by Abby Green
She heard a noise and looked up to see Apollo return. He was holding a bottle and two glasses.
He said, ‘Brandy.’ He poured her a shot and handed her a glass. When her hand shook too much he put his hand around hers and lifted it to her mouth. She drank and winced as the fiery liquid burnt down her throat into her stomach. It worked almost instantly, sending out comforting tendrils. Creating a warmth between her and the numbness that had taken hold.
The shudders started to subside slowly.
Apollo poured himself some brandy and slugged it back. He held up the bottle. ‘More?’
‘A tiny bit.’ She didn’t want to become insensible, not when her mind was actually functioning again. She took another small sip and the warmth extended from her stomach out, creating a calming effect.
Apollo sat on the edge of the bed. After a minute he said, ‘So, do you want to tell me what’s come back exactly? How much of your memory?’
She forced herself to look at him. What they’d just shared... She knew that would be the last time he’d ever allow intimacy between them once she had finished telling him what she had to.
‘All of it. Everything.’
‘Why are you saying you’re not Sasha?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Because I’m not. I’m Sophy. Sophy Jones. Sasha is...was...my twin sister.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOPHY COULD SEE Apollo try to absorb this. Eventually he said, ‘Twins.’
She nodded. She felt sick. Again.
He stood up. ‘What the hell is this...some kind of joke? Now you’re trying to convince me you’re someone else? Did you ever have amnesia?’
Sophy stood up, even though her legs felt like jelly. ‘The accident...happened. It was real. Sasha was driving, she’d picked me up from the airport.’
‘Well, if you’re a twin, and she was driving, where is she now?’
She was driving manically up a winding road, speaking so fast that Sophy couldn’t understand half of what she was saying. And then she turned to Sophy.
‘You have to seduce him, Soph,’ she said. ‘He wants you, not me. Isn’t that ironic? He wouldn’t sleep with me—he knows the baby doesn’t exist now. But if you sleep with him you can get pregnant. Then there will be a baby.’
Sophy looked at her sister, her insides caught in a vice of anxiety and confusion. ‘Sash, what are you on about?’
And that was when Sasha took a bend too fast.
Sophy could see that they were too close to the unprotected edge and she called out. Sasha slammed on the brakes but it was too late.
They stopped right on the edge, the front of the car tipping over. Sophy felt nothing but blood-draining terror as the ravine appeared below them, narrow, deep and dark.
She said, ‘Sasha, don’t move.’
She pushed through the gut-churning terror to open her door carefully and undid her seat belt. If she could inch out of the car then the weight would be redistributed...
Sasha was crying. ‘Soph, I’m so sorry... I should never have done this to you. I’ve ruined everything.’
Sophy looked over and saw blood trickling down Sasha’s forehead. She must have hit her head on the wheel.
She said, in as calm a voice as she could muster, ‘Sash, don’t think about that now. Just look at me, and keep looking at me—not down. I’ll get you out.’
Sophy put her leg out of the car and felt for the ground. Then she eased her body so that she was perching on the seat, her feet on the edge of the cliff.
She looked back at her sister. ‘Keep looking at me, Sash.’
Sophy kept her eyes on Sasha while she reached out to try and get hold of something that might anchor her if she jumped free of the car.
But at that moment a strange expression crossed her sister’s face and Sasha said, ‘I’m sorry, Soph, but I won’t take you down with me.’
And then, before Sophy could stop her, Sasha was reaching across and pushing Sophy out of the car.
Sophy fell into space, her breath strangled in her throat, and then she landed on a hard surface, the breath knocked out of her body.
The only thing she heard before blackness consumed her was the faint sound of metal crashing far below her...
Sophy looked at Apollo.
Sasha was gone.
She tried to answer Apollo’s question but her voice sounded very far away.
‘She’s in the car... I couldn’t get her out. She’s dead.’
And then, like when she’d landed on that ledge, far above the bottom of the ravine, darkness came over her again like a comforting cloak.
The next few hours passed in a blur. Sophy was aware of coming round and a concerned doctor asking her some questions. Olympia had helped her to dress and then they’d been flying over the sea with Apollo’s voice in her ear.
‘Are you okay? We’re nearly there.’
When they reached the bright hospital in Athens where a team of doctors and nurses was waiting for them, Sophy knew that, as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t hide from the painful reality waiting to be unearthed from the depths of her newly returned memory.
‘It would appear that the trauma of the crash, of seeing the car disappear with her sister in it, along with the bump to her head, caused a classic case of trauma-induced amnesia. And, because her sister was in the accident, she blocked out everything about her sister, which was her whole life. Effectively.’
Apollo was silent. Taking this in. He was standing outside the private suite at the hospital with the same doctor who had treated Sasha—Sophy—after the accident.
Theos. Even now it was hard to get his head around it. No wonder he’d always thought of her as so pale. She’d been a different woman. He realised now that all those little anomalies he’d noticed since the accident hadn’t been anomalies.
He didn’t think he’d ever be able to excise the image from his mind of Sophy crumpling before him like a ragdoll and the terror he’d felt as he’d waited for the island doctor to arrive.
She’d come round at the villa but she’d retreated to some numb place Apollo couldn’t reach. Even if the doctor hadn’t recommended it, Apollo would have returned to Athens as soon as possible to seek further treatment.
Through the window he could see a detective talking to Sophy now. She was still deathly pale. Any lingering doubt he might have had about whether or not she’d been lying about the amnesia was well and truly gone.
It was too huge to absorb and try and figure how he felt about this, and the fact that Sasha—his wife, however inconvenient she’d been—was now dead.
The detective stood up and came out. He stopped in front of Apollo. ‘I’ll have a team sent to look for the crashed car immediately. And your wife’s body. We should find Ms Jones’s documents in the car if they haven’t been destroyed. That will help clear things up.’
‘Thank you.’
When the detective had disappeared the doctor said, ‘We’ll keep Sophy in for the rest of the night as a precaution, but she should be okay to go home tomorrow. It’s going to take her some time to adjust to having her memory back. Be gentle with her.’
Apollo’s mind was instantly filled with vivid images of making love to her with a desperation that hadn’t exactly been gentle. His conscience smarted. Had sex precipitated her memory’s return?
The doctor was waiting for his response. He said, ‘Of course.’
She walked away and Apollo went into the suite.
Sophy knew when Apollo walked in. A volt of electricity went through her blood. Steeling herself, she turned her head to look at him. She quailed inwardly. His expression was stony. She had a sense of déjà vu from when she’d regained consciousness after the accident to find him with a similar expression.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Okay, I think. My head fee
ls full again.’ She put a hand to it briefly.
Apollo looked at her for a long moment. ‘Can you tell me one thing?’
She nodded, tensing inwardly. There was so much she had to explain but she needed to make sense of it herself first.
He asked. ‘Was it you that night? The night we met?’
Something inside her relaxed a little. That was an easy question. ‘Yes, it was me.’
An expression crossed his face fleetingly. Too quick for her to decipher. She tensed again. What would he make of that information?
He took a step back from the bed. ‘I’ll leave you now. The doctor said you need to rest. I’ll come back in the morning.’
Sophy watched as he turned to leave. She only noticed now that he was wearing sweat pants and a long-sleeved top. Hair mussed. Not his usual pristine self. The thought that he hadn’t showered since they’d made love made her skin prickle with awareness. She wondered how on earth she could be feeling so carnal after what had just happened.
After what she and her sister had put him through. He was almost at the door and on an impulse she called out, ‘Wait... Apollo?’
He stopped and turned around. A muscle clenched in his jaw. ‘Yes?’
Her fingers plucked at the sheet nervously. ‘I just wanted to say... I’m so sorry. For everything.’
Apollo nodded tersely. ‘We’ll talk about it when you’re ready. Get some rest.’
He walked out, closing the door behind him. That was the problem. Sophy didn’t think she’d ever be ready to talk about it. She sagged back against the pillows. She felt more fatigued than she’d ever felt in her life.
There was little relief in remembering everything, even though she was grateful to have her memory back. To have herself back.
Sasha was dead.
She knew it instinctively, if not factually yet. There was no way she could have survived that crash. Sophy was still too numb with shock to fully absorb the death of her sister who she had loved more than life itself for so long. But who had also caused her more heartache than anyone else.
To say they’d had a complicated relationship was an understatement, but Sophy would never have guessed that Sasha would go as far as she had to engineer a good life for herself.
She’d also never forget that awful last haunting image of Sasha, pushing her free of the doomed car and saying, ‘I won’t take you with me.’
For all of her faults and frailties, her sister had saved her twice in her life...
Oh, Sash...what did you do?
Tears filled Sophy’s eyes and she turned her head to the wall, unable to stem the rising tide of emotion that engulfed her. She realised she wasn’t just crying for her sister, she was also crying because she now remembered everything that had happened the night she’d slept with Apollo.
She remembered why he hadn’t pursued her after their night together.
Because he hadn’t wanted to see her again. Because she’d been inexperienced, a virgin.
And now she knew why. Because he’d told her he didn’t do relationships after losing his entire family.
So not only had she lost her sister and realised she’d been betrayed by her too, she’d also remembered that she’d fallen for Apollo all those months ago, when they’d first met.
And they’d never had a chance.
Two days later
Sophy’s nerves were wound tight. She’d had a reprieve of sorts from facing Apollo and the inevitable discussion since returning to the villa because he’d had an emergency meeting to attend in London.
He’d left her in the capable hands of Kara and Rhea and the doctor had come to check on her that morning. Apollo must have explained everything to his staff because at one point Sophy had attempted to start to tell Rhea but she’d just patted her hand and shaken her head, saying, ‘You don’t need to tell us. We knew something was different. We’re sorry for your sister.’
Sophy had been inordinately touched, especially after everything Sasha had put them through. She knew how difficult her sister could be. She’d endured a lifetime of it and had never been quite able to break away completely.
They’d been living together in London and that was how Sophy had ended up covering for Sasha that night at the function where she’d met Apollo and where she’d had to call herself Sasha. It had been a classic Sasha request: ‘Cover for me, Soph, please! This other thing has cropped up—I’ll lose my job!’
She’d done it, of course. Just as she’d said yes to most of Sasha’s requests. After all, she’d owed Sasha so much... If it hadn’t been for her sister, Sophy might not even be—
There was a sound behind Sophy on the terrace and she looked around. It was Kara. ‘Kyrie Vasilis is in his study—he’d like to see you.’
Sophy’s heart thudded against her breastbone. She’d known Apollo was due back but hadn’t heard him return.
She’d dug through all of Sasha’s clothes to find something vaguely suitable to face him and she’d found an unworn shirt dress, blue stripes, with a black belt. Wedge sandals. It was strange, looking at Sasha’s choice of clothes now and realising why they’d never felt like her. Because she and her sister had always had diametrically opposed taste, in everything.
Sasha had been flamboyant, into fashion and pop culture. Always ambitious for a life more glamorous than the one they’d experienced growing up in a small market town outside London.
Sophy had been bookish and studious. Into clothes that made her fade into the background. She’d been happy to let Sasha shine but for the first time in her life she found herself wondering uneasily why it had been so easy for her to let Sasha claim the limelight.
She was outside Apollo’s study now and had to collect herself. She knocked on the door and there was an abrupt, ‘Come in.’
She took a deep breath and steeled herself but seeing Apollo after a couple of days’ absence hit her straight in the chest like a sledgehammer. He was wearing a dark grey three-piece suit. And he’d never looked more gorgeous. His physicality was overwhelming, as if she was seeing him all over again with new eyes.
He was also a million miles away from the man who had been uncharacteristically dishevelled at the hospital.
Her heart skipped a beat and she sounded breathless when she said, ‘Kara told me you wanted to see me.’
Had his gaze always been so dark green and unnervingly direct? He pulled at his tie and opened the top button of his shirt. ‘How are you feeling?’
Dizzy.
But Sophy knew that had nothing to do with regaining her memory and everything to do with him.
‘Fine. Much better. Thank you.’
He went over to the drinks cabinet and asked if she wanted anything. She shook her head. He poured himself a shot of golden spirits.
Something inside her ached. A few days ago she’d lain in this man’s arms, their bodies entwined. Her soul had sung. Now there was a gaping chasm between them. And how could she blame him?
Apollo downed the shot he’d just poured. It did little to calm his thundering heart or douse the heat in his blood. He’d hoped that a couple of days’ distance from Sophy and time to absorb all the revelations would somehow miraculously defuse this intense need he had for her...but as soon as she’d walked into the room his blood had boiled over.
He’d never expected to see her again after that night in his apartment in London. He’d told himself he didn’t want to see her again but the relief he’d felt when she’d turned up in his office in London had made a mockery of that.
Dealing with Sasha had been easy because she hadn’t been Sophy. Now he had to deal with Sophy.
He poured himself another shot and turned around.
Sophy hoped her emotions weren’t as nakedly obvious as she feared. She’d never been as adept at hiding them as her sister. She had no idea what would happen now. What to expect.
What she wanted.
You still want Apollo, whispered a voice.
She pushed it down.
Apollo came over and stood with the window at his back. It cast him into shadow slightly, making him look even bigger.
‘I need to tell you something.’
She swallowed. ‘Okay.’
‘The detective contacted me. They found the car. And they found a body... They’ve identified your sister by her dental records and the DNA sample you provided.’
Sophy sat down on the chair behind her, the wind knocked out of her, even though this wasn’t a surprise.
‘Are you sure you don’t want a drink?’
She shook her head. ‘No, it’s okay.’ She looked at him. ‘Did they find anything else?’
He nodded. ‘Your bag, with your passport and personal items. There was luggage in the boot but it was ruined. Your things will be returned to you once they’ve been catalogued. They’ve ruled her death as accidental.’
Sophy sucked in a sharp breath. ‘Was...was there any suggestion it wasn’t?’
Apollo’s face was expressionless. ‘They have to look at everything. You’d just arrived on a flight from London that morning. Sasha picked you up from the airport?’
Sophy nodded.
‘Yes.’ Her voice sounded raw.
Apollo said, ‘We can do this later, or tomorrow.’
She shook her head again. ‘No, I know you have questions and you deserve answers.’
She steeled herself but wasn’t prepared when Apollo said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Sophy. I know what it’s like to lose a sibling. I might not have liked Sasha very much but she was your sister and you must have loved her.’
Sophy couldn’t stop the tears that sprang into her eyes. She stood up and fished a handkerchief out of the pocket of the dress. She went over to the other window and gathered herself.
Apollo said from behind her, ‘We really don’t have to do this now.’
Sophy swallowed down her emotion and turned around when she felt more composed. ‘No. It’s okay. Really.’
