How could she think it?

‘You’ll dance again when your hip’s healed,’ he was saying softly.

‘I won’t,’ she muttered, coming back to earth with a crash. ‘I shouldn’t.’

‘Elsa…’

‘I don’t want to think about Matty,’ she whispered. ‘Not here. Not with you.’

They were alone on the dance floor. There were maybe ten or so tables occupied, but the lights were low, the other two couples who’d danced with them to begin with had left, and there was now just the two of them. The pianist had shifted from waltz music to something soft and dreamlike and wonderful.

There was nothing between them. Only a whisper of breath. Only a whisper of fear.

‘Elsa…’ he murmured, and her name was a question. His hands slipped from the lovely waltz hold so they were in the small of her back.

‘Elsa,’ he said for the third time, and he bent his head…and he kissed her.

It was a long, lingering kiss, deep and wonderful, hot and warm and strong, demanding, caressing, questioning.

It was a kiss like she’d never been kissed before.

She was standing in the middle of a dance floor, her arms around his neck and she was being kissed as she’d always dreamed she could be kissed.

She was being kissed as she’d wanted to be kissed all her life.

Matty…

Stefanos himself had pulled her husband into the equation. He was with her still-maybe he always would be. His kisses had been just as wonderful, but different-so different, another dream, another life. He wasn’t stopping her kissing right back.

This was the most wonderful dream. Her hip didn’t hurt, her worries about Zoe were ended, she wasn’t responsible for anything, for anything, for anything…

He was lifting her so he could deepen the kiss, cradling her, loving her and she thought her heart might well burst, as she realised she was so in love with him.

In love with him.

She, Elsa, was in love with a prince. Wasn’t Cinderella only in story books?

And, almost as soon as the thought was with her, the spell was broken. People were…clapping?

She twisted, confused, within the circle of Stefanos’s arms and found the tables of diners were all watching them, smiling, applauding.

‘It’s Prince Stefanos from Khryseis,’ someone called out in laughing good humour. ‘With the Princess’s nanny.’

Oh, right. She pulled back as if she’d been burned and Stefanos let her go to arm’s reach. But he was still smiling. Smiling and smiling.

‘Not the nanny,’ he murmured. ‘Elsa.’

‘In your dreams,’ she muttered and it was so close to what was real that she almost gasped. Not in his dreams. In her dreams.

‘Stefanos…’

‘I’m falling in love with you,’ he said, simply and strongly and she gasped again.

‘You can’t. I’m just…’

‘You’re just Elsa. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.’

‘You’re kidding me, right?’ she demanded. ‘I have freckles.’

‘Eighteen.’

‘Eighteen?’

‘Eighteen freckles. I love every one of them. Elsa, I’ve been trying to figure where we can take this.’

‘Where we…’

‘If we were to marry,’ he said and her world stilled again.

‘M…marry?’

‘I didn’t come prepared,’ he said ruefully. ‘I should be going down on one knee right now, with a diamond the size of a house in my pocket. But I’ve only just thought of it. Alexandros said I needed a wife, and he’s right.’

‘You’ve had too much champagne.’

‘No,’ he said and then, more strongly, ‘no! I know what I want, Elsa, and I want you.’

‘Because Alexandros said.’

‘I don’t think I did that very well,’ he said ruefully. ‘Believe it or not, it’s far less about Alexandros than about eighteen freckles.’

‘Eighteen freckles are hardly a basis for marriage.’

‘I believe you’re wrong,’ he said gravely. ‘But we could work on other attractions. Do you possibly think you could love me? I know you loved Matty. I know you still love Matty. I’ll always honour that, but…is it possible that I could…grow on you?’

‘Like a wart?’ she said cautiously.

‘Something like that,’ he agreed. He smiled and, chuckling, pulled her close.

But…But. This might be the magic she’d longed for but there were buts surfacing in all directions.

‘Stefanos, no.’ She tugged away again, trouble surfacing in all directions. They were being watched, she knew, but the piano was still playing softly in the background and maybe they were more private here than if they went back to their table.

‘Will you be my wife?’ he asked, solidly and strongly, and there it was, a proposal to take her breath away.

The but was still there. Forcing her hand.

‘No,’ she said.

‘No?’

‘I’m not changing direction again.’ She stood, mute and troubled. ‘Not…not while you don’t know where you’re going.’

‘I do know where I’m going.’

‘You don’t.’ She was frantically trying to think this through. To be sensible when she wanted to be swept away in fantasy. Only fantasy was for fairy tales and this was real. ‘Stefanos, the problem is…you’ve committed yourself to staying on the island and you’re making the best of it. But that’s not what I want. You making the best of it.’

‘It’s not such a bad deal,’ he said, puzzled. ‘If it includes you.’

‘I’m not the consolation prize.’

‘I would never suggest…’

‘No, you wouldn’t,’ she whispered. ‘Of course not. You’re too noble and too wonderful and too…’ She hesitated. ‘Too just plain fabulous. The problem is, Stefanos, that even though I’m falling in love with you-and I am-I can’t see you tied even more to the island. Tell me…you’re thinking…or you have been thinking…that maybe you can take some slabs of time away. Maybe you can do some teaching. Not when you’re needed on the island, of course, but if we can get more doctors, if the politics are settled…You’re thinking that, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘But I don’t think that’ll make you happy,’ she said. ‘I think that’s going to tear you further apart. For you’ll lose your skills. You’ll see others go where you want to go.’ She hesitated. ‘Stefanos, when Matty died and I couldn’t do what we were doing with coral any more…I know it sounds simplistic and silly in the face of what you’re doing but it was important to me and I couldn’t just do a little bit. It would have eaten at me. I had to move on.’

‘I think,’ he said steadily, ‘that in marrying you I would be moving on.’

‘I won’t be the cause,’ she said. ‘In no way.’ She bit her lip. ‘Stefanos, do what you have to do and then decide you want to marry me. If you were to do that…’

‘I am already.’

‘You’re not.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t make you see. I don’t even know whether I understand it myself, but in the bottom of my heart it does make sense-that I say no. That I say wait. That I say loving is…for when it’s right.’ She hesitated. ‘Matty and I…’

‘Matty?’

‘You asked me about Matty,’ she said. ‘Maybe I do need to tell you. Just as we finished university Matty inherited his father’s company. His mother sobbed and said he had to come home and run it. So he did-his entire extended family seemed to depend on him and it seemed the only right thing to do. He loved me so I went with him, but it almost destroyed us. For two years I worked on my research while Matty self-destructed. And in the end he handed the entire company over to his cousins. It left us broke. His family thought he was mad. But, you know what, Stefanos, the one thing I do know…When he was killed I thought of those wasted two years.’

‘You’re saying…’

‘I’m saying I don’t want the heartache of those two years again, Stefanos. Oh, I want you. I don’t deny I want you-my love for Matty hasn’t stopped me feeling more for you than I ever thought I could again. But I will follow my own drum and I won’t watch you self-destruct while you follow someone else’s.’

‘So what do you propose I do?’ he said bleakly.

‘Work it out,’ she said steadily. ‘For yourself and for me. Please, Stefanos.’

He didn’t understand. He was seeing her distress, but not seeing it either, she thought. Maybe he was only seeing what he wanted to see. The Cinderella bit. The fantasy.

Whereas what she wanted was more. Love at first sight? No. Love for ever.

All at once she felt tired. Weary of the pain in her hip, weary of worry, weary of the pain inside her heart.

It’d be so good to do just what she wanted, she thought. To have the world magically transformed so she could sink into her prince’s kisses and let herself have a happy ever after.

Stefanos.

He was fighting to change the world, she thought. He was fighting himself.

She didn’t have the courage to stand by his side as he did it.

It was too much. Too soon. Too scary. It was yet another direction, but this one was so big, so terrifying that if she got it wrong it could destroy them all. And if she didn’t get it right…if she wasn’t sure, if she jumped with her heart before her head said it could follow…where would that leave them all?

Oh, but she wanted to.

She mustn’t.

‘I need to go to bed,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve paid me the most extraordinary compliment…’

‘A compliment! It’s so much more…’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ she whispered bleakly, and she stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the lips. A feather touch. A kiss he didn’t understand. ‘I know you don’t follow what I’m saying-I hardly understand what I’m saying myself. I only know that…I don’t know if I can face your demons with you, Stefanos. Maybe I need more courage than I have. Goodnight and thank you. And I love you.’

And, before he could respond, she’d turned and fled from the dance floor. She didn’t stop until she reached her suite, until she was inside with the door locked behind her.

CHAPTER TWELVE