Fiancee for One Night (15 page)

E
ARLY
summer wasn’t one whole lot more reliable than spring, Eve reflected, as she looked up at the patchy blue sky, determined to risk the clothes line rather than using the dryer. Any savings on the electricity bill would be welcome. She’d picked up a couple of new clients recently, but things were still tight if she didnt want to dip into her savings.

Although of course, there was always the ring…

She’d taken it off in the plane, meaning to give it back to Leo but she’d forgotten in those gut wrenching final moments and he’d always said it was hers. Every day since then she checked her emails to see if he’d sent her some small message. Every time she found a recorded message, she punched the play button hoping, always hoping.

And after two weeks when he’d made no contact, out of spite or frustration or grief, she’d taken the ring to a jewellery shop to have it valued, staggered when she found out how much it was worth.

She wouldn’t have to scrimp if she sold it.

But that had been nearly a month back and she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it.

Six weeks, she thought, as she pegged the first of her sheets to the line. Six weeks since that night in his suite,
since that weekend in paradise. No wonder it seemed like a dream.

‘Nice day,’ called Mrs Willis, from over the fence. ‘Reckon it’ll rain later though.’

She glanced up at the sky, scowling at an approaching bank of cloud. ‘Probably. How’s Jack lately?’

‘Going okay since they changed his meds. Sister reckons he’s on the improve.’ Her neighbour looked around. ‘Where’s Sam?’

‘Just gone down for a nap,’ Eve said, pegging up another sheet. ‘Should be good for a couple of hours work.’

‘Oh,’ the older woman said. ‘Speaking of work, there’s someone out the front to see you. Some posh looking bloke in a suit. Fancy car. Says he tried your door, but no answer. I told him I thought you were home though. I told him—’

Something like a lightning bolt surged down her spine. ‘What did you say?’ But she was already on her way, the sheets snapping in the breeze behind her. She touched a hand to the hair she’d tied back in a rough ponytail, then told herself off for even thinking it. Why did she immediately think it could be him? For all she knew it could be a courier delivery from one of her clients, although since when did courier drivers dress in posh suits and drive flash cars? Her heart tripping at a million miles an hour, nerves flapping and snapping like the sheets on the line, she allowed herself one deep breath, and then she opened the door.

There he stood. Gloriously, absolutely Leo, right there on her doorstep. He looked just as breathtakingly beautiful, his shoulders as broad, his hair so rich and dark and his eyes, his dark eyes looked different, there was
sorrow there and pain, and something else swirling in the mix—hope?

And her heart felt it must be ten times its normal size the way it was clamouring around in there. But she’d had hopes before, had thought she’d seen cracks develop in his stone heart, and those hopes had been dashed.

‘Leo,’ she said breathlessly.

‘Eve. You look good.’

She didn’t look good. She had circles under her eyes, her hair was a mess and Mrs Willis had been on at her about losing too much weight. ‘You look better.’ And she winced, because it sounded so lame.

He looked around her legs. ‘Where’s Sam?’

‘Nap time,’ she said, and he nodded.

‘Can I come in?’

‘Oh.’ She stood back, let him in. ‘Of course.’

He looked just as awkward in her living room. ‘I’ll make coffee,’ she suggested when he grabbed her hand, sending an electrical charge up her arm.

‘No. I have to explain something first, Eve, if you will listen. I need you to listen, to understand.’

She nodded, afraid to speak.

He took a deep breath once they were sitting on the sofa, his elbows using his knees for props as he held out his hands. ‘I was not happy when I left you. I went to London, threw myself into the contract negotiations there; then to Rome and New York, and nowhere, nowhere could I forget you, nothing I could do, nothing I could achieve could blot out the thoughts of you.

‘But I could not come back. I knew it could not work. But there was something I could do.’

She held her breath, her body tingling. Hoping.

‘I hadn’t seen my parents since I was twelve. I had to find them. It took—It took a little while to track
them down, and then it was to discover my father was dead.’

She put a hand to his and he shook his head. ‘Don’t feel sorry. He was a sailor and a brutal, violent man. Everytime he was on leave he used my mother as a punching bag, calling her all sorts of vicious names, beating her senseless. I used to cower in fear behind my door, praying for it to stop. I was glad he was dead.’

He dragged in air. ‘And the worst part of it—the worst of it was that he was always so full of remorse afterwards. Always telling her he was sorry, and that he loved her, even as she lay bruised and bleeding on the floor.’

Eve felt something crawl down her spine. A man who couldn’t let himself love. A man who equated love with a beating. No wonder he felt broken inside. No wonder he was so afraid. ‘Your poor mother,’ she said, thinking, poor you.

He made a sound like a laugh, but utterly tragic. ‘Poor mother. I thought so too. Until I was big enough to grow fists and hurt him like he hurt my mother. And my mother went to him. After everything he had done to her, she screamed at me and she went to him to nurse his wounds.’ He dropped his head down, wrapped his arms over his head and breathed deep, shaking his head as he rose. ‘She would not leave him, even when I begged and pleaded with her. She would not go. So I did. I slept at school. Friends gave me food. I got a job emptying rubbish bins. I begged on the streets. And it was the happiest I’d ever been.’

‘Oh, Leo,’ she said, thinking of the homeless child, no home to go to, no family…

‘I left school a year later, went to work on the boats around the harbour. But I would not be a sailor like
him, at that stage I didn’t want to be Greek like him. So I learned from the people around me, speaking their languages, and started handling deals for people.

‘I was good at it. I could finally make something of myself. But even though I could escape my world, I could not escape my past. I could not escape who I was. The shadow of my father was too big. The knowledge of what I would become…’ His voice trailed off. ‘I swore I would never let that happen to me. I would never love.’

She slipped a hand into one of his, felt his pain and his sorrow and his grieving. ‘I’m so sorry it had to be that way for you. You should have had better.’

‘Sam is blessed,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Sam has a mother who fights for him like a tigress. His mother is warm and strong and filled with sunshine.’ He lifted her hand, pressed it to his lips. ‘Not like…’

And his words warmed her heart, even when she knew there was more he had to tell her. ‘Did you find her then? Did you find your mother?’

His eyes were empty black, his focus nowhere, but someplace deep inside himself. ‘She’s in a home for battered women, broken and ill. She sits in a wheelchair all day looking out over a garden. She has nothing now, no-one. And as I looked at her, I remembered the words you said, about an old man sitting on a parkbench, staring at nothing, wishing he’d taking a chance…’

‘Leo, I should never have said that. I had no right. I was hurting.’

‘But you were right. When I looked at her, I saw my future, and for the first time, I was afraid. I didn’t want it. Instead I wanted to take that chance that you offered me, like she should have taken that chance with me and escaped. But my father’s shadow still loomed over me.
My greatest fear was turning into him. Hurting you or Sam. I could not bear that.’

‘You’re not like that,’ she said, tears squeezing from her eyes. ‘You would never do that.’

‘I couldn’t trust myself to believe it. Until I was about to leave my mother’s side and she told me the truth in her cracked and bitter voice, the truth that would have set me free so many years ago, but I never questioned what I had grown up believing. The truth that my father had come home after six months at sea and found her four months pregnant.’

‘Leo!’

His eyes were bright and that tiny kernel of hope she’d seen there while he’d stood on her doorstep had flickered and flared into something much more powerful. ‘He was impotent and she wanted a child and I was never his, Eve. I don’t have to be that way. I don’t have to turn into him.’

Tears blurred her vision, tears for the lost childhood, tears for the betrayal of trust between the parents and the child, the absence of a love that should have been his birthright. ‘You would never have turned into him. I know.’

And he brought her hands to his lips and kissed them. ‘You do things to me, Eve. You turn me inside out and upside down and I want to be with you, but I just don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can love the way I should. The way you deserve.’

‘Of course you can. It’s been there, all along. You knew what was happening was wrong. You tried to save your mother. You tried to save me and Sam by cutting us loose. Because you didn’t want to hurt us. You would never have done that if you hadn’t cared, if you hadn’t loved us, just a little.’

‘I think…’ He gave her a look that spoke of his confusion and fears. ‘I think it’s more than a little. These last weeks have been hell. I never want to be apart from you again. I want to wake up every morning and see your face next to mine. I want to take care of you and Sam, if you’ll let me.’

She blinked across at him, unable to believe what she was hearing, but so desperately wanting it to be true. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I can’t live without you. I need you.’ He squeezed her hands, just as he squeezed the unfamiliar words from his lips. ‘I love you.’

And she flew into his arms, big, fat tears of happiness welling in her eyes. ‘Oh Leo, I love you so much.’

‘Oh my god, that’s such a relief,’ he said, clutching her tightly. ‘I was afraid you would hate me for how I treated you.’ He tugged her back, so he could look at her, brushing the hair from her face where it had got mussed. ‘Because there’s something else I need to know. Eve, will you take a chance on me. Would you consider becoming my wife?’

And her tears became a flood and she didn’t care that she was blubbering, didn’t care that she was a mess, only that Leo had loved her and wanted to marry her and life just couldn’t get any better than that. ‘Yes,’ she said, her smile feeling like it was a mile wide, ‘Yes, of course I will marry you.’

He pulled her into his kiss, a whirlpool of a kiss that spun her senses and sent her spirits and soul soaring.

‘Thank you for coming into my life,’ he said, drawing back, breathing hard. ‘You are magical, Eve. You have brought happiness and hope to a place where there was only misery and darkness. How can I ever repay you?’

And she smiled up at his beautiful face, knowing he would never again live without love, not if she had anything to do with it. ‘You can start by kissing me again.’

L
EO
Zamos loved it when a plan came together. He relished the cut and thrust of business, the negotiations, the sometimes compromise, the closing of the deal.

He lived for the adrenaline rush of the chase, and he lived for the buzz of success.

Or at least he had, until now.

These days he had other priorities.

He shook Culshaw’s hand, who was still beaming with the honour of walking Eve down the aisle before leaving him chatting to Mrs Willis about the weather. He looked around and found his new bride standing in the raised gazebo where they’d been married a little while ago. She was holding Sam’s hand as Hannah jigged him on her hip, the sapphire ring sparkling on her finger nestled alongside a new matching plain band. Evelyn—Eve—he still couldn’t decide which he liked best, had always looked more like a goddess than any mere mortal, but today, in her slim fitting lace gown, her hair piled high and curling in tendrils around her face and pinned with a long gossamer thin veil that danced in the warm tropical breeze, she was the queen of goddesses, and she was his. She laughed as her veil was caught in the breeze, the ends tickling Sam’s face and making him squeal with delight. And then, as if
aware he was watching, as if feeling the tug of his own hungry gaze, she turned her head, turned those brilliant blue eyes on him, her laughter faltering as their eyes connected on so many different levels before her luscious mouth turned up into a wide smile.

And it was physically impossible for his feet not to take the quickest and most direct route through the guests until he was at her side, his arm snaked around her waist pulling her in tight, taking Sam’s free hand with the other.

‘How is my beautiful new family enjoying today?’

And Sam pulled both hands free and pointed, ‘Boat!’

‘Sam is beside himself,’ Eve said, as Hannah put him down and let him run to the other side of the gazebo to gaze out between the slats at the sailing boat lazily cruising past the bay.

‘Culshaw’s the same. Asking him to give you away has made his year, I’d say.’

‘I like him,’ she said, as they watched him animatedly tell Mrs Willis a story. ‘He feels like family to me.’

‘Canny old devil,’ he said as he folded his arms around her. ‘Did I tell you what he said when I tried to apologise and tell him that we hadn’t really been engaged that weekend in Melbourne? He actually said, “poppycock, everyone knew you were destined to be together”,’ and Eve laughed.

‘Maureen told me the same thing.’

‘And they were right,’ he said, drawing her back into the circle of his arms, kissing her lightly on the head. ‘You are my destiny, Eve, my beautiful wife.’

‘Oh,’ she said, turning in the circle of his arms. ‘Did you hear the Alvarezes’ news?’

He frowned, ‘I’m not sure I did.’

‘Felicity is pregnant. They’re both thrilled. I couldn’t be happier.’

He nodded. ‘That is good news, but at the risk of trying to make you happier, I have a small present for you.’

‘But you’ve already given me so much.’

‘This is special. Culshaw’s agreed to sell Mina Island. It’s yours now, Evelyn.’

‘What?’ Her eyes shone bright with incredulity. ‘It’s mine? Really?’

‘Yours and Sam’s. Everything of mine is now yours, but this is especially for you both. It’s a wedding gift and a thank you gift and an I love you gift all rolled into one. And it guarantees you can bring Sam back when he’s older any time you want and show him everything he missed out on now.’

‘Oh, Leo,’ she said, her eyes bright with tears, ‘I don’t know what to say. It’s too much. I have nothing for you.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s nowhere near enough. It was here that you gave me the greatest gift of all. You gave me back my heart. You taught me how to love. How can I ever repay you for that?’

She cupped his cheek against her palm, her cereulean eyes filled with love, and he took that hand and pressed his lips upon it. ‘I love you, Evelyn Zamos.’

‘Oh, Leo, I love you so very, very much.’

They were the words he needed to hear, the words that set his newly unlocked heart soaring. He kissed her then, in the white gazebo covered with sweetly scented flowers, kissed her in the perfumed air as the breeze set the palm tree fronds to rustling and the sail boat gracefully cruised by.

‘Boat!’ yelled Sam to the sound of wobbly footsteps,
suddenly tugging at their legs, pointing out to sea. ‘Boat!’

And laughing, Leo scooped the boy up in his arms and they all gazed out over the sapphire blue water to watch the passing vessel. ‘How long, do you think,’ he whispered to the woman at his side, ‘is the perfect age gap between children?’

She looked up at him on a blink. ‘I don’t know. Some people say two to three years.’

‘In that case,’ he said, with a chaste kiss to her forehead and a very unchaste look in his eyes, ‘I have a plan.’