by Penny Jordan
His children who, according to Lizzie, having been conceived in the sterile atmosphere of a laboratory and carried by a woman they would never know, would be deprived of love.
‘Ilios?’
Lizzie reached up and touched his face, not understanding why he wasn’t responding to her, stroking her fingertips along the length of his sweat-dampened torso, trailing the narrow line of dark hair across his flat belly.
The look of hungry and absorbed need the moonlight revealed in her expression reignited the desire Ilios had been trying to suppress. Like flames devouring dry timber it raced through him, overpowering everything that tried to stand in its way, including his own inner warning voice. His body moved of its own accord, his mind powerless to control its need. And Lizzie reached for him, drawing him down towards her, her lips parting in the same longing he could feel in the way she moved to welcome him between her thighs.
The first hot, slick, sweet taste of her sex against his own brought down what was left of his self-control as effectively as a tidal wave smashing down a sandcastle on the beach.
He was within her, taking her, giving to her as they began the swift surging climb towards immortality. On the journey there were brief seconds of time when the pleasure was so intense, like stars within reach on a journey to the moon, that Lizzie was almost distracted enough to want to reach out to them—but then the drive of Ilios’s body within her own reminded her of the greater purpose, their ultimate shared destination.
It came for her with convulsive tightening of her body that quickened into her orgasm, just as she felt Ilios’s surrender to its fierce embrace spilling hotly into her.
Into her? Like an annoying fly, intruding on the wonderful peace of a lazy summer afternoon, the two words buzzed agitatedly inside her head, ignoring Lizzie’s attempts to brush them away so that she could enjoy the pure heaven of lying fulfilled and sweetly aching in the aftermath of orgasm in Ilios’s arms.
They hadn’t used any contraception. It might not be true that having sex standing up prevented pregnancy, but perhaps if she got up instead of lying there…She was a responsible adult, after all, and there was no place in her life for an unplanned pregnancy.
So why, instead of doing something, or even saying something, was she instead luxuriating in lying close to Ilios, her hand on his chest, registering the beat of his heart gradually returning to normal? Her fingers played with the soft damp hair on his chest, and she enjoyed the male possessiveness of the leg he had thrown across her own, as though wanting to keep her as close to him as she wanted him to be close to her.
Ilios was leaning over her, his hand on her neck, his fingers stroking her skin.
‘Good?’ he asked.
‘Heaven,’ Lizzie responded truthfully. ‘Absolutely heaven.’
Ilios gathered her close, ignoring the inner voice that was warning him he had just done something that broke all his rules, and something he was going to regret.
Chapter Twelve
‘I’VE got to go out to the villa today, to meet with one of the contractors, and I wondered if you’d like to come with me?’
The sudden frown that followed Ilios’s invitation made Lizzie wonder if he had spoken without thinking and was now regretting having done so. But, faced with the prospect of another day on her own, sightseeing in the city, when she could instead see the house that had such a fascinating history, she was not going to ask Ilios if he would like to withdraw his invitation.
‘I’d love to,’ she told him truthfully. After all, it wasn’t just Villa Manos she would get to see properly. She would also be with Ilios. Her heart leapt even as her thoughts filled her with guilt.
It had been disquieting to wake in Ilios’s arms in the early hours of the morning after they had made love—several days ago now. She’d known that she had crossed a barrier she had never intended to cross. Lying with her head on Ilios’s chest, listening to the sound of his breathing, Lizzie had been forced to admit to herself what she had recognised earlier in the evening. Somehow emotion had become entangled in what she had truthfully believed to be merely physical desire. And that emotion was love. An emotion Ilios had already told her he did not want in his life.
But that was all right, she assured herself determinedly now. After all, she was not going to tell him about her love for him. She wasn’t going to offer it to him. She wasn’t going to do anything different because of it. When the time came she would still pack up her belongings, fold her love in tissue paper in her memory, and take it with her. It was hers, and if she wished to cherish it and protect it, and every now and again remove it from the place where she had hidden it to relive those memories she had made, then that was her business—wasn’t it? She was mature enough not to allow it to intrude into what was in reality a business relationship, a business commitment. Ilios had paid her—not to sleep with him of course, but to marry him. In doing so she was providing him a means of outmanoeuvring his cousin, and preventing him from causing him difficulties and delays with regard to their grandfather’s will.
What on earth had made him ask Lizzie for her company? Ilios didn’t know—or rather he was determined not to know, because of what knowing the answer to his own question might mean.
The night he had taken her to bed had changed everything between them. And it had also changed him. Ilios knew that there were those who came into contact with him who considered him hard and demanding, but the demands he made on others, the expectations he had of them, were nothing compared with those he made on and had for himself.
In taking Lizzie to bed in the first place he had broken his own rules, and that was bad enough. However, even though he had known they were not using contraception he had still gone ahead—and it was that fact that most challenged his perceptions of himself. He could have stopped. His mind had given him a warning that had in turn given him the opportunity to stop. But he had ignored that warning. Why? Because at that point he had been too aroused to want to stop? He was thirty-six years old, dammit, not a teenager and he knew it. Now it was that knowledge that was rubbing a raw place inside his head. Like grit in a shoe, demanding attention, a question that wanted an answer.
Why, when he had been aware of what he was doing and the risk he was taking, and when he had had the opportunity to stop, had he not done so? Why had he, in fact, deliberately continued? Knowing what might result? His life was planned out—his way ahead clear. Impregnating Lizzie with his child was not part of that plan, and neither that child nor Lizzie herself had any place in his future.
And now, when surely he ought to be distancing himself from Lizzie, he had actually invited her to spend the day with him.
It would be both heaven and hell to spend the day with Ilios, Lizzie knew. What had happened to her determination to fight what was happening to her? She would recover it, she assured herself. But just for today she was going to allow herself to bask inwardly in the happiness she felt and the delight of being with him. Inwardly. Outwardly, of course, she must treat the day and Ilios himself in exactly the same way she would have done an appointment with any client she might be accompanying, to view a property they wanted her to restyle for them. All right, so Ilios wasn’t going to be asking her to restyle Villa Manos, and for her own sake she must remember why he had married her. As soon as Ilios deemed that their marriage had served its purpose she would be on her way home, and their marriage would be brought to an end.
With that in mind, when she joined him in the living room half an hour after they had finished breakfast, she was wearing her ‘professional uniform’ of jeans and a white tee shirt—although the new jeans were part of her Mrs Manos wardrobe and were designer. They fitted her perfectly, just like the tee shirt. She carried a jacket over her arm.
Like her, Ilios was also casually dressed in jeans. When he turned his back on her to place his coffee mug in the dishwasher Lizzie had an excellent view of the way in which the denim fitted the muscular firmness of his buttocks, and shamefully she could fee
l her heartbeat increasing as her gaze lingered on him longer than it should have done. Her? Ogling a man’s body? Since when? But Ilios was no ordinary man, was he? He was the man she loved. And the temptation to go up to him and lean against him, hoping that he would turn round and take her in his arms, was almost overwhelming.
It didn’t help that Ilios was now coming to bed after she had fallen asleep and getting up in the morning before she was awake, making it very plain that he did not want a repetition of the intimacy they had shared. Although the one good thing about her discovering that she loved him was that she did not now need to fear being overcome by her lust—knowing that she loved him had changed everything. It meant that she would not and could not risk Ilios recognising how she felt.
Pinning a bright, businesslike smile to her face, she asked Ilios conversationally, ‘Is the interior of Villa Manos modelled on Villa Emo as well as the exterior?’
This was another unfamiliar issue he was having to deal with, Ilios acknowledged. The fact that not once since he had taken her to bed had Lizzie made any reference to what had happened. Not so much as by a look, never mind a word. Because she regretted what had happened? Because her sexual desire for him, once satisfied, had vanished? Either of those alternatives should have been welcomed by him, and yet here he was feeling they were unsatisfactory—that the situation between them was unsatisfactory. It left him feeling that there was unfinished business between them, that he wanted…
He wanted what? To take her back to bed and repeat his reckless behaviour? Double the chances of her becoming pregnant? Was that really what he wanted? The ferocity with which his heart slammed into his ribs caught him off guard. It was the realisation of what could happen that had caused that surge of emotion inside him, that was all. Nothing else. The last thing he wanted was for Lizzie to be carrying his child.
Ilios forced himself to focus on Lizzie’s question.
‘Yes and no,’ he answered. ‘It is both similar and different—you will have to judge for yourself. However, what I can tell you is that structurally my ancestor followed Palladio’s measurement ratio for the interior, just as he did for the exterior, so the villa follows Palladio’s beliefs in the importance of architectural harmony. Internally, the living space forms a classical central square core, within which are six rooms that sizewise form repetitions of one of Palladio’s standard modules. For instance, either side of the entrance hall are two rooms which are sixteen Trevisan feet in width by twenty-seven Trevisan feet in length.’ He paused, in case what he was saying was going over Lizzie’s head, but he could see from her expression that she was following what he was saying perfectly.
‘To create a ratio of six to ten,’ she agreed. ‘The perfect numbers in Renaissance architecture. I’ve read references to Palladio’s buildings being like frozen music, because he adopted the proportions that Pythagoras said produced combinations of notes that fall harmoniously on the human ear.’
Ilios gave an approving nod of his head. ‘That Greek connection had great appeal for my ancestor, according to our family lore. As far as Villa Manos goes, in between the smaller rooms—the two I’ve already mentioned—facing east and the west of the villa, are four more rooms which together have the same Palladio measurements. The central grand salon comprises two of those modules side by side, and the floor plan of the piano nobile is repeated in a second piano nobile over it, with mezzanine rooms in between.’
‘Like Villa Cornaro?’
‘You’re obviously a Palladio fan.’
‘It’s impossible not to be if you love classical architecture.’ Lizzie smiled. ‘I was half toying with the idea of training as an architect when my parents died. It hadn’t been my first choice of career, but working as an interior designer showed me how important structure is. From there…What is it?’ she asked, when she saw how his own expression had changed and hardened.
Reluctantly he told her, ‘My father was an architect, and as a boy it was my ambition to follow in his footsteps in that regard—to build modern structures in celebration of Palladio’s own style, based on his principles. Of course there wasn’t the money, although as a boy I didn’t realise that. The Junta imposed such heavy taxes and fines on those who antagonised them, as my grandfather did, that they beggared him. He was left with nothing, and he had to watch Villa Manos falling into disrepair, unable to do anything to halt that process. Keeping it in defiance of the Junta was something of a pyrrhic victory for him. By the time the Junta was deposed there was nothing left for him to sell or mortgage, and certainly no money to educate me to the standard necessary for me to train as an architect. He loved the villa more than he loved any living person.’
Abruptly Ilios stopped speaking, wondering why he had allowed himself to reveal so much about his childhood and his family, telling Lizzie things he have never disclosed before to anyone, much less a woman who had shared his bed.
What was it about her that caused him to react in the way he did? As though she was different—and special? He must not exaggerate the situation, or his own reactions to it, Ilios cautioned himself. It was the fact that Lizzie was knowledgeable about Palladio and his work that had led to him confiding in her the way he had, nothing more.
Lizzie fought back the emotional tears stinging the backs of her eyes as Ilios finished speaking.
‘But he must have loved you as well. After all, he left you the villa,’ she told him impulsively, wanting instinctively to ease what she knew must be his hurt. Who would not be hurt in such circumstances?
‘No, my value to him lay in my genes, that is all,’ was Ilios’s harsh response.
Lizzie ached with sadness for him. Was his own childhood the cause of Ilios’s determination not to marry and not to allow any woman to knowingly have his children? Had having to be so self-reliant, unable to trust the one adult he should have been able to turn to, left him so badly scarred that he was unable to trust other human beings himself? It would have taken great emotional strength and endurance and great maturity to have survived the childhood Ilios had had and emerge unscathed from it, far more than any young child could have been expected to have.
Lizzie felt desperately sorry for the little boy Ilios must have been—so sorry, in fact, that she wanted to gather that child up in her arms and hold him safe, give him the same loving childhood she herself had known. But of course that child no longer existed, and the man he had become would scorn her emotions as mere sentiment, she suspected.
‘The past is over. Looking back toward it serves no purpose,’ Ilios told her curtly. ‘We live in the present, after all.’
‘That’s true, but sometimes we need to look back to what we were to understand what we are now.’
‘That is self-indulgence and it also serves no purpose,’ Ilios insisted grimly, looking at his watch and adding, ‘If you are ready to leave…?’
Lizzie nodded her head. The subject of his childhood and the effect it must have had on him was obviously closed, and she suspected it would remain that way.
It would soon be spring, and the temperature was beginning to rise a little. Wild flowers bloomed by the roadside, the way they had their faces turned up to the sun making Lizzie smile as Ilios drove them towards the east and the peninsula where Villas Manos stood.
Since Ilios was a good driver there was no logical reason for her to feel on edge. No logical reason, perhaps, but since when have the emotions of a woman in love been logical? Lizzie asked herself wryly.
They passed the turn-off for Halkidiki and the famous Mount Athos peninsula, with its monasteries and its rule that no female was allowed to set foot there, including female animals, and then had stopped briefly at a small tavern for a simple lunch of Greek salad and fruit. It was eaten mainly in the same silence which had pervaded since they had set out.
If Ilios was regretting inviting her to join him, then she was certainly regretting accepting his invitation. She felt rejected and unwanted, deliberately distanced from Ilios by his silence—a silen
ce that her own pride would not allow her to break.
Ilios drove straight to the villa on the western side of the promontory, ignoring the fork in the road to the east where the apartment block had been.
It seemed a lifetime since she had first met Ilios there. Then she had been a single woman, her only concern for her financial situation and the future of her family. Her own emotions as a woman simply had not come into the equation. Now she was married and a wife—at least in the eyes of the world. Her family were financially secure, and her anxiety was all for her own emotions.
Ruby had sent her a photograph of the twins via her mobile, so that Lizzie could see the new school uniforms she had bought for them at Lizzie’s insistence that she must do so and that they could afford it. A tender, amused smile curled Lizzie’s mouth. The two five-year-olds had looked so proud in their grey flannel trousers and maroon blazers, their dark hair cut short and brushed neatly.
Lizzie loved her nephews. She had been present at their birth, anxious for her young sister, and grieving for the fact that Ruby was having to go through her pain without their parents and without the man who had fathered her children. But when the twins had been born and she had held them all the sad aspects of their birth had been forgotten in the rush of love and joy she had felt.
They had reached the villa now, and even though she had seen it before, and knew what to expect, Lizzie was still filled with admiration and awe as she gazed at its perfect proportions, outlined against the bright blue sky.
The warm cream colour of the villa toned perfectly with the aged darker colour of the marble columns supporting the front portico and with the soft grey-white of the shutters at the windows. The gravel on which the car was resting exactly matched the colour of the marble columns, and the green of the lawns highlighted the darker green of the Cyprus trees lining the straight driveway. The whole scene in front of them was one of visual harmony.