He handed her the signed contract of sale for the land that Nico wanted. He could not read her expression behind her dark glasses, but from the shake of her hand when he spoke, he guessed that she understood, for with his signature she was no longer obliged to see him for Nico’s sake.
‘Meet me.’ He wanted her now, but he made himself wait. Till he was sure, till he had talked himself out of it perhaps …
Till the time was right.
‘Ring Nico when we get back. Tell him you have my signature.’ Then he looked at her and he tried for haughty, for assuming, for the arrogance that usually dripped from each word, but instead his eyes implored. ‘Meet me tonight, not on behalf of Nico. Hear what I have to say.’ And he turned his back to her, for more than anything he hated weakness. ‘Meet me for dinner.’
He was a skilled seducer, Charlotte reminded herself. He had said, and would again, anything to get her to his bed.
It was hard to remember the hurt, though, when there was something else in his eyes.
‘I don’t know.’ She was truly scared, not of him but of how he made her feel, how easily she believed in him when she had sworn that she never would again.
‘Please be there.’
‘If I’m not?’
‘Then I’ll know,’ Zander said, and he took off her glasses and looked deep into her eyes. ‘Do we say goodbye here?’
He was choosing to kiss her, Charlotte realised.
He chose to pull her into him to serve as a constant reminder. He kissed her better than the first time and maybe for the last time; he kissed her with his mouth and she felt it with her heart. ‘Please …’ He dropped contact for he had to think, but once he had done that, everything would change.
Change can be good, Zander thought as he looked into the blue that could perhaps forever entrance him.
The same can be good too, Zander mused as he thought of her head on the pillow beside him from this night for ever. ‘Meet me tonight.’
HE WENT to his suite and waited for sense to return.
He downed a drink as if were medicine, felt the burn in his gut and waited for normal services to resume, for him to remember how much she annoyed him. Except he could recall not an instant, not a laugh that had irritated him, or questions that had irked. For the first time he had wanted to tell all to another. Still, he racked his brains to find fault somehow, to prove himself right, to tell himself that this could not work, that he was mad to consider a future with her.
But consider it he did.
So too did she.
Had there been love in those coal-black eyes—was there more that he might be prepared to give?
It wasn’t the yacht or the trappings that lured her, it was the voice that had filled her grey bedroom those mornings that she wanted to hear for ever; it was the man who had made her smile and melt. She wanted so much more of him.
She blasted her body and face with the shower, told herself not to get her hopes up, that this was a man who had hurt her deeply, a man who had shamed her badly. Logic told her that this was a man she should not trust.
The phone rang and it was Nico. She had to remember where, for now at least, her duties lay. She would enjoy giving him the good news about the land. But instead of Nico it was Constantine with sad news.
‘He passed away,’ Constantine said. ‘Nico’s father passed away a couple of hours ago. In the end it was peaceful and they made their peace, which is good.’
Charlotte offered her condolences and then told Constantine to pass on that she had Zander’s signature, but they both knew it was not really the land that Nico wanted but the brother and the mother and the history that came with it.
‘Charlotte, you know we have tried all the homes and hostels on Xanos and Lathira but the nurses here were talking and there is one we have missed. It’s in the nunnery in the northern hills of Xanos, they take in a few fallen women and care for them. I have rung and spoken to them and I think I might have found her. Please, Charlotte, can you go and find out? I don’t want to tell Nico until I am certain. Can you go now?’
‘Of course.’ Charlotte looked at the clock. She could surely do it. If she was a bit late for dinner, Zander would have to understand.
It wasn’t just for Nico that she said yes, neither was it for duty. She wanted to face Zander tonight with the truth on the table. As she walked through the foyer, past the various boutiques, she glanced at the jeweller’s, at an empty space where the necklace had been, and she actually held hope.
She was sure, completely sure, that she was doing the right thing by him, that it was the truth that was needed here.
And she was almost sure that Zander wasn’t about to break her heart again.
The driver was delighted by the blonde passenger who spoke a little Greek, but Charlotte barely replied to his questions as the car threaded its way along the hillside and came to rest at the nunnery.
There was no reception on her mobile phone, so she asked the driver to wait and stalled his protests with cash. Then she rang the bell and, when it was answered, she was welcomed into the old building. She spoke for a while with two kindly nuns, one of whom spoke a little English, which helped when Charlotte’s Greek was not up to the job.
‘She speaks of the twins all the time,’ the nun explained. ‘She has two plastic dolls that she holds and will not let go of. It is sad …’
‘Can I see her?’ Even now she dared not get her hopes up, for she had thought she was close to finding her so many times before.
‘Of course. If she can see her sons, or even know that they are okay, maybe she can go to God in peace.’
‘She’s only young, though,’ Charlotte said, for the woman they were speaking about was only around fifty, she had been told.
‘She has lived a hard life.’
It was impossible to remember she was supposed to be working as she walked into the sparsely furnished room for as she walked over to Roula, it was Zander who was in her heart.
It was Roula. She could now, without hearing a word from the woman, ring Nico and tell him his mother had been found, for the eyes that stared into the distance had been passed on to her sons, the pain in them too. Charlotte wanted to embrace her, but instead she approached slowly.
‘This is Charlotte,’ the nun explained to a vacant-looking face of Roula. ‘She works for Nico …’ The old lady’s eyes jerked to hers.
‘He has been looking for you,’ Charlotte said in Greek.
‘Alexandros?’ Roula begged, and Charlotte could not lie to her. Neither could she stand to tell her the truth, that the son she longed for hated her.
