She bit down on her lip, as if just realising how much she’d revealed without intending to. “I didn’t mean to complain.”
His lips compressed and his nostrils flared for the smallest of moments before his expression returned to one of almost disinterest. “In what ways are they protective?”
She focussed on the horizon, sparkling and fascinating. It made sense to give an off-handed answer and change the subject, as she usually would, but there was something about how they were floating in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by only sea creatures for company, that washed away her long-held reservations.
“As a young girl, we would spend a lot of the summer together. Even then, I was different. Not allowed on the fishing boats, not allowed to hike. The one time I did sneak out and trail along with them, Nicholas ended up carrying me on his back for most of it—I was nine,” she said indignantly. But a hint of a smile played on Samir’s lips, irritating Cora. He didn’t get it. “I had to fight so hard to get what they all had as a birthright. I never felt like I belonged,” she said quietly. “I adore them all, so much, but by trying to keep me safe, what they were really doing was making me feel like an outsider. Xenakis are strong. Fierce. Unstoppable. Except for me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“That’s how I always felt,” she said quietly. “I can see it differently now. My cousins had lost a younger sister, Valentina. I grew up in the shadow of her death—the only other daughter. You must have heard about Val?”
Samir’s eyes roamed her face. “She drowned, yes,” he said quietly. “Anastasios has confided in me.”
Her heart stitched a little because it was a sign of just how close this man must be to her cousin.
“Now I get why they were that way. Everyone was so worried something would happen to me, like it happened to Valentina. But when I was younger, I just felt like they didn’t trust me. Like they thought Icouldn’tdo anything.” She expelled a small sigh. “And then, when I was a teenager, I escaped.”
“Escaped?” He murmured. “Rapunzel style?”
“Practically.” She half smiled. “When I was sixteen, summer came and I couldn’t bear the thought of another year spent like a fragile princess, so I went to stay with my godmother, in LA. She had a niece my age—an actress, who’d just won an Emmy and been in a pretty public affair with a mega famous pop star, so the press was all over her like a rash. Which meant I got known too; we were always together, we were photographed, a lot. By the time I came home, everything was different. Cora Xenakis was a personality—an ‘heiress’,” she muttered. “Sometimes, I wonder…”
But she bit back on the revealing admission, turning her face back to the ocean, so her chin sat between her knees, and she rocked back and forth a little on her bottom.
“What do you wonder, Cora Xenakis?”
The ocean pushed her to speak freely. “I wonder if my dad had such low expectations that when I became famous just for being rich and young, he thought that was all I was good for. Maybe he thought being some kind of socialite was my calling in life?”
Samir moved swiftly, standing and pulling her with him, holding her right in front of him, his eyes boring into hers with an intensity that robbed her of breath. “No one, and I meanno one,who has spent even five minutes with you could ever believe that. You are capable of so much, Cora. So much.” He kissed her forehead then, and it was so much more special and intimate than if he’d kissed her anywhere else.
“I got on this crazy merry go round without even realising it,” she said quietly, dropping her head forward and into his embrace. “I was famous before I knew it, and everything I did was analysed, scrutinised, copied. I set fashions around the world just by wearing my hair in a particular style or dressing a certain way,” she shook her head with muted frustration. “I was approached to do a reality show—thank God my parents wouldn’t allow it—but it didn’t matter. Social media was the new reality show and everything I posted seemed to go viral.” She chewed on her lip, eyes swirling with worry. “Life was fast-paced. I told myself I was having fun, that I was happy—and let’s face it, that kind of…popularity…is validating—but when I met Alf, everything slowed down for a moment.” She gnawed on her lip, her voice husky. “I thought he was my exit-ramp. That we could get married and suddenly it would all calm down again, that I’d be a wife, and we’d be married—married people didn’t party in Ibiza and live like I’d been living. I thought he’d slow everything down, but instead, our marriage just intensified the scrutiny, the attention. It was like being trapped—and there was no escape. Everywhere I went, there were photographers. Stories online. Alf loved it; I didn’t.”
“He didn’t want to use the exit ramp.”
She shook her head. “He liked the attention that came from being Mr Cora Xenakis,” she said with a lift of her shoulders.
Samir was quiet, holding her close, his hand rubbing her back, slowly, rhythmically, so Cora remained almost in a trance. “After Alf, they’ve been protective in a different way. They looked at me with such worry, I decided early on that the only way I could cope was by acting, all the time, always, as though everything in my life was completely fine. I couldn’t let them see if I was hurting, if I was sad, because they’d show me that worry again. And I haven’t. Not once since my divorce have I cried in front of my family. Not once have I shown them a single hint of upset. I am strong,” she said firmly. “And they know it.”
“And you don’t date,” he said, so she tilted her head up.
“No.”
“Because they’d worry?”
“Because I don’t want to. And yes, because they’d worry. I learned my lesson, I told you.”
He made a dubious noise of agreement but kept holding her close. “There’s something you should know,” he said quietly.
“What is it?”
“When they speak of you, and they all do, often, it’s with awe and pride.”
Tears sparkled on her lashes at the unexpected compliment.
“Not one of them has ever spoken of you in such a way that would cause me to think they saw you as weak or in need of defending. Anastasios has described you as a force to be reckoned with. Dimitrios tells me you are the most stubborn and morally impressive person he’s ever met.”
Her heart was hammering against her ribs for a thousand reasons. “You’ve spoken to them about me recently?”
“No. But in recent times I’ve recalled past conversations, connecting the dots of their comments to how I feel about you, to what I know about you.” He caught her chin, tilting her face towards him. “And they were all right. Every single comment fits the woman I’ve come to know. You are strong and brave and impressive, Cora Xenakis. I think you are, quite simply, amazing.”