He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, his expression bleak, he simply said, ‘Don’t thank me. If I hadn’t turned up like that she probably wouldn’t have collapsed.’ Wearily, he lifted a hand to run it through his hair. He got to his feet. ‘Talia—’
She shook her head violently. ‘Luke, no! I can’t take any more interrogation. I have to get back to the café. I have to start work.’
An oath broke from him. ‘It’s absurd that you should be working there!’
She lifted his hand from her arm, and even to touch him was unbearable. ‘Luke, I have to go! I’m late. I have to open up the café.’ She took a ragged breath and then said what it would cost her everything to say, but say it she must. ‘I...I don’t want to see you again. Please leave me alone.’
She didn’t look at him. She could not. Instead, head bowed, she hurried from the promenade, diving into the narrow streets through which she could make her way towards the harbour and the café.
* * *
At the café, Maria’s nephew was shocked at her news, and told Talia he’d get a friend to wait on the tables that evening and she must go to her mother. Gratefully, she conceded.
When she set off for the hospital at the end of the day she stopped off at the bank, checking to see if they could afford a week at a convalescent home to help her mother recover.
After that... Well, after that her mother would just have to recuperate in the apartment above the café. She sighed, but knew that anything else was out of the question. They just did not have the money for anything else.
Like a luscious but poisoned fruit, Luke’s offer to pay her mother’s nursing fees dangled in front of her. She thrust it aside.
I can’t—I just can’t. It would...
It would reduce her to what she would have become if she had stayed with him. What he thought she was—what he had always thought her—even when he’d held her in his arms. Pointless. Pathetic. A useless bauble.
She gave a muffled cry of pain and hurried into the hospital. It was no use to think of Luke or to agonise over what was in the past. No use at all. She must focus only on her mother—as she always had, all her life. And now, when she had come so close to losing her, her mother was more precious to her than ever.
A shiver went through her. In all her terror for her mother, and in all her personal anguish over seeing Luke again, she had hardly given the news Luke had brought her about her father a second thought. For a moment guilt went through her. Her father was dead—surely that should elicit some emotion from her? Some sense of grief?
Her face hardened. Her father had been nothing but a malign, controlling presence in her life. And in the life of her mother.
The life Luke saved!
Oh, she could tell herself that had Luke not come to the café as he had her mother might not have had her heart attack, but that did not take away the fact that it had been Luke’s prompt action that had saved her.
Talia felt her heart constrict. For that she would be for ever grateful.
She was grateful too—abjectly so—that her mother, propped up on pillows, wired up to monitors and on a drip, could greet her with a weak smile. Talia hugged her carefully, closing her eyes in a silent prayer of thanks that she had not lost her.
But as she straightened her mother spoke in an agitated voice, one thin hand clutching at her daughter. ‘Darling, that man! That dreadful man!’
Immediately Talia was soothing. ‘Mum, he’s gone, OK? He left. We won’t be seeing him again.’
Even as she said the words she felt pain strike her. To have seen him again...to have had him so near...
Her mother’s grip tightened. ‘Darling, you mustn’t go to him. Not after what you told me.’
Talia shook her head. ‘He didn’t come here to try and persuade me to go back to him,’ she said heavily.
She paused, took a breath. She had to say this, and maybe telling her mother here in a hospital, where there was a crash team on hand if necessary, might be the safest thing to do? Her mother had changed so much since they had left the villa in Marbella. She had become strong and determined. Perhaps she could take this final blow as well? Talia could only pray so.
She took her mother’s hands, held them in hers. ‘Mum, Luke Xenakis came to see me to tell me...’ She took another breath, then told her mother the grim news.
For her mother’s sake, she kept to the official report that it had
been an accident. Whether her mother believed it or not she would not press to find out.
Her mother listened, then loosed her hands to pick at the bedclothes, her gaze turning inward. ‘I think I’ve known all along he would never come home. You were right about it from the start, darling.’ Her voice twisted, became infused with pain and regret. ‘He never cared about us at all. Not really.’
She looked at Talia, her gaze troubled. ‘Never give your love to someone who does not—who cannot—love you back.’