‘And she didn’t like it?’
‘I didn’t get a chance to give it to her. I kept waiting for the right moment—a day in which we didn’t argue, a moment when things felt as they once had. Happy and normal, easy. It never came.’
Genevieve placed her hand on his taut, muscular abdomen, inwardly marvelling at the sheer strength of this man.
‘So where do you stay?’ she asked, rather than pushing him to continue talking about his wife.
She felt him tighten, his belly drawing inwards as though he’d taken a deep breath. ‘Our home.’
Her heart wrenched at the pain loaded into those two simple words.
‘You lived in Athens?’
He nodded once.
‘What’s it like?’
‘Exactly as it was, before she died,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t go there often. I can’t bear to. But there are certain dates in the year when it feels right to remember.’
‘To remember your wife, or remember what you perceive you did to her?’
His eyes showed surprise at her perceptiveness. ‘Both,’ he admitted, after a beat. ‘Mainly the latter. It is hard to allow myself to remember her without also recalling the pain I inflicted, by being so careless.’
Genevieve shook her head. ‘You know, I wonder if your memory is a little flawed.’
‘It’s not, believe me.’
‘I believe you’re remembering things as you think they were, but our memories are fallible, shaped by our present perceptions. I’ve known you less than a week, yet I know you’re not the kind of person who’d willingly, knowingly hurt another.’
A muscle ticced in his jaw. ‘She told me how she felt. I refused to listen.’
‘Did she listen to how you felt?’ Genevieve said, gently, aware that the last thing she wanted to do was criticise his poor, late wife. ‘Did your wants change from when you were dating, to married? Or were you always a workaholic?’
He glanced away, towards the windows.
‘Because it sounds to me like she knew what she was getting, and just wanted you to be different, once you were married. People don’t change.’
‘No,’ he agreed, gruffly. ‘They don’t.’ His hand moved to her hair, gently running over it. She shivered at the small, intimate gesture. ‘I wish I had, though.’
‘She loved you, Nikos. She stayed with you; she fought to be with you. There was enough in your marriage to make her want to stay. Take it from someone who spent almost every day of her marriage planning to leave. Hold onto that, not the arguments, not the blame. Focus on the good memories—I’m convinced that’s what she would have wanted.’
He stood then, abruptly, unsettling her as he strode across the room and placed his coffee cup down on a side table, and stared out of the glass windows that showed a view of the distant city. His back moved with each intake of breath. Then, slowly, he turned to face her, his whole body radiating tension.
‘I want to help you, Genevieve. I hate what your ex is doing to you. But for the duration of this fake engagement, let us agree that you will not try to make me feel better about my own failings. I do not need it; I do not want it.’
She ran the gamut of emotions. At first, it was easy to feel hurt. She’d been coldly rejected by James so many times that her first instinct was to see the same treatment in Nikos. Except there was nothing cold in Nikos, nor his words. For all he was holding onto his emotions with ruthless self-control, she could sense his feelings thrumming around the cabin. The desperation with which he clung to his guilt, almost as a protective mechanism to save him from fully feeling grief. He was using his wife’s death as an excuse, to stop him from moving on with his life, and to protect himself from ever loving—and losing—another person. She could see it so clearly, all of a sudden, and the fact he had his head in the sand about it infuriated her. So much so she stood, and weaved through the furniture, cutting across to him in a scant few seconds, and trying to rally her thoughts.
Trying to calm down, as well, to remember that, in her marriage, she had become expert at holding her temper and her tongue.
Those skills seemed to have deserted her now.
‘I don’t appreciate being told how I can act,’ she said, the words calm enough, though they vibrated slightly. ‘James spent our entire marriage sculpting my behaviour and personality, to be the perfect political wife. I will not endure the same from you.’
‘You are not my wife,’ he pointed out, and now she fully understood what he was doing. Picking a fight with her to push her away. Denying that there was anything real in this relationship because he couldn’t bear to face the alternative: that something was happening between them neither wanted nor had expected. Genevieve was terrified of that, too, but at least she was willing to face it head-on.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But I’m a grown woman, intelligent and perceptive and I can say whatever I want,’ she said. ‘You are being so selfish, to wallow in guilt and consign your wife’s memory to that alone. Why not talk about how wonderful she was? How clever and loyal, talk about her goals and aspirations? Why dwell only on your guilt? On what you think you did wrong, and the arguments that led you to have?’
‘Don’t,’ he ground out, eyes boring into hers.
