fun with women like me, is that right? And in the meantime there’s a pure young virgin back home in Greece, just waiting for you? The age-old double standard of which so many men are guilty?’
Once again her perception startled him and she must have read the confirmation in his face because he could see her pushing her chair back as if preparing to walk out.
‘You’re disgusting!’ she flared.
‘Don’t go,’ he said urgently as he leant across the table towards her. ‘Hear me out first. Please, Tamsyn.’
His words seemed to startle her but not nearly as much as they startled him because making pleas wasn’t something he did very often. Had he thought she would be instantly malleable? So impressed by this introduction to a very different and glamorous kind of world, that she would leap at whatever he asked of her? Yes, he probably had thought exactly that. His lips flattened. How wrong he had been.
‘What’s there to hear?’ she demanded.
‘You said I was born wealthy but that certainly wasn’t the case.’
‘You mean you were born poor?’ she questioned disbelievingly.
‘Not poor but something in between. What is it they say? Asset rich, cash poor.’ He met the question in her eyes and shrugged. ‘My father inherited an island, a very beautiful island, called Prassakri. He was born there. Grew up there. Generations of his family lived and died there.’ His voice tailed off as he recalled the story of how fortunes could wax, then wane without warning. ‘Once many people inhabited that place, with enough work for all but gradually the work dried up and the young men began to leave, my father among them. Fortunately he had enough money to buy agricultural land on the mainland in Thessaly and for a while he was successful. But then came the drought, the worst drought the region had ever seen...’
His paused for a moment and she sat forward, genuine interest lighting up her freckled face. ‘Go on,’ she urged.
He grimaced. ‘My father lost everything. And more. What the drought and resultant fires didn’t take, bad investments soon took care of the rest. From being affluent, suddenly there wasn’t enough food on the table. My mother took it badly.’
‘How badly?’ she questioned, her eyes narrowing.
‘Badly enough.’ He shut down her question sharply. Because he’d never talked about this with anyone. There hadn’t really been the need to resurrect the pain and the discontent. Until now. ‘The atmosphere of blame and recrimination in the house was unbearable,’ he remembered suddenly, as he recalled walking into the house and seeing his mother’s cold face and icy demeanour. ‘My father was forced to sell the island to a neighbour and although it broke his heart to do so, he vowed that one day he would buy it back, because the bones of his ancestors are buried on that island and that means a great deal to a Greek.’
He took another mouthful of wine. ‘Soon after that, land prices began rocketing and the purchase of Greek islands became beyond of the reach of most people. I could see my father’s increasing powerlessness as he sensed the opportunity to buy back Prassakri slipping away from him. But his neighbour had a daughter—an only daughter—who just happened to be very beautiful. And I had just won a scholarship to an American college. It was a pretty big deal at the time and I was seen as someone who would one day make good. And that was when the neighbour made my father the offer.’
‘What offer?’ she breathed, her green eyes huge, her expression rapt.
‘That if I were to marry Sofia, then he would allow my father to buy back the island at the original price.’
‘And you agreed?’ she breathed.
The facts when recounted now sounded like an extreme reaction but Xan recalled vividly that the offer had made perfect sense at the time. Hadn’t he agreed in an attempt to bring about some sort of peace to his damaged family? To stop his mother haranguing his father with her bitter lament? ‘I didn’t marry you in order to end up a pauper.’
‘I was nineteen,’ he said harshly. ‘And it didn’t seem real at the time. Sofia was a sweet young girl who would make any man a good wife, and if it meant the end to my father’s heartache, then why wouldn’t I agree? With one stroke I could restore the pride which was so important to him and maybe stop my mother from withdrawing more and more.’
‘Yes, I know—but even so.’ Sitting back in her chair with her hair looking like living flame in the candlelight, she threw him a perplexed look. ‘It seems very extreme.’
‘To be honest, I thought that Sofia would back out of the offer before I did,’ he said, he said with a shrug. ‘That she would fall in love and want to marry someone else.’
‘But that didn’t happen?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘It didn’t happen. I tried to convince myself that arranged marriages work in many countries. That we share a common language and upbringing. And as time went on I found it a useful deterrent to the ambitions of other women, knowing I had an arranged marriage bubbling quietly away in the background and therefore was not in a position to offer them anything.’
‘But you’re a modern Greek! This sounds positively archaic.’
‘I am not so modern as I might appear on the surface, Tamsyn.’ His voice grew silky as he corrected her. ‘At heart I have many values which some might consider old-fashioned.’
At this she screwed up her face, but not before he had seen the brief shiver rippling over her skin. Was she remembering how it had been between them in bed that night? When he’d experienced an almost primitive pleasure as he had broken through the tight barrier of her hymen and given an exultant shout of joy? No, he had been anything but modern that night.
‘And what about love?’ she challenged. ‘Isn’t that supposed to lie at the foundation of every marriage?’
His laugh was bitter but at least now he was on familiar territory. ‘Not for me, Tamsyn. Only fools buy into romantic love.’
For the first time since they’d started this extraordinary conversation Tamsyn experienced a moment of real connection as she recognised a sentiment which was all too familiar. She thought about her feckless mother and the way she’d hocked up with all those different men. Hadn’t that been why she and Hannah had been left abandoned and taken in by a pair of dysfunctional foster parents—because their mother had fallen in love for the umpteenth time? ‘Well, that’s one thing we do have in common,’ she said. ‘Since I feel exactly the same.’
He gave a cynical laugh. ‘You actually say that like you mean it.’
‘Why, do people normally say things just to please you?’’
‘Something like that,’ he agreed.
Tamsyn wondered what it must be like if everyone was tiptoeing around you all the time. Was that what made him so sure of himself? ‘So what’s the problem?’ she questioned. ‘It sounds like the perfect solution. You’ve played the field and now you’re settling down. A practical union between two people who know exactly where the boundaries lie.’
‘And that’s exactly what I thought—until the theory became reality and I realised there was no way I could marry Sofia.’ He met the question in her green eyes. ‘ Oh, she’s still a nice enough woman,
