‘I’ve looked there.’
‘I will ask the garage where the car’s being repaired and see if they have found it.’
‘Can you do that now, please? I need to check in with my dad, and Kelly and…’ There was a pang in her chest to know she was no longer an employee of Kelly Holden Designs. Lucie had loved her job as an interior designer. Really loved it. Her resignation was another void in her brain. So too giving up her share of the flat tenancy. ‘Check in with my whole life really.’
Thanasis gave a brief, tight smile. ‘Of course.’
With everything that had been going on, he hadn’t given Lucie’s phone a second thought, but now he knew it was missing, he could only hope it stayed lost.
Thanasis’s family and the Tsalikis would all keep their mouths shut about the animosity between them but he had no way of knowing what she’d confided to others. He was confident she’d not betrayed the pact they’d made before their final argument but Lucie’s fury when she’d left his apartment that day was such that it was within the realm of possibility she would have called one of her many friends to vent about it.
The call to the garage was over within a minute.
‘I’m afraid your phone wasn’t in the car,’ he told her, relief filling him.
Fate, it seemed, was determined to continue working in his favour.
‘I have your father’s number,’ he added. ‘You can use my phone to check in with him.’ Thanasis had spoken to Charlie Burton numerous times since the accident and was confident Lucie had confided nothing in him.
‘If we stop at a phone shop on our way to the harbour, I can buy myself a replacement,’ she suggested.
He made a point of looking at his watch. ‘It’s a long sail to Sephone. The sooner we set off the better.’ And the more isolated he kept her, the less likely something or someone would trigger her memories. ‘I can have a phone helicoptered to you, if you wish.’
‘Can’t we take the helicopter ourselves?’
‘No flying until you are back to full health,’ he asserted firmly, and was rewarded with such a doe-eyed look that the guilt at his deception plunged a little deeper.
Damn Rebecca Tsaliki for letting her daughter believe they were lovers. And damn himself for going along with it.
Lying did not come naturally to Thanasis but what other choice did he have? Let his business be destroyed and his family face destitution?
And besides, if Lucie’s memories came back before the wedding, they were all damned however they played it. The resulting explosion would lead to a scorched earth.
It was only for another week, he reminded himself grimly. Not even that. Six days. Just until they made their vows. The most pressing thing was getting her to the altar and the world’s press witnessing Antoniadis and Tsaliki breaking bread together for the first time in forty years.
But as much as Thanasis needed to get Lucie swiftly away from Athens and to the solitude of his island, he would not disregard the doctor’s advice. Flying the short distance—and by helicopter, it was a short distance—should be safe for her he’d been assured, but to his mindshouldwas not cast-iron enough. His feelings for Lucie were a hot mess of lust and loathing but he would never wish physical harm on her or do anything to put her in danger.
He could still feel remnants of the ice his blood had temporarily frozen into when he’d been told of the accident.
She thought his basic human concern for another person’s well-being was down to his ‘love’ for her, and he turned his face away so she wouldn’t see his revulsion, at her and at himself, and dredged his parents and sister into his mind’s eye. They were the people he needed to keep at the forefront of his thinking whenever the urge to rip off the mask of his deception became unbearable. Them and the thousands of Antoniadis Shipping employees. All those futures in his hands.
Turning his stare back to her, he smiled and held out one of the hands all those futures depended on.
There was only a small hesitation before her beautiful heart-shaped lips pulled into a shy smile and one of the tiny hands all those futures also depended on slipped into his and her fingers tentatively closed around his.
For the beat of a moment, he experienced the strangest sensation; the sensation of Lucie’s fingers closing around his heart.
CHAPTER FOUR
FOR ALL THATLucie had said only her head hurt, there was a stiffness to her gait evident when they made the short walk along the harbour with the nurse who’d accompanied them from the hospital.
Keeping a supportive grip on her hand, like any supportive fiancé would, Thanasis shortened his usual stride to keep pace with her. There was something about her tentative but determined steps that highlighted her current fragility and tugged at his chest. For the first time since she’d walked into the hotel bar he was wholly aware of how tiny and delicate she really was. Only her determination hinted at the combative personality he’d spent two months sparring and clashing with.
The medics who’d attended the scene of the accident had said it was nothing short of a miracle that she’d escaped the wreckage with nothing more than a bleeding nose from the airbag. Those medics didn’t know how tough Lucie was. Thanasis could well imagine his car crumpling around her and then having second thoughts. The injury to her head had come about, so witnesses had attested, when she’d caught her foot stumbling out of the car. She’d been too disoriented by the accident to put her hands out to break her fall. It was nothing but bad luck that her head had landed on the edge of the pavement kerb.
He couldn’t bring himself to think of her head hitting the kerb as being his good luck, even if he was using her amnesia to his full advantage.
When they reached his yacht, she stared at it for a long time, silently taking it all in. ‘Persephone… Is she where your island gets its name?’
