THE SUN POURING into the bedroom woke Tabitha from the deep slumber she’d finally fallen into.
Giannis’s side empty, she stretched and climbed out, looking for something to wear. She settled on the shirt she’d practically ripped from his body, still discarded on the floor where she’d thrown it.
A powerful sense of déjà vu hit her but she was too full of bliss from a night spent making exquisite love to fear the irony that the last time she’d spent the night with him she’d also woken to an empty bed and helped herself to his shirt.
They were married now. She carried his child in her belly.
For the first time since she’d been ten years old, Tabitha woke without a single fear in her mind.
It was liberating.
As she fastened the buttons of the shirt that fell to her knees, she gazed around at Giannis’s bedroom. Their bedroom.
It was like a whitewashed cave with curved ceilings, thick arches and an abundance of alcoves, some covered with doors, others with seats carved into them or modern artwork placed in them.
She found a bathroom that thrilled her feminine heart, a dressing room filled with Giannis’s clothes, another dressing room filled with her clothes... She quickly shut that door so she didn’t have to change out of his shirt.
Padding to the other side of the room to one of the huge arched windows, she was astounded to find a private balcony with an infinity pool and immediately set about locating the door to it.
She found it behind the silk drapes hanging at the far end of the room and stepped out onto it. The sun’s rays were already strong that morning, the cloudless sky a deep royal-blue.
‘I was afraid for a moment that you’d done another early-morning vanishing act.’ Giannis’s deep, rich voice rumbled deliciously through her ears and she turned with a smile to face him.
He wore only a pair of shorts and carried a tray with coffee, orange juice and a variety of pastries and fruits.
He grinned, placing the tray on the glass table by the thick-walled balustrade. ‘But I see you have stolen another of my shirts.’
As her heart had lodged into her throat at the first sight of him, it took a few moments before speech came. ‘You wasted all that money on clothes for me when you could have just given me your discarded shirts.’
‘If you wore only my shirts neither of us would ever leave my room.’ And then he pulled her to him and kissed her so thoroughly, her knees weakened. ‘Good morning, matia mou.’
Staring into the gleaming eyes, she smiled again. She couldn’t stop smiling. ‘Good morning.’
Anticipating another kiss, she was disappointed when he let her go and pulled a chair out for her. ‘Sit. Eat.’
She raised a brow at his authoritative tone.
He winked and took his seat. ‘I find I have a great appetite this morning.’
Laughing, she sat and helped herself to a glass of orange juice.
She could hardly credit that only twenty-four hours ago she’d been filled with dread. Now she felt as light as air, as if she could fly.
Giannis gazed in wonder at the radiance shining from his new wife, his relief at finding her still there now tamed.
While he’d waited for the coffee to brew he’d had an unexpected feeling of déjà vu flash through him.
The last time he’d made her coffee after a night of making love, he’d returned to an empty room.
This time the room had been empty but she had still been there.
The smile she had greeted him with could have melted an iceberg.
The night they had shared...
Theos, his loins still thrummed from the effects.
Biting into an apple, he chewed and swallowed the bite before saying, ‘We have the next three days to ourselves. Is there anything you would like to do?’
She pulled a face as she considered the question. ‘Can we stay in bed?’
‘You read my mind.’
Their eyes met. His heart thumped hard against his ribs.
That was to be expected. After the night they’d shared, all of him felt out of kilter. Three days of making love to his beautiful bride would be enough for everything to right itself.
She broke into a bread roll and spooned honey on it. ‘What happens after the three days are up? Are you going back to work?’
‘I have to,’ he answered regretfully. ‘And I might have to answer the occasional urgent email while we’re here. I have many business interests and, while I employ the best people to run them for me, any issues are ultimately my responsibility.’
She bit into the roll and shrugged, clearly conveying that she understood.
‘What did you want to do?’ he asked curiously.
She looked at him with a frown, her mouth still full of food.
‘Before Emmaline kicked you out of your home and cut your education off. What did you hope to do? Would you have gone to university?’
She swallowed her mouthful and took another drink of orange juice. ‘I wanted to do a business degree.’
He raised a brow in admiration. ‘What would you have done with it?’
‘The plan was for me to take over my father’s business.’
‘What business was he in?’
‘He owned a brewery.’
Recognition flashed through him. ‘Brigstock Brewery? That’s your family’s business?’
He remembered it well. His first illicit pint of beer at boarding school had been in one of its pubs.
‘It’s been in the family for over two hundred years,’ she said with a touch of pride. ‘We own over two thousand pubs and restaurants and brew many of our own beers.’
‘Who runs it now?’
She gave a shrug but he caught the sadness in her eyes. ‘It’s not been family-run since my mother died. My father gave up day-to-day control of it so he could look after me. It’s run by a board of directors but he was still the majority shareholder. He’d started easing back into the business a couple of years before he died. The plan was always for me to one day take my place on the board too.’
It was an answer that led to so many further questions, he hardly knew where to start. ‘How old were you when your mother died?’
‘Four. She died of cervical cancer. My father died when I was sixteen, of a heart attack. Probably the stress of being married to Emmaline,’ she added with a bitter murmur.
‘If he was the majority shareholder then presumably he was entitled to a majority share of the profits?’
Her eyes met his. There was a stoniness in them he’d seen only once before. ‘Those profits go into the trust.’
He felt his own blood turn stony. ‘Meaning they go to Emmaline?’
She nodded.
He drummed his fingers on the table, thinking hard, biting back irrational heated thoughts of hitmen and torture. ‘You need to fight this.’
‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’
‘You begin at the start. With Emmaline. She has taken—’
‘I know what she’s taken and done,’ she interrupted with a hint of anger. ‘I’ve lived with the consequences for almost five years.’
‘You don’t have to live with them any more. Let me help you. We can take back what was yours.’
‘No!’ Tabitha’s shout of disagreement surprised her as much as it clearly surprised him. Lowering her voice, she said evenly, ‘The thought of seeing Emmaline again terrifies me.’
‘You won’t have to see her alone. I’ll be by your side.’
‘The effect would still be the same. All I have to do is think about that woman and my hands go clammy.’ This conversation alone had her heart racing in the sick, frightened way it had done all those years ago when she’d walked for hours along the side of the road with her thumb out, praying that whoever stopped for her wouldn’t be an axe murderer, no clue where she was going to go or what she was going to do when she got there. She’d been lost and terrified, feelings she remembered all too vividly to ever feel safe from them.
‘Emmaline and her evil daughters put me through hell and I will not put myself or our baby through the stress that seeing them again would cause.’
‘So you let her win?’ he challenged.
Tabitha threw her hands in the air. ‘She’s already won! I’m not going to put myself through a huge court battle while I’m pregnant.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Once the baby’s born? Will you fight her then?’
‘Maybe.’
‘I don’t like the word “maybe”. It’s weak.’
His comment landed like a wound to her heart. ‘Is that what you think of me?’
‘No, matia mou, it’s what you think of yourself. You don’t see how strong you are.’
‘I’m not strong.’
‘The fact you are still here proves you are strong. How many people in your position could have done what you did?’
‘I didn’t do anything. I’ve been a chambermaid for years.’
‘That takes strength in itself. Think of the girls you were at school with. How many of them would have found the strength to lower their hands into doing the menial work of their household staff? It would be beneath their dignity. Most of them would have ended up on the streets or selling their stories to the tabloid rags for money. You didn’t.’ He reached across the table to take her hand in his, bringing it up to his face to stare intently at it before turning his gaze back to her. ‘You worked your fingers into callouses to support yourself. One day you will find you do have the strength to face your stepmother and fight her for what is yours. The power is yours. You just need to believe it.’
Tabitha’s heart thumped so hard, there was danger it could burst out of her.
To hear Giannis say those things...
She stared into his eyes and found she could cry to see only sincerity staring back at her.
She’d spent so long thinking herself weak that it was incredible to hear that Giannis, a man who epitomised strength and power, thought her strong.
Her head was still dazed when he brushed a kiss on her knuckles, the gleam returning to his eyes. ‘Finish your roll, koritzi mou. And then I would suggest you eat another.’
She blinked a couple of times before finding her voice. ‘Why would you suggest that?’
‘Because I’m taking you back to bed. You will need all your strength for that.’ And then he winked and took a huge bite of his apple.
* * *
Two weeks after the wedding Giannis was sat in his office reading his investigator’s report on Emmaline.
The report on Tabitha had been emailed too but, when he’d hovered over the icon to open it, he’d found himself plagued by a violent bout of nausea and deleted it unread.
His wife deserved better than to have her husband poking into every last detail of her history. It was a violation she had done nothing to warrant and he was sickened with himself for authorising it.
He had no such qualms about reading the report on Emmaline.
By the time he’d finished, reading it a second time for good measure...
He had never felt such fury, not even when he’d received confirmation he was not the father of Anastasia’s child.
Emmaline Brigstock was a greater piece of work than even Anastasia had been. The woman was vile. Clever, manipulative and cruel.
Her first husband had died in a motorboat accident when their daughters, Fiona and Saffron, had been small. He’d recognised their names from the guest-list of his ball. Tabitha’s tormentors had been there the night they’d conceived their child. Had Tabitha seen them?
He thought of the shattered glass in her hand and knew the answer was yes.
Emmaline’s first husband’s family described Emmaline as an arch manipulator. Her own family described her as cold. Her sister, estranged for many years, described her thus: ‘the kind of woman children would lovingly follow into her home believing they were going to be shown a litter of puppies, only to watch the puppies be drowned’.
Transcripts of interviews with ex-members of staff who’d borne witness to her treatment of Tabitha—all undertaken on condition of confidentiality—proved that Tabitha’s treatment at her stepmother’s hand had been far more wretched than she’d confided to Giannis, especially after her father had died. The day after his death, the cook had witnessed Emmaline slap Tabitha around the face. She’d no longer been permitted to eat in the dining room, forced to eat alone in the kitchen. She’d been excluded from all family occasions. Christmas had been spent with the staff. She’d received no presents. Her birthdays had gone unremarked and certainly not celebrated.
Pages and pages of testimony of the cold cruelty Tabitha had endured.
Not a single member of staff had a bad word to say about Tabitha herself. On the contrary, they’d all adored her and had been heartbroken when she’d run away on her eighteenth birthday, all having believed Emmaline’s explanation for Tabitha’s sudden disappearance from Brigstock Manor.
‘She’d been such a happy child but those years after her father died...well...she become a shell of herself,’ the housekeeper had explained. ‘It was no surprise that she left the moment she legally could. Their treatment of her was barbaric.’
Calling out to his PA to cancel his next meeting, Giannis opened his oak cabinet door and pulled out the bottle of Scotch he kept there for the occasions he worked late and wanted to wind down before returning to his apartment. He filled the glass to the brim, drank half of it then reached for his phone.
First he forwarded the report to his English lawyer with instructions to check for any illegalities in Emmaline’s activities. Instinct told him that she must have broken a swathe of English laws.
Then he called his sister.
Niki answered on the first ring.
Cutting out the usual pleasantries, he said, ‘It’s Tabitha’s birthday next week. How do you feel about organising a party for her? I thought we could book that restaurant we took our parents to for their fortieth wedding anniversary.’ The restaurant was one of the best in Athens, excellent food, location and atmosphere combined with attentive but relaxed staff, making it a memorable venue for all the right reasons.
Her response was exactly what he had known it would be—enthusiastic—and she promised to get straight on to it.
Knowing he’d put the wheels in motion to bring a smile to his wife’s face eased the fury pumping through his blood a little.
What hell she must have lived through.
He imagined a miniature Tabitha, with chubby cheeks and honey-blonde hair, and his heart twisted to think of that little girl losing her mother at such a tender age. Her father had found a new mother for her, and sisters too, not knowing he was bringing a black widow and her venomous offspring into his home.
It would be easy to sneer at her father for falling for Emmaline’s lies but Giannis had been the victim of his own gold-digging witch.
Tabitha could not be more different if she tried.
What was she doing right then? Was she reading one of the books he’d had shipped over by an English retailer, after she’d said in passing that she had always loved to read but that she’d only read one book since having been kicked out of her home? It hadn’t been time or finances that had stopped her reading. For almost five years she had worked long, physical hours. She’d been too exhausted to read a book. She’d been too exhausted to do anything.
He swiped his phone and found her number before his brain registered what his fingers were doing and he turned it off before he could put the call through.
He downed the rest of his Scotch. The ease he’d just found disappeared. His skin felt suddenly uncomfortable, as if it had tightened around his bones and was constricting his lungs.
Since when did he call a woman just to hear her voice? Never.
And since when did he cut meetings short and cancel appointments just so he could read non-work-related reports? Since when did he focus on anything at work other than the work itself?
Since Tabitha.
It had been the same even before they’d married, he thought, remembering the weeks spent in his fruitless search for her.
In the course of a normal working week he stayed in his apartment in Athens or his other apartments or hotels if he was travelling. He returned to Santorini only at weekends. He worked long hours. Adding an hour’s flight at the end of it was a hassle he could do without.
Since their wedding he’d flown back to Santorini six times. He’d had to physically restrain himself from flying back the other times.
He’d meant what he’d said about making their marriage work but there had to be a balance. He’d told himself he had a duty to spend time with his new wife during the week, and not just weekends, but the uncomfortable truth was that he ached to be with her.
She was never far from his mind.
Even with an hour’s flight between them the spell she’d woven on him proved strong.
Sooner or later the spell would break.
Tabitha was his wife. He had a duty to provide for her, to protect her and to make life as good and as easy as it could be. He would give her everything she desired. He would treat her like a princess. He would worship her body when he was with her and be faithful when he wasn’t.
But his heart he would—must—keep for himself.
Only a fool would allow it to be placed in another’s hands after having had it smashed the first time he’d handed it to someone.