He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I love you,’ he whispered, smoothing back loose tendrils of her hair.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I love you too.’ But his heartfelt words had brought tears to her eyes. She swiped the dampness away.
‘You’re crying?’
She sniffed. ‘Happy tears,’ she said. ‘Happy because I’m with you.’
He kissed her. ‘I think I must be the happiest man in the world to find love not just once, but twice.’
And because Theo had brought the subject up, Isabella felt emboldened to ask, ‘How long were you married?’
‘Six years.’
‘No children?’
He shook his head and sighed, probably not even aware that he was stroking Isabella’s hair. ‘It didn’t happen,’ he said gruffly, ‘not until it was too late.’
Isabella felt a wall of longing and pain behind the simple words he’d uttered, but she wasn’t about to ask what he meant.
‘What was she like?’ she asked instead.
‘Sophia had dark hair and even darker eyes. She was beautiful, inside and out. She was perfect.’
Isabella pressed her lips together. It was ridiculous to feel envious of a dead woman, but it was impossible not to. If Theo felt even a fraction of that emotion for her, she’d be happy. But Sophia had set the bar so impossibly high.
‘How did you two meet?’
‘At university in Athens. We studied economics and international relations together.’
Isabella nodded. She sensed there was a world more pain behind his tortured eyes and strained words.
She smoothed his brow with one hand, trying to ease whatever pain he was feeling—whatever pain he was remembering—and after a while, he sighed. ‘She was the daughter of an international banker. She was kidnapped and held for ransom. The police bungled the recovery. She was killed when they stormed the building where they discovered they were keeping her.’
He sighed. ‘The autopsy discovered she was pregnant.’ He looked at her then, his eyes tortured, his brow twisted. ‘She hadn’t had a chance to tell me.’
‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry.’ She raised herself up on one elbow and looked down at him, her fingernails tracing through his chest hair, and there, in the depths of his dark eyes, she witnessed the extent of his loss. ‘And that’s why you do what you do?’
He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘That’s when it started, but I think the seeds were planted years before when my younger sister drowned. We were at the beach together, caught in the same rip and though I tried, I couldn’t reach her. I couldn’t save her. I hated that I couldn’t save her.
‘And then, when Sophia was killed, I made a solemn vow to do my utmost to prevent anyone else suffering the same fate.’
‘You can’t be blamed for failing your sister.’
‘I know.’ He took one of her hands in his, and kissed the back of it. ‘But it made me realise what loss felt like. Coupled with the loss of Sophia, it made me want to save others from that pain.’
‘I get that,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘Sophia was amazing. I was the boy from the country. I never knew what she saw in me.’
Isabella was in no doubt. ‘I know what she saw,’ she said. ‘Sophia saw a man of honour. A strong man. A protector. A man who would fight for what was right. She saw that in you, I know. Because that’s what I see in you. That’s who you are.
‘And that’s who I know you to be. Because you saved me,’ she said, ‘from a life of bondage and enslavement in a marriage I never wanted nor could be happy in. I can never thank you enough.’
‘No.’ He raised himself up to push her down on her back. ‘It is I who needs to thank you,’ he said. ‘I was stuck in a life of endless guilt for failing to save my sister and my wife and trying to make up for it every day since. I was stuck in a life chasing my tail and never catching it. And for forgetting about the simple things in life. Like what it felt like to have fun. You reminded me what fun was. You reminded me what it felt like to laugh. You reminded me what it felt like to love.’
He pressed his lips to hers. ‘You saved me,’ he said, before he kissed her thoroughly again. ‘And I love you forever for it.’
Isabella was breathless by the time they paused for air. But there was one question she still needed to ask. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘you never answered me.’
