his throat, for he could not loathe the place more, but when she glanced up at him, Zander made sure he was smiling. ‘Always it was my dream to come back …’ He looked at the luxurious properties he’d had carved into the cliffs and hills of Xanos and she followed his gaze.
‘Where was your house?’ She could not help but ask, wondered for a mad moment if it was the house Nico lived in now, but he motioned vaguely to the middle of the development. ‘Where is the one you grew up in?’
‘Where the hotel is.’ He saw her tiny frown. ‘It was unsalvageable.’ He chose not to tell her it had been the first property he had had knocked down, that he had stood with the best champagne in his hand in his office in Australia, and cheered silently as the bulldozer had set to work. Knowing that his family home was being destroyed had been the only moment of pleasure Xanos had given him.
‘You like the beach?’
He saw that she relaxed a little at the less loaded question. ‘I love it,’ Charlotte admitted. ‘Not swimming or anything …’ She smiled, a real smile, the first since she had realised who she was speaking to, and he watched her blue eyes brighten, her mouth spread, and he wanted to see more of the same. ‘Just walking, thinking …’ Her eyes roamed the horizon. ‘Remembering …’ He wondered what. Perhaps romantic walks with Nico before he’d taken a wife, but her voice broke into his thoughts. ‘We always holidayed at the beach,’ Charlotte said. ‘When I was younger.’
He heard her pensive pause and let it be, had learnt so very well how to deal with women, how to get them to unbend, how to win their trust. There was none more skilled at it than he. So brilliant was his technique that it left every woman stunned and breathless when his true nature was revealed, when the man who had listened so intently, had supposedly cared, just dismissed all they had briefly shared.
He was at his dangerous best now, a small question here, an insightful observation there, and as they strolled with seemingly little purpose Charlotte spoke more easily. As a seagull ducked and swooped at a piece of paper, she laughed. Another bird joined it and then another, furious screeches of protest when there was no food to be found.
‘Poor things.’
‘Poor things?’ Zander gave a wry laugh. ‘I can ensure for my guests many things, but a seagull-free beach would be the icing on the cake.’
‘I love them.’ And she laughed and then, because it was safer than talking about Nico, she told him about her long-ago walks with her mother on their holidays, how they had fed the gulls, how it had been a great end to their days.
They walked, five, maybe ten minutes more. The beach café was serving cocktails but they walked past all that to a place more secluded, away from the sand of the beach to the rocky coves around it. Charlotte, calm beside him, was forced to concentrate more on her step than her words.
‘How long have you worked for Nico?’
‘Nearly two years now,’ Charlotte said, and he saw her tense, saw that she sensed perhaps he was fishing, but he worked carefully around that.
‘And before that?’ He tried to guess at her age, mid-twenties he gauged, which was very young to be an assistant to a man like Nico Eliades, but he was quite sure his brother had not hired her purely for her business skills. ‘Did you do business studies?’
‘Oh, no …’ She shook her head. ‘I never intended to be a PA—I was a flight attendant. International.’ She added. ‘That’s how I met him.’
It galled Zander, but he did not show it.
‘On a flight?’
Charlotte nodded. ‘I recognised him back at the hotel I was booked into—he was having trouble being understood.
We were in Japan and, unusually for that hotel, the staff member he was dealing with spoke very poor English, so I stepped in.’
‘You speak Japanese?’
She held her finger and thumb a tiny space a part. ‘A little. And my mother’s French, so I can get by there too. Oh, and I can speak a little … Mía glóssa then íne poté arketí.’ He smiled as she told him in his own language that one language was never enough. ‘I love learning languages, it’s my hobby. I’m studying now … Anyway, Nico was having trouble changing his flight …’ And Zander had to force himself to remember that it was Nico he was trying to find out about, for instead he wanted to know more about her. He wanted to know about her life before Nico and her love of languages, and it wasn’t a ploy when he interrupted her to ask.
‘What are you studying now?’
‘Russian.’ Charlotte rolled her eyes. ‘Well, when I say studying, it’s just on the Internet and I make myself watch the Russian news … Where was I?’ she asked, and he blinked, because he was having trouble remembering where he was. He was forgetting the very reason that he was here. ‘I helped Nico to sort out his flight and his follow-on accommodation and he said that he needed someone part time …’ She gave a tight shrug. ‘I was in no position to accept his offer, of course, I spent half my life 40,000 feet in the air, but we kept in touch and now and then I’d arrange him a flight or book a hotel. But when his PA resigned I’d just left the airline …’ Nothing in her voice revealed the regret in her decision, she just paused for half a second before continuing. ‘It sort of grew from there.’
And something was growing here too—how, she did not know, for her guard was up and she was determined to be businesslike, but there was something about his company that engaged her, something about the hand that reached out for her as she stepped over a rock pool that steadied her stance, just not her heart.
‘I ought to get back.’ Charlotte reclaimed the hand that was warmed by his brief touch. ‘I have to make a phone call. To my mum,’ she added, because, though it didn’t quite fit with her polished party-girl image, she didn’t want him to think she was racing back to tell Nico. ‘You can use mine.’ He pulled out a slim phone from his pocket and she was about to decline, to head back to the safety of her suite, to work out what on earth she should do, but the sky was so gold and her hand was still warm from his touch, and for reasons better left unexamined she did not want their walk to end.
‘It’s international …’ Her voice petered out along with her excuses, because the cost of a phone call would hardly be a problem to him. ‘Thank you.’
Politely he walked on ahead and took a seat on a rock by the water’s edge as she spent a moment locating the number and being put through.
It was heartbreaking. The confusion in her mother’s voice, the pleading with Charlotte to come and save her, to bring her home, had Charlotte biting back tears as a nurse came onto the phone.
‘It might be better if you don’t talk to her just before bedtime,’ the nurse gently suggested. ‘It unsettles her for a couple of hours after she speaks with you.’
‘So it’s better that she thinks I’ve forgotten her?’ Charlotte retorted, and then apologised. “I’m sorry to snap, I just …’
‘It’s so hard on you.’ The nurse was incredibly kind. ‘If she was here permanently it would be different, but she’s only with us for a few days and the change of surroundings is so unsettling, it just disorientates her all the more when you call. Why don’t you ring and speak with the staff to find out how she is?’
It took a moment after
