Chapter Seven
CASSIE STARED AT her phone screen in the darkness.
She knew it was a stupid thing to do. The blue light would suppress the melatonin she needed to convince her body that it was time to fall asleep.
And checking the time was counterproductive.
She was already stressed about not sleeping.
Seeing the time confirmed how long she’d been awake.
And more crucially, how little time she had left before she saw Antaeus again.
Her body tensed beneath the sheet. That conversation, row, clash, whatever you wanted to call it, she’d had with Antaeus had churned up so many feelings, so many memories, all of them bad or compromised by her weakness.
Because she was weak.
And that she had revealed that weakness to him of all people made her feel that she might never breathe normally again. You couldn’t show weakness around a man like him. He would use it against her. Like her father, like Gray.
‘I wanted you.’
Her words reverberated around the room, and suddenly it was too much. She needed to move.
She needed air that wasn’t polluted by her stupidity.
The house was silent, but then, it was two o’clock in the morning.
Everyone was asleep. By everyone, she meant Antaeus.
The staff, including the housekeeper, Giota, lived in a separate annex.
She walked lightly on tiptoe into the kitchen, feeling like she had as a child on Christmas Day when she would creep downstairs to gaze in wonder and excitement at the presents under the tree.
Presents bought with money Henry had manipulated her mom into giving him after he had burned through his own inheritance.
The memory made her feel suddenly sick with something like grief for everything that had been lost over the years.
Her integrity. Her ability to trust other people and herself.
Her mom’s health. And of course, Henry. The Henry from before she saw him in Tribeca with that woman, when he was still just her dad.
The kitchen was dark, but as she walked in, low lights under the units lit up. She opened the cupboards until she found a glass. She ran the tap for a moment, filled the glass and then drank thirstily.
Outside, the pool shimmered like a scissor cut sapphire.
If only she could just jump in. She didn’t even need to swim.
She could just float on her back or, better still, dive down into the cool, calming blue.
Under the water, the world was muffled. Above the surface, everything might be in turmoil, but beneath it, she could press Pause.
Pushing open the door, she hesitated. The air was warm and quiet aside from the intermittent chirping of what she assumed were crickets. The sky was a dark, velvety canopy studded with stars. There was a faint glow from the lights in the pool.
She walked slowly towards the temptingly swimmable water—
And stopped.
Her breath fractured.
Antaeus was in the pool, gliding underwater.
He must have just completed a turn and pushed off from the side, which was why she hadn’t heard him above the sound of the crickets.
He was a proficient swimmer, she thought as he broke the surface with barely a ripple, cutting through the water cleanly to the other end of the pool.
As he completed another turn, she felt a stab of envy, and then a yearning not to be the swimmer but to touch the swimmer.
She licked her lips.
Even with the distorting effects of the water, Antaeus’s body was a thing of beauty. All gorgeous, rippling muscle and taut golden skin.
Her head was suddenly too hot, her body also. It was a shock to realise that she was still so turned on, still so hungry for him.
Thank goodness he was in the water. She inched backwards in tiny steps towards the door. Antaeus had reached the end of the pool again, only this time, he didn’t turn. Instead, he glanced at his watch, and then he was pulling himself out of the pool with an effortless grace.
She froze, her heart pounding so loudly that she was surprised he didn’t look round.
He smoothed back his hair, and she stared transfixed as the water trickled down his neck and shoulders.
As he reached for his towel, Cassie knew instinctively that he was going to press his face into it. This was her chance to escape…
Without warning, he turned his head.
His eyes widened, and she felt her feet root into the cool stone slabs. It was only when she heard the sharp shattering sound of one object hitting another that she realised the glass had slipped from her fingers and smashed on the terrace.
‘Don’t move.’ His order cut through the night air, his assumption that she would follow his instruction as automatic to him as breathing.
And suddenly he was so close that it made her head spin. ‘I said don’t move. You’ll cut your feet.’
‘You’ve got nothing on your feet either,’ she protested.
‘What are you doing? No, I don’t—’ But it was too late.
Antaeus had scooped her into his arms, and he was carrying her across the terrace.
His smooth contoured chest felt hard against her skin, and she could feel his heartbeat pulsing through her body. He dropped her onto the daybed.
‘Stay there.’
He strode away from her, skirting the area where the glass had shattered, and disappeared into the house.
Moments later he returned with a dustpan and a broom.
Watching him clear up the glass, painstakingly picking over the flagstones for stray splinters, she felt her chest tighten.
Her father would have left the mess for Claire, their housekeeper.
Gray had once knocked over a cup of coffee at her apartment, and he had protested when she started clearing it up. But he hadn’t stopped her.
Antaeus had disappeared again. This time he took longer to return, and she was starting to think that he had regretted getting involved and gone to bed. She should have been relieved, but she felt the weight of his absence pressing down on her.
‘Here.’ He was back, and he was holding a couple of glasses and something cream-coloured was tucked beneath his arm. He put the glasses down. ‘I thought you might be cold.’
He held out a blanket made of some kind of shaggy wool.
She hesitated. Any equation involving her and Antaeus alone on a bed under a starry sky added up to a bad idea.
‘I’m fine, and anyway, I should let you get back to the pool.’
‘I was done.’ He shifted back a step, then stopped, momentarily and uncharacteristically hesitant. ‘Stay. For one drink.’ It was another imperative but spoken less imperiously than before. After a moment, she took the blanket. Resisting the urge to stroke it, she spread it over her legs.
‘Thank you.’ Picking up the glass, she sniffed the contents. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s Tsipouro. A local grape brandy.’
She took a sip. It tasted earthy. Good for you, as her mom used to say when she made her eat her vegetables as a child.
‘It’s supposed to help your digestion, help you sleep. I’m guessing that’s why you’re up, isn’t it? Or is stargazing one of your hobbies?’
She shook her head. ‘I did toy with the idea of going for a swim, but you beat me to it. Anyway, I didn’t bring a swimsuit.’
His pupils expanded, eyes sliding down her body in a way that didn’t feel quite voluntary. There was a quarter beat of silence in which blood rushed to her cheeks. Then he lifted the glass to his lips, his muscles tightening across his torso, and now she was staring at his body.
Around them, the darkness was so close that it felt as if they were hiding together inside a wardrobe, like kids playing sardines.
The faint lap of the water against the sides of the pool felt like his gaze lapping over her skin, and she knew that they were too close to be having a conversation.
She was too close to his semi-naked body. Really, dangerously close.
Her heartbeat swelled beneath her ribs, her mind tracking back inexorably to that night in the helicopter.
She remembered it not with her eyes but with her hands.
The lightning had created a stroboscopic effect on their writhing bodies, each flash highlighting a different part—a curving shoulder here, a tense line of muscle there.
There wasn’t enough light to take in the whole of him.
But in the darkness between those flashes, her hands had traced a more complete map that was still etched into her palms.
Hoping she could defuse the shimmering tension between them, she glanced up at the sky, and wow—
She knew next to nothing about stars. Were these even the same ones as in New York? But they seemed clearer and brighter.
‘The stars look so close. I feel like I could reach up and touch them.’
‘That’s because of the mountain. There’s no light pollution up here.’
‘What’s that big group of stars up there?’
His eyes followed to where her hand was pointing. ‘That’s Hercules.’
‘Not Jason?’
She felt her skin sting. Antaeus was staring at her intently. ‘No, there is no constellation named after him. There’s the Argo, but we’re in the wrong hemisphere to see it.’
‘What about the Golden Fleece?’
He shook his head. ‘There’s Aries, the ram. But again, wrong hemisphere. I’d like to see both of them, though.’
And watching his eyes shift back to the sky, she knew why. Why, too, he had wanted the vase. Maybe even why, subconsciously, he had chosen to live near the place where Jason had set sail on his quest to free his father.
For him, Jason was not just a myth. He was a companion. Antaeus had found solace in the similarities of their stories. And it felt seismic for no reason that she could explain, and also like an intrusion. She felt a sudden panic that he might be able to see what she was thinking.
Shuttering her gaze, she took a sip of her drink. ‘Why don’t you sleep?’