beckoning her.
Olivia sighed, but obeyed, walking across the hushed, crowded room towards them, edgily aware of being watched all the way.
She was wearing her only really good evening dress, a classic backless slipper satin, tawny-coloured, with a deep V-neck, which left her shoulders and arms bare, the long skirts clinging from her waist to her thighs and then flowing easily down to her feet. The colour gave depth and brightness to her blonde hair, matched the golden colour of her eyes.
Her father had bought it for her, after deciding that nothing Olivia had brought with her was good enough for a party they had been to the night after she arrived.
The lifestyle on Corfu had been very different—far more casual and relaxed, a real beach holiday in the sun with a party style to match. Here, Gerald Faulton moved in circles who loved any excuse for dressing up: putting on jewellery, clouds of perfume, expensive designer dresses, the women competing to look the most stunning, the men apparently wanting the best-looking woman on their arm each night.
Gerald had gone with Olivia to choose the dress. It was ready-made, but designed by a top French couturier, and luckily fitted her as if it had been made for her, but Olivia wasn’t quite comfortable in it—it was so formal, and yet left so much of her bare.
‘Ah, there you are, Olivia. I want you meet some friends of mine…You’ve heard me mention Constantine Agathios, haven’t you?’
She stiffened, her hand already held out, her eyes on the man’s heavy, olive-skinned face.
It was a shock, and yet it wasn’t. No wonder he had looked familiar! No wonder she had been increasingly sure she had seen him somewhere before.
He and Max might only be half-brothers, but they shared a family resemblance which was very marked, in spite of the age gap between them. She should have guessed at once. She was sure she would have guessed, sooner or later, if she hadn’t been told.
He took her hand and Olivia shivered involuntarily as those large, tanned fingers swallowed hers up. She almost wondered if he would let her hand go again; did he ever let anything go? Meeting those heavy-lidded eyes was even more unnerving. This was a difficult, complicated man, she thought, staring back at him.
There was something belligerent, choleric, in that face; he had a temper, from the look of him. Not an easy man to deal with, or maybe even like? A bull on the point of charging, she thought—that was the impression he left on her, and yet there was something else, a craftiness about the half-hidden eyes, the line of the selfish mouth. She remembered the angry glitter of his eyes when her father stared covetously at his wife, the way Constantine Agathios had swiftly veiled that look, hiding it away. This man was full of rage, but he was cunning enough to hide it, which made him disturbing.
‘I am delighted to meet you, Olivia—may I call you Olivia? You are very like your father. I feel I know you already, and you must be the same age as my son here, Christos,’ Constantine said, and smiled suddenly, full of charm which Olivia didn’t quite trust, although she blinked in surprise as it focused on her. That was something else he had in common with Max—Max had that charm, too, only in him it was genuine, full of warmth. She was sure that Constantine’s charm was skin-deep.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, flickering a look at the younger man. So she had been right—it was his son!
‘What a beautiful dress—that colour is perfect with your wonderful English complexion and hair,’ said the woman beside Constantine, in a deeply accented voice.
‘My wife, Helena,’ Constantine introduced her, letting go of Olivia’s hand at last so that she could shake hands with his wife, who smiled in that languid, sleepy way at Olivia, as she had at Gerald.
‘I always envy English women. They don’t have the problem of coping with too much sun, ruining their skins, giving them wrinkles and lines before they’re middle-aged. In my country, the sun is a woman’s enemy.’
‘We just have to cope with rain,’ Olivia said, smiling back.
‘You English always complain about your weather, but rain is so good for the skin that I only wish it rained in Greece every day!’
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