a peace like nowhere else on earth. There’s nowhere like it,’ he finished softly, but then narrowed his eyes, shuttering them against further intrusion. So she still had that inquisitive way with her—and he had not brought her down here to this secluded spot for Alice to be interrogating him about his choice of home!
‘But that is enough about my unsophisticated life on a little Greek island,’ he murmured, leaning back against the tree trunk so that he could study the slim swell of her breasts. ‘I want to hear all about you.’
It occurred to Alice that he had actually told her very little about himself, other than where he was living. Had he made a success of the family business, she wondered—because hadn’t the company been struggling at some point? she recalled. Her eyes flicked over his jeans and T-shirt—not exactly the outfit of a rich man. Was it struggling still—and did that explain his reluctance to talk about it?
‘Oh, I’ve done okay,’ she said quietly. She didn’t want to boast—particularly if Kyros hadn’t made the dizzy and expected rise to the top—but neither did she want to play down her achievements. Even if her love life hadn’t been a success, at least Alice’s job was the one constant area she could be relatively proud of. ‘Enough to be able to support myself, anyway—and to own my own apartment.’
How long would it take to drive there? he wondered idly. In time for bed? ‘Doing what?’
‘I’m in marketing.’ She thought she saw his mouth curve and stupidly found herself rushing to her own defence! ‘It may sound a little dull, but it’s anything but—especially in the company I’ve joined. We sell health-care products—alternative therapy stuff—which is big business now. When I started out, things were on a downward spin—but we rethought our marketing strategies and it coincided with a change in people’s thinking, and…’ she shrugged, suddenly aware of the gleam in his black eyes ‘…now it’s on the upturn.’
‘Ah, Alice—how passionately you speak of this business. So you have become a career woman?’ he observed mockingly.
‘You make it sound like a fault.’
‘Do I? That is too strong an assessment—though nobody can deny that it is different for a woman. That if she puts her heart into her career, it leaves little room for anything else,’ he mused, glancing down at her bare fingers. ‘Particularly a family.’
Don’t take it personally, she told herself, but the taste of regret made her bite her lip. Just because you’ve never settled down and had children doesn’t mean you’re any kind of failure, she told herself firmly. ‘There’s still plenty of time for that,’ she returned, horribly aware that she might now be sounding even more defensive.
‘You think that women can have it all?’ he questioned.
‘I think men would like them to believe they can’t—but that they owe it to themselves to try.’
‘So you have become the arch-feminist in your silk stockings and suspenders,’ he observed drily, aware of the sudden kick of lust.
Now his black gaze was sliding down over her body, making her skin tingle with a growing kind of awareness. ‘I don’t remember you being quite so outrageously old-fashioned—even in the past,’ she returned. ‘Did you turn the clock back by a century when you returned to Kalfera?’
He stretched out his long legs in front of him and he saw her shift a little, as if her own position was uncomfortable. Was it? Well, it was pretty uncomfortable for him—but maybe that was because the inexorable build-up of desire was pulling tight across the heavy denim of his jeans. Would she notice? he wondered. What would she do if he put her hand there? Would she stroke him and then unzip him and take him into her mouth as she had done so many times in the past?
‘So have you missed me, agape mou?’ he murmured, cursing himself against the now exquisitely painful ache.
It was a long time since she had heard that particular term of affection—it was one of the first and few Greek phrases she had learned and now it took her by surprise. But more crucially, it took her back to a time and a place which she had sectioned off as being too dangerous—rather as you might wire-fence a crater you’d found lurking at the bottom of your garden.
Forgetting Kyros had been something she’d taught herself to do after he’d gone. It hadn’t been easy—but time had helped and so had practice. Yet seeing him here like this hurtled her back to a forgotten time and suddenly she found she had no defence against the flood of memories which washed over her.
They had met during her first month at college—at a party thrown to welcome the ‘freshers’. She had been eighteen and bright and eager to learn about anything life could throw at her and Kyros had been the pin-up Greek who was just starting his final year. Everyone had known Kyros—and he had been more exotic than anyone she’d ever met in the small town where she’d grown up.
His glowing olive skin, black hair and hard tall body were the dream package. And so too were his arrogance and unashamedly macho attitude. At a time when Englishmen had been trying to get in touch with their feelings, Kyros had been their dark antithesis and women had clustered around him like flies.
Alice remembered feeling slightly appalled at how obvious some of those women could be and he was rumoured to have slept with at least three of them. But she hadn’t paid him any attention—not because of some kind of sophisticated game-plan, because she hadn’t had the experience to play games. No, she had simply looked at him and decided that he was way out of her league, her experience, her world—everything, really.
Years later she would understand that men like Kyros were natural predators—that they liked the chase and they liked the new. It had been her freshness and innocence and her lack of interest in him which had drawn him to her—just as nature had programmed her to respond to his alpha qualities.
Physical attraction was one thing but Alice had fallen in love with him because, well, because he was Kyros and she couldn’t not have loved him. And for a time he had loved her too—or so he’d said. But love had not prevented him from walking away from her as clinically as he had. Leaving with a regretful shrug, which had done nothing to dull the pain of his words.
But you must have known I would return to take over the family business, agape mou. In time I shall no doubt marry a beautiful Greek girl who will produce at least five children—most of whom will be sons! And they in turn will take over the business from me one day. That is the way these things work.
No, she had not known at all—or rather, had not allowed herself. She had wanted their relationship to endure and she had cried—but at least she had stopped short of begging him not to go.
And once Alice had seen that his mind was made up, she had forced herself to allow herself a glimpse of her own future. And despite her heartache, she had allowed herself the first faint flare of hope. Soon she would have a degree with which to launch her career. She might no longer have Kyros, she had reasoned—but out there lay travel and fun and excitement for her to sample.
That her life had not materialised according to her dreams was nobody’s fault—let alone Kyros’s.
The memories cleared and Alice saw his ebony eyes gleaming in the moonlight as the music from the party drifted down the garden towards them. She swallowed. What had his question been? The one which had set off all those bitter-sweet thoughts about the past? Had she missed him? he had asked—with all the
