Wedding Night with a Stranger. Anna Cleary

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      ‘They ’d have wanted to take on the little one,’ she continued. ‘I expect they’d have been overjoyed. Eleni had nothing much else to fill her heart. That Pericles liked the business. He was the right one to take over the shipping because he had an eye for money. Clever, but not always very smart. Andreas, now…A thoughtful boy, I think. Sensitive.’ She shook her head and clasped her lined hands in her lap. ‘Oh, that was a terrible shame. The young shouldn’t have to die.’

      Was she thinking of Esther now? ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘They shouldn’t.’

      Again, her wrinkled lids drifted shut. She remained silent for so long Sebastian thought she must have nodded off to sleep. He was about to get up and cover her with one of her shawls when her eyes opened, as clear and focused as ever.

      ‘Is she beautiful?’

      Sebastian’s gut tightened. Resistance hardened in him to the notion of Ariadne Giorgias’s beauty. He opened his mouth to growl something, but nothing would come. Anyway, the less said the better. Regardless of how he felt, whatever he said now could come back to haunt him.

      ‘Do women have to be beautiful, Yiayia?’ he hedged. ‘Wasn’t there an entire generation of women who rebelled against that notion?’

      The old lady made an amused grimace. ‘They usually are, though, aren’t they, glikia-mou? To the men who love them. A man needs something lovely to rest his eyes on.’

      Again, he guessed she was thinking of Esther. And it was true he’d loved her as much as it was possible for a man to love a woman. People in his family rarely made reference to her now, not wanting to remind him of the bad times, all the losing battles with hope after each bout of surgery, the radiation treatment, the nightmare of chemo.

      Even after three years they were still exquisitely careful of his feelings, even Yiayia, tiptoeing around him on the subject, as if his marriage were a sacred area too painful for human footsteps.

      Sometimes he wished they could forget about all that and remember his wife as the person she’d been. He still liked to think of those easy-going, happy days, before he and Esther were married, before he’d started Celestrial.

      A stab of the old remorse speared through him. If only he’d spared her more of his time. In those early days of the company…

      With an effort he thrust aside the useless self-recrimination, thoughts that still had the power to gut him. Too late for regrets, now he’d lost her.

      No one would ever replace her in his heart, but often he was conscious of a hollowness that his work, exciting and challenging as it was, didn’t fill. He hardly spent any time at home now, even sleeping on the settee in his office at times. He could imagine his parents’ amazement if he ended up marrying this Greek woman, after they’d long since given up hope and become inured to the prospect of his ongoing singularity.

      The reality was, he might as well admit it, one way or another a man still needed a woman. Somehow, against his will, against all that he held decent, meeting Ariadne Giorgias in the flesh had roused that sleeping dragon in him.

      Though she wasn’t his choice, she was no less lovely than any of the women he knew. If he’d met her at some other point in time, he might even have felt attracted. But…

      Resistance clenched inside him like a fist. He wasn’t the man to be coerced.

      He became aware of Yiayia’s thoughtful scrutiny. What was it she’d asked? Beautiful. Was she?

      ‘She probably is,’ he conceded drily. ‘To anyone who cares for her type.’

      ‘What type is that?’ Yiayia enquired.

      Defensive, scared, fragile. Pretty. Sexy.

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