Greek Affairs: Tempted by the Tycoons: The Greek Tycoon's Convenient Bride / The Greek Tycoon's Unexpected Wife / The Greek Tycoon's Secret Heir

‘How we both need this,’ Rhiannon admitted. ‘A day away from the stresses and troubles back home.’

‘Home, is it?’ he murmured, without spite, and she flushed.

‘For now, I suppose.’

‘What was your home like growing up?’ As always he’d switched topics—and tactics—so quickly Rhiannon could only blink in surprise. ‘I know you were adopted, and it wasn’t very happy, but …’ He trailed off, spreading his hand, one eyebrow raised. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘There isn’t much to tell,’ Rhiannon replied, careful to keep any bitterness from her voice. ‘I was abandoned when I was three weeks old. Left on a church doorstep, actually. My mother—my adoptive mother, I mean—arranged flowers for the church and she found me. I’d only been left a little while, she said, or she would have been afraid of what the squirrels might’ve done to me.’

Lukas’s lips pursed briefly in distaste before he continued, ‘Did she make any effort to find your mother or father?’

‘No. Mum always said anyone who would leave a baby like that didn’t deserve to have one. I used to dream …’ She hesitated. ‘I used to imagine them coming to look for me. I had all sorts of reasons why they might have abandoned me.’ She smiled ruefully; it hurt, so she shrugged. ‘Anyway, she and Dad adopted me—Social Services were happy to comply. Mum and Dad were upstanding members of the community, so everything was in order.’

‘But you never really felt they wanted you?’ Lukas finished, and Rhiannon flinched.

‘I’ve never said that!’

His tone was gentle, his eyes soft and silver with compassion. ‘You’ve never needed to.’

Rhiannon looked away, across the flat surface of the sea, glittering as if a thousand diamonds had been cast upon its waters. She hunched one shoulder. ‘They were older when they adopted me. Late forties. They’d never expected to have children. Mum couldn’t.’

‘All the more reason to be overjoyed when they were given a chance with you, I would have thought.’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose by the time I came along they were well set in their ways. A little toddler can be a burden, I know.’

‘And you felt like one?’

‘They never said it,’ Rhiannon protested, almost desperate to exonerate their memory. ‘It was just … there.’ She paused, remembering all the moments, the pursed lips, the disapproving looks. The feeling that if she could just act as if she wasn’t there, perhaps they’d love her.

Silly to think that way now, she knew. Yet that was how she’d thought when she was six, twelve, twenty-two.

‘I remember one time,’ she began, the memory rushing back with aching sorrow, ‘I was hungry. Mum strictly forbade snacking between meals, but I’d missed lunch at school for some reason—I can’t remember now. She was out at a flower guild meeting, and I made myself a sandwich. I cleaned up afterwards, so she wouldn’t even know, but there was a drip of brown sauce on the worktop, and she was … furious.’ Rhiannon managed a rueful smile. ‘No dinner for me that night.’

She was surprised to feel Lukas’s hand on her shoulder, slipping up to cup her cheek. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ She leaned against his hand; she couldn’t help it. The strength, the security radiating from him, from that simple gesture, were overwhelming. ‘It was a long time ago.’

‘But the scars are still there?’

‘Yes, I suppose they are.’ She thought of her mother’s pain-worn face on her sickbed, of how she’d cared for her endless day after endless day. Her mother had accepted those ministrations with pursed lips and hard eyes, glaring resentfully at the daughter whom she somehow blamed for her reduced circumstances.