Libby’s mouth dropped open in shock.
She’d been sure he’d only suggested trying again to protect his bank balance. But now…
‘Even if…I can’t—I’m supposed to be working out some potential new tours for next season before my first group arrives,’ she stuttered.
Rion frowned. ‘Tours?’
‘It’s my job,’ she said, realising she’d never explained what had brought her to Athens in the first place. ‘I work for a company called Kate’s Escapes.’
So she was working, he thought in surprise. In the tourist industry. That explained the tan, but not why. Surely Ashworth Motors had to have fallen on hard times. ‘So come to Metameikos.’ He shrugged. ‘Work out a potential tour there. The scenery is the most beautiful in all of Greece.’
Libby’s eyes widened even further.
‘I…I—’
‘Shouldn’t make an impetuous decision, gineka mou,’ he finished for her, striding forward and pinning back the door. ‘Think about it. You have until tomorrow to decide.’
And with that he ushered her out of the door and closed it behind her.
Outside his office, Libby stood rooted to the spot, not sure she was capable of the neurological function required to make it down the stairs.
He’d said he wanted to see whether they could make their marriage work. Even more astounding than that, he’d asked her to go away with him, to work alongside him, in Metameikos.
They weren’t the kind of statements that sounded particularly momentous. They didn’t offer an answer to world peace or hint at a cure for some deadly disease. But to Libby they stopped her world on its axis and started it rotating in the opposite direction from the one in which it had been spinning for the last five years.
Because it showed her that he might be ready for marriage now, in a way that neither of them had been before.
For never, in the three months they had spent together as husband and wife, had he seemed to want to spend time with her or share his work with her, and he’d only ever discouraged her from working. Nor had he ever really spoken of Metameikos, never mind suggested he had attachment enough to return to the place where he’d grown up.
Libby leaned back against the door, her memories surfacing like lava in a volcano disturbed.
No, from the day they’d arrived in Athens, his focus had always been on leaving the past behind him and making it on his own. And whilst she’d been delighted to escape her tyrannical father and leave her past behind too, she’d arrived with a head full of dreams. Dreams about living a life which didn’t revolve around money and status, but love and freedom. But they’d barely finished saying their vows when he’d thrown himself into working eighteen-hour days. She’d virtually never seen him, and on the rare occasions when she had, all he’d done was talk about moving to a bigger apartment, putting money down on a house, finding an investor in his business idea.
At first Libby had admired his diligence. She knew very little about his childhood, but what she did know was that, unlike her, he’d grown up with nothing, on the poor side of Metameikos. It was understandable that getting another decent job was important to him—especially after the way her father had treated him—and she knew they couldn’t survive on their wits alone. But as he’d come home later and later every day, she’d found his obsession harder and harder and harder to cope with. Because she had known that simply working eight-hour days earned him enough to cover the rent and the bills, so why did he feel the need to work any more? If he loved her, wasn’t spending his evenings and his weekends with her worth more than overtime pay?
It hadn’t seemed to be. And as the weeks had passed she’d begun to wonder if he had ever really loved her at all. Because not only had it appeared to fail to cross his mind that a life spent isolated and alone, wondering if and when he was going to come home from work, was nothing like the life she’d imagined when she’d married him, but he hadn’t even really talked to her about his job either—hadn’t involved her in the very thing that had determined the course of her days. The same way it had been with her father and Ashworth Motors. Perhaps she could have dealt with that if they’d shared other things, but he’d never seemed to have time for anything else—save for lovemaking, late at night, when he came home. But he’d only ever seemed disappointed in that.
And eventually she’d had to admit to herself that she was disappointed with their marriage too. Yes, in marrying him she’d escaped the physical restrictions her father had placed on her, avoided marrying a suitor of his choosing, but being Mrs Delikaris hadn’t really felt much different from being Miss Ashworth. She’d felt no more in control of her own life than she had before. What had happened to her chance to just be Libby?
It had disappeared, she had finally admitted to herself one day, three months after their wedding. And unless she did something about it, their marriage was going to destroy her.
He had been tying his tie in the bedroom the following morning, when she’d finally plucked up the courage. ‘Rion, before you leave for work again there’s something I want to talk to you about.’
‘Oh?’
She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve decided to apply for a job at the language school down the road.’
It wasn’t going to solve all her problems, but it might be a start. She’d wanted to get a job ever since they’d arrived, for herself as well as to help out with paying the bills, but he’d told her it wasn’t necessary. She realised now she should have fought harder.
‘They’re looking for native English-speakers to help with classes,’ she continued, ‘and I thought an extra bit of cash coming in might mean you needn’t spend so much time working.’
He shook his head. ‘I told you before, it’s not necessary for you to get a job.’
She sucked in a frustrated breath. Couldn’t he see that she needed a life of her own? ‘But I want to. I’ll be able to learn Greek whilst I’m there and—’
‘I promised you a private tutor.’ He looked pained. ‘And you will have one—just as soon as I secure an investment.’
‘But I don’t want to wait that long. I can’t even greet the neighbours!’
Rion’s face contorted. ‘I can assure you it won’t be that long.’
She shook her head. ‘Even so, it isn’t just that. I want to go to a class, to meet other people.’ Her shoulders dropped. ‘When you’re at work I just feel so…lonely.’
Rion blinked up at her. ‘I am more than willing to have a child, if that is what you mean.’
Libby’s eyes widened in disbelief. She’d always dreamed of having a family of her own one day, but not before she’d had the chance to really live herself, and certainly not now, when he was only suggesting having a baby as a solution to a problem.
A problem he didn’t even understand. And was it really any wonder? No, she realised, feeling her heart rupture, he couldn’t, because the truth was he didn’t even know her. They’d married so hastily that she’d hadn’t even had the time and space to get to know herself.
And in that instant Libby suddenly saw, as if a bolt of lightning had forked down from the sky and illuminated everything, that as long as she remained here she never would. That even if she stayed and fought and fought she would never really gain control of her own life. No, there was only one way to do that.
She shook her head. ‘No, Rion, a child isn’t what I want. I want—’ She dropped her eyelids and took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know exactly what I want, but I know