The Highest Stakes of All

by Sara Craven

  She gave a little shaken sigh. Maybe words would be unnecessary, and her presence, returning to lie beside him in the night, would be enough.

  Moving like an automaton, she climbed off the bed, reaching down for the shawl, letting its soft folds settle round her nakedness.

  She went to the door, but as she began to open it she heard not far away the quiet sound of another door closing and froze.

  She peeped cautiously through the narrow opening and saw Vassos, clad in jeans and polo shirt, coming down the passage towards her. He strode past without even a glance in the direction of her room, and Joanna stood in the darkness, waiting until the sound of his rapid footsteps faded.

  She went back to the bed and lay down, trembling, telling herself she should be thankful that she’d been spared the humiliation of arriving in his room to find it empty or—even worse—of bumping into him on his way out.

  At the same time she found herself wondering where he could possibly be going at this time of night. And why.

  But that, she thought, is not my concern. It simply means I’ve been saved at the last minute from making another terrible mistake. Persephone must have been watching out for me.

  She pulled up the covering sheet and turned over, but it was more than two hours before she finally fell asleep, exhausted from the solitary vigil of lying in the darkness, listening for the sound of his return.

  While some instinct she’d not known she possessed warned her that she waited in vain.

  Joanna walked along the edge of the sea, small warm waves lapping round her feet. To a casual observer, if there’d been one about, she probably looked like a carefree girl in shorts and a sun top, happily enjoying a paddle in the sunshine.

  Only she could know she was a seething mass of nerves.

  It was a week since Vassos had walked past her and out into the night. Seven days and seven nights during which she’d been taught unequivocally just what it was to be the object of a man’s passionate desire. And the exquisite agony of forcing herself to seem indifferent to his lovemaking.

  He sent for her each night—that went without saying. But he also came to her room in the drowsy afternoon siesta hours. Their encounters were prolonged and almost magically sensuous, with Vassos, at times, almost fiercely intent on wringing some kind of erotic response from her trembling, fevered flesh, and at others enticing her with a tender yearning that almost stopped her heart, as if his whole body had been created as an instrument for her pleasure.

  And Joanna lay beneath him, refusing to show any sign of emotion, even in the extremity of surrender when her desperate senses screamed for satisfaction.

  He wanted to win, she reminded herself when she was once again alone. He’d won her at cards, and now he wished to complete his victory. His touch, his kisses, had one purpose—to prove that she was indeed a woman like any other in his experience. And if she thought he meant more, then she was fooling herself.

  In one matter he was utterly scrupulous, however. He always used a sheath which, she supposed ruefully, was a kind of caring, if not the kind she had secretly begun to crave from him.

  She was not proud of such blatant weakness, but she could not deny it, either. Whenever he was around she found she was watching him almost obsessively from behind the screen of her sunglasses, drinking in every inch of the lean body she’d once shrunk from.

  But it was just sex—that was all, she assured herself almost feverishly. Nothing more. So there were no deeper feelings involved. How could there be when he would always be the man who’d kidnapped her in order to take her for revenge?

  Yet he had somehow, against all the odds, made her want him in return so much that her mind seemed to ache as well as her body.

  Sometimes, in the night, when she was back in her own room, she heard again the approach of his footsteps in the passage and sat up, lips parted breathlessly, staring at the door. Willing it to open. And, by some miracle, for everything to change.

  But it never did. Instead Vassos simply walked on, leaving her still wondering. And sometimes crying inside.

  Although she could admit now, in the brilliant sunshine, there were other matters apart from the strictly personal also preying on her mind.

  For one thing, it had occurred to her that since her arrival no one, least of all Vassos himself, had mentioned his wife in any way.

  And her visits to his bedroom had revealed at a glance that he wasn’t treasuring as much as one solitary souvenir of the woman who’d once shared it with him.

  It was almost, she’d decided, puzzled, as if the late Mrs Gordanis had never existed.

  Perhaps, she thought, aware of a swift pang, he had loved her so much that he could not bear to be reminded, even marginally, of the happiness they’d enjoyed together.

  In addition, there was also the matter of the mysterious house in the olive grove, and its occupants, although Vassos’ continuing presence had offered her no opportunity to return there and see if Eleni and her mother had returned—if, of course, they had ever been away.

  But he’d left that morning to fly to Athens on business, so she would be alone for ten days or more, as he’d sardonically informed her. And she was going to need something to distract her in his absence—if only to protect her against missing him too much.

  She folded her arms round her body, shivering a little in spite of the heat. It was still a shock that she could even admit to such feelings—or confess inwardly that she’d hoped against hope that he would invite her to accompany him on his trip.

  As it was, she’d made sure she was awake especially early that morning, going out on to her balcony to listen for the sound of the high-speed launch that would take him across to Thaliki.

  And she’d remained standing there long after the engine noise was no longer audible, staring at the azure glimmer of the sea in the distance over the top of the pines. Stared until her eyes blurred, and pressed a finger against her trembling mouth in case she called ‘Don’t leave me. Don’t go,’ into the empty air.

  Just as a few hours before, when he lay against her in the aftermath of his climax, she had almost begged him, Don’t send me away tonight. Let me stay with you. Make love to me again. Share with me what you feel. Teach me to be your woman at last.

  But she had bitten back the words, because she still couldn’t acknowledge, even to herself, that withholding her body had been useless. That from the very beginning, when he’d been no more than a pirate smiling at her from the deck of a yacht, it had been her heart that was really in danger.

  And each time she lay in his arms, listening to the soft Greek words he whispered to her as his hands roamed her flesh with sensual expertise, she became more deeply lost in a longing that was so much more than physical.

  Terrified that one night she might even whisper the words that must forever be taboo between them. I love you …

  ‘I didn’t want this,’ she whispered in wretchedness. ‘I don’t want this. Because I’ve no idea how to deal with it. Or with him. Or what I shall do when he decides to end it.’

  But at least she no longer feared that he would pass her on to another man, as he’d originally threatened to do. That, she supposed, was something she had to be thankful for.

  And another positive move would be to stop tormenting herself like this over a situation that she could not change and instead try to assuage her own loneliness and heartache with another attempt to help a solitary child who needed a friend.

  She walked out of the water, wincing a little as her feet encountered the hot sand, balancing quickly on one leg and then the other in order to resume the espadrilles she was carrying.

  As she did so, she realised she was not alone. That one of the security guards was stationed in the shade of the trees, watching her. As she walked up the beach towards the track he straightened, throwing away the cigarette he’d been smoking.

  Now, where had he sprung from? she asked herself, annoyed.

  His name was Yanni, and he was the only
one of Vassos’ watchdogs that she’d come to dislike. The others faded away politely at her approach, but Yanni always grinned insolently when he saw her, and she seemed to encounter him in all kinds of unlikely places.

  Joanna was conscious of his gaze following her now as she started up the track. But he never spoke to her, so there was no real complaint she could make about him. She just knew she was glad when the bend in the path took her out of his line of vision.

  She wandered casually through the gardens, in case her progress was being marked from the house, but all seemed quiet, and she was soon in the welcome concealment of the olive trees.

  As their peace closed round her again, it occurred to her that there were times when her life with Vassos assumed a kind of normality. When they actually talked together. Had real conversations. Although these generally occurred over the meals they shared on the terrace.

  She recalled he’d spoken one evening of all the miles his work caused him to travel, and how he always waited with impatience to return home.

  ‘But why here?’ she’d asked, greatly daring.

  ‘Look around you,’ he said. ‘It is very beautiful, although you, of course, cannot be expected to find it so.’

  Yet I could, she thought, if things were different. Then caught herself guiltily, knowing she was straying into forbidden territory.

  She’d shrugged. ‘It’s certainly very secluded. Why is that?’

  ‘It was my grandfather’s decision.’ Vassos played with the stem of his wine glass. ‘He was first a businessman, but also a scholar. His chief study was the ancient mythology of our country, and for that he required privacy. So when he found Pellas and bought it, he made sure it was his alone.’

  She almost said, But what about the house in the olive grove? but stopped herself just in time.

  ‘When the Germans came during the war, they considered it too small to be of strategic importance,’ he went on. ‘So my mother was able to take refuge here when my father joined the partisans. And I was born here.’

  ‘And you’ve always lived here?’ Once more she thought about his wife.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Or on the Persephone.’ His mouth twisted. ‘There have been times in my life when it was safer to keep moving.’

  ‘I wish,’ she said, ‘that my father had felt the same way.’

  ‘Do you, pedhi mou?‘ He sent her a meditative look across the candles. ‘Well, perhaps you cannot be blamed.’ He paused. ‘You are shivering a little. Let us go into the saloni and listen to some music.’

  Usually it was classical music, drawn from a range of composers from Mozart to Stravinsky. Sometimes he chose the insistent beat of Greek bouzouki. But that night he’d slotted a very different tape into the deck, and Joanna recognised with astonishment some of the tracks she’d danced to at the last school disco, in an emerald mini-skirt and the platform shoes that Jackie had loaned her because Gail had refused pointblank to let her have a pair, maintaining she’d sprain her ankle or worse.

  She gave a swift sigh and Vassos looked at her, brows lifting. ‘You don’t like this tune?’

  ‘No, I love it.’ She shook her head. ‘It just brought back—a memory, that’s all.’

  The tape moved into the soft insidious rhythm of Donna Summers’ ‘Love to Love You, Baby', and Vassos rose and came across to her. ‘And this also?’ he queried.

  ‘Well—no.’

  He switched off the central light, leaving the room lit by a single lamp, before taking her hand and pulling her to her feet. ‘Then let us create a new one.’

  For a moment she hesitated, self-conscious, because it was a long time since she’d danced and her male partners had been few anyway.

  Then the music took her and she began to move in shy enticement, matching the lithe grace of the man dancing a couple of feet away from her. The man who reached for her and sent her spinning away from him, then brought her back, close to him, his hands clasping her hips, her fingers splayed across the warmth of his shoulders through the fine linen of his shirt. The man she longed to kiss her as the music ended. To kiss her and carry her to his bed as the song seemed to promise.

  But he had not done so, Joanna thought as she looked up at the rustling silvery leaves of the olive trees and felt her throat tighten. And, for the first time, that night she had spent entirely alone.

  When she arrived at the house, she saw Eleni in the garden, listlessly pushing a little pram with a doll in it up and down the path. This time she was wearing a yellow lace dress which struck Joanna as even less suitable or becoming than the last one.

  She walked to the gate, smiling. ‘Kalimera, Eleni.’

  The child paused warily, and her thumb stole to her mouth.

  Joanna went down on her haunches, her smile widening in warm encouragement. ‘Do you remember me? From the other day?’ She pointed at herself. ‘Joanna.’

  There was a silence, then Eleni made a first hesitant attempt at the name.

  ‘Well done.’ Joanna laughed and clapped her hands. She was rewarded with a smile from the little girl, fugitive at first, then more confident, lighting up the small face in a way that seemed curiously familiar. And which tugged all too potently at her heartstrings.

  ‘You again.’ The voice came sharply from behind her, and Joanna rose and turned to confront the child’s mother, who’d apparently emerged from another part of the grove and was standing, hands on hips, her sloe eyes snapping.

  She was wearing a blue dress today, its bodice buttoned awry over her full breasts and the skirt creased. Her hair looked dishevelled and she was holding a lighted cigarette.

  Looking a mess was one thing, Joanna thought, her mouth tightening. Going off on some errand, leaving Eleni to play alone, was quite another.

  She took a deep breath, keeping her smile resolutely in place. ‘Kalimera, kyria,’ she returned politely.

  ‘Why you here, Gordanis’ woman?’ The demand was sulky. ‘He send you? Why he not come?’

  Joanna bit her lip. ‘Kyrios Gordanis is away—on business in Athens.’

  ‘Athens, po, po, po. Maybe he has woman there. Real woman,’ she added scornfully. ‘No pale—no skinny like you.’

  Joanna felt her colour rise. ‘Maybe,’ she agreed evenly. ‘But I came to visit Eleni, not discuss Kyrios Gordanis’ affairs.’

  ‘Why you visit?’ The woman came nearer, tossing away her cigarette end. ‘You think you make friend of daughter her papa like you better, ne?’ The full mouth curled. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Joanna was very still. ‘Her—papa?’ she repeated slowly.

  ‘You not know?’ There was real malice now. ‘You make baby with Gordanis, anglitha, be sure you give him son, or he build house for you, hide you and girl baby, too. Forget her.’

  Joanna wanted to cry out, I don’t believe you. You’re lying.

  Instead, she turned and looked at Eleni, and saw the solemn mouth curve once more into that slow, entrancing smile. And knew, with a sinking heart, why it had seemed so familiar.

  Realised, too, why she had been warned to keep away. Because she’d been intended to remain in total ignorance about Vassos’ discarded mistress and her forgotten illegitimate child. His unwanted daughter.

  She said quietly, ‘I understand. I—I’m sorry I intruded.’

  The girl came nearer. Her voice became ingratiating. ‘You tell Gordanis that Soula say come see his girl. Each day I dress her—make fine for her papa. Each day he stay away—see his friends—his women. Not her. Never her. She cry. He not hear. Not care.’ She paused. ‘You come, thespinis. Talk—play with Eleni—so you can say to him how good, how pretty. Maybe in bed he listen to you.’

  Words of instant negation rose to Joanna’s lips, but when she looked back at Eleni she knew they would never be uttered. That she could not simply walk away and not return—no matter now much hurt this unbearable truth might be causing her.

  Because there was a small, vulnerable girl who was being hurt far more. Who needed the compa
nionship and care that neither her father nor her mother seemed prepared to offer.

  And for that reason she could not turn her back.

  She said abruptly, ‘I’ll come back tomorrow, kyria. Teach her to play a game with her ball. But not those clothes, please. Shorts and a tee shirt.’

  To the child, watching hopefully through the gate, she said more gently, searching for the Greek words, ‘Avro, Eleni. Endaxi?’ Then turned swiftly and went before she could be tormented by another glimpse of that smile.

  She walked fast, head bent, staring down at the ground with eyes that saw nothing.

  Vassos, she thought, pain twisting inside her. How could you do this—you with your sense of family? Your own child—your little girl—how can you keep her here and ignore her even if you no longer want her mother?

  Nothing you’ve done to me is anywhere near as cruel as this.

  She thought of Eleni waiting each day. Hoping.

  All dressed up and nowhere to go.

  She shook herself, forcing back her tears.

  Well, that child was not going to end up emotionally damaged if she had anything to do with it.

  When Vassos returned she would confront him. Brave his undoubted anger and remind him of his paternal responsibilities. Tell him that, for one thing, his daughter was sometimes left completely alone in that deserted spot.

  If her mother’s not prepared to look after her properly, he should employ a nanny, she told herself.

  For a moment she was haunted by an image of Vassos and his former mistress together, passionately entwined, and bit her lip hard as she wondered how they had met and become involved.

  Soula might have grown blowsy since that time, but she was still good-looking in a blatantly sensual way, and Joanna could see why he would have been attracted.

  Although that did not necessarily mean he’d intended their association to result in a child or welcomed the birth when it came.

  But it does explain why he’s so careful to use contraceptives when we’re together, she told herself forlornly. It’s not to protect me, but to ensure that he doesn’t repeat his mistake.