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Or maybe there was but she couldn’t think of that right now. This place was seductive in its loveliness.
She could play with Michales on this beach. Maybe she could stay here for the year of their marriage. There’d be no need to juggle work and baby care. The terror in her head was gone.
Here she could be free.
Her eyes filled with tears. She brushed them away fiercely, angrily, but still they came.
Alex was beside her, calmly handing her a handkerchief. She took it and blew her nose. Defiant.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, but he was still smiling and she had to suspect he knew exactly what was wrong.
‘This would have to be the most seductive setting in the known universe,’ she whispered.
‘You’re the first woman I’ve ever brought here.’
She sniffed. She looked at him with suspicion over the top of his handkerchief. ‘And that has to be the most seductive line,’ she managed, trying to sound caustic—and failing.
‘You don’t trust me?’
‘Would you trust you?’ She waved his handkerchief at the scene in front of her. ‘Would you trust yourself?’
‘It’s great, isn’t it?’
‘You built this garden?’ She hesitated. ‘Of course you built it. You’re a landscape architect. I read about it. You’ve won prizes.’
‘You build boats. I design gardens.’
‘Here?’
‘Not many,’ he admitted. ‘I mostly work out of Manhattan.’
That was confusing. ‘Are you still working in Manhattan?’
‘When I can. As often as I can get away from here.’
Whoa. Panic! ‘You mean you’re going back to Manhattan?’
‘You don’t want me here, do you?’ He shrugged. ‘I’d assumed you’d stay in the palace, play with Spiros and your boats and your son. I need to put some solid work into rebuilding this economy but if I can manage to get that sorted then I’m free to do what I want.’
Where was the problem with that? She stared down at the cove. Thinking. Or trying to think.
There were factors at play here she hadn’t thought of. She felt as if she were floating in a bubble—she was precariously safe within, but any minute it could burst. What was outside? Who knew?
‘Do you swim?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’ In the midst of confusion, here was something solid.
‘I feel a swim coming on,’ he said, and why did she feel he was changing the subject? ‘We have an hour or so before dusk. Can you bear to take off your wedding dress?’
‘I can’t wait to take off my wedding dress.’ Then, dumbly, she felt herself blushing. ‘I mean… ’
‘I know what you mean,’ he told her. ‘You’ll have a separate apartment here, too.’
Great. It was great. Wasn’t it?
‘But Michales… ’ she managed.
‘He’s almost six months old. Shouldn’t he be surfing by now?’
‘How long can we stay here?’ she asked, staring longingly down at the cove. The dolphins had been joined by friends. They were catching waves, surfing in amazing synchronisation, then performing sleek tumbling turns and gliding out to catch more.
It looked fantastic. How could she think of anything but the sight before her?
‘You can stay for two weeks maybe,’ he told her. ‘I need to go earlier.’
Suddenly she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to think past this moment.
‘Then we’re wasting time. Those dolphins are in my waves. Let’s swim.’
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_cbf334c7-fd2d-5cdc-85a0-195d84915472)
HE NEEDED to swim. He needed to get rid of some pent-up energy.
He needed to clear his head.
Half an hour later they were all in the water. Lily was sitting in the shallows, letting Michales kick his delight as tiny waves broke over his toes. Leaving him free.
Which was what he wanted. Wasn’t it?
Of course it was.
He was doing backstroke, back and forth across the cove so he could watch her as he swam. He needed to let her be. But he could watch her in the shallows, holding Michales, watching him splash, absorbed in her son.
He didn’t have a handle on her. He’d met her once and been entranced. She’d said she’d seduced him, and to a certain extent it was true. Her laughter had seduced him, her loveliness, her vibrancy. Today, standing in the rhododendron drive in full bridal finery, discussing scroggin, he’d seen that part of her again. It was as if it had somehow resurfaced, despite herself.
Resurfaced… That was the problem. His gut was telling him this was the real Lily. Only she’d handed her baby—his baby—to her sister. She’d made one phone call to him and then abandoned the idea of telling him.
It didn’t fit. The Lily he thought he knew would have appeared on his doorstep, angry as hell, tossing her pregnancy to him as she’d tossed the idea of seduction. It was something they’d shared. It was something they’d taken responsibility for together.
There were two Lilys. The Lily he knew—and either a conniving Lily or some other Lily. He couldn’t cope with the idea of either.
Whichever was right, they had to achieve some way of facing the world together. But first… how were they going to get through these first few days?
By avoidance? They’d changed in their separate apartments, and they’d met on the steps coming down to the beach.
She was wearing a plain black bathing costume and another of her lovely scarves.
She’d made him feel… confused as hell.
Dammit, a woman was not going to mess with his head. He couldn’t afford confusion. He had to put every bit of energy he possessed into getting this island back on its feet. He needed to get it back to where it just needed a figurehead.
Could Lily be part of that figurehead?
She’d reacted with fear.
He didn’t understand what was going on. He didn’t understand her.
He swam and swam.
This was the only way to go, he told himself. Get yourself so physically tired you can forget her.
Right.
This place was fabulous. She sat in the shallows with her baby son and the frisson of excitement she’d had when she’d first arrived resurfaced.
Freedom had many guises. Staying here, with Michales, could be a form of freedom. Only Alex’s initial statement that this was her home had been quickly rescinded. Two weeks… Then the palace.
There were issues here she hadn’t thought about. Alex’s work, for one. If he thought she was staying in the palace while he swanned off back to Manhattan…
No deal.
He was swimming back and forth. Back and forth. It was as if he was driven.
He hated royalty. She’d figured that.
Did he plan one day to escape and leave Michales and her to represent royalty in their own rights? When the islanders hated her? Not likely.
But she couldn’t trust him.
She closed her eyes. Michales was kicking his feet in delight, splashing them both. Suddenly she was hit by an almost overwhelming longing. For someone to trust.
Her father had been in his sixties when she was born. She’d been his carer. He’d depended on her but she’d always known that when her father looked at her, he only saw echoes of the young, fascinating wife who’d deserted him. He always saw pain. Her mother and Mia had abandoned her. Mia had betrayed her in the worst possible way.
You didn’t do trust. Not ever.
But she gazed out at Alex and she couldn’t stop the feeling of indescribable pain washing through. He was her husband but she was still alone.
Not alone. Michales depended on her.
She needed to be practical and firm—for Michales’s sake.
She needed to remember who she was. A mother, yes. And a boat-builder.
Not a lover. Not a wife.
A boat-builder.
She turned deliberately from watching Alex and looked instead up the beach.
She’d been absorbed in the antics of her small son. But suddenly he saw her attention turn to the old dinghy high on the sand. She rose, cradled Michales against her and strolled up the beach to inspect the boat.
Michales waved his hands indignantly towards the sea, where the dolphins were still cavorting far out. Alex sensed her smile from this distance. She walked back to the shallows and started playing again.
She should have time to look at the boat if she wanted.
He didn’t want to go near either of them. The same feeling he’d had in the coach came flooding back. Family, he reminded himself.
He did not do family.
Maybe he could go back to the castle. There was pressure mounting from all sides. If he went quietly back, maybe the press wouldn’t discover he’d abandoned Lily here.
Maybe if he left she might feel safer, he thought. He could leave her here to have a holiday in the sun with her baby.
Meanwhile, he could get himself organised. Get this damned island organised. Meet with Nikos and Stefanos and see what they could figure out.
Leave Lily?
Yeah, that felt good. Not.
They were his family.
He didn’t do family.
Love meant grief and loss and heartache.
She wanted to look at the boat. Okay, he could take Michales for a bit. That small commitment wouldn’t hurt.
He swam slowly in to shore, catching a wave for the last part, letting the surf sweep him on. He ended up right beside her. Too close.
She rose, stepping away from him, making space.
‘Sorry.’ He swiped the water from his eyes, kneeling in the shallows. ‘I should have been taking turns with Michales.’
‘It’s your turn now,’ she said and suddenly he had his arms full of baby. And, astonishingly, her voice had turned indignant. ‘Did you know you have a treasure of a boat up there? She’s a gorgeous old clinker-built dinghy, planked in King Billy Pine with Huon Pine and a Kauri transom. What the hell are you doing, letting her rot?’
‘I… She’s old,’ he said, astounded by her sudden passion. ‘My father brought her here before I was born. I took her out a couple of years ago and knocked a hole in her on the rocks.’
‘So she’s been sitting on the beach since then.’ Indignant wasn’t the half of it. She made it sound as if he’d murdered a puppy.
‘She’s got a hole in her.’
‘You’d have a hole in you, too, if you’d hit a rock. That’s a reason for abandoning her?’ She was stalking up the beach towards the wreck, letting him follow if he wanted.
He followed, carrying Michales. She had a really cute butt.
Um… think of something else, he told himself. He’d put a hole in the boat. He was the bad guy?
Michales yelled. Lurched his small body back towards the water. Yelled some more.
