CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXI

Seeing her standing in the doorway, safe and somewhat annoyed, if the little furrow between her eyebrows was anything to go by, Prometheus felt the punch to his solar plexus knock the wind right out of him. He had missed her.

He had always known Aphrodite was cruel, but he had no idea she could be so ruthless when it came to getting what she wanted. And what the goddesses wanted, as Prometheus had well and truly learnt these past few months, was to get their way ... no matter the cost to those involved. No matter who ithurt.

“What are you doing here?” Amara demanded, setting the mop against the wall and stalking out from behind thecounter.

“You’re dripping wet,” she muttered.

He suddenly noticed he had dripped water droplets all over the freshly mopped floor. The heavens had opened just before he arrived, a bout of summer showers soakinghim.

Amara pulled out a chair and insisted he sit, before taking a seat opposite him. She can’t help it, he thought, hostessing was in her nature. The table, the one closest to the door and smack bang in the middle of the café floor, seemed to be her version of a firm barrier between them. Prometheus realised she wasn’t just annoyed; she was angry.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around since we last saw each other,” he began.

“It’s fine. It’s not like I needed babysitting,” Amara bit back immediately, followed by a roll of her eyes and a muttered string of French under her breath, where she implied he liked to rescue damsels in distress or those with daddy issues, for which he was a bastard.

She didn’t know he spoke the language fluently.

Rain continued to lightly trickle against the windows in a tapping pattern that was both soothing and irritating in equal measure. Demeter was sobbing. Her daughter was due to leave for the underworld soon, and she had begun her grieving period on the Earth early it would seem. Autumn was still a while away yet. But that was no matter to Prometheus at present. He was far more concerned with the anger of the woman sitting opposite him.

Amara wouldn’t look him in the eyes, her body turned towards the door in such a way that suggested he leave immediately. It also only gave him a side profile of her face. But she’d told him to sit down, and he saw the tear brimming at the edge before she managed to blink it back.

So she wasn’t angry. She was hurt. She needed reassurance.

He couldn’t blame her. Knowing her history, her longing to belong, the abandonment wound she held, he wished he had some explanation that wasn’t the ludicrousness of the fact that he had handled the situation wrong. That he hadn’t known what to do because he hadn’t told anyone he had fallen in love with them in … centuries. Not since his wife, Hesione, and, well, that hadn’t worked out. Clearly.

“There is something rather distasteful, I find, about the men who prey on the women craving their father’s love. Says rather a lot about his character, I’m afraid,” Prometheussaid.

He got a look of pure loathing for his efforts at a joke. Humour really was not hisforte.

“Amara,” he tried again, gently but firmly.

“So you can speak French? What else don’t I know about you?” The words were clipped, the tone sharp. The words of a defensive woman, a woman who had been vulnerable and then not been given safety in exchange. The eyes, ah the eyes, gave her away. They were agonisingly scared of the answer he might give.

He tried something he would never have imagined himself daringto.

Reaching across the table, he took her hand in his and then gently began to stroke the inside of her wrist with his calloused thumb. Her dainty hand felt tiny cupped in his big, bronzed one, her flesh soft. He imagined she must keep hand cream by her bedside, rub it in every night. The images that followed sent an inappropriate jolt through him and back into the present moment.

She sucked in a breath, but she didn’t break the contact as he’d expected her to.

“I had no intention of abandoning you.” He put it bluntly. It was the only way he knew how.

Her lip quivered, and she brushed a tendril of hair behind her ear, using her hand to keep her face hidden from him. Still she didn’t say anything. When she did turn back to look at him, confusion glittered in those sparkling, shattered, jade-coloured eyes.

“And yet you did,” she said in awhisper.

“And yet Idid.”

He went to tell her then who he was. Who cared if she thought he was crazy, if it would unlock her soul’s memories. He would do it. But when those memories were unlocked, she might think that he was standing in her way, and he found − thanks to Aphrodite’s influences − that he didn’t want Amara thinking of him in that manner. It clawed at a primal part ofhim.

It was only in this moment, on the precipice of knowledge, on the impact of seeing her, that he realised just how clever the goddesses had been. If he was to protect Amara from their onslaught, he couldn’t simply reveal what he knew, because she would now just think it was some elaborate excuse. He was going to have to find another way to do it.

She slid her hand away from his at his silence. Before he could take it back, they were interrupted.

“Amara, you ok, love?” Alice boomed from the doorway that led out into the kitchens and the back entrance.

Amara abruptlystood.

“Sorry, Alice ... let me just finishup.”

Alice shook her head. “Ah, nah hen, leave it until tomorrow. You and your ... friend head on off now so I can lock up.” There was a glint in Alice’s eye that said she’d wanted to say more and was only holding back, as her boss, to spare Amara any embarrassment. Amara kept her head bowed as she ducked behind the counter to grab her bag and jacket.

Prometheus frowned. He wouldn’t have expected a former priestess, particularly of Athena, Artemis, and Aphrodite, to be so meek with another woman. Men, he could understand, given what the goddesses had subjected Amara too. But still, they tended to pick their priestesses with more backbone. He worried that the fear had begun to seep a little deeper into Amara’s bones, into the depth of her being, altering her on a fundamental level while he’d been gone. After all, nothing good had ever come from being in the human world for long. It was why he had given them the lifespan theyhad.

Then Amara threw him a look he couldn’t decipher. One full of hurt and pain and ... somethingelse.

“Don’t come back, ok?”

So she had a backbone afterall.

But before he had a chance to respond to that heartbreaking statement, which revealed the depth of the cut he’d caused, she walked out the door withouthim.