She shook her head, her lip wobbling, tears still streaming, and got down on her knees to meet him. ‘Oh, Caleb…you’re my home too. I love you so much it scares me…’
They looked at each other for an intense moment and he cradled her head before kissing her again. Her eyes were closed and she was breathless when he pulled away finally, both blissfully unaware of the hard floor under their knees. Then Caleb stood and pulled her with him. ‘I have something for you.’
She was incapable of speech, touching her lips, feeling them tingle from the kiss, wanting to pinch herself to see if she was really awake. She wiped at her cheeks as he led her out to the front door and there, parked in front of the house, was her battered Mini. Exactly as it always had been.
She clapped a shocked hand to her mouth. Wide-eyed, she looked at Caleb, shaking her head. ‘But…how…I mean, it was a tin can…’
He grimaced. ‘Just seconds away from it. I started tracking it down after that day your mother spilled the beans, even though you professed not to care, somehow, I knew.’
‘But that was…weeks ago.’
He shrugged. ‘I was fighting a losing battle even then, trying to keep you in the little box I’d built around you, but more and more I was beginning to suspect things weren’t as they seemed, but it was still easier to mistrust you than look at my real feelings…’
She looked away reluctantly from the intense emotion blazing from his eyes.
‘Is that how you came down here? That’s at least five hours…in a car that doesn’t go over forty miles an hour…’
He rolled his shoulders. ‘Don’t I know it and it was more like eight hours.’
He brought her round to the back of the car. ‘This was Plan B in case you weren’t going to listen to me.’
There at the back of the car were tin cans tied on pieces of string hanging off the bumper, trailing on the ground, and a huge sign, which read:
I love you, Maggie. Please marry me?
‘Believe me,’ he said dryly, ‘it’s the only thing that convinced your mother to tell me where you were.’
The laughter bubbled up out of her and she gripped his hand. He brought her round in front of him and she could feel the slight tremor still evident in his hands as they smoothed back her hair. The awe on his face, as if he couldn’t really believe he’d found her. It made her heart soar and flip over.
She wrapped her arms tightly around his waist. ‘The answer is yes, yes, yes…’
She gave him a shyly coy look. ‘About those knots in your shoulders…’
He relaxed visibly and Maggie exulted in the gift he was giving her, that she was giving him. After so much heartache. Perhaps now, she could finally be safe…and happy.
He bent low to whisper in her ear with husky promise, ‘We have so much to talk about, catch up on…but first let’s see about making those babies…’
With one graceful movement, he lifted his most treasured possession and carried her over the threshold of the tiny cottage that clung to the edge of a beautiful beach, with the waves pounding just metres away, and into their new lives.
‘KALLIE, you have to tell him you love him tonight. If you don’t, he’ll never know. You’re going home in two days, next year you’ll be at college or working…this is it, your last chance to tell Alexandros how you feel.’
Kallie’s arms were gripped by her older cousin Eleni, her dark face close to Kallie’s, her eyes fervent. In some dim part of herself she did wonder at that moment why Eleni cared so much about this. And stifled the thought, feeling mean. Hadn’t Eleni been her confidante, having had to listen to her wax lyrical about Alexandros for years on every summer holiday? She was only helping her.
Nerves made her voice shaky. ‘But, Eleni, I haven’t seen him in ages, he’s always in Athens now…’ She shivered. And a little remote. Which he’d never been before…
Eleni shook her head emphatically. ‘Doesn’t matter. He’s always had a soft spot for you. He’s exactly the same, the only difference now is that he’s loaded.’
Kallie gulped. And way more grown up…he’s going to laugh at me.
‘Kallie, come on. Don’t chicken out now.’
She looked at her cousin. She had that impatient look that always scared Kallie a little.
Kallie nodded jerkily, her heart thumping like crazy. Over Eleni’s head she could see the object of her affections. Alexandros Kouros. Twenty-five years old and so handsome it hurt. Midnight-black hair that shone almost blue-black in the light, curling softly on his collar, a touch too long. His skin a deep olive. His face had a harsh masculinity that made Kallie’s insides feel weak. An arresting, utterly captivating quality that drew the eye and kept it there with little effort.
He stood at least six feet four, broad across the shoulders and chest. His body was finely muscled, potently masculine. Sometimes it frightened Kallie, the response she felt around him. Like it was something she couldn’t control, didn’t fully understand…
They were in his palatial family villa, which was right beside her grandmother’s in the hills above Athens, where she always spent her summer holidays. Every year, the end-of-summer party in the Kouros villa was the highlight of the social scene. Kouros Shipping was one of the biggest companies in the world. And since his father’s untimely death two years before, Alexandros had taken full control without even breaking sweat.
‘Kallie, he’s never going to see you as anything but a friend unless you go and take things further.’
‘I know.’ Kallie was anguished, her attention brought back into the room, to the events that her cousin seemed to be determined to set in motion. She’d never done anything so bold in all her life, usually preferring to hide behind a book or in the hammock at the end of her grandmother’s garden, dreaming. She didn’t even know if she really wanted to do it. Suddenly she saw Alexandros across the room take a bottle of something off a table and disappear. Eleni had followed her gaze. She turned Kallie to face her.
‘This is it, Kall—now or never. You’ll regret it for ever if you don’t. By the time you see him again he’ll be married with three kids…’
The thought made Kallie feel physically ill…or maybe that was the wine Eleni had been plying her with to get her courage up. Eleni held up the glass again. Kallie shook her head, as it was it was already swimming slightly. The sight of it made her feel nauseous. It was the first time she’d drunk anything alcoholic and she really wasn’t sure she liked it.
‘Go, Kallie. Now.’
Fuelled by something bigger than her—the wine, the sense of finality
