For the space of the three days in which her father had finally made his move.
‘I should have been there, checking on things, making sure he made no mistakes. Instead, I was the one who made the worst mistake.’
The ‘worst mistake’ being spending time with her. Sadie flinched inside at the pain of his words.
‘I felt so terribly guilty as a result. I was guilty, and that guilt twisted me up inside. I blamed your family for everything that had happened—I blamed you.’
Pushing his fingers through his hair, Nikos pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, as if to ease some intolerable ache.
‘So when you came to me for help—because your mother needed a home where she could be safe—I just saw the opportunity to take my revenge. Thee mou, my darling, I thought that I was immune to this damn feud and I was so proud of being so. Now I see that I was eaten up with it all the time. I thought the worst of you because that was what I expected from a member of the Carteret family. But I wasn’t dealing with just one of the Carterets—I was dealing with you.’
Did he know what he had said? Sadie wondered, not daring to ask the question for fear that, with the raw pain thickening Nikos’s accent, she had misheard him and that ‘my darling’ had been something else entirely.
‘You—you weren’t completely to blame,’ she stammered, feeling as if she was treading over delicate eggshells with infinite care. ‘I had said some terrible things—done some…’
But Nikos was shaking his head again, his eyes dark and shadowed in a way that made her heart twist in pain.
‘And even then I was deceiving myself. Even then I wasn’t admitting to my real motives. I wasn’t even acknowledging that revenge had nothing to do with it, not deep down. Deep down, from the moment I saw you again, I knew that I couldn’t live without you in my life. That once I had you again I could never let you go. So I resorted to stupid subterfuge to get you here and keep you. I was sure that if we could just spend time together then it would be as it had always been.’
‘It could—it was!’ Sadie couldn’t bear to let him go on berating himself any more. ‘Didn’t yesterday—last night—tell you something? That I wanted to be with you.’
‘In my bed, perhaps,’ Nikos responded heavily. ‘But I wanted more than that. I wanted you in my life for good. And I was so desperate to do that that—to keep you with me—that I offered you anything—everything that I thought might keep you there. But I offered all the wrong things. You didn’t want the house—or money…’
‘No,’ Sadie put in softly, her voice breaking suddenly as he reached out and took each of her hands in his, pulling her gently towards him. Her heart was racing so hard that it set her blood pounding in her ears, the sound like thunder inside her head. ‘No, I don’t want those.’
The hands that held hers tightened, drawing her even closer, so that they were almost touching, only their clasped hands coming between them, holding them just a breath apart. The eyes that looked down into hers were blazingly intent, blindingly so. But now they were wide and clear, the clouds and the darkness burned away by the open sincerity that told her everything she needed to know.
‘So now I’m going to offer you the only thing that really matters,’ Nikos told her, his voice so deep, so serious, that it took her breath away, made her freeze into immobility, unable to blink or look away. ‘Though the truth is that the only thing I have to give you, you already have. I gave it to you in the moment we met, but I never really knew it until now. As a result I’ve been lost and wandering—not knowing who to be or how to live.’
Suddenly, unexpectedly, he lowered himself slowly to the floor until he was on one knee at her feet, looking up into her face with his feelings clear and open for her to read.
‘You have my heart, Sadie,’ Nikos told her. ‘You have my heart and my love—they are yours for ever, no matter what answer you give. I am yours. There is no other woman in the world for me. What I’m asking is will you be mine? Will you be my wife and help me to put this dreadful feud far behind us, to heal the hurts that it brought and create a future that is so different, so loving, that there will be nothing but bright days ahead of us?’
‘Oh, Nikos…’
Sadie turned her hands in his so that she could hold him, draw him up again to face her, until she could look deep into his eyes and see the way they changed as she gave him her answer.
‘You have my heart too, and I never, ever want it back. All I want is a chance to go into that future with you, to create those bright days and to love you as I have always wanted to do. And so of course my answer is yes. It never could be anything else. It’s—’
But she never managed to get any more words out. Whatever she had been about to say was crushed into silence by the force and passion of the kiss that Nikos pressed against her lips. And as he swept her up into his arms, crushed her against him, she knew that no words were needed anyway.
Words were totally redundant when there were much better ways to express the way they were feeling.
‘Can we go yet? Can we go?’
Little George was almost dancing on the spot in impatience, tapping his smart patent shoes on the floor and risking crumpling his crisp white shirt and pressed black trousers as he chanted his request over and over again.
‘Can we go, pleeeease? I want to see Niko.’
‘So do I,’ Sadie told him, her smile mirroring that on her brother’s face at the thought of the way that Nikos would be waiting for them, just a very short distance away on this special morning. ‘And we’ll be leaving very soon.’
George had adored his big cousin on sight, and in the time since they had first met that love had grown into a sort of idolatry as Nikos filled the role of the father the little boy had never had.
‘But we just have to wait for—’
She broke off as the door opened and her mother, elegant in peach and cream, stepped into the room. Her eyes went straight to her daughter, taking in the full effect of the simple white sheath dress with its overskirt of lace, the simple wreath of flowers on Sadie’s shining dark hair.
‘You look gorgeous, my darling—every inch the beautiful bride. Nikos is going to be knocked for six when he sees you.’
‘I hope so…’ Sadie smoothed a hand down her dress as she drew in a deep calming breath. ‘And what about you—are you OK, Mum?’
It was impossible to iron out the edge of concern in her voice as she studied her mother’s face. Sarah looked calm and in control, but underneath her carefully applied make-up she was still slightly pale and drawn, revealing the effort she had made to be here. The therapist Nikos had found for her had worked wonders, and that, together with the new-found happiness that came from knowing all their worries about Thorn Trees and everything else were far behind them, had created an incredible transformation in her mother’s life. But all the same the journey to Greece, to Icaros, was more than she had ever been able to imagine her mother could manage.
‘I’m fine,’ Sarah assured her now. ‘I’m exactly where I want to be—by my daughter’s side on her wedding day.’
‘And I’m so happy that you’re here with me.’
Happier than she could possibly put into words, Sadie told herself as she collected her bouquet of creamy roses. Today was literally the happiest day of her life. The day on which she was marrying the man she adored, and the day that marked once and for all the final ending of any last trace of the feud that had threatened to tear her and Nikos and their families apart.
Not only had she been welcomed into the Konstantos family,