Chapter Eleven
SURPRISE MADE FOTIS jerk his chin up. That was what she most wanted to know? Rosa never ceased to surprise him. He’d expected something deeply probing, or painfully personal.
Like what she’d just revealed to him.
He was surprised and, he realised, honoured that she’d shared such intimate confidences.
True, they’d been mainly about her mother rather than herself, but he knew they affected her deeply. It didn’t take a genius to realise her mother’s experiences had impacted on Rosa. They’d affected him.
‘Dimi’s a friend, that’s all.’
It hit him suddenly that perhaps Rosa thought he wanted to be more than a friend to Dimi. Could she be jealous?
The thought barely lasted a second. Dimi was too young and na?ve for a man like him. She couldn’t hold a candle to the woman beside him, whose self-contained facade concealed a vibrant passion and a generosity he couldn’t get enough of.
‘Come on, Fotis. Surely you can share just a little.’
Her tone was full of tongue-in-cheek challenge yet he saw disappointment in her expression. Did she think he was reneging on their bargain?
‘I can and will. In the meantime you need to eat. You didn’t have breakfast.’
Since when had he worried about what a lover ate?
Since Rosa. Only Rosa.
An electric frisson of warning crept across his skin but he dismissed it. He was being considerate, that’s all. He’d interrupted her meal with his questions.
He plucked an olive from the container and leaned across to pop it into her mouth. Inevitably his fingertips brushed those plump, soft lips and he had to snatch his hand back. He’d promised her words, not seduction.
‘I’ve known Dimi since she was a baby. We don’t see each other much but we’re family friends.’ He paused then admitted, ‘That’s rare for me.’ Because he had no family. None that he cared to acknowledge.
Rosa didn’t speak, just nodded as she covered another piece of rich, nutty bread with slices of feta and tomato.
‘Her grandfather was a good friend of my father’s.’
That made Rosa catch his gaze but instead of commenting she took a bite of her food and this time he watched her eyes flicker, half closed in pleasure at the flavour. She was a woman who used all her senses.
He particularly liked her fondness for tasting and touching. A tremor of carnal pleasure scudded along his spine and he made himself look away.
‘Both my parents were only children.’ He knew it to be true in his father’s case.
For his mother he only had her word for it, which proved nothing.
She reinvented herself regularly to suit whatever role she wanted to play.
He forged on. ‘So I didn’t have aunts, uncles and cousins.
But Costas Politis has always been like an uncle to me. My father died when I was young and—’
‘How young?’
‘Five.’
Her hand closed gently around his forearm. ‘I’m sorry. It must have been terrible to lose your dad when you were so young.’
Her eyes were stormy grey, sincere with regret, and he felt a strange churning in his chest. Her sympathy dredged up ancient feelings of loss and pain that he hadn’t let himself dwell on for decades.
With them came half-forgotten memories.
His father’s voice, deep and kind. Riding those broad shoulders down to the sea where his Baba taught him to float and later to fish.
Lying curled up on a chair in the dappled shade of a vine-covered courtyard, listening to the murmur of male voices and the quick click-click of tavli pieces moving around a playing board.
His Baba’s patience when Fotis scrambled up onto his lap, begging to play.
That was how Fotis had learned his numbers, moving counters across the inlaid board, the soft rumble of his Baba’s voice counting with him.
‘It was a long time ago.’ Yet strangely his throat felt tight.
‘Anyway, Costas did what he could to be a mentor, though I didn’t see him often.
’ He read Rosa’s curiosity but she didn’t ask, just waited for whatever he would share.
Which made him decide to share just a little more.
‘I lived with my mother for a while after my father died but I was sent away to school within a year.’
Rosa’s fingers dug into his arm. ‘That’s very young, especially for a boy who’s lost his father.’
‘It was.’ It was unspeakably hard, but no worse than facing his mother’s neglect. He shrugged. ‘Over the years Costas stayed in contact, tried to help where he could. He stood up for my right to inherit. I’ve always respected him for that.’
‘Sorry, I don’t understand. There was some doubt over your inheritance?’
It wasn’t something he spoke about but he had been the one to mention it. Besides, it was a matter of public record, if one had the resources to dig deep enough. His mother had done her best to bury it.
‘My father was wealthy. He left my mother an annuity, but the bulk of his estate was left in trust to me. It was managed independently and my mother had no access to it.’ Fotis stared at the sea and the progress of a proud, white yacht, heading for the horizon.
‘She challenged the will. She wanted control of everything. If she’d succeeded there would have been nothing left for me when I came of age. ’
‘She’d have spent it all?’ No mistaking the shock in Rosa’s tone.
‘She’d have squandered it as quickly as she could. My father must have known that, to make his will that way.’
It pained him to know his Baba must by that stage have been disillusioned about the woman he’d married.
‘Costas Politis is a respected and highly successful businessman,’ he explained.
‘His intervention helped ensure she didn’t succeed.
He guarded my father’s fortune and later mentored me about business.
He helped me make the most of the investments I’d inherited as well as building a new, highly successful enterprise. He was my last link to my father.’
Mouth dry, Fotis swallowed a mouthful of wine and turned to his companion. ‘I like the man and I’m indebted to him. He’s old now and ill, so when I can I keep a friendly eye on his orphaned granddaughter. Dimi had a difficult time after her parents died. She’s impulsive and insecure and—’
‘The perfect target for a greedy con man. Then I broke her heart by having a public fling with her boyfriend, even though I knew they were together. No wonder you hated me.’
‘Pretending to have a fling,’ he corrected.
She lifted her shoulders. ‘The result was the same.’
‘But your intentions weren’t.’ Their eyes locked and he felt that familiar pulse between them. Only this time the connection was far more emotional than physical. ‘You saved her. Did I thank you for that?’
Rosa looked away, reaching for a slice of apricot tart. ‘There’s no need.’
‘There’s every need. You brought public speculation and censure on yourself for her sake. As random acts of kindness go, that’s a big one.’
‘My reputation can stand it. Besides, it was already less than pristine.’
‘Because of those photos taken in your teens?’
For a second she held his gaze, then stared at the dessert in her hand as if wondering how it got there. She put it down. ‘Yes.’
‘Even though some of them were fake?’
Her head snapped up. ‘You know about that?’
‘Part of my job is sieving information for the truth.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t pay much attention to them in the beginning but then after a while, when I knew you better, I wondered and took another look. You were the object of a concerted smear campaign.’
Rosa blinked, staring.
‘You didn’t know?’
Her mouth twisted. ‘Oh, I knew. But no one believed me.’
‘Who did you tell?’ But the answer was obvious. ‘Your father?’
‘The first photos were real.’ She shook her head.
‘Why I thought it was a good idea to go to that nightclub in a minidress, when I had to climb out of a low-slung sports car…’ She paused.
‘The kiss was real, and yes, I’d had more alcohol than I should.
But the photos made things appear far worse than what actually happened.
The stories printed with them made them look like something completely different. ’
Fotis remembered. The implication had been that she’d partied with her boyfriend and later had sex with him in the back of a car. It had been implied that she’d then had sexual encounters with some of his friends while drunk or high.
‘The worst of the pictures were Photoshopped,’ he added. ‘I assume they hit the press after you broke up with your boyfriend?’
She nodded. ‘He wasn’t as clever as he thought.
If he hadn’t bragged about his influence in royal circles, I mightn’t have discovered the truth until much later.
A palace bureaucrat came to me, concerned about rumours that she and some others were going to lose their jobs to outsiders.
She’d traced the stories to my boyfriend.
When I confronted him, he blustered, but not well enough.
He tried to explain with half-truths but his lies weren’t good enough.
‘He’d said he loved me but it was obvious he only saw me as a means to further his career and his friends’.’ She drew a slow breath. ‘I had him barred from the palace and never spoke to him again.’
‘So he took revenge by blackening your reputation,’ Fotis growled. He made a mental note to look into the guy’s current situation and make life as difficult as possible for him. ‘Why didn’t your father help? He had the power to take some of the heat out of the stories.’
‘He thought it was beneath the royal family to sue. Some of the worst photos, where they’d used my face and someone else’s body, were taken down.
Not that he believed they were fakes. He refused to listen.
Insisted I learn the consequences of my actions and lumbered me with close personal protection for years.
After that, even if I’d wanted to have a drink with friends in private, I’d never have managed it. I became a social pariah.’