After lunch they wandered hand in hand around the picturesque small port, at ease with each other the way they used to be. Opening the door of his childhood to Melanie seemed to have given them a new intimacy. Everyone seemed to know Nicos and Melanie lost count of the times they were beckoned in from the open doors of the small white houses ringing the bay. But Nicos refused all invitations with an easy grace. ‘If we go into one and not all the others it will cause a war,’ he grinned.
He draped an arm affectionately round her shoulders as they traversed the winding alleyways behind the port and Melanie was acutely conscious of the warmth of his hip against her own.
‘The port is ringed by mountains,’ he told her. ‘They’re very beautiful. I’d like to show them to you.’
Melanie raised her eyes to the majestic peaks towering above the bay. ‘’Too far today,’ she said, ‘Not at all,’ replied Nicos. ‘We’ll travel like everyone here does.’ She looked at him inquiringly. ‘Bike,’ he announced. Grabbing her hand and laughing he pulled her back down to the portside and up a side street where a single petrol pump stood outside a ramshackle workshop.
His enthusiasm was infectious and Melanie found herself laughing along with him. The proprietor hugged Nicos warmly and Melanie did her best to follow the rapid Greek exchange. ‘He’s lending you a motorbike. Is that what he’s saying?’ she queried. ‘I’m impressed,’ said Nicos. ‘You’re Greek is really improving.’
Melanie feeling a surge of warmth at his praise quickly doused it with the thought that she wouldn’t need the language after the summer was over. She pushed it deliberately from her mind. She was having a wonderful afternoon – why spoil it?
Two helmets were produced and before she knew it she was seated behind Nicos, arms clamped tightly round his waist. He manoeuvred the bike carefully through the narrow lanes but once out of the town he opened up. The rushing cool air after the heat of the day was wonderful. She wanted to lean her head against Nicos’s strong back, but the helmet impeded her.
They flew up the mountain road meeting no other traffic. Nicos slowed and turned up a small track. At the top he cut the engine and Melanie took off her helmet and shook out her long hair. The silence was magical; the view of the bay below, the sun dancing off the glittering sea and the white walled houses even more so. Melanie gasped. ‘It’s absolutely beautiful,’ she signed.
‘So are you,’ said Nicos taking her in his arms, ‘but I didn’t just bring you up here to look at the view.’ He held her close in a long embrace, not kissing her but just stroking her hair and moving his body against her. Desire flamed up in her. He bent his head and she felt his tongue moved softly and slowly over her parted lips. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. He picked her up and carried her into the shade of a stunted tree. He laid her down and undressed her slowly and sensuously, taking infinite time and stroking each part of her as he revealed it. The ground beneath her body was hard and as if sensing it he rolled her over on top of him. She took his male hardness and guided him into herself. He groaned softly and she moved slowly at first, then faster and faster till she climaxed. He rolled her back under him and with his hands beneath her filled her with slow, sure strokes till she felt passion mounting again within her to match his own lifting them both as if on a tidal wave and crashing them back down to earth. He held her tightly afterwards as if he never wanted to let her go.
‘We should go,’ she said finally. ‘I need to tidy you up first,’ he said smiling lovingly at her and picking bits of twigs from her hair. He lifted the bike upright and helped her mount, fastening the strap of her helmet for her and kissing her lightly on the nose. He drove slowly back down the mountain as if he didn’t want the afternoon to end, thought Melanie.
They returned the bike to its owner who peered inside the helmet Melanie had worn and slapped Nicos on the back. There followed rapid and bantering Greek between them that Melanie couldn’t follow.
‘What was he saying?’ she asked Nicos, as they walked back down to the harbor. ‘Did you understand any of it?’ he asked. ‘I heard the word for trees, I think,’ she said. Nicos looked at her mischievously. ‘I didn’t get all the twigs out of your hair,’ he said. ‘Quite a bit was left inside your helmet. ‘
Melanie gasped and felt herself blushing. ‘It will be all round the town. Everyone will know.’
‘Yep,’ agreed Nicos serenely. ‘I’ll be the envy of the whole male population.’
‘I’ll never be able to come back here again,’ she said indignantly. Nicos laughed delightedly and steered her to a harbor side bar. The sun was beginning to sink when he said, ‘Better head back. ‘I’ve got an early start tomorrow morning; a business meeting in London. You will have no company for a while’. A thought chilled Melanie. ‘Is Katerina going with you?’
‘Good Lord, no,’ he snorted. ‘Whatever for?’
‘I thought…’
‘You thought wrong. I’ve told you before. She’s not a girl friend. Why won’t you believe me?’
‘I heard you on the terrace, talking about her father coming,’ she confessed. Nicos threw back his head and laughed. ‘What! So I could ask for her hand?’ Melanie was loath to tell him that was exactly what her fevered imagine had conjured up. He took her hand in his. ‘I’m sorry I teased you a bit about Katerina. I quite liked the fact that you were jealous. The truth is her father is a business associate of mine. He thought she was going off the rails on the Riviera and asked me to bring her to Skiapolos and keep her out of trouble. It’s true her father is coming, but only to take a cruise on the Athena with me.’ He looked mischievously at her. ‘Of course, since you were party to the conversation you will know that I expect you to come, too.’
Melanie felt a great surge of happiness. He may not be her Nicos, but he wasn’t Katerina’s either.
‘When I come back we’ll make arrangements,’ he was saying. Melanie’s heart stilled. She didn’t want him to go away. She wanted this new receptive Nicos to stay with her. The vision she had was of them wandering the island together hand in hand. She would start to tell him and he would listen. Now he was going away.
‘How long will you be gone,’ she asked, dreading his answer.
‘Only a week,’ he said, and her heart lifted. In a week’s time everything would come right between them. She didn’t know why she had such certainty, she only knew she did.
They cruised at a leisurely speed back to Skiapolos. Nicos let her steer the launch only taking the helm as the sun was setting and they neared the home harbor. Ashore they strolled arm in arm up the hill. At the villa steps he took her head in his hands and kissed her gently on the lips. ‘Thank you for listening to me,’ he said. ‘When I get back from London we will talk.’
Melanie’s heart soared. Maybe, just maybe, it would all come right for them.
At the top of the steps he turned to her and said suddenly, ‘Come with me to London.’ Melanie started with surprise. ‘I can’t leave Electra,’ she protested. ‘I have so little time left with her.’ He brushed her words aside. ‘We’ll take her with us. Maria can come to help.’ A million practical reasons why she couldn’t go with him flashed through her mind. I can’t get Electra ready in time. I don’t know what to pack. Maria might not have a passport. He dismissed all her worries.
‘Maria most certainly has a passport. My office arranged it for her. As for packing, don’t bother. If there’s one thing London’s not short of it’s shops. Anything you need we can buy when we get there. No excuses. You’re coming.’
Melanie found she was rather enjoying the sensation of having decisions taken out of her hands. She hurried upstairs to tell Maria, who was excited by the last minute plan. Together they packed a small bag with what Electra would need for the journey and into a large suitcase Melanie threw all the things the baby might need in London’s cooler climate.
She hesitated when it came to her own packing. What would the spur of the moment invitation entail? Would Nicos expect her to dine ou
t with him at the kind of restaurants they frequented before? She no longer had a suitable wardrobe. She was surveying the sparse contents of her bedroom cupboard trying to decide if anything at all was suitable for Nicos’s kind of London, when Anna bustled in. She was as excited as if she was going on a trip herself, her beady black eyes beaming.
‘I pack for you,’ she announced. ‘You go see to baby. Leave packing to me.’ Melanie did, grateful not to have to think about it. Anna would probably just put everything in the suitcase and Melanie could sort it out when she got there.
She’d forgotten how easy it was travelling with Nicos. Everything around him worked like clockwork. The launch picked the party up from the jetty. Electra was handed aboard by the boatman like a precious parcel. The suitcases were loaded on and they were met at the mainland port by limousine and whisked to the nearby airport where Nicos’s private jet waited.
Aboard the jet Melanie found to her amusement that Electra’s baby presence had been more than catered for. She expected a sky cot, but not the play pen and selection of toys. She needn’t have worried about the journey. Apart from Maria the young and very pretty flight attendant spent most of the trip playing with her.
Melanie had little to do but enjoy the glass of champagne before take-off and the excellent meal provided. Nicos spent most of the journey intent on a sheaf of business papers but didn’t seem the least put off by the baby squeals. Melanie found that utterly endearing. From time to time after an extra loud baby squawk he looked up at Melanie and gave her a little smile.
The trip had been so hurriedly arranged that Melanie had no chance to ask Nicos where they would all be staying. Melanie hoped it would not be a hotel. She didn’t like the thought of that with the baby. Perhaps Nicos had taken an apartment. That would be best.
They landed at a small airport in the North London suburbs. Nicos took Electra and carried her carefully down the steep steps from the plane. Melanie saw with a lurch that took her by surprise his familiar Bentley waiting at the foot. Memories of their drives to the country on summer evenings to riverside restaurants swamped her. She hoped London wasn’t going to sweep her up into a maelstrom of memories. That was yesterday – only time would tell if they had a tomorrow.
Settled into the back of the car with Nicos at her side was achingly familiar. The difference was Electra, propped in a car seat and lulled at last to sleep after the excitement of the plane journey. Nicos, briefcase on knee, was still perusing his paperwork. Knowing he had early morning meetings she was loath to interrupt him, but finally he put his files away and she was able to ask, ‘Where are we staying?’
‘Didn’t I say?’ he said absentmindedly, his thoughts obviously still on the next day’s meetings. ‘My house, of course.’
‘In London?’ she was surprised. As far as she knew he hadn’t owned a house in London when they were together. He had roosted in a riverside bachelor penthouse and bought the house in the country for her. ‘I didn’t know you had a house in London,’ she said. It was his turn to be surprised.
‘Didn’t you? I think it was let out to some film star or other,’ he said vaguely. ‘My agent deals with that sort of thing.’
She sighed, exasperated. She’d forgotten he could do this. His casual announcement when he bought the country house was pretty typical and now to learn he had another in London he just hadn’t mentioned. ‘Have you any other expensive piles of bricks you haven’t got round to tell me about,’ she said, a touch acidly.
‘You always used to do that,’ he said, laughing at her. . ‘What?’ she said. ‘Accuse me of not telling you things.’
‘It’s true. You didn’t’. You went out and bought a manor house and then asked me if I wanted to live in it? I might have said no.’
‘But you didn’t, so there you are,’ he said, as if that was an end to it.
She lapsed into silence. Somehow she had to avoid this whole trip turning into a trial of reminiscences.He took her hand. ‘It’s long, isn’t it?’ ‘What is?’ she asked puzzled. ‘Memory Lane,’ he said. She looked away and out of the car window. They were driving through the park, she saw. The Bentley sl owed and drew up before a curving colonnade of elegant 18th century white fronted houses ‘We’re home,’ Nicos announced. Melanie caught her breath. For a moment she wished they were. To share a home with Nicos. What would that be like? To have him come home every evening. To see him every morning over the breakfast table.
‘I wouldn’t care where ‘home’ was,’ she caught herself thinking. ‘Home’ would be wherever we were together. She pulled herself sharply out of her daydream and busied herself with the straps of Electra’s car seat. ‘Here, let me,’ said Nicos, and easily lifting the sleepy baby carried her up the short path to the house. The glossy front door with its brass lion’s head knocker was opened by a black-jacketed manservant and through the open door Melanie could see a wide expanse of black and white tiled hallway.
A housekeeper appeared and Melanie, taking Electra in her arms, was shown up the curved sweeping staircase to the first floor and a fully equipped nursery suite. Nicos came bounding up the stairs behind them, Maria puffing up after him, trying to keep up.
‘Do you like it? Is it all right?’ he asked Melanie, with a worried frown. ‘It’s perfect,’ Melanie smiled. Who wouldn’t be entranced by such a baby room with its sunny yellow and white color scheme, bunny rabbits and fluffy ducklings capering on a frieze round the wall? She walked to the barred window and looked out. The park stretched away before her, green and perfect in the late summer evening.
‘Your room is right next door and Maria on the other side,’ Nicos said. ‘There’s a small kitchen area at the end of the hall where you can make Electra’s tea if you don’t want the kitchen to do it.’
‘You’ve thought of everything,’ she said. An unwelcome thought crossed her mind. Did someone else help Nicos with all of this? As if reading her mind he said, ‘It wasn’t me. I had a firm specialising in nursery décor design it.’ Melanie was taken aback. She didn’t know such companies existed. ‘For the baby that has everything,’ she said wryly, wanting to add ‘except for a mother’.
‘Come down to the drawing room for eight o’clock,’ Nicos said, oblivious to her thoughts. ‘We’ll have a drink then go out to dinner.’
Alone in her room an hour later Melanie had time to consider the invitation and panic. ‘Go out to dinner wearing what? My old jeans and a tee. That’ll do for the local burger bar, if there is such a thing in this upmarket district.
Her suitcase was nowhere to be seen. She pulled open the drawers of an antique chest and found her meagre and much worn underwear and tee shirts neatly folded. Either the manservant or the housekeeper had unpacked for her. Melanie cringed. Rosewood wardrobes lined one wall and with a half embarrassed giggle she opened one of the doors, expecting to see her ripped jeans and faded summer tops. The opening of the door had turned on an automatic light inside the wardrobe illuminating an array of jewel colors. Hanging from the rails, shoulder covers protecting one silken creation from its neighbor, a dozen or so dresses dangled. Jealousy streaked like a fork of lightning through her. Who was the previous occupant of this guest suite and why had they left their clothes behind? Because they were coming back, the devil on her shoulder whispered.
Melanie was furious with herself. What business was it of hers who Nicos entertained in his glossy London townhouse? She flicked the rails crossly, rattling the hangers apart. Her attention was hooked by dark green and flame. She looked closely. There was no mistake. The dresses were hers, bought in a frivolous frenzy that day in an Athens boutique when Nicos had insisted she take the lot.
Anna. It had to be. No wonder she was so insistent that she pack for Melanie. ‘You are a devious old lady,’ she laughed to herself.
Chapter Eleven
Nicos was waiting for her in the elegant ground floor drawing room. He looked at her in the dark blue sheath dress she had chosen and said, ‘You look utterly beautiful; but the neck
is a little bare.’ He walked to a wall cupboard and she saw that it disguised a safe. He withdrew a velvet box and brought it to her. ‘Wear these tonight,’ he said. She opened the box. Inside on ancient black velvet a circle of sapphires gleamed. ‘They’re beautiful,' she breathed. He fastened them round her neck and walked her to a gilt French Empire mirror over the marble mantel.
She looked at her reflection, the dark blue jewels laying flat against her light tanned skin, Nicos standing behind her approvingly and was overcome by overwhelming sadness. ‘They’re part of the Chalambrous collection,’ Nicos said. ‘They will be Electra’s one day.’
‘I’m like Cinderella at the ball for one night, she thought. ‘I don’t belong here.’ Her earlier hopes that she and Nicos might have a future together seemed unrealistic to her now and she didn’t clearly know why. Perhaps it was the opulence of the house. The jewels that would go back in the safe tonight when the evening was over were like an omen. I’m only a borrower. I will have to give it all back. The jewels, the dresses – and most of all, my beloved daughter. The sapphires will go back in their box, the designer dresses will return to the store room and Electra will be returned o her inheritance.
Nicos was looking quizzically at her. ‘Is everything all right? he asked, concern in his voice. She smiled to mask her melancholy. ‘Why would it not be all right when my throat’s encircled by a small fortune?’ ‘No, that’s not you.’ he said, dismissing her flippancy. ‘You never wanted me to buy you jewels. You never wanted anything. I would have given whatever you asked.’
‘Except the one thing I wanted,’ she said. ‘The one thing I wanted from you it seemed you weren’t able to give.’ A shadow crossed his face. ‘I’m sorry, ‘she said, regretting her remark instantly. ‘No more recriminations, I promise.’ She mentally chastised herself. What did she have to gain by antagonising him? But he didn’t look angry. He looked sad.
‘Come and sit down,’ he said, leading her to a sofa and a small table set with an ice bucket from which the foil top of a champagne bottle leaned crookedly. He opened the bottle expertly with a quiet plop and filled two crystal flutes. She watched his fluid movements. He had the grace of a big cat she thought, like a tiger moving through the jungle. He exuded masculinity. There was a quality about him sometimes that she found disturbing but deeply attractive. Predatory, that was it. A delicious thrill that he might pounce.
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