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Twice she’d agreed to marry the wrong man. Twice she’d let her kind, good heart lead her down the garden path.
Would third time be the charm for her? She was mesmerisingly beautiful, kind, funny, intelligent. She deserved someone who loved her. And their daughter?
Pain gripped his chest, because of course their daughter would be a part of that package. If Hannah met and married someone else, his daughter would have a stepfather. The idea filled him with sawdust, but even that wasn’t enough. He couldn’t go after her simply because he didn’t want anyone else to have her.
He wasn’t a spoiled three-year-old.
She’d fallen in love with him even though he didn’t deserve that love, even though he could never give it back. She’d fallen in love with him and the kindest, fairest thing Leonidas could do for Hannah was accept her decision to leave.
He had to let her go.
* * *
‘Christós, don’t go easy on him, will you?’ Thanos asked Leonidas.
Leonidas, sitting at the head of the table in one of the boardrooms of their London offices, threw his brother a quizzical expression.
‘Did you see his hands shaking? He turned violet from rage.’
Leonidas shrugged. ‘He wants to do business with us? Then he needs to lower his rate.’
Thanos laughed. ‘I’ve never seen you quite like this.’
Leonidas compressed his lips. His personal life was a mess but that didn’t mean his business life had to be. He’d become some kind of monster since Hannah had left the island—working eighteen-hour days seemed like the best way to put her out of his mind.
Every morning he’d woken to the security briefings, reporting on her whereabouts. Their only communication had been through his lawyers—him transferring a town house in London to her name, her not wishing to accept. He’d wanted to text her. To call her.
Hell, he’d wanted to see her. He’d wanted to see her so badly he’d felt as if he were running a marathon uphill, every single day that passed in which he didn’t give into his impulses and get on a flight and go to London, knock on her door and demand she marry him after all.
He was a tyrannical CEO, so why not make it impossible for her to refuse marriage? Threaten harder, demand more.
But every time he imagined doing exactly that, he saw her as she’d been that last morning, her heartbreak evident in every line on her face, her softly spoken words when she’d told him he was a good person, that he would never hurt her.
And she was right about that—he couldn’t hurt her. So he’d let her go, as he’d known he should. And every month that passed had filled him with an increasing ache, a desperation that was tearing him apart.
He needed her, but it was a selfish need, just as it had been all along.
He’d taken what he wanted from her, using Hannah to fill in the gaps of his soul without realising he was only adding to her own pains. He was becoming yet another thing she would need to get over.
He wanted to speak to her, but how could he? He took his cues from her and she was refusing to so much as acknowledge his gifts.
This week, however, had been by far the hardest. Three months after she’d left the island, a whole season later, he’d come to London. And he’d gone to bed every night looking out on this ancient city, knowing that she was only miles away. Imagining her, and the roundedness of her belly, the sweetness of her face in repose, the sound of her husky breathing.
He had tormented himself with her nearness—and the knowledge he had no right to see her. That he was here in London and not at her side.
‘Leonidas.’ He looked up as his brother’s assistant entered the room. Belinda, somewhere in her fifties with pale hair and a permanently disapproving scowl, had worked for Thanos for almost a decade and it showed. She was tired and almost on the brink of a nervous breakdown—keeping Thanos’s life on the rails could not be an easy occupation. At least they compensated her well for such a chore. ‘Greg Hassan’s on the phone for you.’ She nodded sternly towards the receiver on a bench in the corner of the room.
‘Thank you.’
Leonidas moved quickly across the room, telling himself not to panic even as the taste of adrenalin filled his mouth.
‘What is it?’ He had no time for pleasantries.
‘Hannah’s been rushed to hospital. Her waters broke.’
‘What hospital?’
Hassan gave the name. Leonidas slammed the phone down and grabbed his coat without saying a word.
