she must have nodded off to sleep. He was about to get up and cover her with one of her shawls when her eyes opened, as clear and focused as ever.
‘Is she beautiful?’
Sebastian’s gut tightened. Resistance hardened in him to the notion of Ariadne Giorgias’s beauty. He opened his mouth to growl something, but nothing would come. Anyway, the less said the better. Regardless of how he felt, whatever he said now could come back to haunt him.
‘Do women have to be beautiful, Yiayia?’ he hedged. ‘Wasn’t there an entire generation of women who rebelled against that notion?’
The old lady made an amused grimace. ‘They usually are, though, aren’t they, glikia-mou? To the men who love them. A man needs something lovely to rest his eyes on.’
Again, he guessed she was thinking of Esther. And it was true he’d loved her as much as it was possible for a man to love a woman. People in his family rarely made reference to her now, not wanting to remind him of the bad times, all the losing battles with hope after each bout of surgery, the radiation treatment, the nightmare of chemo.
Even after three years they were still exquisitely careful of his feelings, even Yiayia, tiptoeing around him on the subject, as if his marriage were a sacred area too painful for human footsteps.
Sometimes he wished they could forget about all that and remember his wife as the person she’d been. He still liked to think of those easy-going, happy days, before he and Esther were married, before he’d started Celestrial.
A stab of the old remorse speared through him. If only he’d spared her more of his time. In those early days of the company…
With an effort he thrust aside the useless self-recrimination, thoughts that still had the power to gut him. Too late for regrets, now he’d lost her.
No one would ever replace her in his heart, but often he was conscious of a hollowness that his work, exciting and challenging as it was, didn’t fill. He hardly spent any time at home now, even sleeping on the settee in his office at times. He could imagine his parents’ amazement if he ended up marrying this Greek woman, after they’d long since given up hope and become inured to the prospect of his ongoing singularity.
The reality was, he might as well admit it, one way or another a man still needed a woman. Somehow, against his will, against all that he held decent, meeting Ariadne Giorgias in the flesh had roused that sleeping dragon in him.
Though she wasn’t his choice, she was no less lovely than any of the women he knew. If he’d met her at some other point in time, he might even have felt attracted. But…
Resistance clenched inside him like a fist. He wasn’t the man to be coerced.
He became aware of Yiayia’s thoughtful scrutiny. What was it she’d asked? Beautiful. Was she?
‘She probably is,’ he conceded drily. ‘To anyone who cares for her type.’
‘What type is that?’ Yiayia enquired.
Defensive, scared, fragile. Pretty. Sexy.
CHAPTER THREE
MIDWAY through winding her hair into a coil, Ariadne’s hand stilled. What had Sebastian Nikosto meant by ‘a start’? And how much of a start? Surely he wouldn’t expect to kiss her. Or worse.
She remembered his cool, masculine mouth, the seductive blue-black shadow on his handsome jaw, and felt a rush in her blood. Panic, that was what it must have been, combined with a fiery inner disturbance to do with how little she’d eaten since she’d boarded the plane.
The man had revealed himself as a barracuda. Her feminine instincts told her he might want to try something, but she’d just have to hold him off. That shouldn’t be so hard, given how much he’d disliked her at first sight.
She’d managed to hold Demetri at bay for months, even though they’d been engaged and she’d believed herself in love. She made a wry grimace at herself. What a fool she’d been.
Afterwards, Thea had hinted that that might have been where she’d gone wrong with her ex-fiancé, but Ariadne knew better. It was because he’d had the mistress that Demetri hadn’t been concerned about making love to her.
And everyone knew that like or dislike didn’t necessarily have much to do with a man’s sexual desires. Take Demetri’s case. He’d made love to people he didn’t even know. And she’d been such a contemptible pushover, believing his lies every time, doubting the evidence her close friends had tried to give her. Making excuses for his lack of interest in her, because she’d wanted to believe it was all fine and everything was as it appeared. Until she’d gone for lunch at that Athens restaurant and seen him there with his girlfriend.
It had still taken her days to accept the reality, but she’d never be so naive again.
It would hardly make sense if Sebastian Nikosto wanted to kiss her, after the things he’d said, but nothing about this whole situation made sense. The more she puzzled over it, the more her confusion increased.
She felt as if she were locked in a nightmare. If only she could fall asleep she might wake up and find herself back in her bedroom in Naxos. Had Sebastian’s anger been with her, or with the deal he’d struck with her uncle? He’d made it sound as if the whole thing had been her idea.
Some aspects were so ironic, she’d have laughed if she hadn’t been in such distress.
Thio had probably thought she would suit an Australian Greek because of her Australian mother. Meanwhile, Sebastian Nikosto had taken one glance at her from across a room and had felt cheated. She’d never forget that frown, how it had speared through her like a red-hot needle.
Was it because she wasn’t attractive enough? Had her uncle explained to him that the woman he was throwing in to sweeten his pillow had blue eyes, not the dark shining beautiful eyes most Greek women took for granted as their heritage?
She stabbed a pin into her chignon. Whatever happened, she would die before she kissed a man who’d been paid to take her. No wonder he judged her with contempt. She must seem like the leftovers on the bargain rack in the Easter sales, thrown in as an added incentive. She was almost looking forward to meeting the man again and showing him his mistake. She truly was.
Despite all her bravado, the coward inside her was tempted not to keep the dinner engagement. What if she were to lie low in her room with a headache instead? In the morning, simply check out of the hotel and disappear from Nikosto’s life without a trace?
She would have to check out, anyway. She wasn’t sure what the price would be, but with the grand piano and all in the suite she guessed she wouldn’t be able to afford many nights here.
After the devastating conversation with Thea, desperation had inspired her with a survival plan. If she sold what little jewellery she’d brought and added the proceeds to her holiday money, provided she found somewhere cheaper to stay, she should have enough to get by on until she could find some sort of job. There must be art galleries in Australia. Under the terms of her father’s will, unless she married first she couldn’t inherit her money until she was twenty-five. All she had to do was to stay alive another fourteen months.
More and more throughout the afternoon her thoughts had returned to that beach
