Modern Romance December 2016 Books 1-4. Кейт Хьюит

that Angelos was providing her with an out. ‘He took over the raising of me and my brothers and sisters after my parents died.’

      ‘How many brothers and sisters do you have?’

      ‘Seven,’ Talia answered, ‘including my half-brother, Nate. Five brothers and two sisters.’

      ‘That’s a lot,’ Angelos remarked. ‘Are you close to all of them?’

      ‘Mostly, in different ways, although I don’t see Nate very much.’ She frowned, thinking of the elusive half-brother who had always skirted the fringes of her family. ‘My father had an affair, before I was born, and Nate was the result.’ She grimaced. ‘Which puts my parents in a bad light, I know. They were...weak people, I think. But I still missed them, the idea of them.’

      ‘I suppose bad parents are better than none.’

      ‘Do you think that? You didn’t grow up with any parents...’

      ‘No.’ Angelos stared out at the sea, his mouth pressed into a firm line. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I would have preferred almost anyone to the care home, or scratching a living on the docks.’

      Talia shook her head in genuine admiration. ‘It’s amazing, how far you’ve come.’

      ‘Just luck,’ Angelos dismissed with a shrug of his shoulders, as he had before.

      ‘More than luck,’ Talia insisted. ‘Not many people could do what you have done, Angelos.’

      A brief look of something close to anguish contorted Angelos’s features and then he looked out to sea again. ‘Maybe,’ he allowed, ‘but I’ve failed in other ways.’

      Talia felt as if her heart was bumping its way up her throat. ‘What do you mean?’

      Angelos shook his head, and then nodded towards Sofia. ‘This is her day. Let’s not ruin it by talk of the past.’

      Which made her even more intrigued, but Talia knew better than to press it. She turned to Sofia with a smile, and they spent the next few minutes chatting in a mixture of broken English and Greek, both of them managing to get their meaning across. Mostly.

      Several times she sneaked a glance at Angelos; he was still staring out at the sea, his eyes narrowed against the sun, the set of his mouth seeming bleak, and Talia wondered if she’d ever get an opportunity to ask Angelos what he’d meant when he’d said he’d failed.

      * * *

      He didn’t talk about the past. He certainly didn’t mention his failures. But he had to Talia; he’d almost told her about the fire. The realisation made Angelos’s shoulders tense and his chest go tight. He didn’t want to relive that awful day, the worst day of his whole life. He’d put those memories in a box and slammed the lid shut, but for some reason getting to know Talia was prying it open again. And that was not a good thing.

      What was it about this woman with her clear, hazel gaze and her impish smile and incredible bravery that got to him? That made him want to tell her things, just as she’d told him? She’d been so honest with him, and he admired that deeply. But he wasn’t capable of it himself.

      In any case, she was leaving in a month. He’d enjoyed these last few days, and he was grateful to Talia for helping him to reconnect, at least a little, with his daughter. But it wasn’t as if he and Talia had any kind of relationship. In a matter of weeks he’d never see her again.

      He glanced at Talia; she’d stopped chatting to Sofia and was sitting back, her hands in her lap, the wind blowing her hair into golden tangles about her face. Her incredibly pale face, and belatedly Angelos noticed how her fists were clenched, how she was starting to tremble.

      He knew they shouldn’t have gone in the boat.

      ‘Talia.’ He slid off his seat and reached for her hands; they were ice cold. She didn’t even look at him. ‘Talia,’ he said again, his voice hard and insistent, and she blinked him back into focus.

      ‘Sorry...’ she whispered, and Angelos muttered a curse.

      ‘You have nothing to be sorry about.’

      ‘It’s just...we can’t see land any more...’ Her teeth chattered and Angelos slid next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, closing her eyes.

      ‘It’s okay,’ he murmured. ‘It’s going to be okay. We’ll get to land, we’ll be safe. I’ll keep you safe.’ The words echoed through him, a promise he meant utterly and yet feared was hollow. After all, he’d broken it before.

      Sofia turned to look at them, her face going nearly as pale as Talia’s as she took in her nanny’s sickly expression.

      ‘Talia...’

      Talia gave her a weak, apologetic smile and silently Sofia slid her hand into hers. Angelos went back to the tiller, guiding them as quickly as he could towards the shore.

      The boat sped swiftly over the water; he kept glancing at Talia, making sure she was okay. Her face was pale but she lifted her chin bravely and squeezed Sofia’s hand.

      ‘I’m okay, Sofia,’ she told the girl. ‘Don’t worry, please.’

      The realisation that even in the midst of her suffering and fear, Talia was able to comfort his daughter, cared enough to comfort her, made something expand painfully in Angelos’s chest.

      He turned away quickly, not trusting the expression on his face, and steered them on to Naxos.

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      AS SOON AS the sailboat reached the jetty, Angelos leapt out and tethered it before turning to Talia, his arms outstretched. She fell into his embrace clumsily, because her legs were so shaky, and heat scorched her once pale face as her panic started to recede, replaced by an almost as awful embarrassment.

      ‘You must think...’ she muttered as she stepped away from him.

      ‘I think you’re very brave, to go on this boat for my daughter’s sake,’ Angelos murmured. His hands still rested on her shoulders, his palms warm through the thin fabric of her sundress. ‘Thank you,’ he added, and then he released her to help Sofia out of the boat.

      His words whirled through her mind as they set up camp on the stretch of beach by the harbour, the sand soft and warm beneath her bare feet.

      ‘I think you’re very brave.’ Did Angelos really mean that? She didn’t feel brave. She felt like the worst wimp, unable to hack so much as an hour in a sailboat. What kind of sad sack wasn’t able to manage that?

      Talia had accepted her limitations for so long they had stopped bothering her. At least, she’d thought they had. But now that she was experiencing more of life, both with Sofia and Angelos, she was coming to realise how little she’d had these last seven years...and how much she still wanted.

      They spent the morning on the beach and then walked into the town of Chora for lunch. As they approached the whitewashed buildings, colourful cafés with striped awnings and tables outside, Talia watched as Sofia seemed to shrink into herself. Her hair slid in front of her face, her shoulders hunched, her whole demeanour making Talia think the girl wanted to hide herself.

      In the nearly two weeks since she’d been on Kallos, Talia had grown so used to Sofia’s face, to her bright smile and beautiful eyes as well as the puckered, reddened flesh that covered her entire cheek. She’d stopped noticing it at all, and Sofia had been much less self-conscious. But now she saw the shyness and insecurity come back, and she could tell Angelos noticed it too. As his daughter hid behind a curtain of curly dark hair, Angelos’s scowl deepened, a deep furrow carved between his straight eyebrows.

      ‘Where shall we go?’ Talia asked brightly. She was determined to rescue this day and keep it special and happy for Sofia’s sake. It wasn’t every day a girl turned