‘We therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection...’
The vicar gave his final blessing and then he was guiding her away, with the soft thud of earth falling on wood behind her.
Eyes blurred, she felt herself stumble suddenly, lifting her head to steady herself. Her gaze darted outwards, to the lychgate across the churchyard, where so lately her husband’s body had rested before its slow procession from the hearse beyond into the church.
And she froze, with a sense of arctic chill.
A car had drawn up beside the hearse—black, too, with dark-tinted windows. And standing beside it, his suit as black as the hearse, his figure tall, unmoving, was a man she knew well. A man she had not seen for five long years.
The last man in the world she wanted to see again.
* * *
Anatole stood motionless, watching the scene play out in the churchyard. Emotions churned within him, but his gaze was fixed only on the slight, slender figure, all in black, standing beside the priest in his long white robe at the open grave of his uncle. The uncle he had not seen—had refused to see—since the unbelievable folly of his marriage.
Anger stabbed at him.
At himself.
At the woman who had trapped his vulnerable uncle into marrying her.
He still did not know how, and it had been his fault that she had done so.
I did not see what ambition I was engendering.
It was an ambition that had spawned her own attempt to trap him—when thwarted, she had catastrophically turned on his hapless uncle. The uncle who—a life-long bachelor, a mild-mannered scholar, with none of the wary suspicions that Anatole himself had cultivated throughout his life—had proved an easy target for her.
His gaze rested on her now, as she became aware of his presence. Her expression showed naked shock. Then, with an abrupt movement, he wheeled about, threw himself inside his car and, with a spray of gravel, pulled away, accelerating down the quiet country lane.
Emotion churned again, plunging him back into the past.
Five long years ago...
* * *
Anatole drummed his fingers frustratedly on the dashboard. The London rush-hour traffic was gridlocked and had come to a halt, even in this side street. But it was not just the traffic jam that was putting him in a bad mood. It was the prospect of the evening ahead.
With Romola.
His obsidian-dark eyes glinted with unsuppressed annoyance and his sculpted mouth tightened. She was eyeing him up as marriage material. That was precisely what he did not welcome.
Marriage was the last thing he wanted! Not for him—no, thank you!
His eyes clouded as he thought of the jangled, tangled mess that was his own parents’ lives. Both his parents had married multiple times, and he had been born only seven months after their wedding—evidence they’d both been unfaithful to their previous spouses. Nor had they been faithful to each other, and his mother had walked out when he was eleven.
Both were now remarried—yet again. He’d stopped counting or caring. He’d known all along that providing their only child with a stable family was unimportant to them. Now, in his twenties, his sole purpose, or so it seemed, was to keep the Kyrgiakis coffers filled to the brim in order to fund their lavish lifestyles and expensive divorces.
With his first class degree in economics from a top university, his MBA from a world-famous business school and his keen commercial brain, this was a task that Anatole could perform more than adequately, and he knew he benefitted from it as well. Work hard, play hard—that was the motto he lived by—and he kept the toxic ties of marriage far, far away from him.
His frown deepened and his thoughts of Romola darkened. He’d hoped that her high-flying City career would stop her from having ambitions to marry him, yet here she was, like all the tedious others, thinking to make herself Mrs Anatole Kyrgiakis.
Exasperation filled him.
Why do they always want to marry me?
It was such a damn nuisance...
A dozen vehicles ahead of him he saw the traffic light turn to green. A moment later the chain of traffic was lurching forward and his foot depressed the accelerator.
And at exactly that moment a woman stepped right in front of his car...
Tia’s eyes were hazed with unshed tears, her thoughts full of poor Mr Rodgers. She’d been with her ill, elderly client to the end—which had come that morning. His death had brought back all the memories of her own mother’s passing, less than two years ago, when her failing hold on life had finally been severed.
Now, though, as she trudged along, lugging her ancient unwieldy suitcase, she knew she had to get to her agency before it closed for the day. She needed to be despatched to her next assignment, for as a live-in carer she had no home of her own.
She would need to cross the street to reach the agency, which was down another side street across the main road, and with the traffic so jammed from the roadworks further ahead she realised she might as well cross here. Other people were darting through the stationary traffic, which was only moving in fits and starts.
Hefting her heavy suitcase with a sudden impulse, she stepped off the pavement...
With a reaction speed he had not known he possessed, Anatole slammed down on the brake, urgently sounding his horn.
But for all his prompt action he heard the sickening thud of his car bumper impacting on something solid. Saw the woman crumple in front of his eyes.
With an oath, he hit the hazard lights then leapt from the car, stomach churning. There on the road was the woman, sunk to her knees, one hand gripping a suitcase that was all but under his bumper. The suitcase had split open, its locks crushed, and Anatole could see clothes spilling out.
The woman lifted her head, stared blankly at Anatole, apparently unaware of the danger she’d been in.
Furious words burst from him. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing? Are you a complete idiot, stepping out like that?’
Relief that the only casualty seemed to be the suitcase had flooded through Anatole, making him yell. But the woman who clearly had some kind of death wish was perfectly all right—except that as he finished yelling the blank look vanished into a storm of weeping.
Instantly his anger deflated, and he hunkered down beside the sobbing woman.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
His voice wasn’t angry now, but his only answer was a renewed burst of sobbing.
Obviously not, he answered his own question.
With a heavy sigh he took the disgorged clothes, stuffed them randomly back into the suitcase, and made a futile attempt to close the lid. Then he took her arm.
‘Let’s get you back on the pavement safely,’ he said.
He started to draw her upright. Her face lifted. Tears were pouring in an avalanche down her cheeks, and broken, breathless sobs came from her throat. But Anatole was not paying attention to her emotional outburst. As he stood her up on her feet, his brain, as if after a slow motion delay, registered two things.
The woman was younger than he’d first thought. And even weeping she was breathtakingly, jaw-droppingly lovely.
Blonde, heart-shaped face, blue-eyes, rosebud mouth...
He felt something plummet inside him, then ascend, taking shape, rearranging everything. His expression changed.