Bound to the Greek (22 page)

He paused, laughing a little, and Eleanor prompted, ‘Your sister?’

‘Funny, the power of just one word. Family.’ Eleanor shook her head, not understanding, and Jace reached for her hands. ‘She told me she’d always wanted me to have a family, and I’d never thought of children that way before. I haven’t thought of children at all for so long—I’ve even avoided my own nieces and nephews. But when I thought of my own inability to have children, it was simply as a failure. A disappointment to my father, to myself to provide an heir. To continue the dynasty. I never thought of it—of them—as a
family:

Jace was smiling, yet each word was a hammer blow to Eleanor’s heart. Her throat was too tight to speak, so she just shook her head. She should have told him. Of course she should have told him. Why hadn’t she? How could she have allowed it to come to this?

‘But in that moment,’ Jace continued, squeezing her hands, ‘I realised what I wanted. What I’ve wanted all along, even though I’ve been fighting it. Love is scary, Eleanor. You know it as well as I do. Hope is dangerous.’

Oh, God help her, Eleanor thought numbly. So scary.
So
dangerous. She just shook her head, helplessly, as a tear slid down her cheek. In the darkness she didn’t think Jace saw it.

‘I want us to be a family, Eleanor,’ Jace said softly. ‘More than anything. And more than just that—I want us to spend
the rest of our lives loving each other. I want to see you hold my son—or daughter, I don’t care which. I never thought I could have it, I didn’t even dare dream—but now I know it can be, and I want it all with you.’ The moon slid from behind the clouds and in its silver rays Eleanor saw the tender, triumphant smile on Jace’s face. She felt him slip his hands from hers as he dropped to his knee and fumbled in his pocket for what could only be a jewellery box.

‘This is what delayed me an extra day in Athens. I wanted it to be perfect. It was my grandmother’s, but I had the stone reset.’ With a growing sense of unreality Eleanor watched as Jace stretched out his hand, flicking open the box. The moonlight glinted off the most amazing, enormous antique diamond she’d ever seen. ‘Eleanor Langley, will you marry me?’

E
LEANOR
gazed at the ring, gazed at Jace and all the love shining in his eyes, and shook her head helplessly. ‘Oh, Jace.’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘I never expected this,’ she began, helplessly, for her mind was seething with disappointments and fears. She really
hadn’t
expected this. She’d been living in the moment, enjoying Jace, loving him, yet her stupid, stubborn mind had pushed away any real thoughts of the future. Conveniently ignored the realities—the truths Jace had given her tonight. She’d wanted his honesty, yet now that she had it she realised it changed everything. For the worse.

‘Eleanor?’ Jace asked softly. ‘What’s wrong?’ He stood up, reaching out to brush her damp cheek with one thumb. ‘You’re crying.’

‘I’m overwhelmed.’

‘That’s okay.’

She nodded, jerkily, because it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t remotely okay. Of course Jace wanted children. A family. She’d been a blind fool, a willingly blind fool, not to see it—think it—before now. She hadn’t wanted to think it. Hadn’t wanted to be completely honest with Jace. She’d lacked?still lacked—the courage.

Jace wanted children—a family—and there was no way she could fit into that happy picture. Just as there was no way she could take that dream away from him now.

‘Jace!’ One of his sisters—Eleanor thought it was Parthenope—called from the terrace. She didn’t understand the Greek, but the gist was all too apparent. They needed Jace back at the party.

‘Photographs,’ he explained tersely. ‘I don’t—’

‘No. Go.’ She shook her head, wiping her wet cheeks, and tried to smile. ‘This is a party, Jace. We can talk—later.’

‘Come with me. You should be in the photos—’

‘No, no one even knows me yet. Besides, I need to check on the food. I’ll see you later.’ Already Eleanor was walking away from him, reaching for her sandals, not looking back.

‘Eleanor,’ Jace called, and she heard the frustration and confusion in his voice, sharpening her name. ‘Whatever this is, it can be solved.’

Two more tears slid down her cheeks. Jace knew her, understood her so well. But he didn’t know the most important thing, the thing she’d kept hidden. Shame roiled through her. All this time she’d been berating Jace for hiding his heart from her, yet now he’d been as honest and vulnerable as he could be, and she was the one who was still hiding. Who had been hiding all along, and who was still afraid. And some things couldn’t be solved.

Jace smiled for photo after photo, his cheeks aching, as his gaze swept through the foyer. Where was Eleanor? She’d disappeared from the beach after his proposal—and that hadn’t gone nearly as well as he’d expected.

In the moment when he’d shared that precious dream, Eleanor had looked devastated. And Jace had no idea why.

Frustration gnawed at him and as the photographer readied for yet another snap he broke away from the gathered crowd of his family.

‘Jace,’ Alecia protested, but he just shrugged as he strode away.

‘I need to find Eleanor.’ A feeling of foreboding stole over him as he walked through the empty rooms of the villa. He shouldn’t have waited for so long.

***

Halfway to the kitchen the answer had presented itself, so apparent, so appalling. She needed to leave. She needed to leave now. If she stayed, she’d tell Jace the truth; he’d wrestle or coax it from her, and she didn’t have the strength to resist. Then she would have to face the unbearable pain of his rejection, or, perhaps worse, the stoic acceptance of her own inadequacy. She couldn’t do that to herself. She couldn’t do it to Jace.

Yet she was on an island, and the only way off was Jace’s private jet. Where could she hide? How could she escape? The questions pounded inside Eleanor’s mind; she forced all other, more rational thoughts away.

Then Eleanor saw the lights of a farmhouse glimmering in the distance, heard the clank of a bell, and the answer came to her.
Of course.

Hurrying upstairs to change into more serviceable clothes, she grabbed her purse and her passport—leaving everything else—and desperate, despairing, headed out into the night.

The track winding through the hills was lit only by a pale wash of moonlight, and Eleanor stumbled on the rocks and twisted tree roots. Even as she ran she knew she was being foolish. Yet she also knew she couldn’t stay and watch Jace’s dream be destroyed—or hers. She couldn’t face him. She couldn’t face the truth because it hurt too much.

Love hurt. Why had she risked it again after all these years? Why had she risked it with
Jace!

After a quarter of an hour she found the farmhouse, huddled among the hills, and knocked on the door. Behind her somewhere a goat bleated.

The man who answered the door was grey-haired and a bit scruffy, a mug of coffee held in one hand. He stared at her blankly.

‘Yassas… parikalo…’
Every Greek word evaporated from her frazzled mind as she gazed at him helplessly.

‘I speak English,’ he told her, the words flat and a bit rough.

‘Oh, thank God. I need to go to Naxos?on your boat—’

‘At this hour?’ He looked appalled.

‘It’s important—
please:

Something must have convinced him?the wildness in her eyes, or perhaps the ragged edge fraying her voice, or the wad of crumpled twenties she thrust at him. In any case, he shrugged, nodded, and said, ‘I get my boots. It take twenty minute in the boat.’

Eleanor sagged against the doorway in relief.

A few minutes later they were on the beach, the sea no more than a sound in the darkness, the waves crashing onto the shore. The wind whipped Eleanor’s hair into tangles, and she stared at the forlorn little rowboat dubiously. It really was small.

Good Lord, what was she
doing?

‘Is this the only boat?’

The farmer shrugged. ‘The motorboat, it belong to Zervas.’ He gazed at her speculatively, and Eleanor wondered how much he knew. How much he’d seen over the last few weeks.

For a moment—a second—she hesitated, wondering if she could go back to the villa and explain everything to Jace. Maybe he would understand. Maybe it would be okay.
Maybe.
She couldn’t trust a maybe, she couldn’t act on it. The fear that had taken root in her heart was too pervasive, twining its poisonous tendrils around every thought, every dashed hope.

She couldn’t go back. She couldn’t tell Jace the truth. She couldn’t bear to see him disappointed, the dream he’d shared with her dashed, destroyed—

I want to see you hold my son—or daughter, I don’t care which. I never thought I could have it, I didn’t even dare dream—but now I know it can be, and I want it all with you.

Eleanor closed her eyes, a tiny sob escaping her. Her shoulders shook.

‘You get in the boat?’ The farmer held onto the edge of the boat with one work-roughened hand as the waves churned around him. Eleanor could hardly believe what she was doing, yet she was too afraid to face the other choices.

Coward. You’re more of a coward than Jace ever was.

‘Miss?’

‘What the
hell
do you think you’re doing?’

Eleanor froze. She felt a hand clamp down hard on her shoulder and whirl her around. Her purse slipped onto the sand. ‘Jace—’ She was glad to see him, even now, after everything. Glad and relieved, even though Jace looked livid. His angry gaze travelled from her to the man waiting with the boat. He spoke a few terse phrases of Greek and numbly Eleanor watched the man give a philosophical shrug before hauling his boat back onto the beach. Within seconds he was gone, swallowed up by the darkness.

Jace’s gaze snapped back to her; his eyes were the colour of cold iron. ‘So what is this?’ he growled, his voice low and savage. ‘Some kind of revenge?’

‘Revenge?’ Eleanor repeated blankly. Then her eyes widened and her heart squeezed painfully, robbing her of the ability to talk or even think—

‘So I can see how it feels,’ he sneered. ‘Is that what this was all about, Eleanor? Coming to Greece, being with me, everything?’His voice tore and he pressed his lips together, his eyes flashing furiously.

He was
hurt.
She’d hurt him with her disappearance, of course she had. She’d hurt him more than the truth ever could.

She really was a coward.

‘It’s nothing like that, Jace,’ she whispered, but he didn’t look as if he’d even heard her. ‘I swear to you, this wasn’t revenge!’ Her voice rose in a yelp as he pulled her along the beach, driven by his own fury and pain. ‘Where are we—?’ She stopped talking when she realised Jace was not in a mood to listen.

He led her away from the beach, back towards the villa, its
lights twinkling in the distance. Eleanor thought of facing all his family there and closed her eyes. She couldn’t. ‘Please,’ she managed. ‘Can’t we just talk—alone?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Jace growled back at her. ‘We are most certainly going to talk.’

Yet he didn’t speak again until they’d reached the villa; he stalked past it, with Eleanor having no choice but to follow, her arm still in his strong grip.

‘Where are we—?’

‘Where do you think?’ he snarled. ‘Where you want to go.’

Eleanor didn’t understand what he meant until she saw the dull gleam of his private jet under the moonlight.

‘Jace—’

‘Now.’ He let go of her and she stumbled at the sudden release. The jet loomed in front of her, large and silent. ‘I rang the pilot—he lives on Naxos. He should be here in a few minutes.’

Eleanor gazed at him, his face hard and implacable, his eyes two narrowed slits. ‘Why—?’

‘He can take you wherever you want to go. Back to New York, I presume.’ He drew a breath, and it hitched. ‘You didn’t have to take a leaky rowboat in the middle of the night if you wanted to leave me, Eleanor. All you had to do was say.’

The look of naked pain on his face was too much for Eleanor to bear. She wrapped her arms around herself even though the wind wasn’t that cold. What a mess everything was. What a mess she’d made. ‘I don’t want to leave you, Jace,’ she whispered.

‘Considering I found you trying to board a boat to Naxos without a single word of explanation, I find that hard to believe.’

‘It’s true.’

‘So did it feel good? To leave me hanging, just as I did you? No word, no warning? Had you been waiting for this?’ Each question was a laceration on her soul.

‘Stop.
I wasn’t—I didn’t mean—’

‘Excuses!’ Jace slashed a hand through the air. ‘Well, get on the plane, Eleanor. Nothing is stopping you now.’

Anger made her straighten her shoulders and cross the tarmac to poke a finger in the hard wall of his chest. ‘I’m not getting on that plane, Jace. Not yet, anyway. Yes, I ran away. But I didn’t mean to leave you—it wasn’t some kind of revenge?’ Her voice broke on that horrible word, but she forced herself to go on. To confess the truth. ‘It was fear. I was
scared,
Jace. I still am.’ She dropped her hand and bowed her head, felt the sting of tears in her eyes.

Jace was silent for a long moment. ‘What are you afraid of, Eleanor?’ He didn’t sound angry any more. He didn’t sound particularly forgiving, either. Eleanor looked up. This was the hard part. This was why she’d run away in the first place.

‘Afraid of disappointing you. Of you leaving me or staying with me for the wrong reasons?I’m not sure which would be worse.’

Jace’s expression didn’t change, didn’t soften. ‘Now it sounds like
you
don’t trust
me.
Why would you disappoint me? Why would you think you could?’

She drew a breath and met his gaze directly. It hurt. ‘Children, Jace,’ she said rawly. ‘I should have told you before. I meant to tell you?when we—that first night?’ She swallowed, her throat so very tight. ‘But I couldn’t. I was too scared. And then everything was going so well, and I just stopped thinking about it because I wanted to be happy—for a little while—and you said you didn’t even think about children very much—’ She let out a hiccuppy sob, knowing she wasn’t making sense yet unable to speak the bald, bare truth.