‘Firstly,’ he tried, desperately and silently needing her to understand, ‘I don’t want you to overstretch your company at such an early stage in its development. At the moment you are risking a great deal. If I say yes, you would risk even more. And secondly, we haven’t actually done a market share price, so I couldn’t honestly say that you’d get a fair price.’
‘I believe in what Célia and I are doing. I believe in this company and know, know, it will work. And I don’t need a market price, I need a fair one. And I trust you to be fair. I don’t need more. I just need enough. And I think five million is a fair and appropriate price. It’s enough to inject some of it into the company and still have a cushion that allows for some wiggle room.’
‘Please think about this.’ He was almost begging. Never before had he felt that sense of a precipice before him.
‘Roman, honestly, I don’t need to. I know that this will work, I know that this is what I need. Please, would you buy the shares from me?’
And his earlier promise came back to haunt him. That he would give her anything she wanted, while she wanted it from him. Only this time, giving Ella what she wanted…would cost him everything.
* * *
Within two days the money had come through from the sale of her shares to Roman, Loukas had happily signed the paperwork, becoming their first client, and Ella was almost bursting with joy. She knew that she had put all of her eggs in one basket, but it was a basket that she and Roman shared. She was investing not only in herself, but them.
Roman was still out wrapping up things with the bank and Kolikov Holdings as Ella watched the sun begin its descent into the South Pacific Ocean. It felt so strange to have the night sky begin to glow about three hours earlier than France, adding to the feeling of a stolen moment outside of time. Ella shivered a little, remembering the last time she had felt like this—before her marriage to Roman. A time that she had felt just belonged to them.
But this was different, she told herself. This was their second chance. How it should have been all along. With a hand soothing over the gentle bump of her abdomen, Ella marvelled at just how much had changed since she had met him that day in the woods near her grandmother’s cottage. In some ways, everything she had wanted back then had come to pass. Her marriage to Roman, her business, even their child, she acknowledged.
She might not have liked how they’d got here, but she couldn’t wish it away. Had it not been like that, she might never have got to know the real Roman. Neither the one who had appeared perfect nor the one who had appeared monstrous had been the man she had come to…had come to…
Love.
With a surety that shocked her, the knowledge raced along her veins, fizzing in her blood and lighting something like pure joy within her. She did love him. She loved the man who would do anything to protect their child, the man who had confessed the deep pain hidden beneath his quest for vengeance, the one who still slept lightly in the hope that his mother would one day come and wake him and dance for him in the moonlight. The man who brought her exquisite pleasure and the man who had given her the ability to secure the business she and Célia had worked so hard for.
Energy raced through her body and she wanted to move, to dance, to take this moment and embrace the sheer happiness of it, having reached such a low shortly after her marriage. She picked up her phone and found a song on her music list, one that would perfectly echo everything she feared she might never capture in words.
As the song began the notes swept around her, filling the space and echoing in her heart, asking that she feel love. And she did. Paying no heed to the thought that someone could come upon her, dancing around the beautiful living space, with the most incredible backdrop, Ella danced and danced and danced, an almost intoxicating high running through her veins.
She performed another twirl, the layers of her skirts spinning out from her waist, making her feel like a child again, which was perhaps why she didn’t see Roman at first. Didn’t see the look on his face that might have stopped her in her tracks had she not been so caught up in her joy.
* * *
Roman knew she hadn’t seen him yet, and was thankful for it. Because it gave him time. Time to adjust to the fact that, as she spun round the room, he saw his mother. Ella’s movements were not the elegant sweeps his mother had made beneath the night sky. Her arms didn’t extend and reach out for something intangible, as if the gesture would never end, never stop reaching. Because, he realised, Ella believed she had already found what she was looking for.
The happiness and joy he could almost see vibrating on the air about her, as she moved in time with the song that taunted him, cut him off at the knees.
She turned to him then, eyes seas of sparkles that would rival the night sky, and he knew. He didn’t want to, almost asked her not to say what she clearly wanted to say. But his words wouldn’t come, while hers poured from her lips like raindrops.
‘I’m so happy,’ she said, almost strangely apologetic, or embarrassed. But those feelings were apparently put aside or pushed down as he watched her transform into someone assured, confident, someone owning her own sense of self. It was like watching a flower unfurl to bask in everything the sun could give.
‘I couldn’t have done it without
