apparently enjoying the company of an attractive woman again.
‘He was a Spartan general. Not very popular with the Athenians, since he defeated them to end the Peloponnesian War. How did you know that?’
‘I’m just interested in history.’
She went very pink as she said this, and Lysander studied her even more closely. ‘It is a fascinating subject, I agree, but I am still waiting to hear your name,’ he reminded her.
Did she want to have lunch with this handsome stranger? He intrigued her for sure, but how did she know that she could trust him? Ianthe fretted. She was alone on this island, with no one to even know or care if something happened to her…
Oh, don’t be so ridiculous! Her own voice came back at her in irritation. Nothing’s going to happen to you other than that you might just have a good time. For goodness’ sake, Ianthe, live a little! That last was Polly’s voice. How many times had her wonderful and often exasperated friend urged her to do just that? Especially when Ianthe had been prevaricating over some invite or social event, making pointless heavy weather of something that should be pleasurable. Sometimes her parents’ endless pleas for caution became a ponderous chain, shackling her.
She made up her mind. Remembering what she’d promised herself, about taking every opportunity that came her way now that she was miles away from the known and the familiar, she found herself giving the terrifyingly attractive man beside her a determinedly agreeable smile.
‘My name is Ianthe.’
He hadn’t furnished her with his surname so she took her lead from him. After lunch she would probably never see him again, so it hardly mattered. Somehow it would be fun to stay anonymous…to be a different Ianthe, not bound by her usual self-imposed restrictions and conformity.
‘But you have a Greek name!’ His eyes narrowing as he continued to study her, Lysander did not conceal his surprise.
‘Yes.’ She shrugged almost guiltily, unable to explain that she was on a bit of a personal quest—that she might truly be able to claim some Greek blood, except she didn’t know how or even if she would ever find out the truth about her own ancestry.
‘Come.’ He moved beside her and lightly touched her hand—not missing the look of startled pleasure in her unbelievably sultry dark eyes. ‘Let us go to lunch together and we will talk some more.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘SO, HOW do you go about choosing subjects for your pictures?’ Ianthe asked him before biting into an olive she’d selected from her colourful bowl of traditional Greek salad. They were sitting outside at a taverna up on a hill, the sparkling iridescence of the sea a stunning backdrop as two passenger ferries crossed each other in the distance, leaving a foaming backwash in their wake.
Lysander appeared thoughtful for a moment, his captivating eyes shielded from her gaze by dark sunglasses. Even so, Ianthe felt the keen scrutiny of his unsettling glance with the same stunning acknowledgement as though he was asking the most intimate questions of her that a man could ask a woman…
‘The woman in the photograph became my subject quite by chance,’ he replied with a shrug, breaking some bread and leaving it on his plate.
Her glance was drawn immediately to his lean, bronzed hands with their almost pearlescent square-cut nails. He definitely had ‘artistic’ hands, but they didn’t look work-shy either.
‘I’d been travelling around some of the smaller islands, taking my camera with me, and after walking all day in one particular place, and getting lost, I stopped at a small house to ask the way. It was Iphigenia’s house—the woman in the picture. She fed me that day with what little food she had, and in the course of our meal together she told me her life story. When we had finished eating she was curious about my camera and asked if I would like to take her picture. I said of course, and the result you see in the gallery.’
Iphigenia had moved Lysander deeply that day, with her kindness and her humility. Their encounter had happened just three scant months after Marianna had died. Leaving his business affairs to trusted colleagues, he had taken off travelling, needing to be alone for a while, needing to make sense of a world that he could not pretend to understand any more. Iphigenia had lost her entire family to illness, one after the other—her husband, her son, then lastly her daughter. Yet she wasn’t bitter, and she was utterly convinced that they would all be reunited again when she died.
Lysander had almost made his own entreaty to God that that might become true for her, though he nurtured no such similar hope of being reunited with the baby son he’d lost. That would be a miracle he found too hard to believe in…especially when he knew he probably didn’t deserve it. He had never been able to shake a nagging feeling that maybe, because he hadn’t truly been able to find forgiveness in his heart for Marianna’s adultery, he was somehow being punished.
When he’d finally returned home and developed the picture he’d known he’d captured something very special indeed. He could have sold Iphigenia’s picture a hundred times over with the interest it had generated, but Lysander had instead given it to his friend Ari Tsoukalas to hang in his gallery.
‘So you are a photographer by profession?’
‘Amongst other things, yes.’
There was not the slightest need or inclination on Lysander’s part to tell this charming young woman that he earned his main income from the shipping industry, and that that income ran into millions of dollars a year. Far better that she believed him to be a simple photographer. That would allow them both to be free to enjoy their unexpected lunch together, without all the baggage that his family’s name and wealth entailed.
‘And do you exhibit your photographs anywhere else?’ Ianthe enquired politely. For a moment Lysander’s attention was caught by the way she chewed on the juicy black olive and carefully extracted the stove by making her mouth into an unconsciously sexy ‘O’ shape, to capture it with her forefinger and thumb. Such an ordinary, commonplace action should not provide the highly provocative entertainment it did, but Lysander couldn’t deny that his groin had tightened hotly at the sight. He considered the pretty English tourist with a renewed fascination that wouldn’t be assuaged.
‘Not yet, but I’m currently working on putting a small exhibition together in Athens with a friend.’
He was telling the truth—apart from the fact that the exhibition was being held in one of the city’s most prestigious venues, and the friend who was helping him put it together was one of the world’s most celebrated photographers. It wasn’t anything to do with any kind of social nepotism, though: Lysander’s photographs had caught the other man’s professional eye when some of them had been published in a fashion magazine.
‘Well, I wish you well with it. If your other photographs are anything like the one I saw today then I’m sure you’re well on the way to making your fortune.’
She smiled, showing perfectly neat straight white teeth. Lysander didn’t doubt that she dutifully brushed them and flossed three times a day. Already he’d sensed that she was a contained little thing, the kind of person who paid rigorous attention to the small things in life…yet he’d also intuited that underneath she had a fire in her belly to match his own. A person who could be spontaneously moved and inspired, as he’d seen her that morning, would not lack for passion.
As the hot sun beat down upon their heads, Lysander fell into a compellingly
