“Are you not happy to see me, Eleni?”
“I... I don’t know what to feel, Spiros. Or what to say. You got me in a lot of trouble for the stunt you pulled at my wedding reception. You disappeared without a word, and then you walk back in like you belong here.”
“I’m sorry about that.” He clasped her cheeks, his gaze reverent. Something inside Eleni—maybe that naive nineteen-year-old—ached at his touch. Couldn’t help but soften when she remembered how he’d been her only salvation on the toughest days.
If only he’d never left. If only they’d married back then... She didn’t know what the future would have held for her then, but suddenly Eleni knew, as well as the beat of her own heart, that Spiros was too late.
And not just because Eleni had said her vows to Angelina and Drakon.
“It took me forever to get into the palace, and when I did it was to see you in your wedding dress, looking incredibly lovely. I lost my mind right then. I hope that arrogant Spaniard was not cruel to you.”
“Gabriel is never cruel.” And she had known cruelty at the hands of the mad king. For all his claims to ruthlessness, Gabriel ran his empire with a firm but considerate hand. “Spiros, you left years ago. Without word. Without even a goodbye. Do you honestly expect that nothing has changed in all these years? That I have not changed?”
“But you waited for me, didn’t you? You didn’t look at another man. You didn’t marry until just a few months ago. Andreas told me you didn’t. Andreas told me you waited for me, you mourned for me...”
Eleni grabbed the wall behind her, a sick feeling clamping her stomach. Anything that involved her older brother, and the warpath he’d been on since their father’s dementia had worsened, did not bode well. For any of them. “What does Andreas have to do with any of this?” And even as she asked the question, things clicked. Andreas asking her about Spiros after their father’s death, relentless and incessant. Andreas asking her why she hadn’t moved on with her life.
“He’s the one who encouraged me to come back to you. He asked me if I still loved you and I said yes. But it was already too late. By the time I sold my business in the States and came back, you were already married to him.” Torment flickered across his angelic features while Eleni felt like she had stepped onto a land mine.
When and how had Andreas sought Spiros out? Was this the source of the tension between him and Gabriel?
She could just imagine Gabriel’s fury at Andreas’s meddling. Familiar fear flew through her veins. She didn’t want to lose either of them.
How like Andreas to pull the strings from behind the curtain. She was going to throttle her older brother.
“Say something, Eleni.”
“Why did you leave in the first place?” Eleni bit out loudly, frustration coiling through her. “I was so worried about you. I imagined such horrible scenarios. Couldn’t you have owned up to my face that we were done? That you never loved me.”
“But I did love you, Eleni. Desperately.” Spiros’s face fell and pity filled Eleni’s chest. “It was your father’s doing. He said I wasn’t good enough for you then. He said I had to grow some balls. When I told him you would run away with me, he threatened my family. You know how much my father and our family depended on the King’s goodwill. I let him...convince me to wait. I felt like I had nothing to offer you. He promised that if I made something of myself, he’d consider me again in a few years. But the condition was that I never see you. Never contact you. So I left, Eleni. I traveled the world. I...made something of myself.”
Her heart felt like it had received one final blow. “I waited and waited for you...and when you never came back I gave up on you. Then after a while, your family said that you’d gone to America. That you’d met someone there and forgotten all about me.”
“I’m sure he made them say that.” He moved back and forth in the confined space, his movements restless, angry. “Your father...he was mad. He never meant for you to marry me,” he said, coming to the same conclusion Eleni had. “He never meant for you to leave his side, Eleni. I was such a fool to believe him.”
Her knees shook with the magnitude of her father’s casual cruelty.
Spiros was right. Gabriel had been right. Her father had meant to keep her with him for the rest of his life. Like an unpaid staff member, a companion, forever reminded that she owed him for everything in her life.
He’d not only ruined her life but he’d ruined Spiros’s too. “Why did you come back now, Spiros?” She couldn’t even muster anger for him. She felt nothing.
“I heard the news of King Theos’s death. And I knew you were still...waiting for me.”
Eleni didn’t bother to correct him even though resentment grew in her.
“As you very well know, I’m a married woman now.” She jerked away from Spiros, resignation filling her. Suddenly, she felt immensely tired. “I don’t love you, not anymore.”
“But I love you, Eleni. I would wait another ten years if it meant you would be mine.” How could she tell him that it would come to nothing? That he should have stayed and fought her father, that he shouldn’t have let his insecurities drive him away.
Tears filling her face, Eleni let Spiros fold her into his embrace. Her chest ached for him and for her, for the future they could have had. If not for the machinations of a sick old man.
For her own sanity’s sake, she wished she felt something for Spiros. She would never break her vows but at least her heart would remain safe from Gabriel.
But even as Spiros held her tight, even as the man she had once loved promised his eternal love to her, nothing moved in her.
He was not overtly tall. He was not broad in the shoulder and narrow in the hips. He didn’t look at her with compelling gray eyes. He did not call her Princesa in a mocking way and yet somehow mean it.
He didn’t deny feeling any emotions. He didn’t fiercely protect everyone he considered his. He didn’t threaten her powerful brothers for their supposed neglect of her or even the entire world for insulting her.
He simply was not Gabriel.
“I have already made my vows, Spiros,” she said, wanting to do him a kindness. Wanting to alleviate her own guilt at the love she felt for Gabriel. “I have made promises to a little girl and her father. I... I cannot walk away from those. I will not break my word. I’m so sorry. There’s no future for you and me. Maybe there never was.”
Spiros frowned. His hands digging into her shoulders, he said, “This is not over, Eleni mou. I refuse to give you up so easily after all these years. The Spaniard does not love you. He cannot make you happy.”
Eleni didn’t know how long she stayed in the stall after Spiros left, his dire warnings ringing in her ears.
But it didn’t matter.
Gabriel had spoiled her for anyone else.
* * *
I will not walk away from the promises I made. I will not break my word.
Eleni’s words to that man haunted Gabriel throughout the day. Damn it, of all the times for him to walk into the stables, of all the things he had to overhear coming from her mouth.
Had he thought her like his mother once? Or like Monique or his sister, Isabella, fickle and full of deceit?
Now he wished she was like them. That she didn’t care for anyone except her own happiness.
But of course not.
His wife was a bloody saint, forever willing to sacrifice her own happiness on the altars of others’ lives.
It was her choice to give up her happiness, something said in his head. A voice that sounded very much like the ruthless, arrogant man he’d been when he’d threatened to sink Drakon if a mere woman didn’t cater to his wishes.
He wanted to, God, how he wanted to forget what he had seen in the damn stables.
The pain of a lost future in her eyes, the tears that had fallen when Spiros had told her what her father had done. The way she had folded into that man’s arms as if she had no will left.
He would have given anything to un-see it, to carry on like he had been for weeks now. Putting Andreas off, making plans to take Eleni and Angelina away from the cursed palace, reminding himself again and again that Eleni had chosen this marriage, chosen this over some fantastic notion of love.
That she gave everything to it because she wanted to.
Yet the shadow of the man had hung over them. The idea of him waiting forever and Gabriel hiding it from her, crept into all the small spaces between them, until it had become an invisible wall. Until the guilt of it had made him withdraw from her.
Neither had it been missed by her. More than once, Gabriel had seen her hesitate before she said something to him, had seen the stricken look in her eyes when he didn’t meet her gaze or avoided spending time with her.
For weeks, he’d existed in a strange limbo, unwilling to let go of her but unable to live with the gift of her choice.
And now—now that he had seen her face, now that he’d heard what she said, he found it unbearable to live like this any longer.
Was this how his father had felt after his mother had come back? Knowing that she still mourned the lover that had abandoned her, yet unable to turn her away? Gabriel had considered it his weakness.
Had his father loved his mother that much then?