncomfortable memories churning to the fore.

Lukas brought out a dish of black olives, a tomato and feta salad, and some crusty bread. They both dug in with gusto.

‘There isn’t anything nicer than this,’ Rhiannon said after a moment. ‘Sitting in the sun, in the middle of the sea, eating delicious food.’ With a delicious man. She kept that last thought to herself, although she felt her cheeks warming.

‘Paradise,’ Lukas agreed.

They finished their bread and salad in silence, and then Lukas brought out another covered dish.

‘I saved the best for last.’ He opened it, revealing a heavenly slice of baklava.

Rhiannon stared at the sticky sweet, her cheeks flaming. She couldn’t quite meet Lukas’s eyes.

‘Adeia packed forks,’ he said with wry humour, and an unwilling laugh escaped her.

‘Good. Much easier that way.’

Lukas’s gaze was thoughtful as he handed her a plate. ‘It certainly is…although less enjoyable, perhaps.’ And she knew they were not just talking about eating dessert. The memory of that intimacy was heavy and expectant between them.

They finished their baklava in silence. Afterwards Lukas put away the dishes and turned the sail for home.

The wind had quietened down, and the boat drifted slowly, lazily, along the water. Rhiannon trailed a hand through the foamy wake.

‘Now,’ Lukas said gently, settling himself beside her once more, ‘we talk.’

She looked up through her lashes, took a breath. ‘You sound like you have plan.’

‘I do.’

Her heart began a heavy bumping against her ribs. ‘I have a plan too,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking…’ She hesitated at Lukas’s carefully blank look.

‘Tell me about it,’ he said, after a long moment.

Rhiannon took a breath. ‘I realise Annabel needs to grow up as a Petrakides. If I can be in her life, I’m willing to take a smaller role.’

‘Are you?’ Lukas asked, and she didn’t like the dangerous neutrality of his tone.

‘Yes. I could live in Athens—transfer my qualifications, learn Greek. If I could visit Annabel a few times a week…’

‘You’d be willing to completely rearrange your life for a few hours a week?’ Lukas asked, and there was both disbelief and condemnation in his tone.

‘Why not? You’re not willing to have me be more involved, are you?’ Rhiannon lifted her chin. ‘Over and over you’ve made it clear you will decide Annabel’s future, and there’s been more than a suggestion that I’m not involved! But you can’t stop me from moving to Athens, Lukas.’

Lukas shook his head. ‘This is not how I wanted to talk. Rhiannon, there need not be enmity between us. I’ve come to realise you care for Annabel. I do not doubt your sincerity…’

‘But…?’ Rhiannon prompted, a bitter edge to her voice. Lukas was silent. When she looked at him, his gaze was grey and steady, his face calm and yet filled with determination.

‘There is another solution—one that I believe will be amenable to both of us.’

‘What is that?’

‘Marry me.’

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