of what he was contemplating did not induce the remotest sense of guilt.
He wasn’t looking for a soul mate. Emotionally, he was spent: there was nothing left in that department to give any woman. These days Lysander had only one use for attractive females who persisted in trying to command his attention. Ianthe might not have deliberately come on to him like the others usually did, especially when they found out who he was, but she had confessed to him that she was unattached. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that a woman like her would be nursing some secret hope of some kind of romantic liaison whilst on vacation.
Well, he couldn’t offer her romance. But the idea of a liaison—now, that was appealing.
‘Thank you. But I have done all the talking, it seems, and I still know nothing about you. What brings you to our little island?’
She didn’t answer him straight away. It was a relatively simple question, but she seemed to be having extraordinary difficulty finding a reply.
‘I came because I badly needed a break…a change of scenery.’
‘And you travelled here alone?’
‘I didn’t want to travel with anyone because I needed time on my own, to think.’
‘That sounds very serious. So you have important decisions to make about your life, perhaps? Or am I being a little too personal?’
He was being too personal, but when he removed his stylish sunglasses and fixed her with that arresting indigo stare of his Ianthe did not have the nerve or the inclination to rebuff his questions. In any case, ‘too personal’ or not, it might be easier to share some of what was on her mind with a stranger—someone she would never see again once she left the island.
Ianthe decided to take at least a small step and reveal something of what she felt—just not too much.
‘I suppose I do have some important decisions to make. Some things…some very hard things happened that have kind of forced those decisions on me. But the truth is, in some ways it’s as though what happened—how it affected me—was fated. Up until recently I was ignorant of personal tragedy or pain. I think I needed to learn that lesson, however painful, and change my way of life.’
She went quiet for a very long moment. Lysander could see the near agony that she could not quite conceal in her very expressive dark eyes and was curious at what had caused it.
Then she took a breath and smiled, deliberately lightening the mood. ‘Of course it’s far easier to contemplate than actually do, don’t you think? Making changes, I mean.’
‘If the desire is there…’ He shrugged. ‘I think you have clearly been changed already by what has happened to you, Ianthe. You are a brave woman to embrace it so philosophically. Many people recognise they need to change something, but rarely do anything about it—even when pushed. It is too easy to pretend nothing has happened, or stay in our comfort zones, no?’
He was so easy to talk to. His deep, rich, accented tones seemed to lull her into a strange feeling of safety she hadn’t experienced with anyone else. And he’d said she was brave. No one had ever said that to her before.
She closed her lips and became very aware of the silent but strong clamour of emotion surging through her heart.
‘Ianthe?’ Lysander prompted gently, his hand reaching for hers.
Contact with his firm, warm flesh was like being seared with a branding iron, and for a moment she was caught up in a vortex of shock and heat that robbed her of speech.
‘I’m not brave at all,’ she insisted after a while, her shock slowly subsiding as she stared down at her small slender hand, held possessively captive in his. ‘I’ve been the opposite all my life. Always playing safe, always erring on the side of caution. My parents tried to protect me from everything, you see, and I’m afraid I just let them.’
‘But now you are breaking free, yes? Like a beautiful butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.’
His words caused such a swell of emotion inside her that Ianthe pulled her hand free and rubbed it, biting down on her softly quivering lip to prevent herself from disgracing herself with tears. She had to change the subject to something less personal. ‘This is such a beautiful place…have you always lived here?’
She was determined to bring their conversation back to much more neutral and safe ground. When Lysander didn’t immediately reply, but instead surveyed her as though he understood every raw emotion that was threatening to submerge her—and understood it intimately, as though he was a kindred spirit—Ianthe found she couldn’t look away from him, no matter how hard she tried.
‘I don’t live here. I only visit now and then. I have a house on the island, and whenever I need to get away for a while…this is where I come. I live in Athens. And, yes, I agree with you, this is a beautiful place. It is a good place to come when you have lots of thinking about life to do.’ His voice was gently humorous, but not in any way derisive.
‘Is that why you’re here too?’ she asked him, feeling as though she stood precariously on the edge of a precipice that hypnotically begged her to leap into space. She took a hasty sip of the chilled white wine he had ordered for them with their meal, but her hand was trembling as her fingers curled round the stem of the glass.
Surprisingly his jaw clenched a little, as if her question disturbed him.
‘No. I am here on a kind of working vacation.’
‘Taking photographs, you mean?’
‘Ianthe?’
‘Yes?’
Startled by the suddenly authoritative tone in his voice, she felt her brown eyes collide anxiously with his searing gaze, like the fragile wings of a moth bumping against the dangerous yet compelling heat of a lightbulb.
‘As flattering as it is to have a woman so easily persuade me to talk about myself, I am much more interested in learning about you than in answering all your very polite questions about my own life.’
He was being perfectly serious. Especially since holding her hand just now had engulfed him in the kind of heat that stirred the blood to passion rather than friendship. Just an hour or so ago he had been feeling angry and in despair—hating his own morose company, but still unable to contemplate spending time with anyone else. And yet now…now, after being with the sweet, sexy woman sitting opposite him for just a few short minutes, he felt more vitality throbbing through his veins than he had experienced in months.
‘I don’t really want to talk about myself, if you don’t mind,’ she replied. ‘I’d just like to sit here and enjoy the sunshine and your company, and forget about my problems for a while. Is that all right with you?’
Apart from taking her to bed and tangling his limbs with hers for the rest of the afternoon in the trapped heat of his bedroom, with the blinds rolled down to shield them from the unforgiving sun, Lysander couldn’t think of anything he’d like better.
‘You don’t ask for much. And I would be happy to sit here and do just that.’ He raised his glass to her in the semblance of a toast. ‘I am very fortunate to have met you today, Ianthe. I thought it would be a day just like any other, but meeting you has proved me wrong, I do believe.’
Feeling
