Loe raamatut: «Consequence Of The Greek's Revenge»

CHAPTER TWO

ATHENA SAT NUMBLY in a café in Thera, barely registering the coffee she’d ordered set before her, let alone the sprawling sea-filled caldera of Santorini far below or the way its surface sparkled like jewels under a September sun that still packed a punch.

It was the three cruise ships that lay anchored that held her gaze, or, rather, their tenders, busy like bees ferrying passengers back to their vessels after a day riding donkeys up the steep steps and wandering the cobbled steps of the towns clinging to the cliff’s edge. Idly she watched the tiny boats come and go, their movements vaguely therapeutic.

She took a long breath of the clean salt air, and let it out slowly, feeling the tension in her shoulders and neck dissipate with the steady rhythm of their to-ing and fro-ing, easing the dull ache in her head she’d had ever since leaving the sterile steel and concrete offices of her father’s lawyers in Athens.

It was the shock, she knew. The shock, and the strain of trying to follow a legal conversation delivered in rapid-fire Greek, that had made her head spin. Her conversational skills might have been enough to get her through her university studies, but they were no match for the full-on onslaught of legalese she’d had to interpret, and the certainty that she must have got it wrong.

It wasn’t until she’d held up one hand and appealed to them that she didn’t understand, that nothing made sense, that one of them had taken pity on her, and uttered the words in English. ‘It’s quite simple, Athena, your father left it all to you. Everything he owned. Every last euro.’

And even delivered in English, that had made the least sense of all.

She shook her head, just as she’d shaken her head then, still battling to come to terms with a morning that defied logic and had left her reeling.

She’d entered the offices confused about why she’d even been summoned, only to exit it one hour later baffled, because suddenly she was one of the richest women in Greece. The estranged father who’d disinherited her when she was in her teens had left it all to her, his fortune, a home in Athens, a super-yacht complete with helicopter, and then the jewel in the crown, the Aegean island of Argos.

Every last bit of his fortune left to her.

And she’d had no idea.

She tossed back her coffee as a string of donkeys led by a man with a leathered face clip-clopped lethargically by, the animals worn out from ferrying cruise-ship passengers up and down the cobbled path to the crater’s edge. It was impossible not to feel for the creatures, but there was good reason Santorini attracted so many visitors. The stark beauty of the ring of islands and its seemingly bottomless blue crater, the dark looming cliffs of ancient volcanic ash with their white buildings around the crater’s rim like icing on a cake. Along with the famous sunsets.

Athena loved it for all those reasons and more, for its rich ancient history and for the elemental power of the weather, the wind so wild at times, it threatened to hurl you from the crater’s edge. As she felt now. Tossed by the winds of fortune.

She’d been so right to come.

She felt real here. Humbled.

Besides, where else would she go?

Back to Melbourne where she’d grown up after her parents had divorced, where all her school friends were, or to the tiny dot of a village from where her father had come, that she remembered only one time visiting as a child? She could go to either, but she would be known. Friends in Melbourne. Family in the village to welcome their long-lost relative. Her aunts and uncles and cousins many times removed. There would be hugs and tears and concern for how she was coping, and that would be lovely, but there would be no room to think.

And after this morning’s revelations, more than ever, she needed to think.

Whereas she could breathe here, on this magical island in the midst of the Aegean. She could think. And right now she desperately needed to do both.

‘May I?’

It was the voice that compelled her to look up, rather than just wave her agreement to share her table as she usually would, the voice that punctuated the hubbub of the chatter around her. Rich and thick, like the grounds in the bottom of her tiny coffee cup, and so deep she could almost feel its vibrations. A voice that suited him, she discovered a moment later. Immaculate was the word that sprang first into her mind. Tall and dark, with chiselled jaw and thick dark hair closely swept back at the sides, longer and sculpted in waves at the top.

But it was his eyes that hers had to return to for a second look. Dark and long-lashed, they held too much to be the eyes of someone simply looking for a place to sip their coffee, and an electric jolt zapped down her spine.

His lips turned up into a smile and her brain kicked back in.

‘Oh, yes, of course.’

He curled his long frame onto the stool alongside her, the outside of his leg brushing hers, a kiss of sudden heat that made her jump. She pulled her legs away, took a calming breath.

‘You like your coffee strong.’

It wasn’t a question.

She nodded without looking up, her fingers cradling the tiny cup. ‘It helps me think.’

‘Thinking is good,’ he said, taking a sip of his own coffee before adding, ‘But you also need to find something that makes you smile.’

She looked across at him quizzically. ‘Excuse me, but do I know you?’

‘Do I need to know you to know you look sad? Pensive? Like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders?’

She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t believe anyone was talking to her this way, let alone a stranger.

‘No,’ he said into the silence between them, swirling his own coffee in his big hand. Long tapered fingers, she noticed, dusted with tiny dark hairs and finished with neatly trimmed nails. ‘We’ve never met,’ he said, without taking his dark eyes from hers. ‘There is no way I would have forgotten, if we had.’

His eyes and words combined so it felt like a velvet glove stroking its way down her spine, and it was so long since she’d felt anything close to a spark of attraction, an eternity it seemed, that she could almost forgive him for initiating a conversation no stranger had a right to.

And for all she knew there should be no reason to stay and talk, her coffee finished, for some reason she was tempted to linger, and experience these foreign feelings just that bit longer.

‘My name is Alexios,’ he offered, and she knew he was in no rush to go anywhere in a hurry either.

‘Athena,’ she said.

‘Ah. Goddess of wisdom and craft.’

She smiled. ‘Not to mention goddess of war.’

He conceded her point with a tilt of his head, his dark hair glossy under the sun’s light. ‘True enough, yet possessing a calm temperament and moving slowly to anger, and then only to fight for just causes.’

‘You know your ancient Greek mythology,’ she said, impressed.

He shrugged. ‘I am Greek,’ he said, confirming what she’d suspected, even though they’d been speaking in English. ‘It would be ignorant of me to be unaware of my heritage.’

‘And so, Alexios—’ She thought for a moment. ‘That would make you a defender of mankind, am I right?’

He smiled, and again she was taken aback by how good-looking he was when he smiled, his lips framed by his shadowed face, darker in the cleft of his jaw, while the unbuttoned neck of his shirt shifted softly in the breeze, drawing her eyes further south, the stark white linen contrasting with the slice of olive skin of his throat and chest.

‘The goddess of war and the defender of mankind,’ he said. ‘The world would be a safer place in our joint hands, don’t you think?’

And suddenly she realised she’d been staring at him and she looked hastily away, knowing he was flirting with her, and finding herself enjoying it, even if she wasn’t sure how to respond. She didn’t do flirting. It felt like for ever since she’d felt carefree enough and interested enough to make a first move, let alone a second. ‘I don’t know about that.’

A couple squeezed past then, an American and his wife, fresh from a cruise ship and full of excited chatter at the view, and she took advantage of the distraction to shift her chair and turn her attention out over the caldera again, feigning interest in the sideways sway of the cruise ships at anchor, and the steady movement of tenders to and fro. She was nothing more than a temporary diversion in her visitor’s day. He’d soon finish his coffee and move on.

‘I have a problem,’ he said, refusing to cooperate with her expectations. ‘Maybe the woman named for the goddess of wisdom could help me.’

She looked back at him, setting her eyes to narrow, suddenly suspicious. ‘I don’t see how.’

‘You see, soon the sun will set on the most romantic island in the world, and I am eating alone.’

‘And what does that have to do with me?’

‘You could help me, very much, if you would agree to dine with me.’

She sighed, taking one last look over the sparkling waters of the caldera, feeling disappointed now. Conversation with a stranger who made her skin tingle over a shared table was one thing, dinner was another. She’d heard stories about the men who preyed on lonely women promising them all kinds of romance, and attraction was just the kind of thing that would tempt a woman to let down her guard.

And after this morning’s stunning revelations, she had more reason than ever to be wary. He couldn’t know. Nobody outside that office could possibly know, but she’d been warned to be careful, given her inheritance, and that just meant being more careful than ever.

‘I’m sorry. I’m not looking for a gigolo. Maybe you should advertise your...’ she allowed her eyes to roam purposefully over the olive-skinned vee of his chest ‘...problem, somewhere else.’

He leaned back in his chair and laughed, his shirt pulled taut over a sculpted chest so she could see the dark circles and the hard nubs of his nipples, and she could almost smell the testosterone rolling off him in waves. ‘Nobody has ever called me a gigolo before.’

She forced her eyes back to his. He was attractive. Sexy. What of it? ‘No? You don’t make a habit of picking up sad-and-lonely-looking women in bars here on Santorini?’

‘Only the very beautiful ones.’

It was her turn to laugh. She couldn’t help it. It was a ridiculous conversation and the man was outrageous, but at the same time he was like a breath of fresh air in her out-of-kilter world. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed.

He was smiling now himself. ‘You see? You should laugh more. You are even more beautiful when you laugh.’

She could say the same about him. His smile lines complemented without weakening the hard angles of his jaw, the harsh line of his mouth had softened, his lips turned up. Warmer.

And his eyes—his eyes looked at her as if he knew her. It was disconcerting. She blinked that thought away. Nobody knew who she was. Nobody knew she was here. She’d left the lawyer’s offices and headed straight to her apartment to pack a carry bag, booking a flight in the taxi on the way to the airport.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘What’s it to be? Dinner with me or a night alone and morose and a lifetime spent regretting it?’

‘You’re very sure of yourself.’

‘I’m very sure of the fact I want to have dinner with you. I want to get to know you better.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I have a feeling I’m going to like what I discover. Very much.’

She shook her head. It was ridiculous to feel half tempted. She didn’t do blind dates. She didn’t let herself get picked up in cafés. She didn’t let herself get picked up, period. And that little voice in her head asking her why not just this one time could just get back in its box and shut up, especially given the lawyers’ warnings.

Except the voice in her head was conspiring with Alexios’s pleading dark chocolate eyes to resist arrest. Why shouldn’t she have dinner with this man? it argued. What was wrong with feeling attracted to him and actually acting on it? Nobody knew who she was, and even if people had seen photos of her in the press, she was no household name. People might think she looked familiar, but she hadn’t been interesting or scandalous enough to become common paparazzi fodder—not for a long time.

After the undisciplined years of her late teens, she’d made sure of that. She’d been cautious. Responsible. Determined to keep out of the public eye as much as possible. Which meant not taking unnecessary risks, however good-looking those risks might be.

‘No,’ she said finally, common sense winning over recklessness, not letting him argue further when he raised one hand as if to protest. ‘I’m afraid not. Thanks for the conversation. It’s been...’

‘Tempting?’

‘Interesting.’ Although she knew his word was far closer to the truth.

Someone brushed quickly behind her before moving away—a waiter gathering cups and plates, she presumed—so she had to wait a few moments until she could push her chair back. ‘It’s been lovely chatting. Have a pleasant evening.’ And then she reached beside her to where she’d left her bags. Except there was only one there. She blinked, checking on the floor under and around the chair.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘My handbag,’ she said. ‘It’s gone.’ She scanned the café, saw a man scooting between the tables towards the exit, the white strap of her shoulder bag trailing under the crook of his arm, and felt the sickening realisation that it hadn’t been a waiter or even a customer brushing past behind her, but a thief. He glimpsed back over his shoulder as if checking he’d made a clean getaway, guilt written all over his profile, and she was on her feet, pointing. ‘Stop!’ she cried, before appealing to the startled restaurant patrons, ‘That man’s stolen my bag. Someone stop him!’

‘Wait here,’ said Alexios, with a comforting hand to her shoulder and already off in pursuit, heads of patrons turning as he cut a swathe through the tables.

The waiter stood back for Alexios before he wove his way across to her, full of apologies and consolation. ‘Let me get you another coffee,’ he offered.

‘Not coffee,’ she said, not needing it. Her heart was already beating wildly in her chest. It needed no more stimulation. Her passport and her purse were in that bag. The thief had a head start on Alexios. If he disappeared amidst the alleyways of Thera and if she lost it...

The waiter nodded, only to return with sparkling water instead, and a tiny ouzo, ‘To calm your nerves’, while an American woman at the next table leaned over to pat her on the arm, tut-tutting about thieves who preyed on tourists, and hoping that Athena’s husband would get her handbag back.

She didn’t have the heart to tell the woman the truth, that they had never met before today. Because the second Alexios had disappeared, another unpalatable possibility had already wiggled its way into her consciousness, that her would-be rescuer and thief had been working together, one to distract her with compliments and meaningless conversation, while the other worked out the best time to strike. She’d assumed he was some kind of gigolo when all the time he was more likely some kind of common thief.

A devastatingly handsome, charming thief.

More fool her.

The seconds ticked by, feeling like minutes, all the smooth-talking compliments he’d given coming back to haunt her, mocking her. He’d called her beautiful and she’d been charmed stupid because of it. And suddenly she couldn’t sit there any more. Why was she waiting for a stranger to return with her purse? She should be going to the police.

The waiter waved aside the bill when she promised to return, when there was a commotion at the door, followed by applause and cheers, and there, standing in the doorway, was Alexios, breathing hard and holding her bag.

Relief surged like a wave over her. Never had she seen a more welcome sight. ‘You caught him?’

‘I did,’ he said, handing her the bag. ‘The boy won’t be bothering anyone around here again.’

More cheers rose from the patrons and Alexios was hailed a hero while Athena opened her bag to check her passport and purse were still there. ‘I was just about to go to the police. Should we report it anyway, in case he tries again?’

‘He didn’t have time to open it, let alone steal anything,’ Alexios assured her. ‘And after the talking-to I gave him, I’m sure he won’t be trying that again any time soon.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, peeling off some bills to pay for their coffees. ‘My passport and my credit cards are in here. I don’t know how to repay you.’

He smiled. ‘That’s hardly necessary. Though, if you insist, my invitation still stands to come to dine with me, if you care to change your mind?’

Her eyelids closed on a slow blink. The man had just rescued her handbag and she felt a flush of guilt for thinking Alexios might be working alongside the thief. And after he had proven himself trustworthy by catching up with the thief who had stolen her bag, it would be churlish to refuse dinner with him now, surely?

Besides, just for once it was nice to be able to give into temptation and not feel guilty about it. What possible harm could it do?

Her smile told him all he needed to know. He was already smiling himself before she uttered the words, ‘It would be my pleasure. Of course I’ll have dinner with you.’