She didn’t say anything, just kept her hand on his, and after a long moment he said, so quietly that she had to strain to hear, ‘I remember being here … in this house … with my mother and father on holiday, just before she died. Ya-ya was still alive too, and my aunt … and we were happy. Really happy.’
Lucy didn’t interrupt.
‘My father had met my mother when he’d come here on a day-trip with some friends. They were typical Athenians—cocky, arrogant, rich … But he saw her, and within a month he’d taken her back to Athens to be his wife.’
‘He must have loved her a great deal.’
Ari jerked his head to look down at Lucy. She felt tension spike in his form as if he’d just realised that he’d spoken out loud and had a witness.
‘Loved her so much that after she died he married again within the year? Please. My father left me here with my grandmother, and the next time I remember seeing him he had Helen Savakis with him. His new wife.’ His lip curled. ‘She convinced him to send me to boarding school, where I was conveniently out of the way, so that she could have her own son and raise him to be my father’s golden child.’
Lucy’s shock at Helen’s cold-hearted ruthlessness was palpable. ‘But your father left everything to you …?’
Ari nodded, looking back out to sea. ‘Which is why Anatolios hates me and Helen despises me even more now than she did when I was a child. She hates the fact that she needs me for her security. She hates the fact that I’m not in Athens, where she can try to make me marry a woman of her choosing to control me even more …’
Lucy winced reflexively at his mention of marriage and remembered his caustic response to Helen’s obvious fear that what was between them might be serious. She guessed in that moment that Ari’s memory of this place and that time when his parents were together ran deep for a reason. If they’d had a halcyon time here, only for his mother to die so suddenly and his father disappear, it must have been heartbreakingly confusing for a small child. How would someone so tiny make any sense of loving a place when it was also the scene of such sorrow?
But from the sounds of it, if his father had been a successful young man, with the world at his feet, it must have been love for him to marry Ari’s mother, who would have been very poor.
‘I can only imagine how hard it must have been for your father to leave you behind … perhaps that’s why he married again so soon …’
Ari turned then, and looked down at Lucy properly. She felt very exposed in the face of his deep hurt and unmistakable cynicism.
‘Yes—and why he found it no chore to send me away to school on his new wife’s recommendation.’
‘Ari, I’ve seen the way a woman can enchant a man. Maybe he was just—’
Just enchanted the way you’re being enchanted right now? The revelation made Ari’s voice harsh. ‘What, Lucy? Please don’t try and feed me some psychobabble nonsense. This subject is closed for discussion.’ His eyes flashed a warning in the silvery light. ‘And you’re far too overdressed.’
Ari picked Lucy up with an intensity that sent a flutter of fear through her. Instinctively her hands tightened on his shoulders. And then something happened. Almost instantaneously she sensed a different intensity run through him. The mood altered. He looked down at her and she could see feral desire mixed with something almost like confusion in those dark green depths, and her heart ached with a mirror emotion.
The fact that she could sense his need to dilute the emotion he’d just revealed with physicality made her reach up and touch her mouth to his. She felt him tremble slightly, and as she wrapped her arms around his neck and deepened the kiss he responded.
He took her over to the bed and laid her down with a gentleness Lucy would have bet he hadn’t been feeling just moments ago. The fact that she was so aware of him, aware of what was going on inside his head, made her reel anew. His body covered hers with a delicious weight and Lucy brought a shaky hand to his face. When he turned to press a kiss to her inner palm she felt another flutter of fear—but this time it was because she knew for certain that she’d fallen in love with this complex, proud man who presented one face to the world and another here with her.
When Lucy woke the next morning she wasn’t surprised to see Ari up and dressed and sitting on the balcony. Dark glasses shielded those amazing eyes. There was a stillness to his body and a sternness to his features that told her the sensual cocoon they’d inhabited last night was gone. The revelation of admitting she’d fallen for him made her feel intensely vulnerable in the harsh light of day. She pulled the sheet up over her body and Ari’s head turned. Her skin prickled when she imagined the slow appraisal he was giving her from behind those shades. She came up on one arm and pushed her heavy mass of hair back, feeling very rumpled and lethargic. Ari had been ruthless in his pursuit of pleasure last night, hers and his, surprising her with the depth of passion he’d incited within her. It had seemed as if their lovemaking had gone to another place, and Lucy cringed inwardly now to remember that she’d been moved to tears after one shattering climax after another.
Now Ari just uncoiled that long lean body from the chair and said coolly, ‘We need to get back to Athens. We’ve got work to do and a heavy week coming up.’
Lucy felt as if he’d slapped her. Her body went cold. Boss/assistant. Back to work. Back in her place. The intense vulnerability made her feel slightly sick.
‘Of course,’ she said through numb lips, when she felt like saying something like, I never asked for this, you know, and I certainly never expected to be brought here to this idyllic little hideaway where you couldn’t contain your emotions.
When Lucy stood under the shower a short time later her belly clenched painfully. She could see exactly why he’d brought her here now: no possibility of paparazzi catching them out, no one who knew him apart from the locals he’d known as a child … no chance for her to be getting any ideas.
There was a knock on the door that made her jump, and Lucy heard a curt, ‘The helicopter is on stand-by. As soon as you’re ready we’re leaving.’
‘Fine,’ Lucy called casually, belying the unsteady beating of her heart and the sick feeling gripping her gut. His words and cool manner were an all too mocking confirmation of her fears and her own stupidity. He was hustling them out of here as if there had just been some kind of dire weather warning, making it patently obvious how much he regretted bringing her there in the first place.
As she switched off the shower and stepped out, she knew that she would have to start distancing herself. She couldn’t go on like this. She was being served a timely reminder of what she could expect out of this relationship—which was nothing but a very bruised heart.
That evening, when they returned to the hotel from Ari’s Athens office and Lucy felt Ari take her arm as they stepped out of the lift, she drew on all her strength to pull away from his touch.
They approached her hotel room door and she prayed silently that he wouldn’t try to come in. She sent him a quick glance, while swiping her door open at the same time, thanking God that her hands were steady.
‘I’m tired. I’m going to go to bed …’
Her door opened and she heard a drawling, ‘Not a bad idea.’
Lucy
