Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘Do you have to work all day?’ Grace tried to remove the pleading note in her voice as Odysseus rose up from the breakfast table, but sometimes it was hard to pretend to be contented when inside you were a bubbling mass of conflicting emotions.
When you were trying like mad to temper the stupid feelings which kept growing inside you, no matter how much you knew that it was pointless to care for such a stone-hearted man.
She shrugged her shoulders slightly and gave him a hopeful smile.
‘Couldn’t you at least bunk off for a couple of hours so we could go swimming? ’
As the glorious sunshine dappled over his powerful body, he gave her that look she knew so well.
Slightly regretful and slightly resigned.
As if he could do nothing about the many work-related demands on his precious time, despite being the boss of a massive global business.
‘You know I can’t. There are a dozen things I must do before we leave for Tuloranka and, unfortunately, these are things I don’t really want to delegate.
Now come here, poulaki mou , and kiss me before I go. ’
She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t his little bird .
She was his wife, and she was becoming increasingly frustrated.
Not sexually. Oh, no. She certainly had no complaints in that department.
How could she when she melted with intoxicating pleasure whenever he so much as laid a finger on her?
It was everything else. But she raised her face to his all the same, while he planted a lingering kiss on her lips and told her he would see her later.
As she watched him walk across the beautiful grounds towards his office, she acknowledged a certainty which was growing by the day.
That there were always serpents in paradise.
Always.
Putting the spoon back in the jar of honey, Grace stared out at the unremittingly blue sea.
Not that she had anything against the island of Kosmima itself.
Her view that this was the prettiest place she’d ever seen remained constant—and if there was a nicer spot to sit eating your breakfast, she couldn’t imagine it.
And who in their right mind would turn up their nose at the massive infinity pool, stunning grounds and endless beaches of fine sand so close to Odysseus’s sprawling villa?
Throw into the mix a massive library, a friendly housekeeper who would rustle up anything Grace wanted, no matter how many times she protested that she was perfectly capable of doing it herself, and it felt as if she were staying in a five-star luxury resort.
On her own.
Once again she was the recipient of someone else’s wealth and once again she was nothing but a kind of functionary…only this time she wasn’t a servant, but a makeshift wife.
It didn’t help that she couldn’t drive and although her husband had put his chauffeur at her disposal, she hadn’t taken him up on the offer. She didn’t want to be driven around, sitting like a lemon in the back seat, like some bizarre curiosity as the powerful car moved through the countryside.
She didn’t seem to know who she was any more. She was no longer a rich man’s housekeeper, but she didn’t feel much like a wife either. In fact, she didn’t feel like a wife at all.
Because things had changed between her and Odysseus. He had become increasingly distant since the night of their wedding and she wasn’t sure how to fix it .
This was supposed to be a brief honeymoon before they flew out to Tuloranka, but she’d scarcely seen her husband.
Stirring some sugar into her coffee, she willed the stupid lump in her throat to subside.
Had she expected marriage to bring them closer?
Guilty. But there were plenty of other crimes she could add to her charge sheet of unrealistic expectations.
Despite all her best intentions, she knew perfectly well that she’d fallen for him.
But was that so very surprising? It wasn’t as if she was in a club of one, was it?
Not if you read the reports of women who’d been smitten with the Greek billionaire in the past.
He’d explicitly warned her that he didn’t do love, but Grace had chosen to blot out those warnings.
Secretly, she had hoped for more. When he’d told her about his awful childhood, her heart had melted like butter.
His bitter disclosure had given her a glimmer of hope that their relationship had the ability to deepen and she’d been longing to show him some of the affection he’d grown up without.
But she hadn’t got the chance, because his emotional retreat from her had been immediate and almost tangible.
Was he regretting having let his guard down during his bitter revelation about his early years?
Was that why he closeted himself away in his office day after day, making it very clear that her presence in his private lair was unwelcome?
She’d learnt that any attempts to entice him away from his busy schedule were doomed to failure, so that in the end she’d given up trying.
At first she had consoled herself with the knowledge that he would always appear by late afternoon, giving them time for a blissful bout of sex before early-evening drinks.
Afterwards, they would dine by candlelight on the sunset terrace and she guessed that, to an observer, everything must have looked just fine.
Sometimes, she even managed to convince herself it was fine.
His quickness of mind and rare flashes of humour continued to captivate her and his capacity for physical pleasure remained undiminished.
He could dissolve her doubts and uncertainties with a single kiss and sometimes, in those moments, she was certain that she loved him.
But those kind of thoughts were dangerous.
Wouldn’t he be horrified if he knew? Of course he would.
And the longer this went on, the more she would lose her own identity—hankering after a man who seemed determined to push her away.
More than that, she was lonely. At least in Venice she’d had her friends and the familiarity of a city she’d known most of her life, even if she had been working for the boss from hell.
But this loneliness was different. It went bone-deep.
She forced herself to read books from the vast library and made serious inroads into learning Greek—sometimes helped by Marinos, who would practise his English on her.
Odysseus had employed a female coach to help improve her swimming technique and every morning she used the vast pool, getting more proficient and fitter than she’d been in years.
But there was only so much displacement activity you could engage in before your head started wanting to explode.
Finishing her coffee, she went up to their room, where the bed had already been made—the pristine new sheets giving no sign of the previous night’s passion.
She thought of the way he held her every night.
The way he drove into her and buried his face in her hair when it was over, his breathing harsh until he had steadied it enough to whisper her name in a way which made her heart clench.
Wasn’t it all too easy to feel that she meant something to him in those moments?
That she was more than just a convenient wife—a tick on the list of requirements for a successful man?
But those longings never lasted—they were banished by the sight of the now-familiar mask Odysseus put on as he got dressed each morning, the stony perfection of his features making him resemble a gorgeous stranger.
This morning, even the vast garden was making her feel claustrophobic and suddenly Grace knew she had to get away from the villa before she drove herself crazy.
Cramming on the straw hat which Sofia had gifted her as a wedding present, she prepared for a walk—sensibly covering her shoulders in a cap-sleeved cotton dress before running downstairs to ask Evangelia for some water.
‘The master, he knows you are going out?’ the housekeeper questioned doubtfully.
The master! An infuriating and outdated description, but not as infuriating as the illicit thrill of pleasure it triggered, as Grace acknowledged its implications of dominance and power.
Resisting the impulse to enquire whether she needed the Greek billionaire’s permission to actually leave the building, Grace shook her head.
‘He’s busy working,’ she said, taking the flask of chilled water Evangelia held out to her, unable to iron the sarcasm from her voice as Gouri the cat arched her back and hissed at her. ‘And I’d hate to disturb him.’
But a few minutes of brisk walking soon calmed her ruffled senses and she found her mood automatically lifted by the beauty of the island as she got further away from the villa.
The sky was blue and the sea even bluer, glittering like dark sapphires beneath the beat of the sun.
She didn’t see another soul as she made steady progress along the cliff path and as the sun rose higher, she was cheered by the sight of a small harbour in the distance.
Carefully, she began to pick her way towards it, down a winding path edged with an abundance of wild flowers.