Betrothed: To the People’s Prince

hey?’ He smiled and tried to take her hand across the table. She snatched it away as if he burned.

‘This is crazy. I’ve told you, Nikos, I’m not coming home.’

‘Can I ask why not?’

‘I don’t belong there.’

‘Of course you do. My family has always welcomed…’

‘Your family,’ she interrupted flatly. ‘Of course. How’s your wife?’

Why had she asked that? What possible difference did it make? But suddenly-she had to know.

Nikos didn’t answer directly. He’d given up trying to take her hand. Instead he’d clasped his hands loosely on the table top. He flexed them now, still linked. Big hands and powerful.

He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

She shouldn’t even care. She shouldn’t have asked.

But she had asked, and there was something in his face that said the answer was never going to be easy. For a couple of moments she thought he wouldn’t answer at all. But finally he beckoned a waiter, ordered a beer and answered.

‘Marika and I are divorced. She’s remarried and left the island.’ His gaze was expressionless, not giving a clue if this still had the power to hurt.

Ten years ago-two months after she’d left the island-her aunt had written.

By the way, Nikos has married Marika. Rumour is there’s a baby on the way, but I guess no one worries about such things any more. You know, I always thought you and Nikos would marry, but I know King Giorgos would hate that. So you’re best out of it.

Until then she’d hoped, desperately, that Nikos would follow her. But when she’d read that…

Marika was a distant relation of Nikos, giggly, flirtatious and ambitious. She’d always thought Marika was in love with her cousin, Demos-but obviously it had been Nikos all the time.

She’d been so shocked she’d been physically ill.

Then, four months later her aunt had written a much shorter note. ‘A baby. A little girl for Nikos and Marika…’ Her note had trailed off, unfinished, and the writing on the envelope had been scrawly.

It was no wonder. The letter had been delivered two days after her aunt’s death.

She’d wept then, for not going home in time, for not guessing her aunt was ill until she’d received the letter, for knowing her last link to the island was ended. And if she’d wept for the fact that Nikos had a baby with Marika, then so be it, the whole thing was grey.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said now, feeling useless. ‘How…how long?’

‘How long ago since she left? Nine years. It wasn’t what you might call a long-term marriage.’

His tone was bitter. Oh, Nikos, she thought. You, too? Wounds might heal, but scars remained.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, but then made a belated attempt to pull herself together. ‘But…it’s nothing to do with me. Nothing from the island’s anything to do with me. My aunt was the last family I had, and she’s dead.’

‘The whole island’s your family. You rule.’ It was said explosively, with passion, and Athena flinched and couldn’t think how to reply.

The crepes arrived, light and hot, oozing a wonderful lemon liqueur and doused with clotted cream. This was everything she most denied herself in food. Nikos picked up a fork and started in-then paused.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I didn’t really want these.’

‘You’re ill?’

‘No.’

‘Then eat,’ he said. ‘You’re stupidly thin.’

‘I am not!’

‘Are, too,’ he said, and grinned and suddenly there it was again-the bossiness, the arguments, the fun. Childhood with Nikos had been wonderful. Magic.

‘Can’t make me,’ she responded before she could help herself, a response she’d made over and over as a kid.

His dark eyes gleamed with challenge. ‘Want to bet?’

‘No!’

‘Eat your crepes, Thene.’

She smiled, despite herself, picked up a fork and ate.

How long since she’d indulged in something this full of calories? They tasted fantastic.

‘You’re not a model,’ Nikos said, halfway through his crepes and finally pausing for breath. ‘Why starve?’

‘It’s expected,’ she said. ‘You can never be too rich or too thin.’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard that, too,’ he growled. ‘So, they’ll fire you if you gain a pound or six?’

‘That party we were at tonight…If I’d turned up as a size fourteen, you think I’d get a foot in the door?’

‘You’re invited to write about it. Not be it.’

‘I’m part of the scene. They like their scene perfect.’

‘And this is a career you like?’

‘It beats pulling craypots.’

More silence. But he wasn’t angry, she thought. He kept on eating, as if she’d just commented on the weather. She’d never been able to needle him.

Oh, she’d missed him. For ten long years it had felt like an ache, a limb missing, phantom pains shooting when she least expected. Watching him now, it felt as if she was suddenly whole again. He was intent on his pancake, maybe giving her space-who knew with Nikos?

He’d fitted right in with the people at the party, she thought. But then she thought, no. She’d got that wrong.

Nikos was an embodiment of what the people she worked with wanted to be. They went to gyms and solariums and plastic surgeons and every other expensive way to get their bodies to where Nikos had his.

All they had to do was haul fifty or so craypots a day for life, she thought, and found she was smiling.

‘What?’ he said, and she was suddenly smiling straight at him, almost pleading for him to return the smile.

And he did. In force. His smile had the capacity to knock her sideways.

The waiter, about to descend to take away their plates, paused with the strength of it. This was a classy establishment. Their waiter knew enough not to intrude on such a smile.

‘I’ve missed you, Thene,’ Nikos said, and his hand was reaching over the table for hers.

No. She found enough sense to tug her hands off the table and put them sensibly in her lap. But she couldn’t stop herself saying the automatic reply. ‘I’ve missed you, too.’

‘So come home.’

‘Because I’ve missed you?’

‘Because the country needs you.’

Here it was again. Duty. Guilt.

‘No.’

She closed her eyes and the waiter decided it was safe to come close. He cleared the plates and set them again, ready for souffle. Maybe Nikos was watching her. She didn’t know.

Duty.

It had torn her in two ten years ago. To go back now…

“You know Demos wants to open the diamond mines again?” he said, almost conversationally, and her eyes flew open.

‘What the…Why?’

“He’s wanted to for years. It was only Giorgos’s greed that stopped him. Giorgos wasn’t fussed about mining them-he had more money than he knew what to do with, thankfully. But the royal money chests have gone to Alexandros on Sappheiros. There’s little money in the Argyros exchequer.”

“Which mines does he want to open?” She shouldn’t care, she thought. She shouldn’t!

‘All of them.’

‘All? The island will be ripped apart.’

‘You think Demos cares?’