‘Running away won’t change anything either. Admit it, matakia mou. You and I belong together.’
Her jaw clenched in response.
‘So what are you going to do?’ he asked scathingly, leaning closer to her ashen face. ‘Run away and start a relationship with Leander? Is that how you intend to prove we’re over?’
‘How do you know about Leander?’ She shook her head and took a deep inhalation. ‘Don’t answer that. I can guess.’
He felt no guilt for seeking information about her date. Helios looked out for those he cared for. ‘He’s too young for you. I know you, Amy. You don’t need a boy. You need—’
‘He’s my brother,’ she snapped suddenly, angry colour flushing her cheeks.
Her declaration momentarily stunned him into silence. Stepping back to look at her properly, he dragged a hand through his hair. ‘But Leander is from Agon. Your brothers are English, like you...’
‘I’m only half-English.’
‘Your parents are English.’ Weren’t they? Wasn’t this something they had talked about...?
‘My father’s English. Elaine—my mum—didn’t give birth to me. My birth mother’s from Agon.’
How had he not known this?
Amy must have sensed the direction his mind was travelling in. ‘Do you remember once asking me how I’d developed such an obsession and a love for your country?’
‘You said it was... You never gave a proper answer...’ Realisation dawned on him as he thought back to that conversation, months ago, when they had first started sleeping together. She’d brushed his question aside.
‘And you never pursued it.’ She shook her head in a mixture of sadness and anger.
‘I didn’t know there was anything to pursue. I’m not a mind reader.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She gave a helpless shrug. ‘A huge part of me wanted to tell you, and ask for your help in finding her, but I knew that confiding in you would change the nature of our relationship.’
‘What would have changed?’ he asked, completely perplexed.
From the first the chemistry between them had been off the charts. Making love to Amy had always felt different from the way it had felt with his other lovers. He’d never felt the urge to ask her to leave at night—he liked sharing his space with her, this incredibly sexy woman with a brain the size of a watermelon. He loved it that she could teach him things he didn’t know about his own country.
To learn now that she had roots in his country...
‘I didn’t keep any secrets from you,’ he added, his head reeling.
‘Apart from throwing a party to find a wife?’
He inhaled deeply. Yes, the real purpose of the ball was something he’d kept from her for as long as he could. But this information was on a different scale. He’d known Amy had kept a part of herself sheltered from him, but he’d had no idea it was something so fundamental.
Her eyes held his. ‘I was scared.’
Another stabbing pain lanced him. ‘Of me?’
‘Of what you would think of me. At least I was in the beginning.’ Her voice lowered to a whisper. ‘And I was scared because you and I came with time constraints. We had a fixed marker for when we would end, we both knew that. We both held things back.’
‘I never held anything back.’
‘Didn’t you?’ There was no challenge in her eyes, just a simple question. ‘Helios, I couldn’t take the risk of what we had developing into something more—of us becoming closer. We can’t be together for ever. I was trying to protect myself.’
For an age he stared at her, wishing he could see into her mind, wishing he could shake her...wishing that everything could be different.
‘Do not go anywhere,’ he said, turning his back to her and striding to his dressing room. ‘You and I are going to talk, and this is not a conversation to have naked. We’re long past the point of keeping secrets from each other.’
While Helios slipped on a pair of boxers Amy used the few moments alone to catch her thoughts before he reappeared.
It wasn’t long enough.
She pressed her back tightly against the door, her vocal cords too constricted for speech.
‘I mean it, Amy,’ he said with a hard look in his eye. ‘You’re not going anywhere until we’ve talked this through.’
‘What’s the point?’ she asked, her voice hoarse.
‘If your history is what’s stopping us from being together then I damn well deserve to know the truth.’ He strolled back to the bed and sat in the middle of it, his back resting against the headboard. ‘Now, come here.’