Deceptive Passion

by Sophie Weston

  `Well, you ate little enough last night,' Susie said. She sent her guest a slant-eyed look. 'Did you think Miles had poisoned the food?'

  Not that friendly, then. Diana side-stepped it with the ease of practice.

  `Tiredness. I've been travelling too long.'

  Susie poured coffee for both of them and took hers to the chaise-longue, tucking her feet under her.

  `How was Hamburg?' she asked.

  `Wet. But it should be rewarding.'

  Susie nodded absently. 'It worries you that Miles is here, doesn't it?'

  Diana made a great business of helping herself to yoghurt and swirling the dark golden honey into it. `He's entitled,' she said carefully.

  `But you're not happy about it.'

  Diana avoided her eyes. Even if she knew what the truth was about her complicated feelings for Miles, she didn't feel like sharing them with Susie Galatas.

  So she shrugged. 'He's human. We used to get on well enough, after all.'

  Susie's eyes widened. 'You mean you'd go back to him?' she said blankly. 'After all you've said?'

  Diana took a spoonful of yoghurt, not answering.

  Susie looked troubled. 'Oh, God. It must be hell for you, being here with him. Look—if you want to go, I'll tell him. We won't be offended. Honestly.'

  Yesterday, it would have been all that Diana needed to have her turned round and out of Castle Galatas in

  minutes. But Miles with his damnable blackmail had effectively cut off that escape route.

  So she said casually, 'I can handle it.' She gave Susie a warm smile that was almost genuine. 'I'm going to snooze and rest, whenever I'm not working. If I know Miles he'll be flinging himself round the bay in a boat. Or running the marathon. We won't meet except at meals.'

  Susie sucked in her bottom lip, shaking her head.

  `For instance,' said Diana, taking more coffee, 'today, I'm going to lie on the terrace and not lift a finger all morning.'

  Susie uncurled her legs and stood up. She still looked worried but there was an unusual gleam of amusement there too.

  `Oh, no, you're not,' she said. 'Miles is taking us all fishing.'

  Diana didn't resist, in the end. At least they would not be alone. Though the relief was short-lived when she saw the amount of luggage Susie and Chris considered essential for the trip.

  `Good lord, are you going to sleep on board?' Diana demanded.

  Dimitri, who was nearest, looked up and grinned. He took her hand and bent briefly over it. 'This is what the brother and sister Galatas consider essential fare for a civilised fishing trip,' he explained.

  `The emphasis,' said Chris calmly, 'is on civilised. I am not Miles.'

  Miles raised his brows. It fell to Susie to explain. `Miles likes to kill his lunch,' she told Diana.

  `I like my fish fresh,' Miles said.

  Susie patted his arm. 'Squid still squirming. We know. We remember.'

  They must do, thought Diana. A momentary bleakness touched her. A shared childhood gave an intimacy that nothing else quite matched. She shook off the shadow. `Can I help?'

  `Only by sitting and looking beautiful,' Susie said generously. 'Somebody needs to.'

  `And you qualify,' Dimitri told her.

  Susie turned away to supervise the picnic basket. Diana smiled. Her jeans were new, only because she had split her old ones climbing over antique fireplaces in Hamburg. Her striped blue shirt and bright scarf came from a chain-store and she wore neither make-up nor jewellery. But she did not protest, as she once would have done. She had learned that compliments were the social coinage with which men like Dimitri negotiated with the opposite sex. They were graceful and quite meaningless.

  She saw Miles watching her frowningly. She lifted her chin and aimed a smile somewhere to his left.

  `Can't I at least help carry this stuff to the boat?' she asked.

  There was a general shout of laughter in which even Miles joined.

  `I said civilised,' Chris reminded her. 'There's a hoist to get this stuff down to the bay. My grandfather had it installed.'

  `And you and Miles rode up and down on it all week,' Susie recalled. 'How angry he was!'

  Once again Diana felt excluded. She covered up quickly.

  `I'm going to be a complete passenger. You're not going to let me contribute at all.'

  `Oh, we'll think of something,' Miles murmured. Dimitri and Chris were hauling a rope tight while Maria and another girl were carefully stowing bottles in

  a wicker basket. Clearly nobody but Diana was intended to hear the barbed remark.

  She looked at him then, schooling her expression. He looked friendly enough on the surface. But the brown eyes were masked. She knew that look. She had hoped prayed—she would never have to see it again. Her heart sank.

  And then, for some reason, she looked at Susie. She was watching them. Susie's beauty was always dark and dramatic but for a moment she looked almost ugly. Her mouth thinned, leaving her looking drained and shockingly old.

  She must have overheard Miles's remark too. Diana realised it with a little shock. Heard it and been hurt by it. So Susie must still be in love with him

  She felt a brief spur of anger at Miles. Whether the rumours about him and Susie were justified or not, there was no need to hurt her gratuitously. Diana moved away from him unobtrusively, turning her back. She could feel his eyes between her shoulder-blades, though.

  The others seemed unaware. They set off down the path to the boat, Miles first way out in front, then Susie with Dimitri and, last, Diana beside Christos. The other three talked of islands and charts and winds. She allowed her attention to wander.

  It was very hot but the others had all brought jerseys, looped about them over long-sleeved shirts. All but Miles, who was wearing the lightest of Tshirts and looked as if he might tear it off at any moment. She watched him springing lithely down the uneven path. He looked superbly fit.

  Not for the first time, Diana wondered what he was doing in Greece in May. He had said—hadn't he?—that he had been working in the open air. She had inferred

  that meant he had been there for some time. Whereas

  his lawyer thought he was in Australia on a lecture tour.

  Had something gone wrong? She watched the solitary figure forging ahead as if impatient with the others' recreational pace. She had deliberately not kept up with his old friends in Oxford, but she had read that his book had been well received and that he and Steve Gilman were being given all sorts of honours in the scientific world. Nothing wrong there, surely?

  Of course he drove himself and everyone else at a punishing pace. Diana wondered briefly if that had finally brought about a physical collapse. But she discarded the idea as soon as it was born. Quite apart from the muscular shoulders and the outdoor tan, it was no invalid who was leaping down the path like an Olympic runner.

  Abruptly she caught herself. Well or ill, Miles Tabard was no longer any affair of hers. She reminded herself of that all the way down to the boat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE boat trip was a revelation on a number of fronts, not all of them encouraging. For one thing Diana was surprised to see how relaxed and friendly Chris Galatas was. She thought wryly that it was probably because she and Miles were clearly no longer together.

  For another, she was startled and dismayed to find how her heart quivered every time Miles leaped nimbly across the side of the boat. Had he always been this reckless? She watched him scramble over the top of the cockpit in the swaying launch as it curved round the bay, and had the sensation of being in a nightmare. He never seemed to lose his balance, even for a moment, but she found she couldn't bear to watch him.

  He's nothing to do with me, Diana told herself again. She felt sick. She turned her back and concentrated on her conversation with Christos.

  He was saying casually, 'I hear you're doing up Dieter's place, aren't you?'

  The Hamburg client. Of course, she should have realised that Chris would know him Ther
e were swift footsteps which she was almost sure were Miles running across the sloping roof. She swallowed, not looking round.

  `I deal with the architect,' Diana said.

  Christos took out some sunglasses and pushed them up his Roman nose. He grinned. 'I'm squashed. But I've known Dieter Schleger for a long time.'

  Diana eyed him warily. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

  `That if there was a gorgeous female tripping about renovating his crumbling tax-loss he'd be hot in pursuit.'

  Against her will, she smiled. He was quite right about the reason for Schleger's purchase of his baroque mansion. The architect was open about it.

  `I'm flattered,' she said with composure. But Herr Schleger doesn't know I exist.' She sat back, clasping her hands round her knees and looked at him thoughtfully. 'You and Miles seem to have an odd idea about what I do. I don't dine in diamonds and satin with the owners of the houses I work on, you know. I'm just as much a workman as the plumber or the person who puts tiles on their roofs. I wouldn't want it any other way. And I've never even seen your friend Dieter.'

  Chris folded his hands over his stomach. A small smile played about his mouth. 'Wrong idea indeed.' He flicked her a look. 'I hope you won't mind having dinner with the owners here?' he added drily.

  `Since you're so democratic in Greece, I'll make an exception,' she said demurely.

  Chris gave a great shout of laughter.

  Miles came sure-footedly down the deck towards them. As Diana had somehow known he would, he had discarded his T-shirt. His shoulders were as brown as polished walnut. The dusting of hair that formed a triangle on his chest had bleached to auburn. The bone and muscles beneath moved like oiled steel as he put one hand on the side and vaulted down to join them.

  Diana caught her breath. One unprepared glimpse of the elegant machine that was her husband's body set her pulses hammering. She fumbled for her own dark glasses.

  Miles smiled at her. 'Dazzled?'

  For a moment she thought he had noticed her shameful reaction to his near-nakedness and was mocking her. She stiffened, angry and obscurely

  wounded. Miles's eyebrows rose. Then, too late, she realised he was talking about the gleam of silver where the sun hit the water.

  She pushed the sunglasses on with jerky movements, not answering.

  Oblivious of the tension, Chris said, 'Not surprising. She's been locked in dark palaces for the last year. Needs the fresh air and sunshine.'

  Miles laughed. 'Back to nature, that's what you need.'

  Chris said, 'Not too far back. You be careful,' he urged Diana. 'He'll have you climbing masts and eating seaweed.'

  Diana's confusion was under control now. `So I gather,' she said coolly. From behind the protection of her dark glasses she said to Miles, 'When did you develop this Boy Scout streak?'

  Miles eased himself down beside her. He spread his arms along the side of the boat, stretching behind her. It was the merest brushing of flesh against the material of her shirt. Diana went still. The warm skin felt like fire against the masking cotton. She felt his eyes on her.

  `Oh, it's always been there,' he said easily. 'You didn't see it in England because I don't like wet tents and sausages.'

  Chris shuddered. 'I don't understand English education.'

  Miles kicked him with a bare, bronzed foot. 'You don't understand education at all, you philistine. When did you last read a book? All you do is make money. Look to the whole man, my friend. Look to the whole man.'

  `I conserve my energies,' Chris said with dignity.

  Miles laughed. 'Too right. If your car broke down, how far do you think you could walk?'

  Chris grinned suddenly. 'As far as I had to. Shut up, you monster. And stop waving your biceps about. You're not going to make me feel inferior. Or Diana either.'

  Miles's laughing eyes surveyed her deliberately.

  `Diana's a different kettle of porridge altogether,' he drawled. 'You're just lazy. And if you aren't ashamed you aren't proud of it either. Now, Diana thinks it's a good thing to be frail and let people take care of her. Don't you, sweetheart?'

  The attack was unexpected but the weapons weren't. It was what Miles had said on that devastating last night.

  `I'm not your insurance policy,' he had said to her with that killing quietness. 'You picked the wrong man for a father substitute.'

  Even now, it could still hurt. But she had been on her own since then. She had rebuilt her confidence. Miles was not going to put her down again.

  `I thought real men like to take care of women,' she told him sweetly.

  Miles gave that crooked, mocking smile she had once feared so much.

  ' Real men like their ladies to be equals,' he said softly. Diana leaned forward casually, so that she broke that delicate friction between their bodies.

  `Desirable behaviour is spearing squid and tightrope-walking on fast launches?' she enquired neutrally.

  Even though they were no longer touching, she could feel Miles's body tense as if she had surprised him. Chris was chuckling.

  `She's right, you know. You wouldn't like a girl to play your games as well as you do yourself, Miles.'

  Diana flung him a grateful smile. Miles reached out a lazy foot and kicked him gently again.

  `You're supposed to be on my side,' he complained.

  Chris flung up a hand, the stub of his cigar between his fingers.

  `Not me. I'm a fully paid-up neutral.'

  `You're a fully paid-up coward,' Miles retorted. But there was a smile in his voice.

  Why, thought Diana, why does he sound so tolerant, so friendly when he's teasing Chris and so cold when it's me?

  Chris was smiling too. 'I initiate. I create. I inspire,' he said. 'That's work. I just don't like getting my hands dirty.'

  Miles flung back his head and laughed. Chris turned to Diana.

  `Do you like getting your hands dirty?' he appealed. `When you're consorting with your plumbers and tilers and whatever, do you take the tools out of their hands and cover yourself with dirt?'

  Miles sat upright suddenly. She felt his arm tense along the wood behind her, even though they were no longer touching.

  `It's a fascinating thought,' he drawled. 'Dirt, darling?'

  Diana didn't look at him. The endearment was like a touch; her blood leaped at it. Even when she knew it was a mockery of everything they had once felt. Correction, thought Diana wryly; everything she had felt.

  `Dust rather than dirt,' she said with an effort. Even without looking at him she could feel Miles's eyes on her.

  He said slowly, 'I thought you were an interior decorator. An adviser.'

  Diana sent him a brief, carefully unfocused smile over her shoulder. She didn't want to meet his eyes. He was too close.

  `When you're talking about restoration, it gets a bit basic, I'm afraid. More than pretty ideas and swatches of materials, anyway.'

  `You mean those palaces of yours put you on a daily rate and make you bring your own sandwiches?' His voice was full of unholy amusement.

  She made herself laugh a little. `No sandwiches when I'm examining historic fabrics. But you've basically got the idea.'

  Miles chuckled. `Do you enjoy it?'

  Diana considered. It was better than thinking about his uncomfortable nearness.

  `Most of the time,' she said honestly. 'I'm getting quite good, which is nice. I'm not very keen on having to sell myself but more work comes in these days from recommendations. And of course,' she added with a flicker of malice she couldn't repress, thinking of his strictures last night, 'you meet a very nice class of person.'

  Miles's eyes went blank. She looked full in his face and saw they had gone as brown as madeira, bright as the sunlit sea and quite without expression.

  `A very nice class of plumber,' murmured Chris, 'is exactly what this castle needs. If we entertain you royally, do you suppose you could give us an introduction, Diana?'

  Before she could answer Susie had come and claimed Miles. It
didn't seem to Diana that he went reluctantly. She relaxed her tense shoulders against the side of the boat with an almost audible sigh of relief as he went. But it didn't stop her looking after them with something like regret.

  Miles and Susie fished noisily from the side of the boat for the rest of the morning. Dimitri came and sat beside her, pointing out landmarks as they rapidly went

  past. Chris dozed. From the corner of her eye Diana watched the anglers.

  Dimitri followed the direction of her gaze. He stopped talking about the coastal landscape.

  `I think this time she's going to get what she wants,' he said softly.

  It was obvious what he meant. Diana didn't try to pretend she didn't understand. She looked at Susie's animation and thought she detected a hint of frenzy there. Diana, who knew how Miles could remove himself at a stroke when he felt like it, felt suddenly sorry for her. If Susie wasn't as confident as she looked, Miles could hurt her badly.

  `If it is what she wants,' she said.

  Dimitri looked at her pityingly. 'Diana, how old are you?' he asked.

  `Twenty-six,' she said, startled.

  `And you have heaven knows how many degrees and run your own business?'

  `Well, sort of,' Diana said cautiously. 'It's not quite as grand as you make it sound but ...'

  He waved the caveat aside. 'No matter. My point is that you have a lot to learn.'

  She stared at him. His mouth twisted a little and he said gently, 'You think you're bright. And sophisticated. And up to a point you are. But you're no match for Susie. She can't spell in any language and she wouldn't know how to run a cocktail party without help, much less her own business. But she's got you taped and hog-tied.'

  `I don't understand,' said Diana, pardonably.

  `No. You wouldn't. Because Susie is a Clever Woman,' Dimitri said, stabbing the air with his finger to make his point. 'And you're not.'

  `Thank you,' said Diana, ruffled.

  He grinned. 'It's a compliment, you know. Clever Women are manipulators. Men don't like that. When,' he added with sudden gloom, 'we notice it's happening.'