The World's Most Notorious Greek (Mills & Boon Modern) Page 17

  Achilles...

  Her eyes filled with tears and she didn’t want to look, because she would only be disappointed. And the disappointment would be so bitter.

  But she couldn’t stop herself from moving over to the edge and taking a glimpse through the trees...

  And her heart caught hard in her chest as a man pulled himself out of the water.

  A beautiful man.

  Her man.

  She could barely see through the tears in her eyes, a sob catching in her throat.

  He was here and she didn’t know why. He was here, swimming in the lake, so close and yet so far. And how dared he? How dared he come to where he must know she walked? How dared he flaunt himself like this?

  And how dared she still love him when all he’d done was hurt her?

  She turned away from the sight of him, walking quickly along the path, blind with tears, when a voice from behind her said, ‘Diana.’

  Tears were streaming down her cheeks. That voice, that beautiful voice...

  ‘That’s not my name,’ she said hoarsely, not sure why she wasn’t running, getting as far away from him as she could.

  ‘I know.’ Beneath the deep, lilting timbre was a note of desperation. Of pain. ‘It’s Willow. My Willow.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m nobody’s Willow.’

  She didn’t hear his footsteps, but suddenly there were hands on her hips, holding her tight, pulling her back against a hot, hard male body, still damp from the water. ‘Yes, you are.’ His mouth was by her ear, his breath hot on her skin. ‘You’re mine. I claimed you. You’re my Willow and you were mine the moment I laid eyes on you.’

  The tears wouldn’t stop, pain and fury building in her heart, and she let them. Because this was who she was. A woman of deep passions. Passions he didn’t want, and so what did it matter if she held them back? What did it matter if she let them out?

  He hadn’t wanted her back in London, so why would he want her now?

  She turned in his arms, curling her hands into fists, hitting him on his damp, bare chest, wanting to hurt him for what he’d done to her and to their child.

  ‘I hate you,’ she said thickly. ‘I hate you so much.’

  He only caught her fists in his and gathered them together, bringing them to his mouth and kissing her knuckles. His eyes were very dark, almost black.

  ‘I’m sorry, chriso mou,’ he said in a low, rough voice. ‘I’m so very sorry for hurting you. And you have every right to be angry. Take it out on me, my Diana. You can hurt me; I deserve it.’

  His heat took all the strength from her. All she could do was look up into his beautiful, beloved face. ‘Why?’ Her voice was hoarse and broken. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I hoped my swimming would bring you to me.’ He cupped her face between his palms. ‘Because I’ve come back to claim what is mine. You. You and our child.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You didn’t want me. You told me—’

  ‘I know.’ His voice was very calm, very sure. ‘But you were right about me. And I was so very wrong.’

  Willow swallowed, her heart slowing, catching. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I told myself that I had nothing to give you, that I didn’t love you. That I felt nothing at all. I’d convinced myself of it so completely that nothing could have changed my mind. And that’s where you were right. I clung to that belief because I was afraid.’ There was a hot glow in his eyes, a deep remembered pain. ‘My father told me he had no love left to give, that he’d given it all to Ulysses. And I believed him. I had to believe him. Because if I didn’t, if there was still love inside him, then why hadn’t he given it to me?’ His thumbs moved on her cheeks, stroking gently. ‘It was easier to tell myself that it was his fault, Ulysses’ fault. To tell myself I felt nothing than to believe there was something wrong with me.’

  ‘Oh, Achilles,’ she whispered brokenly, her heart aching for him. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing at all. If you believe nothing else, then believe that.’

  His midnight eyes stared down into hers. ‘That’s why I’m here, Willow. Because you sent me that ultrasound picture of our child and all I could think about was what was I missing out on and what I really wanted. And you were right, my Diana. It’s you. It’s our child. It’s our family. That’s what I want. That’s what I always wanted.’

  She swallowed, her chest tight, her voice stuck in her throat. ‘Achilles...what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying that I love you, Willow. I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you. And I can’t be afraid of that pain any more, chriso mou. I can’t.’ His expression became suddenly fierce. ‘I’ve been half-alive for so long. Existing but not living. Holding on to the ghosts of my father and brother, and I can’t do it any more. I don’t want to. What I want is to love you. Love you until there’s no more love in me left to give.’

  All her anger vanished. Just dried up and blew away, taking all the pain along with it.

  ‘You idiot,’ she said, her voice having gone scratchy and tight. ‘You can’t run out of love. It doesn’t work that way, I told you. The more love you give, the more you have, don’t you know that?’

  He smiled, damn him. That beautiful, slow-dawning smile that she loved so much. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t know that. But maybe you can teach me?’

  She’d always been a woman of deep passions and those passions were strong and true. Her anger was a storm and storms passed, and so had hers, leaving nothing but the one passion in her life that would never change, never flicker or fade.

  Her love for him.

  So she gave him the only answer she had, an answer that mere words weren’t enough for.

  She reached up, pulled his mouth down on hers, and started teaching him right there and then.

  EPILOGUE

  ACHILLES INSISTED THEY renew their vows on Heiros during the university summer break, so there would be no disruption for Willow’s degree, and she agreed. She wore a gown of her choosing, very Greek, a chiton of draped white silk and a golden tie at her waist. Her hair was loose and woven with wild flowers.

  He had never seen anything so beautiful.

  Their son, a golden-eyed terror called Alessandro, caused havoc by the water’s edge during the ceremony, and Achilles had to quell him by lifting him up in his arms and making him help him say his vows.

  Even Willow’s father—who’d surprised everyone by deciding to attend at the last minute—agreed that it was the most beautiful renewal.

  Willow somewhat mischievously had suggested they honeymoon in Thornhaven, since their first honeymoon had been on Heiros, but, since the weather was better in Greece, they stayed in Greece.

  But it wasn’t until deep in the night, after their passion was spent, that Achilles brought out the letter Jane had sent him, which had arrived the morning they’d left England. A letter he hadn’t known what to do with and had successfully pushed to the back of his mind until now.

  Willow lay wrapped in a sheet, the moonlight shining on her bare silky skin, frowning as she read it. And then, once she was done, she put it down and looked at him, sympathy and pain and love glowing in her eyes.

  The letter was written in a shaky hand:

  Achilles,

  I’ve been a dreadful father to you and I know that. I wish things had been different, but if there’s one certainty in life it’s that you can’t change the past. I should have moved on, I should have let Ulysses go, but I couldn’t. And now it’s too late. But it’s not too late for you. To that end, I’ve decided on something that you may think is a punishment, but is not intended as such. loz!

  I want you to have Thornhaven, but in order to keep it you must marry and have a son. This house needs a family. It needs children and laughter and happiness. It has been a house for ghosts for too long.

  You need a family too. Y
ou need to have the family that your mother and I failed to give you. And with any luck, when you do, you will make more of it than we did...

  ‘Where did this come from?’ Willow asked, a tear slipping down her cheek.

  ‘Jane found it in amongst some papers in Papa’s study.’ He looked down at it, the same pain and love that were in his Willow’s eyes in his own heart too, along with a deep regret. ‘It seems I was wrong about him. He did have something left for me after all.’

  His beautiful wife reached out and touched his face, and just like that the pain inside him was gone, leaving behind it only a bittersweet regret. ‘You see?’ she said softly, her mouth curving in a smile. ‘It never runs out completely.’

  He smiled, the emptiness inside him, the void that had been there for so long only a memory. Because now his heart was full, with his wife and his son, with the family they would have and the future they were building together.

  With love, of which he had an inexhaustible supply.

  Because, as it turned out, his wife was right about that too.

  Love really was infinite.

  Coming next month

  HIS STOLEN INNOCENT’S VOW

  Marcella Bell

  “I can’t,” she repeated, her voice low and earnest. “I can’t, because when I went to him as he lay dying, I looked him in his eye and swore to him that the d’Tierrza line would end with me, that there would be no d’Tierrza children to inherit the lands or title and that I would see to it that the family name was wiped from the face of the earth so that everything he had ever worked for, or cared about, was lost to history, the legacy he cared so much about nothing but dust. I swore to him that I would never marry and never have children, that not a trace of his legacy would be left on this planet.”

  For a moment, there was a pause, as if the room itself had sucked in a hiss of irritation. The muscles in his neck tensed, then flexed, though he remained otherwise motionless. He blinked as if in slow motion, the movement a sigh, carrying something much deeper than frustration, though no sound came out. Hel’s chest squeezed as she merely observed him. She felt like she’d let him down in some monumental way though they’d only just become reacquainted. She struggled to understand why the sensation was so familiar until she recognized the experience of being in the presence of her father.

  Then he opened his eyes again, and instead of the cold green disdain her heart expected, they still burned that fascinating warm brown—a heat that was a steady home fire, as comforting as the imaginary family she’d dreamed up as a child—and all of the taut disappointment in the air was gone.

  Her vow was a hiccup in his plans. That he had a low tolerance for hiccups was becoming clear. How she knew any of this when he had revealed so little in his reaction, and her mind only now offered up hazy memories of him as a young man, she didn’t know.

  She offered a shrug and an airy laugh in consolation, mildly embarrassed about the whole thing though she was simultaneously unsure as to exactly why. “Otherwise, you know, I’d be all in. Despite the whole abduction…” Her cheeks were hot, likely bright pink, but it couldn’t be helped so she made the joke, anyway, despite the risk that it might bring his eyes to her face, that it might mean their eyes locked again and he stole her breath again.

  Of course, that is what happened. And then there was that smile again, the one that said he knew all about the strange mesmerizing power he had over her, and it pleased him. dpg!

  Whether he was the kind of man who used his power for good or evil had yet to be determined.

  Either way, beneath that infuriating smile, deep in his endless brown eyes, was the sharp attunement of a predator locked on its target. “Give me a week.” His face may not have changed, but his voice gave him away, a trace of hoarseness, as if his sails had been slashed and the wind slipped through them, threaded it, a strange hint of something Hel might have described as desperation…if it had come from anyone other than him.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Give me a week to change your mind.”

  Continue reading

  HIS STOLEN INNOCENT’S VOW

  Marcella Bell

  Available next month

  Copyright ©2021 by Marcella Bell

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