greet them, dogs leaping and bouncing in concert. And from that moment, Elvi doubted that even Xan had managed to get a word in edgeways, for Ariadne talked in a constant stream, hopping confusingly from one topic to the next. She spoke fluent English, however, relieving Elvi’s main fear that Xan would be the only person around who understood her, and the older woman was both friendly and welcoming.
On the way through the opulent house, Elvi received a stream of information. Ariadne’s mother had been English and Ariadne did not normally live in the big villa, having her own home in the village by the harbour. But when Xan entertained the wider family, Ariadne always acted as his hostess.
‘First wife seniority!’ Ariadne joked. ‘Xan doesn’t like his stepmothers much but he accepts his brothers and sisters and, naturally, Delphina wanted her wedding staged here and her brother doing the service—’
‘Her brother’s a priest?’
‘Lukas is a Greek Orthodox priest and Tobias, the other son, is gay. Not that I’m criticising, but Xan did turn out more conventional than his brothers,’ Ariadne proclaimed with pride. ‘And it goes without saying that he’s the cleverest. Delphina’s a dear, you’ll love her. She and Takis fell in love at school, almost like Helios and me... Xan’s father, you know. But of course, Helios and I didn’t attend the same school. I was the village doctor’s daughter and we met when he went fishing. Like Xan, Helios was gorgeous.’ Ariadne loosed an extravagant sigh as if she was looking back in time before continuing briskly, ‘But he was also weak and unreliable and quite unable to keep his trousers zipped. Not very good at making money either. By the time Helios passed he had even mortgaged this house. Xan rescued all of us from penury.’
‘Xan’s...’ Elvi hesitated as the eyes of Xan’s mother locked with fixed attention to her face. ‘He’s quite a character,’ she pronounced lamely.
The older woman showed the way into a bedroom where confusion seemed to have broken out between two maids over Elvi’s luggage. Ariadne smiled even wider and rested a supervisory hand on Elvi’s arm to guide her away from the small domestic dispute they had interrupted. ‘Do you know how many years I’ve been waiting for my son to bring a woman home with him?’ she asked earnestly.
‘Oh...’ Elvi reddened. ‘Xan and I are not...er, serious or anything like that,’ she hastened to declare.
‘Xan doesn’t know how to do serious. Not after witnessing the sort of shenanigans he grew up with in this house...all those wives, the live-in lovers who didn’t make it to the altar, the screaming dramas,’ Ariadne told her with scorn. ‘All Helios’s children suffered but Xan was older and he endured the most.’
Elvi frowned. ‘He lived with his father, not you, after...er...the divorce?’
‘Helios refused to give up custody of his eldest son. I was distraught. Losing your husband to another woman and then losing your only child at almost the same time was a huge shock for me.’ Ariadne paused in the sunlit corridor lined with magnificent paintings, her rounded but still attractive face full of remembered pain and regret. ‘I was young and heartbroken but I was also selfish. I walked away to make a fresh start instead of staying on the island and accepting that I could only be a part-time mother to my son.’
Elvi was listening closely, deeply interested in what she was learning about Xan’s childhood. ‘Walked away?’ she encouraged, impatient to hear more.
But Ariadne, who had paused on the threshold of a much larger and more magnificent bedroom than she had previously shown to Elvi, was no longer looking at her. She was studying her son and she addressed him in Greek, her attitude one of humour while Xan stood there, his tall, powerful figure rigid, his bronzed face impassive, responding to the older woman with a non-committal shrug that nonetheless telegraphed a temper on a short fuse to Elvi’s increasingly observant eyes. Faint dark colour edged his killer cheekbones, a gleam of hot gold brightening his gaze.
‘I will leave you with your...friend.’ Xan’s mother laughed in emphasis, standing back as Elvi’s cases were brought in. ‘Dinner is in an hour.’
Xan strode out onto the balcony that overlooked the sea. The Aegean Sea, almost as blue as Elvi’s eyes, he brooded grimly, exasperated by his mother’s infantile game-playing.
‘So...’ Elvi hovered uncertainly by the glass doors. ‘What was that all about?’
Xan swung back, lithe as a jungle predator and as immaculate as he had been at dawn that morning, shirt still crisp and white, tie still straight. No, he badly needed a shave, she noted with relief, grateful he wasn’t quite perfect when the linen sundress she had worn from travelling was as creased as though she had slept in it and bore a coffee stain.
‘I haven’t brought a woman to the island with me before.’
‘I know. Your mother said.’
‘To prevent her from reading too much into your visit, I said you were just a friend—’
‘I said we weren’t serious,’ Elvi hastened to add.
‘But Ariadne called my bluff,’ Xan admitted, his beautiful stubborn mouth curling with annoyance. ‘She put you in another room and naturally I countermanded that instruction.’
Elvi inwardly cringed and her cheeks reddened with embarrassment. In a household with other guests, all of them presumably Xan’s relatives, staying in his room put her under the spotlight more than she would’ve liked, had she had a choice. And she didn’t have a choice, she reminded herself ruefully.
‘Ariadne’s desperate for me to get married and produce grandchildren for her,’ Xan revealed in an aggrieved undertone. ‘But I’m nowhere near ready for that step.’
Elvi shrugged a stiff shoulder. ‘Well, I imagine you’ll do exactly as you like anyway and she knows that.’
Always throwing oil on troubled waters, that was Elvi, Xan noted, and it was a novel approach to a man quick to impatience and anger, but rather soothing to be around, if you needed to be handled as though you were an unstable explosive device. Was that how she saw him? To his own surprise, he asked her that question.
‘Well, you’re naturally intolerant,’ Elvi pointed out almost apologetically, as if the unlovely trait of intolerance could not possibly be his own fault. ‘You are very precise in your expectations and accustomed to other people meeting those expectations, either because you’re paying them to do so or because you’re used to people going out of their way to please you.’
‘Both,’ Xan agreed, impressed by her honesty and her tact. He didn’t think he had ever been insulted or criticised so politely. ‘Are you planning to go out of your way to please me any time soon?’
Elvi stiffened, her cheeks flushing, her mouth compressing. ‘Probably not.’
Xan swung away to hide his smile because she would assume he was laughing at her and he wasn’t. She was teaching him almost as much as he was teaching her and by the time she learned and accepted that sex was merely sex, he would probably be bored, he told himself stubbornly, striving to ignore the reality that simply the thought of getting her into the same bed at the end of the tedious evening ahead sent a throbbing, stabbing pulse of raw erotic craving through him. She would have an enjoyable holiday on Thira and then he would send her home. She would be restored to happy-clappy positivity, merely a little less innocent and the sordid aspects of their original arrangement would be tidily airbrushed over into something more
