A FEW DAYS after Christmas Antonios and Lindsay came to the villa, all the way from New York. Margo had spent hours getting ready: supervising the preparations for meals, tweaking the decorations, and finally seeing to her outfit. She was nervous about meeting Leo’s brother and his wife—both for her sake and his.
Their relationship had been growing stronger in the last few days, but it still felt fragile. They hadn’t said those three important words, and Margo quaked inwardly to think of actually committing herself in that way to Leo, of making her frail hopes real and spoken. Of losing it all.
She’d known the worst to happen so many times; she couldn’t help but expect it now.
With Antonios’s upcoming arrival, Leo had withdrawn a bit, spending more time in the office, coming to bed late at night. At least they now shared a bed. They hadn’t discussed it; Leo had simply joined Margo there on Christmas Eve, after they’d made love. And he’d continued to join her every night, much to her relief and joy.
The night before she’d turned to him, smoothed a thumb over the furrow in his forehead. ‘Tell me what’s going on,’ she’d said quietly.
Leo had twitched under her caress. ‘Nothing’s going on.’
‘Are you worried about seeing Antonios again?’
‘I’m not worried.’
‘But there’s something. You haven’t been yourself, Leo—’
‘I’m fine.’
He’d rolled onto his side, away from her, and Margo had sunk back against the pillows, more hurt than she’d wanted to admit even to herself.
‘Leave it alone,’ he’d muttered, and they’d gone to sleep in silence.
Now she stood on the portico, shivering slightly in the wintry breeze, as Antonios and Lindsay’s hired car came up the estate’s sweeping drive. Leo joined her on the step, his expression inscrutable as the car came to a stop in front of them.
Margo had felt a distance between them this morning; apparently their new relationship didn’t extend to the kind of honesty and intimacy she’d been looking for last night. Lesson learned.
Lindsay got out first, waving her welcome. She was beautiful in a pale, almost ethereal way, and she smiled at Margo. Leo had told her a few days ago that Lindsay suffered from social anxiety, but with Antonios’s help was able to manage it. Margo wanted to make things as easy for her new sister-in-law as possible and she started forward, smiling her own welcome.
‘I’m so very glad to meet you.’
‘And I you. Although I haven’t heard that much about you.’ Lindsay gave Leo a teasing look, and he smiled back tightly.
Margo knew Lindsay had no idea about their complicated history; she certainly wasn’t going to mention it now—not when she was wondering yet again just what was between her and Leo.
‘Come inside,’ she said, drawing Lindsay up the steps towards the villa. ‘It’s freezing out.’
Although Antonios was only just getting out of the car Margo could still feel the tension emanating from both of the brothers. Better, she decided, for them to have their reunion in private. Leo had already shown her he didn’t want her involved.
Lindsay came behind her into the villa, stopping to admire the garlands of greenery looped over the banisters and along the doorways. ‘Oh, but it’s beautiful! Did you do this?’
‘Yes, I wanted a proper Christmas,’ Margo said, feeling rather shy.
Lindsay beamed at her. ‘I love it. I wish I could make our apartment back in New York look half as nice. I’m hopeless with decorating and things like that. Hopeless with almost everything except for numbers.’
‘I doubt that.’
Leo had told her that Lindsay was a brilliant mathematician, and was currently teaching at a university in New York City. Looking at her sister-in-law, Margo couldn’t help but feel a bit intimidated. Lindsay might have social anxiety, but she hid it remarkably well. Margo was the one who felt and no doubt looked anxious...about so many things.
Xanthe, Ava and Parthenope came into the room, greeting Lindsay with warm hugs, reminding Margo that she was still on a somewhat fragile footing with Leo’s sisters. It would come right in time, she told herself, and sat down on a settee while Maria came in with coffee for everyone. Just as things would with Leo. She had to trust that—had to believe that things would work out this time.
But that was easier said than done.
Eventually the three women finished their greetings and catch-up and turned to Margo.
‘Leo is a dark horse,’ Lindsay said teasingly. ‘I didn’t even know he was seeing someone.’
Margo’s insides tensed. ‘He likes to keep things quiet, I suppose,’ she said.
‘You’re one to talk, Lindsay,’ Xanthe said, grinning. ‘Antonios showed up with you with no warning whatsoever!’
‘That’s true,’ Lindsay agreed with a laugh.
Desperate to direct the spotlight away from herself, Margo said, ‘That sounds like there’s a story to be told.’
Lindsay agreed, and then told Margo how she and Antonios had met and married in New York City all within a week.
‘When you know, you know, right?’ she said, with a smile that Margo suspected was meant to create solidarity but only made everything inside her shrink with apprehension.
Lindsay made it sound as if everything was obvious and easy when you were in love, but Margo still felt so much uncertainty, so much fear. She wanted to embrace this new life, and yet still she was holding back, and Leo was too. Perhaps they always would.
It was certainly hard for her. Everyone had let her down at one point or another. No one had been there for her when she’d needed it. It was so difficult to let go of that history—not to make it affect her choices even now. Difficult not to brace herself for when Leo would fail her, or say he’d had enough, or just walk away. Everyone else had—why wouldn’t he?
Antonios and Leo finally came into the sitting room. Margo shot Leo a swift, searching look, but she couldn’t tell anything from his face and she wondered what had passed between the two brothers.
The conversation moved on to Parthenope’s family, and little Timon’s antics. Margo sat back and let it all wash over her; it felt good to be part of a family—even if she was just sitting and listening to everyone else. She caught Leo’s eye and he smiled at her, and the uncertainty that had been knotting her stomach eased a little.
It was going to be okay. She would believe that. At least she would try.
* * *
Leo sat on the settee across from Margo, barely listening to everyone’s chatter. The stilted conversation he’d had with Antonios out on the steps replayed in his mind.
It had been strange and unsettling to see his brother again, standing there in front of their childhood home, remembering the death of both of their parents, a decade of hostility and suspicion between them... Leo had felt himself tense, his hands ball into instinctive fists. He’d seen from the set of Antonios’s jaw and his narrowed eyes that he felt the same.
They could clear the air, they could forgive the past, they could say they were moving on, but the reality was that memories still clung. They still held power. And if he couldn’t move past things with Antonios, how could he with Margo?
He wanted to tell her he loved her, wanted to trust that what they had was real and lasting. But the memory of her last rejection still had the power to hurt. To make him stay silent. They’d had just over a month together...a few intense moments. Nothing, he acknowledged, that actually constituted a real, loving, trusting relationship.
‘How’s marriage?’ Antonios had asked as they’d stood outside in wintry silence.
‘Fine.’
‘I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.’
‘It’s not as if we keep each other up to date on our personal lives,’ Leo had answered. He’d meant to sound light, but it had come out terse and dismissive instead. ‘You’re one to talk, anyway,’ he’d added, trying for a joke, but it had fallen flat.
Antonios had just nodded, his jaw bunched, and they hadn’t spoken again until they were settled in the sitting room with everyone else—and then only about innocuous matters.
Leo’s gaze kept straying to Margo. She was listening to everyone, but he thought she looked tense, maybe even unhappy, and he wished they could be alone. Wished he could be sure of her feelings...and of his own.
* * *
‘Is everything all right between you and Antonios?’ Margo asked as they got ready for bed that evening.
They hadn’t spoken much during the day, busy as they’d both been with their guests. Margo, Leo noticed now, looked pale and tired, with lines of strain around her eyes.
‘As well as they can be, I suppose,’ he said as he stretched out on the bed.
Leo still kept his clothes in the adjoining room, but he’d brought a few things into Margo’s bedroom: his books, his reading glasses, his pyjamas. Small yet intimate things that spoke of building a life together. But lying there he felt as if his presence in Margo’s life, in her bed, was transient.
Margo took down her hair, and Leo felt a frisson of sensual pleasure as he watched her raise her slender arms, anticipating the sudden tumble of dark, wavy hair down to her waist.
‘What does that mean?’ she asked as she reached for the satin nightdress she wore to bed and quickly undressed.
Leo had tantalising glimpses of her breasts and thighs, milky-pale and soft-looking, before she shrugged the nightdress on and slid under the covers, pillows propped behind her as she looked at him and waited for his answer.
‘We have ten years of hard history,’ Leo said slowly. ‘Even though we’ve talked about it and tried to put it behind us, I don’t think it’s that easy or simple.’
‘No,’ Margo agreed quietly. ‘It isn’t.’
He knew she was thinking of her own past hurts. As much as she might want to, could she move on from her appalling childhood and the many wrongs that had been done to her? Could they move on from the hurt they’d caused each other?
He wasn’t about to ask those questions. They spoke of his own past, his own uncertainty and fear. He’d spent his childhood trying to prove himself to his father—wanting Evangelos to love him,and receiving only rejection.
And it was those experiences that kept him silent now.
‘Do you think things will get better in time?’ Margo asked, her gaze serious and intent on him.
For a second Leo thought she was asking about things with them. Then he realised she meant Antonios.
‘Maybe,’ he said with a shrug.
He didn’t sound hopeful.
Wanting to end the discussion, he reached for her, wrapping a thick tendril of hair around his wrist as he pulled her gently towards him. She came with a smile, her features softened and suffused with desire, their bodies bumping up against one another as Leo brushed a kiss across her mouth.
They’d made love many times in the days since Christmas Eve. Their chemistry had always been explosive, right from the beginning, but in the last week it had become even more intimate and arousing.
Margo let out a soft little sigh as she brought her arms up around his neck, her body yielding to his in a way that made Leo’s head spin and desire spiral dizzily inside him. He slid his hand from her shoulder to her waist to her hip, loving the silky feel of her skin, the ripe fullness of her breasts and hips.
She twitched slightly beneath his caress and he stilled his hand. ‘What is it?’
‘Just the normal fears of a pregnant woman,’ she said with an uncertain little laugh. ‘I feel fat.’
‘Fat? Fat? Margo, you are not remotely fat. You are fecund and beautiful and glowing. I like your body more, I think, than before you were carrying our baby.’
‘You do not!’
‘You doubt me?’ he said in a mock growl, and she let out another laugh, this one breathless with anticipation.
‘I do.’
‘Then perhaps I should prove to you just how beautiful you are,’ Leo said, and bent his head to her breasts, taking his time to give each one his full, lascivious attention.
Margo let out a sigh of pleasure, her hands tangling in his hair, and Leo lifted his head.
‘Does that satisfy you?’ he demanded, and she gazed at him with a mischievous smile.
‘Not...quite.’
‘I see I’ll have to prove it to you some more.’
‘You just might.’
Laughing softly, he slid a hand between her thighs. ‘I can do a lot of proving,’ he murmured, ‘if that’s your wish.’
‘It is,’ Margo whispered back, her hips arching upwards. And then they lost themselves to their shared pleasure.
* * *
The next day Leo and Antonios repaired to the office, to discuss matters relating to Marakaios Enterprises, and Lindsay sought out Margo up in the soon-to-be nursery, where she was comparing fabric swatches.
‘Hello,’ she said, poking her head around the door, and Margo gave a self-conscious smile before welcoming her in.
‘Sorry, I’m not trying to hide away.’ She rubbed her lower back while motioning to the swatches. ‘Just trying to make a decision about fabric. It can take ages for it to come in once you place an order.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Lindsay answered with a laugh. ‘But Leo mentioned you worked in decorating before...?’
‘I was a buyer for a department store in Paris. Home furnishings.’ It occurred to her this must seem like a rather useless job to a brilliant mathematician, but Lindsay appeared genuinely interested.
‘Do you miss it? When Antonios and I lived here I missed my old life a lot more than I thought I would. My old job...’
Margo was intrigued to think that Lindsay and Antonios’s marriage hadn’t always been as perfect as it now seemed.
‘I don’t miss it exactly,’ she answered slowly. ‘But I miss feeling productive and useful sometimes.’
Lindsay nodded in sympathy before saying in a rush, ‘Look, I think I may have put my foot in it yesterday, which isn’t all that surprising, considering how bad I am at social situations. But when I mentioned not knowing that you and Leo were dating...’ She swallowed, a blush staining her pale cheeks. ‘Well, it’s none of my business whether you were dating or not. I didn’t mean to make you feel awkward.’
‘But you noticed that you did?’ Margo answered with an uncertain laugh.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, don’t be. It was a perfectly innocent question. And the truth is my relationship with Leo is...complicated.’
‘I can relate to that.’
‘Can you?’ Margo glanced at her sister-in-law with open curiosity. ‘Because from where I’m standing you and Antonios seem to have the fairytale.’
‘Oh, don’t say that!’ Lindsay cried, and Margo raised her eyebrows. ‘It used to seem like a fairytale,’ she explained. ‘Meeting the way we did in New York. Antonios sweeping me straight off my feet.’ Lindsay sighed and shook her head. ‘But life isn’t a fairytale, you know? Reality sets in. And when it did for Antonios and me, it was hard.’
‘How so?’
‘Did Leo tell you about my social anxiety?’
‘A bit...’
‘As soon as we were married Antonios whisked me off here and put me in charge of the household. He thought he was honouring me, but in truth it just terrified me. I’ve had social anxiety since I was a child—talking in front of crowds, being the centre of attention...it all makes me start to panic. And when I landed here...with all of Antonios’s sisters as well as his mother looking at me, measuring me...it was hard.’
‘But his sisters love you now,’ Margo remarked.
Lindsay smiled wryly. ‘That doesn’t mean they weren’t taken aback when Antonios showed up with me out of the blue.’
‘The same way Leo showed up with me,’ Margo admitted with a laugh. ‘Poor girls. They’ve had an awful lot of shocks.’
‘So why did you and Leo marry, if you don’t mind me asking? Were you dating...?’ Lindsay’s blush deepened. ‘Sorry, I’m being inexcusably nosy. But, if you don’t mind me saying so, you remind me a little bit of me when I came here. A little overwhelmed...a little lost.’
‘Do I?’ Margo could hear how stiff and stilted her voice sounded and busied herself organising the swatches of fabric, just to give herself a little time to order her thoughts.
‘Am I wrong?’ Lindsay asked quietly.
‘Not exactly. Coming here as Leo’s wife was overwhelming—especially considering the circumstances.’ She glanced down at her bump and Lindsay nodded her understanding. ‘I don’t have a lot of experience with big families or houses. I’ve pretty much been on my own my whole life.’
‘As have I,’ Lindsay said quietly.
Margo looked at her in surprise. ‘We seem to have quite a bit in common.’
‘Not least being married to difficult Marakaios men.’
They both laughed at that, and then Margo said seriously, ‘But Antonios seems to dote on you.’
‘Antonios can be stubborn and set in his ways. He tends not to see another person’s perspective unless it’s pointed out to him. Repeatedly.’ Lindsay softened this observation with a smile and added, ‘But I’m utterly in love with him, and he with me, and that makes all the difference.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it does,’ Margo murmured.
She thought of how she and Leo had made love last night, spending the whole night sleeping in each other’s arms. Was that love? It seemed like it, on the surface, but the fact remained that she still felt wary and guarded, and she thought Leo did too. They were both still holding back, both afraid to commit fully to their marriage... Or maybe Leo just didn’t want to. Maybe what they had was enough—was all he wanted.
And yet she knew she wanted more. She wanted the fairytale.