It had hit her the moment Lester Miles had mentioned a future wife and Diantha Christophoros in the same, soul-destroying breath. Couldn’t he have come up with someone fresh instead of picking out his old love to replace her with?
He’d also been having her watched, she suddenly remembered. Had he been that desperate to find a solid reason to bring their marriage crashing down that he’d had to go to such extremes?
I hate him, she thought on a blistering wave of agony. And she did. The two opposing emotions of love and hatred were swilling around inside her in one gigantic, dizzying mix. The man was bad for her. He had always been bad for her. Three years on, she thought wretchedly, and her stupid heart had not learned anything!
The taxi pulled into the kerb outside her hotel. Fumbling in her purse, Isobel unearthed some money to pay the driver then climbed out into the heat of a midday sun. Within seconds she felt as if she was melting, which only made a further mockery of her sanity in coming here to Athens at all and wearing leather of all things in this city famous for the oppressive weight of its summer heat.
Her mother had been right; she’d been asking for trouble—and had certainly found it! Returning to her hotel room, she stripped off the wretched suit and walked into the bathroom to shower his touch from her skin.
Never again, she vowed as she scrubbed with a grim disregard for her skin’s fragile layers. By the time she had finished drying herself she was tingling all over for a different reason and her mood had altered from feeling destroyed to mulish. If she’d ever needed to be reminded why she left Leandros in the first place then that little scene in his boardroom had done it.
She didn’t need a man like him. Let him pour his money into his settlement, she invited, as she dressed in a pair of loose-fitting green cotton trousers and a matching T-shirt. Let him have his divorce so he can marry Diantha Christophoros and produce black-eyed, black-haired little thoroughbreds for his dynasty—
Was that it? Her head shot up, the brush she was using on her hair freezing as she struck at the heart of it. Had Leandros changed his mind about children and decided it was time he made an effort to produce the next Petronades heir?
What was it Lester Miles had said? She tried to remember as she brushed her hair into one long, thick, silken lock. Nikos was getting married. The lawyer called it an heir thing. Nikos might be three years younger than his brother but if Leandros wanted to keep the line of succession clear in his favour, then he needed to get in first with a son.
The tears came back. I would have given him a son. I would have given him a hundred babies if he’d only wanted them. But he didn’t, not with me for a mother. He wanted a black-haired Greek beauty with a name exalted enough to match his own.
I’m going to be sick, she thought and had to stand there for a few minutes, fighting the urge as a three-year-old scar ripped open in her chest.
She had to get out of here. The need came with a sudden urgency that left her no room to think. Securing her hair into a simple pony-tail, she snatched up her camera case and slung the strap over her shoulder, slid a pair of sunglasses onto the top of her head then headed for the outer door.
It was only when she stepped out into the hotel corridor that she remembered her mother, and felt guilty because she didn’t want to see her right now while she was in this emotional mess. But in all fairness she could not just walk out of here without checking Silvia was back. With a deep breath for courage, she knocked on the door next to her own room. There was no answer. Silvia must still be out with Clive. Relief flicked through her. In the next minute she was riding the lift to the foyer, so eager to escape now that she could barely contain the urge long enough to leave a message for her mother at Reception to let her know what she was doing.
As luck would have it, she was about to step outside when Lester Miles strode in.
‘How quickly did they draw up the papers?’ she questioned tartly.
‘They didn’t.’ The lawyer frowned. ‘Mr Petronades left just after you did.’
To dance attendance on his future bride? Isobel wondered, and felt another burst of bitterness rend a hole in her chest.
‘So what happens now?’ she asked.
‘I am to wait further instruction,’ Lester Miles informed her.
‘Really?’ she drawled. At whose command—Leandros’s or Takis Konstantindou’s? ‘Well, since I am the one you are supposed to take instruction from, Mr Miles, take the afternoon off,’ she invited. ‘Enjoy a bit of sightseeing and forget about them.’
It was what she intended to do anyway.
‘But, Mrs Petronades,’ he protested, ‘we are due to fly home tomorrow evening. We really should discuss what it is you want from—’
‘I don’t want anything,’ she interrupted. ‘But if this thing can be finished by me accepting everything, then I will.’ End of subject, her tight voice intimated. ‘They will be back tomorrow with their proposed settlements,’ she predicted. ‘I’ll sign and we will catch our flight home.’
Never to return again, she vowed as she left the poor lawyer standing there looking both puzzled and frustrated. He’d been looking forward to a good fight. He’d had a taste of it and liked it; she’d recognised that in the Petronades boardroom today.
As she stepped outside, the full heat of the sun beat down upon her head. She paused for a moment to get her bearings before deciding to revisit some of her old haunts that did not remind her of Leandros. There were plenty of them, she mused cynically, as she flopped her sunglasses down over her eyes then walked off down the street. While Leandros had played the busy tycoon during her year here in Athens, she had learned to amuse herself by getting to know the city from her own perspective rather than the one her privileged Greek in-laws preferred.
Leandros had just managed to park his car when he saw Isobel step into the street. About to climb out of the vehicle, he paused to watch as she stood for a moment frowning fiercely at everything before she reached up to pull her sunglasses over her eyes, then walked off.
Where was she going? he mused grimly. Why wasn’t she sitting in her room sobbing her heart out—as he’d expected her to be?
A stupid notion, he then decided when he took in what she was wearing. It was what he had used to call her battle-dress. When the hair went up in a pony-tail and her camera swung from her shoulder, and those kinds of clothes came out of the closet, his aggravating wife was making a determined bid for escape. How many times had he watched the back of that fine, slender figure disappear into the distance without so much as a word to say where she was going or why she was going there?
His jaw clenched because he knew why she had used to disappear like this. It had usually occurred after a row, after she’d asked him for something and he’d snapped at her because he’d been too busy to listen properly, and thought the request petty in the extreme. Guilty conscience raked its sharp claws across his heart. He’d been hell to live with, he recognised that now. He’d done nothing but pick and gripe and shut her up with more satisfying methods. And had never seen how lonely she’d been as she had walked away.
Climbing out of his sleek red Ferrari, he paused long enough to remove his jacket and tie then lock them in the boot. Then he intended to go after her.
But Leandros remembered the lover, and stopped as a whole new set of emotions gripped. Was he still in the hotel? Had she just come from him? Was he receiving the same walk-away treatment because he hadn’t listened to what she had been trying to say? Had they rowed about the disaster this morning’s meeting had turned into? Had she told the lover that she’d almost made love with her husband on the boardroom table before she walked away? Had they made love just now, in there, in that shabby hotel that suited clandestine relationships?
His mind knew how to torment him, he noted, as he slammed the car boot shut.
Where was his mother-in-law while all of this was going on? Was she lying on her sickbed with no idea that her daughter was romping with the body-builder in the next room? Ma
ybe he should go and talk to Silvia. Maybe he should tackle the lover while Isobel was out of the way.
But his mother-in-law was a dish best eaten cold, he recalled with a rueful half-grin at the memory of her blunt tongue. And he wasn’t cold right now, he was hot with jealousy and a desire to beat someone to a pulp.
Isobel disappeared around a corner; the decision about whom he was going to tackle first was made there and then. To hell with everyone else, he thought. This was between him and his wife.
It was good to walk. It was good to feel the tension leave her body the deeper she became lost in the tourist crowds. Isobel caught the metro into Piraeus, drank a can of Coke as she walked along the harbour, pausing now and again to snap photos of the local fishermen and their brightly painted boats. She even found her old sense of fun returning when they tossed pithy comments at her, which she returned with a warm grasp of Greek that made them grin in shocked surprise. Most people hated the busy port of Piraeus but she’d always loved it for its rich and varied tapestry of life.
An hour later she had walked to Zea Marina where the private yachts were berthed and ended up getting out of the heat of the sun in Mikrolimano beneath the awning of one of her favourite restaurants that edged the pretty crescent-shaped waterfront. She couldn’t eat. It seemed that her stomach was still plagued by a knot of tension even if the rest of her felt much more at peace. But she was content to sit there sipping the rich black Greek coffee while taking in the spectacular views across the Saronic Gulf to the scatter of tiny islands glinting in the sun.
Eventually Vassilou, the restaurant owner, came out to greet her with a warm cry of delight and a welcoming kiss to both cheeks. It was that time of the day when Athens was at its quietest because most people with any sense were taking a siesta. The restaurant had very few customers and Vassilou came to sit beside her with his coffee while he tested her Greek.
It seemed crazy now, that she’d learned the language down here with the real people of Athens and not up there in the rarefied air on Lykavittos Hill, or Kolonáki, where the wealthy Athenians lived in their luxury villas. No one up there had thought it worth coaching her in the Greek language. They spoke perfect English so where was the need?
The need was sitting right here beside her with his thick thatch of silver hair and craggy brown face and his gentle, caring eyes. Not many minutes later they were joined by a retired sea captain, who began telling her some of his old sea yarns. Soon the chairs at her small table had doubled along with the circle of men. The restaurant owner’s son brought coffee for them all and sat down himself.
Isobel was relaxed; she was content to sit and be entertained by these warm-hearted people. Despite her nightmare marriage to Leandros, she’d loved Athens—this Athens—and she’d missed it when she returned to London.
Suddenly she sensed someone come to stand behind her chair. Assuming it was another local, drawn to the little coffee-drinking group, she didn’t think to glance round. She simply continued to sit there on a rickety chair with her coffee-cup cradled between her fingers and her smile one of wicked amusement while she listened—until a hand settled on her shoulder.
His touch caused a jolt of instant recognition. Her body froze and she lost her smile. The old sea captain’s voice trailed into silence, and as each set of eyes rose to look at Leandros she had to watch the warmth die.
Not into frozen shock, she noted, but into looks of respect, the kind men gave to another when they recognised a superior man come down into their midst.
They also understood the gentle claim of possession when they saw it. These shrewd men of Greece understood the light, ‘Kalimera,’ when it was spoken with the smoothness of silk. ‘I understand now why my wife goes missing,’ Leandros drawled lazily. ‘She has other suitors with whom she prefers to spend the siesta hours.’
The words were spoken in Greek with the aim to compliment, and Isobel was not surprised when the grins reappeared. Men were always first and foremost men, after all. She sat forward to put down her coffee-cup, though ostensibly the movement was supposed to dislodge his hand. It didn’t happen; the long brown fingers merely shifted to curve her nape then he bent and she felt the warmth of his breath brush her jawbone just before the brush of his kiss on her cheek followed suit.
He must know that her expression did not welcome him, but he was trusting her not to reject him here in view of all of these interested eyes. And, oddly, she didn’t. Which troubled and confused her as she watched the sudden genial shift of bodies and listened to the light banter that involved excuses as the others left the lovers to themselves while they made a mass chair-scraping exodus to another table.
It took only seconds for her to know she’d been deserted. The reason for that desertion chose one of the vacated chairs and sat down. He didn’t look at her immediately but frowned slightly as he gazed into the distance with his mouth pressed into a sombre line and the length of his eyelashes hiding his thoughts. He had lost his jacket and tie, she noticed, and the top two buttons to his shirt had been tugged free. He looked different here in the humid weight of natural sunlight, less the hard-headed business tycoon and more the handsome golden-skinned man she had first fallen in love with.
Her heart gave an anxious little flutter. She converted the sensation into a sigh. ‘How did you know where to find me?’ she asked then added sardonically, ‘Still having me watched, Leandros? How quaint.’
The sarcasm made his dark head turn. Their eyes connected, the flutter dropped to her abdomen and she sank back in her chair in an effort to stop herself from being caught in the swirling depths of what those dark eyes could do to her if she let them.
‘You speak and understand my language,’ he said quietly.
It was not what she had been expecting him to say. But she hid her surprise behind a slight smile. ‘What’s the matter?’ she mocked. ‘Did you think your little wife too stupid to learn a bit of Greek?’
‘I have never thought you stupid.’
Her answering shrug dismissed his denial. ‘Inept and uninterested, then,’ which added up to the same thing.
He didn’t answer. He was studying her so intently that in the end she shifted tensely and found herself answering the dark question she could see burning in his eyes. ‘I have always had a natural aptitude for languages,’ she explained. ‘And this…’ her hand gave a gesture to encompass Piraeus in general ‘…was my classroom three years ago, where I learned Greek from the kind of people you’ve just scared off in your polite but esoteric way.’
‘Esoteric,’ he repeated. ‘You little hypocrite,’ he denounced. ‘I have yet to meet a more esoteric person than you, Isobel, and that is the truth. You lived right here in Athens as my wife for a year. You slept in my bed and ate at my table and circulated on a daily basis amongst my family and friends. Yet not once can I recall you ever mentioning your trips down here to your classroom or revealing to any one of those people who should have been important to you that you could understand them when they spoke in Greek.’
‘Oh, but I heard so many interesting titbits I would never have otherwise, if they’d known I understood,’ she drawled lightly.
‘Like what?’
Light altered to hard cynicism. ‘Like how much they disliked me and how deeply they wished poor Leandros would come to his senses and see the little hussy off.’
‘You didn’t want them to like you,’ he denounced that also. And his eyes threw back the cynical glint. ‘You made no attempt to integrate with anyone who mattered to me. You just got on with your own secret life, picking and choosing those people you condescended to like and holding in contempt those that you did not. If that isn’t bloody esoteric then I misunderstand the word.’
‘No, you just have a very selective memory,’ she replied. ‘Because I don’t recall a moment when any of those people you mention cared enough to show an interest in anything I said or did.’
‘Most of them were afraid of you.’
She laughed, that was
so ridiculous. His expression hardened. The anger of this morning’s confrontation had gone, she noticed, but what had taken its place was worse somehow. It was a mood with no name, she mused, that hovered somewhere between contempt and dismay. ‘You slayed them with your fierce British independence,’ he continued grimly. ‘You sliced them up with your quick, sharp tongue. You mocked their conservative beliefs and attitudes and refused to make any concessions for the differences between your cultures and theirs. And you did it all from a lofty stance of stubborn superiority that only collapsed when you were in my bed and wrapped in my arms.’
Isobel just sat there and stared as each accusation was lanced at her. Did he really see her as he’d just described her? Did he truly believe everything he’d just said?
‘No wonder our marriage barely lasted a year,’ she murmured in shaken response to it all. ‘You thought no better of me than they did!’
‘I loved you,’ he stated harshly.
‘In that bed you just mentioned,’ she agreed in an acid-tipped barb. ‘Out of it? It’s no darn wonder I came looking for my own world down here where I belonged!’
‘I was about to add that unfortunately love is not always blind.’ He got in his own sharp dig. ‘I watched you cling to your desire to shock everyone. I watched you take on all-comers with the fierce flash of your eyes. But do you know what made all of that rather sad, Isobel? You were no more comfortable with your defiant stance than anyone else was.’
He was right; she’d hated every minute of it. Inside she had been miserable and frightened and terribly insecure. But if he thought that by telling her he knew all of this gave him some high moral stance over her then he was mistaken. Because all it did was prove how little he’d cared when he’d known and had done nothing to help make things easier for her!
Love? He didn’t know the meaning of the word. She had loved. She had worshipped, adored and grown weaker with each small slight he’d paid to her, with his I’m too busy for this and Can you not even attempt to take the hand of friendship offered to you? What hand of friendship? Why had he always had something more important to do than to take some small notice of her? Hadn’t he seen how unhappy she was? Had he even cared? Not that she could recall, unless the rows had taken place in their bed at night. Then he’d cared because it had messed with that other important thing in his life—his over-active desire for sex! If she’d sulked, he’d thrown deriding names at her. If she’d said no, he’d taught her how quickly no could be turned into a trembling, gasping yes!
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