‘I’d love to see your boat!’ Olivia said wistfully.
‘Well, come with me,’ he said, at once. ‘If you don’t mind riding pillion on my motorbike.’
She was taken aback. ‘You ride a motorbike? Did you hire it here?’
‘No, I always have it on my boat. It’s more convenient to have your own transport, wherever you end up!’
‘Yes, it must be.’ Olivia flushed with excitement. ‘I’ve never ridden on a motorbike—I’ve always wanted to though!’ Yet she didn’t dare leave without asking her father’s permission. Gerald was unpredictable; he might not approve of her going off with Max Agathios, and she might return to find him icily angry with her. Olivia found her father far too alarming to risk that. She had never learned how to talk to him, or cope with his moods, except by keeping quiet and out of his way.
Anna came out to clear the table and Max Agathios turned to speak to her in Greek. Olivia watched them both, wondering what he was saying, what Anna was answering. Anna smiled at him and Olivia thought, She likes him! She had never seen Anna smile at her father like that. Anna’s olive-dark eyes had a lustre and a gleam that Olivia recognised, instinctively, as sensual. Anna found Max Agathios attractive; she was responding to him as a woman to a man she wanted, and Max smiled back at her with an unhidden appreciation of Anna’s ripe warmth.
Olivia looked down, feeling excluded, left out, like a child at a grown-up party.
‘OK, we can go—Anna will explain where we’ve gone,’ Max said, startling her by suddenly being closer than she had thought.
She looked up, her skin pink, her eyes bothered, and he gave her a mocking little smile, as if he knew what had disturbed her and was amused by her reaction.
Anna had gone. They were alone on the terrace. Olivia hesitated, biting her lower lip, but why should her father object? He took very little interest in what she did while she was staying here, and if he disapproved of Max surely he wouldn’t let him stay at the villa?
‘Will I be OK dressed like this?’ she uncertainly asked, and Max ran his eyes down over her slender figure in the brief striped shorts, the thin yellow top. That look made her breathless suddenly.
His brows lifted.
‘Don’t wear much, do you?’
‘I didn’t notice you wearing much on the beach this morning, either!’ retorted Olivia, and he grinned at her wickedly.
‘I wasn’t expecting company. Well, come on! My motorbike is in the garage.’
They walked round to the front of the villa and went into the spacious garage, which usually just contained the bright red sports car her father had hired at the start of his holiday, as he did every year. Today it held a motorbike too; Max wheeled out the gleaming black machine, which was obviously new, streamlined and light, for easy transport on the boat, no doubt. Max picked up the black and yellow crash helmet which had been left on the leather saddle and held it out to her.
‘Put this on.’
She hesitated. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m borrowing a spare one from the gardener,’ he said with amusement, shouldering into a black leather jacket.
She had seen the gardener coming to work on his old bike, wearing a scratched and battered helmet, and laughed at the idea of Max wearing it.
As she began fumbling with the straps of his helmet he pushed her hands aside and adjusted them for her, his long, deft fingers cool on her flushed skin. The black leather jacket made him look bigger, more formidable than ever.
‘Now put on this jacket,’ he commanded, helping her into a leather jacket which was much too big for her.
‘I feel ridiculous in it!’ she protested, the cuffs coming down over her hands.
‘It will be some protection for you though, supposing that we had a crash—not that that is likely; I’m a very experienced rider, but I’d be happier if you wore this,’ he said, zipping it up, and standing so close that she was reminded of that moment on the beach when he had lain on top of her, naked, his body pressing her down. The memory sent heated blood rushing round her body; she couldn’t look at him.
It was a deep relief when he helped her on to the pillion and swung in front of her. ‘Hold on to my waist!’ he ordered over his shoulder, and she tentatively slid her arms round him as he kick-started the powerful machine. His waist was slim, in spite of the leather jacket. Her fingers met on the other side.
A moment later they were riding up the stony private road to the public road running past the villa. It was only when they were out on the highway that Max let the throttle out and the motorbike really put on speed.
The ride was exhilarating. Olivia clung to Max’s strong body, feeling as if they were moulded together, letting herself move with him, leaning this way and then that as he took the corners, the wind blowing her short hair up into golden filaments, her thighs forced against his, his blue jeans rubbing against her bare skin.
They drove past the lush olive groves which grew all over the island, past whitewashed houses set back from the road among orange and lemon trees, the dark tongues of cypress trees curling up against the blue sky. The air was full of the scent of flowers. The heat of the day was beginning to intensify now that the sun was riding higher in the sky, and Olivia felt perspiration trickling down her back, her thin yellow top sticking to her hot skin under the over-large leather jacket.
Corfu was a fascinating town, the architecture an international muddle of styles: a Byzantine church here, an elegant French ironwork balcony there, a Venetian subtlety down near the harbour, and elsewhere neoclassical Greek columns to be glimpsed beside plain modern villas. They even passed a flat green space where you could see English cricket being played, with men in white clothes running between the two wickets and people in straw hats sitting in deckchairs to watch, lazily clapping.
Corfu’s history was complex; many races had come here over the centuries and left their mark behind them without making much impression on the Corfiots themselves, who continued to live as they always had, in the sun, growing their olives, looking after their sheep and goats on the herb-scented hills, where thyme and rosemary and basil grew wild, fishing in the rich blue sea, cooking in the tavernas and hotels, cheerfully accepting the tourists who flocked there.
As they rode down towards the harbour they passed a horse-drawn carriage slowly plodding along, under the fluttering awning a dreamy couple gazing out at the shops and tavernas they passed. The noise of Max’s motorbike made the horse start in alarm, tossing its head, and plunging sideways across the road. The driver swore in Greek and reined his horse back tightly, soothing it with clicking tongue and murmured reassurance, then, as Max roared past, shouted angrily at him in Greek.
Max shouted back in the same language, grinning at him.
The driver waved a fist at him, but was laughing now.
‘What did you say to him?’ Olivia asked.
‘You don’t want to know!’ Max turned his head to look at her, his dark eyes teasing. ‘You must learn to speak Greek.’
‘I am learning,’ she said, then admitted, smiling, ‘Slowly.’
