sat down on the bed-edge to unzip her bag and start taking things out, voice casual. “What happened to his wife?”
“The boat in which she and my aunt were returning from a visit to the mainland developed engine trouble and was driven onto rocks in a squall and sank. The crew escaped, but they were trapped below.”
“It must have been dreadful for him, losing them both together,” said Chelsea, in swift, surging empathy. “How on earth did he cope?”
“The way he copes with everything. No one ever knows Nikos’s true feelings.” Dion came away from the windowsill, where he had been leaning. “I’ll leave you to finish unpacking.”
“There’s little enough of it to do,” she said. “I hope you don’t go in for dressing up in the evening, because I’m going to be seriously letting the side down. I set out to travel light.”
Dion laughed and shook his head. “We are very informal. Not,” he added, “that you could look anything but beautiful whatever you wear. With eyes such as yours, you have no need of jewels!”
“Corn!” Chelsea was laughing too. “Pure, unadulterated corn!”
“It works with others,” he returned, unabashed.
She didn’t doubt it. Given the opportunity, most would be only too ready to respond to any line he cared to use, however corny. It was a source of some wonder to her still that he left her so relatively unstirred in the physical sense.
His cousin was a different matter, she had to admit. He radiated a sexual attraction impossible to ignore. Not that it made any difference to her prime objective.
So far she had no formulated plan of campaign. The ideal would be to find some way of putting him in her debt, although she couldn’t begin to think how that might be done. All she could do was play it by ear and hope for a break of some kind. Being nonconfrontational would be a good start.
Dion was watching her curiously. “You looked just then as if you had some problem,” he remarked. “Is it one I can help you with?”
“I was just wondering whether to go for a swim before I finish unpacking,” she improvised, holding up the bikini she had just taken out. “If it’s all right to use the pool, that is?”
“Why else would it be there?” he returned. “I’ll go and put on bathing trunks and we’ll swim together. You can find your way back out to the pool?”
“I’m sure of it.” Even if it had been a spur-of-themoment suggestion, the thought of a dip was tempting. It was still only just gone six-thirty, and dinner was hardly likely to be served before nine. Plenty of time to tidy herself up in. “I’ll see you out there,” she said.
The blue bikini looked just a little too brief for present circumstances. She put on a black one-piece suit instead, missing the fact that the smoothly clinging Lycra outlined her shape far more provocatively. An over-sized white shirt did double duty as a covering wrap; it would hardly do to parade through the house semi-naked. Her hair she tied back into her nape with a rubber band. There would still be plenty of time to wash it before dinner.
Kiria Pandrossos was gone from the terrace when she reached it, her place taken by a younger version who eyed the newcomer with a total lack of welcome.
“You must be Florina,” said Chelsea, extending a smile herself. “I’m Chelsea Lovatt, a friend of Dion’s.”
“Why are you here?” The question was abrupt.
Chelsea kept the smile going. “Your brother invited me. He’ll be out in a moment. We’re going to have a swim.”
The striking face failed to relax. “Dion treats our home as a hotel! He has no right to bring people here without first asking permission.”
“Your mother didn’t seem to mind,” Chelsea felt bound to respond, and saw the other’s expression sour even further.
“My brother can do no wrong in her eyes, but that does not make what he does right.”
Sibling jealousy, Chelsea concluded, feeling some sympathy. Sons were all-important in this country. Florina was a year or so older than her brother—of an age when she might be counted as being well and truly on the shelf marriage-wise. Waiting for her cousin to make a move wouldn’t have helped. In all fairness, the man should surely clarify his intentions.
Dion’s arrival was a relief. If he registered his sister’s lack of enthusiasm for their new guest he refused to acknowledge it.
“I’ll race you six lengths of the pool,” he challenged Chelsea, having already sampled her prowess in the water. “And this time I will win!”
Laughing, she slid out of the white shirt and kicked off her sandals, then followed him to the pool-end to pose with him in the classic position. They entered the water in perfect unison, surfacing within seconds of each other and striking out powerfully.
Chelsea had given up competitive swimming on leaving school, but she had kept up the practice because it was one of the best ways of keeping fit. She had little difficulty keeping pace with Dion over the first lengths, and would have beaten him by a short head over the last had her more charitable instincts not caused her to lose just enough ground for him to touch a couple of feet in front. Pandering to male pride, maybe, but it meant far more to him than it did to her.
“You win,” she said in mock resignation, treading water.
Curly black hair sparkling with water droplets, perifania restored, Dion could afford to be generous. “Only just. You swim faster than any other female I ever encountered! It took me by surprise the first time.”
“I know.” Tongue tucked firmly in cheek, Chelsea made a wry grimace. “I suppose I’ll just have to settle for second best when it comes right down to it.”
She turned to swim across the width of the pool to where a metal stepladder extended down into the water, this time using a more restful breast stroke. The sight of the man now seated with Florina on the terrace brought her to an abrupt halt only halfway up the steps. It was too late to drop back into the water because he was looking right at her, mouth taking on the fast-becomingfamiliar slant as she vacillated.
He got to his feet to take a towel from the nearby rack and bring it across. Except that instead of placing the towel where she could reach it and retiring again, he opened it up and held it out invitingly, dark eyes cynical.
“Are you coming out?” he asked. “Or did you change your mind after all?”
“Coming out.” She suited her actions to her words, hauling herself the rest of the way up the ladder and accepting the towel without looking at him directly. Dressed now in beautifully tailored cream trousers and dark brown silk shirt, he was no less disturbing. “Don’t let me splash you,” she tagged on, hoping he would back off and give her room to breathe.
“Water will do me no harm,” he said. “Why did you allow Dion to win just now?”
Feeling considerably more confident with the towel wrapped securely about her, Chelsea raised a pair of innocently widened blue eyes. “Why would I do that?”
“Because of
