‘Stuff.’
‘What stuff?’
He drew in a breath and released it in stages. ‘Family stuff.’
‘Your father?’
Something passed over Loukas’s features, like a tide of tension stiffening his facial muscles in degrees until his entire face was a mask set in stone. ‘That’s enough talking for now. I’m keeping you up. You look done in. I’ll see you in the morning.’
Emily frowned as the door closed behind him. She considered going after him to pump him for more information but the long day was finally catching up with her. She was almost too tired to remove her contacts and place them in the solution container she drew out of her bag beside the bed, but remove them she did. Then she sighed and leaned back against the downy-soft pillows and within seconds her eyes drifted closed...
* * *
Loukas gave up on sleeping on the sofa, even though it was reasonably comfortable. He sat staring sightlessly at the view from the windows, barely noticing the beads of rain dripping down the glass. He’d cancelled all but one of his work commitments so he could get Emily out of London and safely on Corfu, where hopefully they would b
e left in peace until he got a ring on her finger.
He hadn’t yet given his mother or his sister the heads up about Emily. Not that he was in regular contact with them. He’d visited Ariana after her recent surgery, but mostly he kept his distance, because every time he phoned or visited he was conscious of how it reminded her of what he had done to her. He figured, out of sight, out of mind worked best for all of them. Ariana, thankfully, remembered nothing of the accident, and she accepted the years of operations and physical therapy with admirable if not downright astonishing fortitude.
But, even though they never talked of that day, it was something he could never forget. He had caused so much damage to his family, injuring his sister and destroying his mother’s marriage as well. Her husband had left just over a year after the accident, unable to cope with his wife’s absences while she helped Ariana in hospital and then the start of the long months in rehab.
Loukas had watched in despair as the people he loved most in the world had lost everything that was dear to them. His sister had lost her ability to run, play and dance, her future stolen from her, never to be regained. Her mother had lost the love she had found after her bitter divorce from his father and had become a shadow of herself, physically gaunt and emotionally fragile, only managing to survive out of her fierce determination to claw back her daughter from death’s greedy jaws.
Their lives had improved a lot over the years—Loukas had seen to that, providing them with everything they needed—but at the end of the day it still came down to the painful reality that Ariana was never going to do all the things her peers took for granted. His mother was never going to get those lost years back and, because she was Ariana’s full-time carer, there was no way she could have a life of her own.
And it was his fault.
How was he going to call his sister and mother to tell them about this new hurt he’d caused? He hated the thought of them opening a newspaper or news link and hearing about it that way, but how did you tell your family you’d got a girl you should never have slept with pregnant? Not that his mother would mind. If anyone was a frustrated grandmother it was she. He saw the way she looked longingly at passing prams and advertisements with babies and children in them. It was like a knife twisting in his gut to see how hard she tried to disguise it. But, because of his sister’s on-going health issues, there would be no grandkids other than his.
Knowing he had taken away his sister’s chance of becoming a mother made his guilt about the accident all the harder to bear. It was one of the reasons he had never planned to marry and have a family—because why should he have that privilege when his sister could not? Every milestone of his would be a guilt trip instead of a celebration.
Loukas got up from the sofa and crossed the suite to creak open the bedroom door. The light from the streetlights outside cast the bed in a beam of silver. Emily was curled up like a comma on the bed, barely taking up any space at all. Her brown-blonde hair was spread out over the pillow like a halo and her hand with its bandaged finger was tucked up near her chin, the other splayed on the sheet beside her head. She made a soft murmuring sound, rolled over and stretched like a cat, her small but perfect breasts rising under her top, the darker nipples showing through the fabric.
Emily suddenly opened her eyes and saw him standing there. She sat bolt-upright and reached for a pair of glasses beside the bed, pushed them up her nose and then grabbed at the sheet to pull it up to her chin. ‘You gave me such a fright!’
‘Sorry. I was just checking you were—’
‘You could have knocked first.’ Her mouth was just shy of a pout. ‘How long have you been there?’
‘Not long.’
She hugged her bent knees, giving him a look over the rim of her tortoiseshell glasses that reminded him of a child pretending to be a starchy librarian. ‘How’s the sofa working out for you?’
‘Great.’
‘Liar. I bet your legs hang over the edge.’
Loukas glanced at the bottle of contact lens solution beside the bed and the little container she housed them in. ‘I didn’t know you wore contacts. Were you wearing them the night we—’
‘Yes, but I didn’t take them out because...’ Her cheeks went a delicate shade of pink. ‘I didn’t have time.’
‘We were in a bit of a hurry, weren’t we?’ He came to sit on the edge of the bed next to her bent legs. ‘Can I get you anything? A drink?’
‘No, I’m good.’
‘Not sick?’
She lifted her good hand and crossed her middle finger over her index finger. ‘So far, so good.’ She uncrossed her fingers and then, after a brief moment, reached out to touch his jaw, her soft fingertips catching on his stubble. Her eyes behind the glasses looked big and luminous, her mouth so soft and kissable he had to pinch his lips together to stop himself from leaning forward to kiss her. ‘I had beard rash for four days after that night we slept together. It cost me a fortune in concealer.’