She’d been offered a job working at the observatory in Athens. The offer had come out of the blue only a few days ago, via her professor in Manchester. It was almost too good to be true, she mused, whispering a sigh up into the dark sky. She could pay off her student loans and not miss the cash, and she and Toby could move into her grandfather’s house in Glyfada. After all, she had all the money in the world now to ease the path for any decision she wanted to make. Melissa could come with them. She could hire her own staff.
Or she could continue to bury her head in the sand and do absolutely nothing. And why was she considering that as an option? Because she did not want to leave here, this island, this house.
‘Not eating tonight?’ Hearing the even-pitched voice—belonging to the big reason why she didn’t want to leave here—Zoe turned her head to watch as Anton stretched out beside her on the other lounger. It was really quite funny the way they’d formed their own private living area out here on the lawn over the last few weeks.
Only Zoe wasn’t laughing. In fact she felt so unhappy she wanted to cry. She looked back at the night sky again and watched it blur out of focus.
‘Theo asked me only the day before he died if I still hated him,’ she confided.
Threading his long fingers with hers, he asked, ‘What did you say?’
‘I told him the truth. I told him that at first I wanted to hate him but when I looked at him I saw my own father, so how could I hate the man who gave me the love of the most wonderful father I could have had?’
‘You made your peace with him, agape mou,’ Anton said gently. ‘That is a good thing.’
Pressing her trembling lips together, Zoe nodded her head. ‘I—liked him.’
‘For all his irascible manner, Theo kind of grows on you,’ Anton said with a smile. Then he stopped smiling. ‘However, he has become yet another person you cared about who has passed out of your life.’
Another person she cared for she’d lost … That was three people already this year, and now she was having to come to terms with the knowledge that she was about to lose another one.
On impulse she lifted their clasped hands and pressed kisses on his fingers. ‘I’ve been offered a job,’ she whispered tragically.
She felt his fingers tighten on her fingers before he untangled them, and wished she could learn to hang on to secrets as well as he did.
‘A good one?’ he asked after a tense moment.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed, then went on to explain. ‘It feels like those heavens up there have been pulling strings for me down here. If I take the job it will mean I can finish my post-grad course while I work—get some normality back in my life. You too,’ she added carefully, aware that she was opening the can of worms she had wanted to keep sealed up so tight no one would be able to prise off the lid.
‘My life is fine the way that it is,’ Anton responded smoothly. ‘We can both commute,’ he decided then. ‘I do it every day as it is.’
‘You know that wasn’t what I meant.’ Sitting up, she wrapped her arms around her bent knees. He wasn’t so slow on the uptake that he hadn’t already worked out where she was going with this. ‘We had an—arrangement,’ she spelled it out. ‘Now it’s time for us to—bring it an end.’
For a minute his silence was agony. For a minute she even questioned whether or not he had heard what she’d said. She wanted to look at him, but she couldn’t bring herself to look, and the tears were rolling freely down her cheeks.
He sat up too, only he got up, rising to his full height and shoving his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘Don’t do this, Zoe,’ he growled out.
‘Don’t do what—talk about the thing we have both been hiding away from here? Theo is gone.’ Feeling the need to bite down on something to stop the sobs from forming in her throat, she bit down hard on one of her knees.
‘And if you are trying to tell me that you want out of this marriage because of Theo’s death, then try telling me so with a bit more enthusiasm than that stupid comment muffled by the thickness of your tears!’
So, she was crying … Zoe used the back of her hand to wipe her damp cheeks. ‘I don’t see why you’re so angry. This has always only been only a temporary s-situation.’
‘It is not a situation, it is a marriage!’ He launched down at her. ‘I married you, I did not buy you in some cut-throat arrangement I made with Theo or you or the damn devil himself. I married you. I wanted you to be my wife.’ He tossed the words down at her like Zeus throwing thunderbolts. ‘How many times did I offer to marry you before we eventually did it?’
‘Offer! I beg your pardon?’ Zoe scrambled to her feet. ‘You never offered to do anything!’ she flashed back at him. ‘You told me what I had to do because you always think that you know best!’
‘I do always know best,’ he countered savagely. ‘Why else are we having this ridiculous argument? Because you started it.’ He snapped out the answer to his own question. ‘Because you can be such a flimsy-brained idiot when—’
‘How dare you call me flimsy-brained?’ Zoe gasped.
He could because he was angry. He could because he had truly believed that she had more damn sense by now than to still think of their marriage as temporary.
‘You are so rude sometimes.’
She stiffened up like a long, slender soldier with tangled golden hair wearing skimpy shorts and a top that did absolutely nothing to hide the lush curves beneath it. Anton looked her over with a derisive flick of a gaze.
‘Don’t come the lofty English lady with me,’ he retorted. ‘You are as Greek as I am underneath all of that haughty dignity. You are as stubborn as I am and just as determined to get your own way as I am. You are also a hell of a lot better at making me suffer for my sins than I’ve made you suffer.’