‘I meant,’ she said, clearing her throat, ‘I haven’t had any complaints about being assertive. Though that doesn’t seem to get me anywhere. In the business world.’
He drained his glass and reached for more. In the quiet afternoon, the only sounds were the slosh of water in his glass, and the bursts of cicadas through the heavy heat. The sun beat down on his back, warmth spread and seemed to soothe his tense shoulders. The world was beginning to slow and right itself. Greece was seeping under his skin again.
‘Maybe you’ve been talking to the wrong people. I guess some people, some men, are threatened by an assertive woman.’
‘Well, I can’t seem to be any other way,’ she said, walking to the edge of the terrace. She placed her hands lightly on the top of the barrier and stared out to sea. Sunlight glinted on her golden hair and bathed the edges of her shoulders; the skirt of her dress floated up in the warm summer’s breeze.
‘Be yourself,’ he said. ‘It’s working well from where I’m standing.’
She cast a glance back over her shoulder.
‘With all due respect, it’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to ask anyone to finance your company. You’ve got everything you could ever need.’
Everything he could ever need? People thought that having the cars and houses and planes was everything. Easy mistake to make but they were so wrong. He wanted peace. He wanted trust. He wanted to be able to wake up in the morning to birdsong; he wanted to roll over in his bed and hold the warm body of the woman he loved, not slide into cold space, wondering where she was and who she was with, and what she’d done.
But he doubted he would ever find it, if it even existed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and he looked up from his self-pity. ‘I overstepped the mark there. I had no right to say that. It was unprofessional. I just want you to know that I’m really grateful for this chance—I don’t want to do anything to ruin it.’
‘Oh, come on, Jacquelyn. Give yourself a break. Maybe you should try being a bit less professional for a while. All I’m saying is that I’d be grateful for your company for the next few hours. As one human being to another, the real Nikos and the real Jacquelyn.’
She was on the back foot. He could see tension in her eyes and the nervous way she clasped her hands. She walked over to where her laptop sat and moved it out of the wedge of sunlight that had crept onto the table. Then she closed the lid halfway.
‘Well, the thought of spending time here… Who wouldn’t want to do that? I mean, it’s gorgeous, and I haven’t had a holiday in four years, but…’
‘There’s a “but”?’
‘But can I get your word that the pitch will definitely go ahead?’ she said, her hands clasped in front of her chest.
‘The pitch will definitely go ahead,’ he repeated, nodding. ‘Come hell or high water, you’ll get your chance to talk about your business. I’m only talking a walk, a swim, then an early dinner. You could stay here tonight—there’s plenty of space,’ he said quickly, when he saw a look of surprise and shock sweep over her face. ‘Get an early night and then you’ll be fresh for the morning. Pitch at nine and I’ll have the jet ready for ten-thirty. I’m heading back to New York via London tomorrow too. I think that would work—yeah?’
‘You mean stay all night? I don’t think so. I wasn’t really counting on that. I’m not really prepared.’
‘I wasn’t counting on it either,’ he said, with an honesty that he didn’t expect. ‘This is the first time I’ve been back here in years. I thought I’d hate it, I thought I’d want to get away the minute I…found what I was looking for in the vault, but I don’t. I really want to hang out, relax.’
He looked round again at the terrace, the pool, the bushes popping with colour and even the empty hot tub that shimmered in the baking heat. The olive groves behind him on the hillside, the goats roaming free. This was home, and he’d had no idea how much he’d missed it.
‘Come on. If you won’t do it for me, do it for the staff who’re slaving in that kitchen preparing dinner for us tonight. You can’t let them down.’
‘That’s not fair. That’s blackmail,’ she said, but a smile was tugging at her lips.
‘I never said it was fair. But if you want that on your conscience…’
‘OK. I’ll stay. As long as I can get an early night in the guest bedroom…’
‘Of course. That’s a given. So on that basis we have a deal?’ He laughed, and extended his hand.
‘Deal,’ she said, and as she slid her hand into his, and looked up with those cool blue eyes, he knew there was a fire that burned there, and he was even more sure that there was nothing he wanted more on this earth than to light it.
THE BRIGHT AFTERNOON sparkled and finally faded as the lilac clouds of dusk slipped through purples and mauves and came to settle over the low hills. Night wrapped warm arms around the vast lands of the villa, snuffing out everything except the sconces on the walls, the lamps dotted on paths and the fiery glow of the man himself.
Jacquelyn, freshly showered, hair long and loose, slipped into her silk jersey maxi dress and stepped out on the terrace to watch.
Her hands curled round the cool metal barrier and she breathed, deeply. What a day. From the moment the plane had touched down on the soil she’d been swept up in love for this place. The light, the scents and sounds, every fabulous aspect of this fabulous villa. And then spending the last part of the afternoon walking through shady olive groves, visiting the fabled Well of Agamemnon and sitting on Nikos’s private beach.
She could hardly believe she was the same person who had been so dismissive of Nikos Karellis only one day earlier. Now her heart raced and her stomach fluttered at the thought of his face breaking into a smile, as he took her hand to guide her down the worn sandstone steps onto the baking sand.
She’d been right not to strip off and swim though, tempted as she was. But that would have been a step too far. Instead she’d kept her sundress on and her dignity intact, and watched happily from the tiny terrace as he’d emerged from the pool house in a pair of swim shorts and jogged past her into the sea.
He was magnificent. All that she’d denied herself in that flash as he’d opened the door to his suite, she’d then feasted on from the safety of her deck chair. She’d gorged herself on the rippling muscles of his back, his firm calves and thighs as he’d pounded past her to the waves. The sight of his fabled tattoos winding from his neck over his back and his chest, tracing their silky path over strong, hard, perfect muscles.
He’d pounded the waves, swimming out some fifty metres and back, making her feel stupidly, ridiculously nervous when he’d almost seemed to disappear in the foaming white horses.
And then finally he’d emerged and walked towards her, dragging a towel this way and that, mesmerising her, like a magnificent godlike hypnotist. She’d been powerless to stop herself. And that
