by Julia James
She tried to answer, but couldn't. If she answered him she would have to open that door that she had banged tightly shut this morning as she got out of bed. And she couldn't face that.
The alternative was to go on along this pam she was on now. It would be temptingly easy to do so.
She had never seen Knossos, and was unlikely ever to get the opportunity to do so again. Just as she had wanted to see Athens while she was there, now she wanted to see the famous site of the very first civilisation Europe could boast, the Minoans, whose vast, labyrinthine Bronze Age palace at Knossos made the Parthenon look modern.
And see it she did, joining the throng of tourists who poured over the massive remains of the excavated and partially restored site, amazed at the sheer size of a palace first built over four thousand years ago and destroyed so cataclysmically. She was both fascinated and awestruck—and saddened. The exquisite murals, even if restored, caught at a world where militarism and armaments seemed quite absent—a world where nature and fertility were more valued than war and conquest.
'They did not need military might—all the Minoan palace sites lack ramparts,' Nikos reminded her when she found herself remarking on it. 'Theirs was a maritime trading empire, a thalassocracy, linking Egypt, the Levant, Asia Minor and Greece. And, of course, the legend of the annual tribute of] seven youths and seven maidens to feed to the Minotaur, so central to the story of the gallant Theseus, more likely represents the tribute the ancient mainland Greeks, the Myceneans, were required to pay the Minoans. It was more likely commercial rivalry that brought down the Minoan empire, not the death of a monster!'
'And the earthquakes and tidal waves,' added Andrea. 'How terrible it must have been!' She shuddered, remembering a television programme she had once watched which had recreated, with computer simulation, the terrifying volcanic explosion of the island of Thera, modern Santorini, which had blasted the atmosphere with dark, choking, poisonous dust and sent a wall of water hurtling south to crash devastatingly upon the low, defenceless Cretan shore.
She looked around her. All about had once been walls and rooms, stairs and chambers, courtyards and gardens, storerooms and towers, bustling with people carrying on their ordinary, everyday lives. All gone now. All silenced.
They were once as alive as you are now. Felt the warmth of the same sun upon their faces, felt the same earth beneath their feet as you do now.
As if he could read her thoughts on her face, she heard Nikos say quietly at her side, 'We must live while we can, Andrea. We have no other choice except to make the most of what is given to us. Our minds, our hearts—our bodies and our passions.'
For a moment, the briefest moment, she met his eyes and read what was in them. Then, his message sent, he lightened his expression.
'Are you hungry? Let us eat.'
They lunched, at Andrea's instigation, at a small tourist restaurant close to the palace of Knossos, which, though clearly catering for the masses, appealed to her with its vine-dappled terrace set back, overlooking the road. It was pretty, and quite unpretentious, and they both ate a typical tourist salad of feta cheese and tomatoes drizzled hi olive oil, followed by the ultimate Greek tourist dish of lamb kebabs.
If Nikos was taken aback by her choice, he hid it. Maybe after a lifetime of eating only in the most expensive restaurants it was amusing for her to eat such humble fare and mingle with ordinary folk whose grandfathers were not multimillionaires.
She looked quite natural in such a place, he suddenly realise. Her hair was drawn back into a simple plait, and if he did not know better he'd have said that her clothes—-jeans and & simple white T-shirt—could easily have come out of a chains-tore. She must be favouring a designer who charged a fortune to achieve that very effect.
Nor did she balk in the slightest at the taste of the robust but rough Domestica wine she drank. To Nikos it brought back memories from his early years, before his palate had become exposed only to the finest vintages. He wondered when it was that he had last drunk such table wine as now filled his glass.
Too long. The words echoed inside his head, and he put them aside with a frown.
'Where would you like to go this afternoon?' he asked, to change his thoughts. 'Shall we drive to a beach and sun ourselves?'
Immediately he cursed himself. In his head he heard her low words, filled with quiet, unemotional anguish, saying how she only swam very early in the morning, when no one could see her legs...
'Or perhaps you would like to see Heraklion?' he hurried on. 'Or we could drive further into the interior, perhaps? There is Mount Ida to see, where the god Zeus is said to have been bom, in a cavern there.'
'I'd like that,' Andrea replied. ‘I…I'm not sure I'm up to much more walking, I'm afraid. I'm rather feeling it in my legs after tramping around Knossos. Not that I'd have missed it for the world!' she added, lest she sound whining.
‘I’ll phone for the car,' said Nikos, and got out his mobile phone to summon the large, chauffeur-driven hire car that had brought them here from the yacht and which was now parked in the palace car park.
'Nikos—' She stayed his hand and he stopped, surprised. 'I—I don't suppose,' she found herself saying wistfully, would be possible—if not today, then perhaps tomorrow—if we are still here, of course,' she burbled, feeling awkward suddenly, 'to have a car like that one there to drive around in would it?'
She pointed down to where one of the legion of open-side four-by-fours, favoured by tourists as hire cars, was making its way along the road.
'They look such fun,' she said.
They were fun, she discovered shortly. For the first time if dawned on her that being the wife of a rich man—however fraudulently, to her mind, and certainly however temporarily had its compensations. A swift phone conversation with the chauffeur and the luxury limo had been traded for a self-drive bouncing Jeep.
She had to hang on tight, especially as they started to climb into the central Cretan mountains. The hairpin bends were tight, and got tighter, but as they did the views got more and more stupendous. The mildness of the lowland air crispened into a clarity that cleansed the lungs.
'This is wonderful! Thank you!'
They had stopped at a viewpoint and were looking down over the island, towards the sea beyond. Forested slopes spread out like skirts around them.
'I am glad you are enjoying yourself, agape mou.'
He smiled down at her. Again, as in the aftermath of the concert, there was nothing in Nikos's reply except open appreciation of her gratitude for showing her Crete.
She smiled back up at him, her eyes warm, and in that mo-merit she saw his expression change, as if her smile had done something to him.
Hurriedly she looked away, saying the first thing that came into her head.
'For a Greek island, Crete is very forested,' she observed.
"It was not always so,' he answered, accepting her gambit. He must go slowly—oh, so slowly—with this wounded deer, lest she flee him and wound herself even more in the process. ‘When the Venetians ruled Crete, and then the Turks, much of the forest was cut down for timber for ships. In those days public enemy number one for trees were mountain goats, who ate the saplings before they could mature. So a decree went out offering a bounty for every dead goat brought down from Be mountains.' His voice became very dry. 'It is perhaps predictable to relate that an active goat-breeding programme was soon well underway amongst the impoverished but financially astute mountain-dwelling peasants...'
She laughed, as he had intended.
"The best-laid plans of bureaucrats,' she commented, equally dryly.
He slipped his hand into hers, making the movement very casual. 'Indeed. Come—back on the road again. Finding a cafe would be very welcome, ne?
They stopped for coffee at a little cafeneion perched precariously, so it seemed to Andrea, over the side of a precipitous slope. The view, however, more than made up for it. They sat in silence, absorbing the peace and serenity arou
nd them, but it was a silence a world away from the silence at dinner the night before, Andrea found herself thinking. Then it had all been strain and horribleness. Now—now it was...companionable.
The thought was odd. Almost unbelievable.
As she sat there, sipping her western filter coffee while ikos drank the undrinkable treacly brew of the native, she decided she did not want to think about it.
She just wanted to enjoy the moment. For now, it was enough.
It was early evening by the time they got back to the coast. They did not arrive back at Heraklion, but further west, at Rethimnon. 'Just in time for us to make our votla,' said Nikos.
'Volta?'
'In the early evening, after work and before dinner, we take our stroll around the town—to see and be seen,' explained Nikos.
With the westering sun turning the azure sea to turquoise, and yellowing the limestone buildings around the pretty Venetian harbour of the town, it was a pleasant thing to do, discovered Andrea. They strolled around the quayside. And if at some point Nikos slipped his arm around Andrea's shoulders, to shield her from a group of lively tourists heading in the opposite direction, she found, when he did not remove it, that she did not mind. Indeed, the opposite was true. The warmth of his casual embrace was comforting. And when, as they took their places at a table set out on the quayside to have a drink, he let go of her, she felt, she realised, strangely bereft.
Nikos took a beer, Andrea a tall glass of fruit juice, and they watched the world go by. It was very easy, very relaxed. They talked about Crete—its long struggle for independence, its ordeals under Nazi occupation, and its modern Renaissance as a tourist destination. Neutral subjects. Safe subjects.
'Do you know the island well?' she asked.
He shook his head. 'I'm afraid my visits have mostly been brief, and in respect of business. I've seen more of Crete today than ever before.' He paused, then said with deliberate casualness, 'Shall we stay a few days longer?'
She stilled. 'I—I...'
He covered her hand with his. 'You do not need to decide now, Andrea mou. Let us take things as they come, ne?’
There was meaning in his words, but she could not challenge him. Instead she looked out over the gilded water, streaming with the setting sun.
'Shouldn't we start heading back to Heraklion? Won't they be wondering where we are?'
He gave a laugh. 'Captain Petrachos sailed the yacht along the coast—he's anchored off the shore now. We'll take a launch back to it whenever we want- There's no hurry.’
'Oh,' said Andrea. Once again she realised how very, very easy being a holidaymaker was if you had a luxury yacht trailing around after you.
'Shall we dine ashore?' enquired Nikos, calling for another beer.
'Can we?'
He laughed again. 'Andrea, this is our hon—' He caught himself, and amended his words. 'Our holiday—we can do anything we like!'
Andrea looked around. Everywhere were open-fronted restaurants, tables spilling out onto the quayside and the pavements, happy holidaymakers enjoying their escape from hum-dram lives. It was livening up now, and she could hear the throb of bouzouki music emanating from the bars.
'Let's eat here!' she enthused. She could not face returning to that opulent monstrosity of a yacht, whose garish luxury appalled her so. Besides, she felt safe here, amongst so many people....
And Nikos was being so nice...
She sipped her orange juice, nibbling moist, succulent olives out of the dish placed in front of them, staring out over the harbour. Carefully, tremulously, she opened her mind and let herself face up to what had happened.
Nikos had made love to her. He had taken her naked body and brought it to ecstasy. Initiated her into the realm of sensual experience. Changed her from an unknowing, virginal maiden into a woman who knew the power of the senses. The overwhelming, irresistible power that took away all reason, all logic, and swept her away, to let her do things, experience things that she had never, ever thought to experience.
It happened. It was real. I let it happen.
She could have stopped him—should have stopped him— but she hadn't. She hadn't found the strength to stop him.
Even though she knew exactly why he had done what he had.
She said the words to herself, spelling them out. Letting there be no mistake about it. Refusing to deceive herself.
He made love to me. Last night Nikos made love to me because he felt sorry for me.
That was the truth of it.
It tore at her, pulling her in two. Part of her was filled with mortification that this most perfect paean to masculine perfection should have had to force himself to make love to her scarred, disfigured body. But part of her was filled with wonder—wonder that a man who had married her for no other reason than to get her grandfather's business empire should have had the compassion, the kindness, to feel sorry for her...
Emotions stirred in her heart, welling up, but she knew they were dangerous. Very dangerous.
Nikos Vassilis, who had married the splendid Coustakis heiress, not the humble, ordinary Andrea Fraser, would have no use for such emotions—and neither must she.
It was late before they returned to the yacht. They had eaten in one of the harbourside restaurants, filled with chattering, cheerful tourists. It had been fun, and had distracted Andrea from her deeper thoughts. But now, as the motor launch creamed its way across the dark sea towards the string of lights that edged the massive bulk of her grandfather's latest toy, those thoughts surfaced.
Nikos could tell. As he helped her up the lowered steps to gain the safety of the deck he knew, by the way she immediately pulled her hand free of his, that she was filled with nervous self-consciousness.
Keep playing it easy, he adjured himself.
Dismissing the crewman with a smile, he turned to Andrea.
'Come, let us watch the night.'
He led her up to the uppermost deck, towards the stern. They would not be overlooked there. The bridge crew were out of sight, and he had given orders that the rest of the staff could stand down.
Glad for a reprieve from having to go to bed, and not having the faintest idea what on earth Nikos was going to do about sleeping arrangements now, Andrea followed him. It was, she had to admit, a glorious sight. The twinkling line of lights along the Cretan coast echoed the blaze of stars in the celestial oceans above their heads.
They stood side by side, leaning on the railings, trying to identify constellations.
'I only know the Plough and Orion in winter,' admitted Andrea. 'London isn't very good for star-gazing.'
'We should sleep in a goat hut on the top of Mount Ida to have the clearest view on the island!' teased Nikos, and she smiled.
'Crete was wonderful,' she said wistfully. 'Thank you for taking me there today.'
Lightly, very lightly, he slipped his hand underneath the plait of her hair at the back of her neck.
'As I said, pethi mou, we can spend as long as we like here. Shall we do that?'
His fingers were brushing her nape. Very lightly.
It set every nerve in her body quivering.
Danger!
You've got to stop this—now!
'Nikos—'
'Hmm?' His fingertips were playing with loose strands of hair. She felt ripples of sensation down her spine.
'Nikos—'
She paused again, trying to concentrate, trying to focus on what she had to tell him. Must tell him. Right now.
'I—I have to talk to you!' The words came out in a rush.
It did not stop his fingers gentling at the tender skin beneath her ear, nor did it stop the shivers of pleasure vibrating in her.
'What about?' he asked idly. His other hand had come around her spine to rest on her hip. It felt large, and heavy, and warm. And dangerous.
Still he went on feathering the loosening tendrils of her hair, brushing the velvet of her skin.
She forced herself to concen
trate.
'About,.. about... what happened.'
'When?' asked Nikos, in that same lazy tone, as his thumb moved to brush along the line of her jaw. 'Last...last night....' 'Ahh,' breathed Nikos. 'That.' 'Yes! That!' echoed Andrea. It was supposed to come out forcefully, but as his thumb grazed the cleft of her chin it only came out as a sigh.
'This?' queried Nikos. His fingertips still stroked her cheek lightly, oh, so lightly, but now his thumb pressed lightly, oh, so lightly, on her full lower lip. 'No!'
'Ahh. Then this, perhaps...'
His hand smoothed over her hip languorously, shaping its feminine contour with lazy ease.