He was stroking her hair, soothing his hands along it and murmuring to her. She didn’t know what he was saying, but the words flowed over her like a cool stream, like a warm balm, like arms drawing her to him, holding her, folding her. She lay there, being held by him, his hand on her hair, her face resting against the strong wall of his chest, inhaling the familiar scent, the touch and feel of him, his very being.
Markos. The man who was most dear to her. The man she had loved so much.
The man she still loved. Whom she would love for ever.
The truth of it blazed in her heart, unquenchable. She had never stopped loving him. Could never stop loving him.
Markos, who had come back for her. Come back to her…
She felt the tears start to slide from her silently, slipping one by one from her eyes, which could see nothing. She felt their moisture bead against her cheek, soak into the taut fine cotton of his shirt. And still he held her, and held her.
And now he was talking. She heard the words and understood them, low and resonant through the strong wall of his chest.
‘Let me stay, Vanessa. It’s all I ask. I won’t trouble you or make demands on you. I just want to be near you, as close as you will let me be. Please don’t turn me away. Please don’t shut me out of your life. Please let me be near to you.’
The words flowed over her and into her, and as she heard them the heaviness of her body seemed to lighten. And more, far more than the heaviness of her body.
The tears slid from her eyes, faster now, until there was a stream soaking into his shirt, pouring down her cheeks, and she pressed her face closer to him.
The hands soothing her hair moved, cupping around her cheeks, feeling their wetness.
‘Vanessa! Don’t cry—don’t cry!’
He held her face away from him, his own stricken.
She gazed up at him through blurred vision, her lashes wet, the tears flowing silently from her, and as she gazed the last of the heavy feeling turned to the sweetest lightness.
His thumbs smoothed the tears spilling from her eyes.
‘Please don’t cry. I didn’t want to make you cry. I didn’t want to upset you, or hurt you any more than I have already. I’ve been so stupid, such a brute. You must hate me, and have every reason for hating me, but please don’t cry. Just let me stay close to you and take care of you, our baby. Let me be a father to our child—even if you don’t want to marry me or be my lover ever again, at least let me take care of you and our baby. I’ll do anything. Anything I can. Anything you’ll let me.’
She gazed up at him, her vision still blurred. And yet for the first time she seemed to see clearly.
‘Do you mean that, Markos?’ she said. Her voice was tremulous. ‘Do you really mean that?’
‘Oh, God, with all my heart, Vanessa. With all my heart.’ His voice sounded as choked as hers.
He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them, searching deep into hers.
‘Will you forgive me?’ he asked, his voice low. ‘Will you forgive me for being such a blind, stupid, arrogant fool? I treated you so badly. I took you for granted, took everything you gave me, and everything you said about what I’d done and what I am was true. I’m guilty of it all. I just didn’t know. I didn’t know until you walked out and left me just how much I needed you. And when I found out about the baby, thought you must have gone to another man, I was so twisted up inside I couldn’t see straight. I couldn’t see what anyone could have seen! And then, when Leo and Anna sent me back here again, I was even worse to you. I said such stupid, cretinous things to you. Can you ever forgive me? I was a fool, a complete fool, and if what I said then has made me lose you now, then I…then I…’
He came to a halt, his breath shuddering.
‘Oh, Markos,’ she breathed, her eyes softening, glowing like candles, illuminating the dark that had been all around him.
Slowly she reached up her mouth to kiss him. Slowly she felt her lips touch his, felt the long, low release that her touch brought him—and her.
Then she sank back into his arms, her head cradled against him. Peace filled her. He held her to him, bowing his head to brush his lips against her hair.
For a long, timeless moment he just sat there, holding her close to him, close to his heart.
Then, slowly, he started to speak again. The words came from very deep inside, from a place he had never wanted to look into again.
But now he did, taking the contents out of the darkness where they had lain so long and bringing them into the light, where they could finally shrivel and die.
‘It was when you told me why you didn’t want me to have anything to do with our child. That it would be better off without me for a father. A father who had never wanted his child to be born, who had never wanted to marry its mother, who hadn’t even believed the child was his, who’d treated its mother as nothing more than a mistress…’He paused a moment, inhaling a heavy breath. ‘Your words chilled me. To the bone.’
He was silent a while. She said nothing, giving him the time he needed.