style="font-size:15px;"> ‘I’m on my way to the airport now.’
‘Now? As in right now?’
She looked down again at her skimpy clothes and then up into his face, which seemed to have softened slightly.
‘Don’t worry. I won’t ask you to pitch in your pyjamas. The flight will take a few hours. I’m going to be busy for a while—you can finish your presentation, if that’s what you want to do. There should still be plenty of time for the pitch. If there’s not enough time, do it after lunch. You can come to the villa. Fly home later this evening. You’ll be back at work tomorrow.’
He stepped out into the street and seemed to look over his shoulder.
‘OK? It’s the best I can do.’
‘I’ll take it,’ she said, knowing that this was in fact a better offer than she could ever have imagined. Travelling with Nikos to his villa in Greece. Lunch and then making her pitch. Surely this indicated that he was really interested in what she had to offer?
‘Could you give me ten minutes?’
He checked his watch; he raised his eyebrows.
‘Five?’ she said.
He nodded and stepped inside.
‘I’ll be right back.’
With an energy she didn’t know she possessed Jacquelyn flew upstairs to the flat, ran a shower and was in and out of it in under a minute. She dragged a brush through her damp hair and tied it into a braid. She lathered cream on her face, hands and arms and threw her favourite cornflower-blue sundress over her head. With a minute to spare she applied deep pink lipstick, slid on gold jewellery and leather sandals.
Never in her life had she gotten ready so fast. She looked flushed and desperate, but the light golden tan and blue of the dress picking out the blue of her eyes made the whole appearance somehow alive.
Let that be a lesson, Jacquelyn Jones, she thought.
She tossed a jersey dress into her bag and clean underwear, just in case, then grabbed her laptop, the folio of designs and looked around the studio. Coffee cups, handkerchiefs and the half-eaten slice of toast she had started and then discarded.
She ran downstairs, pulled the door closed and went out into the courtyard where Nikos was waiting. He stood in profile, staring at the fountain, lost in thought.
She beamed at him, carried away by her own enthusiasm and energy, but when he turned to look it was with a face etched deep with concern.
‘Is everything OK?’ she asked, suddenly stalling on the steps.
He focused on her, swept her with his eyes and then his face seemed to brighten.
He put his phone in his pocket.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Sure. All good. You look beautiful, Jacquelyn.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, astonished. Because getting a compliment from a man like him seemed to be worth more than getting a compliment from anyone else. It didn’t make her flesh crawl or make her feel patronised. And she wanted him to think she was beautiful.
How odd that she should care…
He smiled.
‘Let’s go to Greece,’ he said.
SO HE DIDN’T always make the right decisions, and extending a pity invitation to Jacquelyn Jones was definitely not one of his best. As soon as he’d taken the second call from Mark, he should have followed his first instincts and sent her a message.
But when he’d found out that Ariana Bridal was only two miles from Maybury Hall he didn’t have the heart to drive by. And all he was going to do was offer her another place, another time, and, if he was completely honest, hopefully another agenda—one not related to business.
With every passing minute he had regretted this gut reaction to those blue eyes. He owed her nothing but somehow he’d found himself agreeing to meeting her not once but twice. This was getting way out of hand.
They’d had no time to talk on the flight—he could have predicted that—and the time of this pitch had dragged on now, to some post-lunch rendezvous, every minute heightening her optimism and dimming his.
But in a way it had been a salvation having her chatting away and oohing and ah-ing about the scenery on this first journey back from the airstrip to the villa. He doubted she’d noticed him turn his head away when they neared the hairpin bend that dropped to the steep olive grove where Maria’s car had taken its tragic turn.
The skid marks were still on the road, twin black lines, baked into the cement. On through the village of Agios Stephanos they drove—it was almost exactly as he remembered, the bakers, the store, the old men who stared, and dogs tied up in pockets of shade, barking at the cars as they passed.
He pointed out the tiny old white church clinging to the side of the steep cliff, roughened with centuries of hot sun and windswept winters. His great-grandparents had been married there, and their parents and grandparents before them, but he kept those facts to himself.
Further on, faded signs sent far-travelling tourists to sacred wells, and a stream trickled down to the level of the sea, where his private shingle beach presented itself to crystal-clear aquamarine waters, and where once upon a time he’d moored his boat.
Once upon a time this had been the one place on earth he’d felt truly alive, and truly alone. It was in his DNA and it was a thousand miles from Sydney.
Maria hadn’t particularly liked it here—too basic, too boring—and he’d seen no reason to try to change her mind. He’d kept it private and personal, loving his times alone here. Occasionally he’d entertained like-minded clients who’d turned into friends, but never, it had to be said, anyone who was still at the stage of pitching a proposal.
He stood now in the library, sheaves of papers strewn all over the table. Beyond them, through the window, he looked out over the old familiar gardens and tennis courts, down to the pool house to where, with another apology, he’d sent word for her to wait for him.
The hour he’d asked her to wait had become three, as he’d rummaged through Maria’s unfiled documents, with calls back and forth to Mark. He’d sent more apologies and the offer of anything his guest’s heart desired, including food and drink, spa treatments from his private masseuse and her choice of clothes from the vast wardrobes in the villa.
Finally, he closed the door of the safe, clutching the bundle of papers that he’d been searching for. They were a mess but they showed Maria’s ownership of a company listed in Cayman. He connected by video phone to Mark and his lawyer and together they went through them word by word. It seemed that she’d bought a shadow company, but that it had ceased trading six months later.
There was no sign of any money ever changing hands between her and his father. And there was no sign of any profits, which meant that neither his father nor Martin nor
