By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс

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.’

       EPILOGUE

      LEO 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