‘No.’ Her voice sounded scratchy and her eyes were fixed on Sebastien. ‘For years I’ve thought about you. In my dreams. In my darkest moments. You were always there.’
Alesia looked at her mother in consternation. She hadn’t expected her to recognize Sebastien but clearly she did and it was equally clear that she hated him. The last thing she needed now was this sort of shock and it was all Alesia’s fault.
She should have guessed that Sebastien would follow her.
She never should have come.
She turned to Sebastien, desperate to rescue such a disastrous situation. ‘You’re upsetting her. I think you should leave,’ she pleaded urgently, taking her mother’s hand in her own and squeezing it tightly. ‘We can talk later—’
‘If that is what your mother wants, then of course I will respect her wishes,’ Sebastien said roughly, walking into the room with his customary air of purpose. ‘But there are clearly things that need to be said.’ He turned to Alesia’s mother. ‘I had no idea you were alive.’
Alesia closed her eyes. They just didn’t talk about the accident any more. Her mother found it all too distressing. ‘Please, will you go—?’
‘I don’t want him to go.’ Instead her mother stretched out a hand towards Sebastien, her blue eyes so like her daughter’s brimming with unshed tears. ‘Not until I’ve thanked him. If you only knew how much I’ve longed to thank him but I had no way of discovering who he was and tracing him. I didn’t know his name—’
At that confusing declaration Alesia stared in astonishment and, to her surprise, Sebastien stepped up to the bed and took the hand that was offered, enveloping slender fingers with his own large, strong hand. ‘No thanks are needed. Not then and not now—and I had no idea who you were until very recently.’
‘There were so many people on the yacht that day—’
Alesia glanced between them in confusion. ‘Mum—?’
‘How did you make contact with him?’ Her mother turned towards her and the tears spilled over and trickled down her pale cheeks. ‘You knew how much I wanted to find the man who rescued me. Without a name, how did you ever find him, you clever girl?’
The man who had rescued her?
Stunned into silence, Alesia sat still, unable to speak or move for a long moment. When she finally managed to produce words, her voice was croaky. ‘This was the man who rescued you when the boat exploded?’
That couldn’t be true.
It couldn’t have been Sebastien.
‘And you. He rescued you too,’ her mother said, a tremulous smile on her face as she looked at Sebastien. ‘He risked his life so many times going under the water to find you. I saw you on the gangplank only seconds before the explosion. I knew you were in the water, probably too badly injured to help yourself. I was screaming and screaming for someone to save my baby.’
‘Your mother was trapped under wreckage on the boat,’ Sebastien said gruffly, his dark eyes shadowed by the memory. ‘She refused to cooperate with any sort of rescue until I’d found her daughter.’
Alesia was in shock. The vision in her head. The man she remembered. ‘It was you?’ Her voice was barely audible. ‘The man who rescued me—the man I remember—that was you?’
His jaw tightened. ‘I didn’t realize myself until the night when you told me your story,’ Sebastien confessed, lines of tension visible around his dark eyes. ‘I realized then that it had to have been your mother that I’d rescued but I had no idea that she was still alive. Philipos informed everyone that she had died along with Costas.’
‘That’s what he wanted people to believe. He wanted me out of his life. You went back on to the boat to rescue others,’ Alesia’s mother said quietly, ‘and the ambulance took the two of us to hospital. I asked everyone about you but no one knew anything. Then Dimitrios had us flown to England and I was forbidden from ever visiting Greece again. We kept our identity secret under his instructions.’
Sebastien frowned, every inch of him suddenly alert. ‘How could he make such a threat? How could he prevent you from visiting? And why?’
Her mother closed her eyes. ‘He hated me from the first moment that Costas brought me home to Corfu. When Costas was killed there was no one to defend me. He threatened to take Alesia from me,’ she said wearily, ‘and bring her up as a Greek. As his own. He didn’t really want her. It was just a threat to punish me. Few people know just how evil that man is. There was no way I wanted him near my daughter. I agreed to disappear. To break all contact. It suited him. It was what he always wanted.’