by Sara Craven
A long time later, he said, ‘Dare I ask if you have missed me a little?’
She lifted her head from its pillow on his chest. ‘I think you know the answer to that already.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But perhaps I need to hear you say it.’
‘Then—yes, kyrie. I missed you.’
And you, my darling. If I asked you the same thing, what would you say? Could you reply ‘Yes’, or would you hesitate, knowing that you’d found consolation with Domenica or someone else while we were apart, then tell me a kind lie?
Alex sighed softly, contentedly, and rolled over, imprisoning her beneath him.
‘At last,’ he whispered. ‘Now tell me again, but this time without words, agapi mou.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I AM going nowhere…
Natasha found Alex’s words tingling in her mind as soon as she opened her eyes the next morning.
It was still very early, the pale sky hardly tinged with the pink of sunrise, and she lay quietly, assimilating her surroundings and the sweet, lingering ache of physical delight. Remembering…
And as she did so, she felt her body warm and her mouth curve gently in utter contentment.
As she took this moment—waking in Alex’s arms, with her head on his shoulder and his cheek against her hair—captured and hid it deep in her consciousness. A fragment of sheer happiness to be treasured and enjoyed in the inevitable loneliness ahead of her.
Although she would not think of that now. Not allow herself any sad thoughts when she had the rapture of last night’s lovemaking to savour—the total mastery of his body, his hands and mouth taking her to new heights, urging her into new responses, new demands that she would never have believed possible.
Quite—irresistible, she told herself languorously. And she had not even attempted to resist.
They had finally fallen asleep, still entwined, in sheer exhaustion, although she’d been drowsily aware at some point of Alex moving, taking the crumpled sheet and arranging it over their damp bodies, before drawing her close again.
All the same, she thought, it was now day—and time she wasn’t here.
She eased herself out of his embrace, infinitely careful not to disturb him, knowing that if he woke and drew her down to him again she would make no protest.
She hadn’t really noticed her surroundings last night. She had seen only him, but she looked round her now as she retrieved her robe and fastened it round her. It was a very big room, but the bed she’d just left dominated the space—king-size going on emperor, she thought—its massive carved headboard giving it dignity to the point of grandeur. An important bed.
On the wall opposite a large unframed picture of a wild sea dashing itself over rocks. The Aegean raging in a storm, and she shivered suddenly as if she could feel the spray on her warm skin.
An imposing mirrored dressing table in the same dark wood as the bed, and, by the window, a couch and a table. Two doors leading, she guessed, to the bathroom and his dressing room. Nothing else.
She trod back to the bed and looked down at him tenderly, longing to bend and kiss him, but telling herself that would be an indulgence. And that later there would be plenty of time for kisses and other pleasures too.
Then crept quietly out of the room.
She was having breakfast on the terrace when she heard his voice from the saloni aiming a sharp question at Zeno.
He came to join her, his hair still wet from the shower, and a thin shirt open over a pair of dark swimming trunks.
‘Kalimera.’ He bent and kissed her, rubbing his freshly shaven cheek gently against her face. ‘I woke without you, matia mou. Why?’
‘I thought it would be better if I went back to my own room,’ she said, suddenly shy as her body stirred involuntarily in answer to his brief caress.
‘Not better for me.’ He sat down, pulling the coffeepot towards him. ‘And from now on, you share my bedroom. I will arrange to have your clothes and belongings transferred at once.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Please—Alex, don’t do that.’
He stared at her, dark brows drawing together. ‘Why not?’
She hesitated. ‘Perhaps,’ she said haltingly, ‘for the same reason that I didn’t have lunch with your father’s friends. For the sake of appearances.’ She forced a smile. ‘I gather your household isn’t altogether accustomed to having your…female guests here.’
‘No,’ he said, after a pause. ‘They are not.’
They thought the first would be your wife—because Josefina told me so. And they will still believe that your bride alone should have the right to share the master bedroom with you.
And they would be right, she thought. I shouldn’t sleep there, because that amazing bed is a marriage bed, not a place for a transient love affair, and I—I turned you down when you asked me. Even then, in my subconscious mind, I must have known that I loved you. But that I couldn’t bear to be married simply because your honour demanded it—because you’d taken my virginity and spoiled me for any other marriage.
I knew that being tied to me in such a way could only lead to indifference, with resentment not far behind. And having to live with you on those terms would have been a real fate worse than death. Far more so than any seduction.
She hurried back into speech. ‘Therefore,’ she said, ‘it might make things easier all round if we were…discreet.’
Alex took one of the fresh rolls from the napkin-covered basket on the table, and began to butter it.
He said drily, ‘I hoped for discretion too, pedhi mou. But I think your arrival in the dining room the other day damaged any lasting hope of that. By this time the world will know I am not alone here. And I assure you that no one in the house will be even slightly deceived over where we spend our nights. But let it be as you wish.’
He sent her a sudden wicked grin. ‘So, do I whisper “My place or yours?” over dinner?’
She tried not to smile back, and failed completely. ‘I’m being serious,’ she protested.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘And please believe I am entranced at this belated effort to establish my unswerving morality.’ He refilled her coffee cup. ‘And in future I shall come to you at night, although I do not guarantee to wait until everyone else in the house is asleep, or leave at dawn.
‘I shall have also to think up all kinds of reasons to be alone with you, Natasha mou, in the daytime, as well,’ he went on. ‘And I think that today we will go sailing.’
She said rather wistfully, ‘That would be lovely. But are you sure you can spare the time? I know how busy you always are.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And lately I have been working extra-hard trying to clear my desk in order to be with you, my beautiful one, and give you all the attention you deserve, instead of snatched moments.
‘So for a while at least, we can put the world at a distance,’ he added quietly.
For a while at least…
Yes, she thought as he reached across the table and took her hand in his. And for that time, however long, however short, he would be hers. She would hope for nothing more.
It was a day captured from heaven. Aboard the caique Mariam they sailed all the way around the island, eventually anchoring off a deserted beach where they went ashore in the dinghy and Alex cooked the fish he’d caught a short while before over a driftwood fire on the sand.
‘You’re full of surprises, kyrie,’ Natasha commented from the rug he’d spread in the shade of an ancient olive tree at the edge of the beach, as she watched him deftly prepare their food.
He looked at her across the fire, his eyes paying tribute to the slender curves revealed by her bikini.
‘And when we have eaten, kyria, I intend to surprise you in a different way,’ he promised softly, and she threw back her head laughing, because there was sunlight, food and wine, and the anticipation of her lover’s arms around her and his kisses on her lips.
One glorious sun-filled day seamlessly became another. Turned in
to a week that slipped into a second, then a third.
I am going nowhere…
He’d said that, and it seemed he’d meant it.
When they were not aboard Mariam they were often beside the pool, Alex taking full advantage of its seclusion to swim and sunbathe naked, and to encourage her to do the same.
They’d been in the water together the first time he’d swiftly stripped her of her bikini before discarding his own trunks, and tossing them onto the tiled rim.
‘Alex—no,’ she’d protested desperately, trying unsuccessfully to hold him off. ‘Someone might see us.’
‘No, agapi mou,’ he whispered. ‘I promise that we will not be disturbed.’ And pulled her close.
Much later, she said breathlessly, ‘I thought you didn’t approve of naked girls in swimming pools.’
He laughed, kissing her softly. ‘I approve of you naked anywhere and at any time, Natasha mou,’ he told her.
His behaviour on the beach below the villa was rather more decorous, however, and, to her own astonishment, Natasha found herself being swiftly initiated into the thrills and spills of waterskiing and windsurfing, at both of which Alex was effortlessly expert, and, more unexpectedly, a remarkably patient teacher, and as her fledgling skills developed and improved under his careful tuition she felt almost triumphant.
Iorgos was at the wheel of the speedboat when she attained sufficient prowess to ski beside Alex and, while he remained taciturn, there were times when he bestowed on Natasha a faint smile that was almost approving.
She realised she was learning other lessons too. Making discoveries all the time about the man she loved, seeing a younger and altogether more carefree side to the powerful controller of his business empire.
Someone, she thought, who sang softly under his breath, and held her hand as she walked beside him. Someone who seemed to know intuitively the occasions when she was tired enough to wish just to sleep in his arms.
Someone who talked to her, argued with her, teased her. Who encouraged her to revive the Greek language skills of her younger years. Who challenged her in the evenings to play the wickedly fast Greek form of backgammon that she’d learned with Thio Basilis, and sometimes allowed her to win. Who was teaching her chess.
Someone who fulfilled every dream she’d ever had. Except for the most important one…
He spoke of his desire for her so frankly that it still had the power to make her blush, but he never spoke of love.
Sometimes, when she lay drifting in the exquisite euphoria of her climax, she imagined him whispering, ‘M’agapas?’ ‘Do you love me?’
And was thankful she was not forced to lie—to deny her most secret, most precious feelings, and have to suffer the subsequent pain.
Because Alyssos was such a small island, it was hardly worth using the Jeep, so she and Alex spent a lot of time walking, and she guessed that quite often they were visiting places that had been his favourites in childhood.
He didn’t say much at these times, just looked around him with hooded, reflective eyes.
She remembered that Mac Whitaker had hinted that Alex and his father had more or less given up on the island, just as Thia Theodosia had done, and wondered why this should have been, as it clearly meant so much to him.
But when she asked him, he merely shrugged and drawled, ‘Things change, matia mou.’ Which left her none the wiser, and reluctant to put the real question hovering in her mind—to ask him how the feud between their families had begun.
Because it never, she thought ruefully, seemed to be the right moment. And now the opportunity might have gone altogether.
‘The world at a distance.’ At the time that had sounded like a promise, but suddenly it was nudging closer again, working its way insidiously back into their lives, like a latter-day snake in Eden, and it seemed to Natasha that Alex’s words had been more of a warning.
Very much like—‘Things change…’
Because they had already done so, almost before she was aware.
And the major change was in Alex himself. The light-hearted lover was becoming unsmiling and introspective, his movements and manner almost abrupt. Sometimes when she woke in the night, it was to find him standing at the window, his face brooding as he stared into the darkness.
She longed to ask what the matter was—if she could help in any way—then reminded herself just in time that she was there solely to share his bed for a while, not his thoughts.
He was once again spending part of each day in his study, and their mealtimes together were often interrupted for phone calls which needed to be taken in private. Nor was there any more relaxed and sensuous nudity beside the pool in case a member of staff brought down a message for him, while the lingering, breathless siestas in her bedroom with the shutters closed were also becoming a thing of the past.
As, it occurred to her, she might well be herself.
And when, for the first time, he did not come to her room at night, she knew with aching certainty that it was the beginning of the end, and that she must prepare for it.
Her heart was thudding when he joined her for breakfast the following morning. Waiting, she realised, for the axe to fall.
He said without preamble, ‘Natasha, I have to go away later today. There are matters I must attend to that can be put off no longer.’ He looked up frowningly at the hazy sky. ‘Would you like to go out on the boat this morning—before the weather breaks?’
She did not think she could bear the boat, where she’d spent so many happy hours with him. Not when it could be the last time…
She steadied her voice. ‘That would be nice, but you did promise once that you’d show me where Thia Theodosia used to live.’
He hesitated, his frown deepening. ‘Very well,’ he said quietly. ‘If you are sure that is what you want.’
This time they took the Jeep, Natasha realising at once that they were heading to a part of the island they had not visited before. For a while they followed the main highway, then Alex turned off abruptly onto a much narrower road, its surface scarred and pitted, showing how little it was used.
The new owners clearly didn’t mind being jolted, Natasha thought breathlessly as the Jeep made another turn onto a steep and rocky track down into the promised shade of the olive trees with their silver, shivering leaves, and, as they finally emerged into the open, directly ahead of them was the subdued glimmer of the sea.
But that was all.
Natasha turned in her seat, staring round her. She said half to herself, ‘But this can’t be the place. There’s nothing here.’
‘As I told you.’ His confirmation was harsh.
‘But there was a house once.’ She pointed. ‘Some of the foundations are still there—see?’ She scrambled out of the Jeep and went over to examine the remains of the concrete platform.
‘So, what happened?’ Alex had followed her, and she turned to him, spreading her hands in bewilderment. ‘Was there an earthquake? If so, it must have been pretty selective.’
‘No earthquake,’ he said. ‘The house was demolished in another way.’
She stared at him, her throat tightening. ‘Tell me how.’
‘With explosives first,’ he said. ‘Then the rubble itself was removed.’ He shrugged, his mouth hard. ‘Until everything had gone. As you see.’
‘Yes,’ she said thickly. ‘I—see. Only too well.’
She shook her head. ‘How could you do this?’ Her eyes searched his, trying and failing to find some trace of the warmth and tenderness of the past weeks. ‘Does Thia Theodosia know about this?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She has always known.’
‘That’s awful,’ Natasha whispered. ‘Because she’s so kind, so lovely. She wouldn’t deliberately hurt a living soul. So how could you destroy an innocent woman’s home—something which meant so much to her? What kind of people are you?’
‘Human beings,’ he said harshly. ‘With all the faults and failings of that condition. Capable of hatred,
jealousy and vengeance. Did I ever pretend otherwise?’
‘But why this? It makes no sense.’
‘That is something I am not qualified to answer,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Nor, Natasha, did I light the fuse or move the stones. I was too young. Now, shall we go? If you have seen enough?’
There were tears in her throat, burning, acrid. She could only nod, then sit beside him, staring at nothing as they returned to the villa in silence.
As she made to leave the Jeep, he said quietly, ‘Natasha—it was an empty building. Worse things have happened since this feud began, believe me.’
‘You’ll never convince me of that,’ she said shakily.
This was more than two proud and arrogant men locking horns in enmity over their commercial dealings. It went far beyond cruel and spiteful, or a desire to win—to beat a rival a down, she thought. There’d been real hatred in this act of destruction.
She swung back to face him. ‘Oh, God, how long will this vile thing be allowed to go on—poisoning people’s lives? Why can’t you do something to make it stop?’
He said slowly, ‘Perhaps I can. But it might be something you would hate even more.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Never in this world.’ She looked past him. ‘I—I can’t stay here any longer.’
‘In this house?’ he said. ‘Or anywhere on the island?’
‘Anywhere.’ She shuddered. ‘I thought it was so peaceful here. So beautiful.’
You made it beautiful, and now it seems uglier than any nightmare.
She said, ‘But—knowing about this mindless violence—I can’t think of it in the same way ever again.’ Or of you—your father’s son…‘And I want to leave. You have to let me go.’
‘Go where?’ he demanded roughly.
‘To England,’ she said. ‘To London. Back to road rage, muggings and football hooligans. They’ll all seem like a walk in the park compared with Alyssos.’
She swallowed. ‘There’ll be a helicopter coming for you, won’t there? Will you let me go with you to Athens? My plane ticket might still be valid.’