There was only one possible way forward now.
Summer found him sitting on the old stone steps at the back of the house, shrouded by the night. She’d hung up after talking with Star, who had left Duratra and headed into the desert to find the second half of the key to wherever and whatever held the family’s missing diamonds. A part of Summer quivered with fear that Star might not find it, and that she herself might not find this hidden location where her great-great-great-grandmother had placed the family heirloom. And without the diamonds they wouldn’t meet the terms of their grandfather’s will and be able to sell the estate to Lykos, so that they could pay for their mother’s treatment.
The other part was trembling because of a certain Greek magnate staring into the sky, looking as if he had no plans to leave.
I believe you.
If he’d said it immediately, freely even, she might not have trusted him. But he’d said it as if it had cost him something and she couldn’t understand what that might be.
Kyros was absolutely one hundred per cent committed to his wife and family. I know this to be true. I have seen it with my own eyes.
‘What is my father to you?’ Summer had been so busy putting the pieces together that she’d spoken before she’d thought. And the look in his eyes when his gaze rose to meet hers made her wish she hadn’t.
The tangle of hurt, resentment, love, protection...all these emotions knitted together in his eyes.
‘Everything,’ he replied, turning back to look up at the stars. ‘I still...’
She flinched, knowing that words of disbelief would have finished that sentence.
‘I do believe you,’ he said, as if he’d felt rather than seen her hurt. ‘It’s justhard. I’ve known him since I was twelve.’
And I’ve never known him, she thought as something twisted in her heart.
‘He gave me everything that I have today and I would do anything for him.’ He said it simply, easily, like floating on water, but she felt the words like a stone, weighing and pressing him down. Maybe he couldn’t see it.
‘What happened? How...?’ He asked as if she held the answer to understanding a shocking mystery.
‘I don’t know. I was hoping to ask him.’
‘And...your mother? What does she say?’
‘I can’t ask her,’ she replied past the hurt in her chest.
‘Why not? Surely she’d—’
‘She’s not well,’ Summer said, cutting him off, the stubborn jut to her jaw putting an end to his line of questioning. His eyes softened, and she didn’t want to see it. Things had been much easier when he’d been an ocean away and ignorant. She’d hardly thought of him at all.
Liar.
‘Does she know about the baby?’ he asked quietly as if, without being told, he knew that darkness stalked the fringes of their conversation. Loss. And possibly worse.
‘No.’
He nodded once. ‘Well, we can stay here until you’re ready.’
‘Ready for what?’ she asked, not quite sure what he was talking about.
‘To return to Greece.’
‘Why would I return to Greece?’
She couldn’t understand why he was looking at her as if she had lost her mind, or memory, or something.
‘Because that is where we’ll live.’
‘What?’ she demanded, heat creeping up her neck and twisting in her belly.
‘When we’re married.’