Chapter Five
‘WHY SANTORINI?’
Cassie wondered if she could ignore the question. Ares had insisted on coming with her onto the island. He’d seemed almost eager to get off the boat. She was regretting saying they’d walk the famous almost six hundred steps up from the old port to Fira instead of taking the cable car.
They’d docked the tender at the port. Donkeys meandered up and down the steps carrying luggage and, sometimes, people. One passed her by now with a tourist on its back. Cassie felt sorry for the poor donkey.
She glanced at the man who was keeping pace beside her easily.
She noted there wasn’t a hint of perspiration or exertion on his face, when hers felt as if it were about to melt off under the seam of the baseball cap she was wearing for protection from the late afternoon sun as much to hide her identity.
She’d changed out of the cut-off shorts and T-shirt into loose linen trousers and a sleeveless V-necked silk top. A bag containing water and other essentials was slung across her body.
‘Because I’ve never been and I’ve heard the sunset viewed from Oia is spectacular.’
‘It’s just a sunset.’
Cassie stopped near the top—mercifully—and looked at him. ‘Are you always this grumpy or is it my unique effect on you?’ she asked and smiled sweetly.
He just scowled behind his dark shades that made him look like a movie star.
After Cassie had unpacked earlier and returned up top on the boat, Ares had gone down into the cabin with his bag.
She’d called after him with only a modicum of sarcasm, ‘Feel free to use one of the rooms at the stern of the boat.’
He hadn’t answered. But he had changed into a white short-sleeved polo shirt that made him look even darker and only emphasised his outsize muscles.
It wasn’t just the climb up from the port that made her breathless. She went back to climbing the last steps and said, ‘If you don’t want to be here so badly why don’t you send someone else? Maybe they’ll be a bit more excited about a sunset.’
Cassie had more or less resigned herself to the fact that she would be shadowed for this trip, whether she liked it or not. She didn’t fancy her chances of evading Ares or one of his staff, after reading about him and his company.
‘All my staff are busy on assignment.’
Cassie sent Ares a look. ‘No doubt protecting far more worthy clients.’
He seemed to stiffen. ‘I never said you weren’t worthy.’
‘You didn’t have to,’ Cassie said without any rancour. She was actually finding it quite refreshing being around someone who wasn’t overly obsequious. Or who she felt she needed to keep happy.
They were at the top of the steps now and Cassie saw a bus being loaded up with Oia in the window. She was heading for it when a hand—a large hand—wrapped around her bare upper arm. An electrical charge jolted through her body. She stopped and looked at Ares.
He said, ‘Where are you going?’
‘Taking the bus to Oia. It’s the best place to see the sun set.’
He shook his head. ‘No, we’ll take a cab.’ He was all but herding her to the taxi rank nearby and within a nanosecond she was installed in the back seat with him alongside her, one long muscled thigh far too close for comfort.
He was giving instructions to the driver in Greek and then the car was on the move.
A little stunned at the speed with which the man moved for someone so big and imposing, Cassie said churlishly, ‘This is my trip.’
‘And you’re my responsibility. When we’re off the boat, I’ll dictate the modes of transport.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Cassie said under her breath.
But obviously not far enough under because he said, ‘That’s more like it.’
She looked at him but his face was turned away towards his window. She could have sworn she saw the faintest upturn of one side of his mouth and that sent a wave of heat undulating through her body.
Disgusted with herself for being so weak and susceptible to a pretty face and a few bulging muscles, she looked out of her own window.
‘This place is like a theme park.’
The words were gritted out from above Cassie’s shoulder.
She’d taken off her baseball cap and it hung from the strap of her bag.
Her hair was pulled back and she was wearing shades.
She knew that she more or less blended pretty well with the rest of the tourists.
If anything, Ares was the one attracting all the attention, moving through the throngs of people clogging the narrow pretty streets of Oia lined with shops and boutiques and restaurants.
That suited her fine. She loved this sensation of being anonymous among crowds. Then she spotted something and exclaimed, ‘Ooh, I was going to try and find this—it’s here!’
She veered to the left and heard a stifled curse from behind her. She ducked into the famous bookshop that was situated in a cave that had been turned into a building. Like many of the buildings built into the caldera walls of Santorini.
‘It’s a…bookshop.’
She turned around to face Ares. He looked stunned as he took it in. No doubt he’d expected her to make for the first exclusive boutique or jewellery store. She was interested in those too but she liked confounding him.
‘I’ve always wanted to see this place.’ Cassie wandered further in and gazed at the shelves and poetry written on the walls. It was quirky and coming down with books. Heaven.
She picked up a big glossy hardback of photos of Greece. She could sense Ares’s tension beside her and glanced up. ‘Look, if you—’ She stopped talking when she saw the expression on his face. It looked pained.
She put the book down. ‘What is it?’
He shook his head, expression clearing. ‘Nothing, I’ll wait outside.’ He slipped his shades back on and ducked back out through the small doorway. After a few more minutes’ browsing, Cassie followed him outside to find him leaning against a wall, hands in his pockets.
He looked relaxed but she could see the tension in those impressive muscles. He saw her and stood up straight. They resumed walking along the street. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to elaborate, Cassie asked, ‘What was that about?’
‘What?’
Cassie rolled her eyes. He was being obtuse. ‘You know very well—you looked as if you’d just eaten a side of cold suet pudding.’
The faintest glimmer of a smile touched the corner of his mouth. ‘Suet?’
Now Cassie’s mouth twitched. ‘A particularly revolting dessert we used to be served in boarding scool.’
She felt him glance at her and he said, ‘Boarding school?’
She nodded. ‘Since I was eight, in Switzerland. I came home for holidays and half-term. But my parents let me do the baccalaureate in Sadat.’
He seemed to digest this and Cassie had resigned herself to him dodging her initial question when he said, ‘I’m dyslexic. So…being surrounded by books makes me a little uncomfortable.’
Cassie felt a little punch to her gut at that admission. ‘There are so many more ways to read now.’
He shook his head. ‘I know, but not so much when I was growing up. My parents weren’t very willing to accept that a child of theirs was in any way imperfect.’
Cassie stopped in the narrow street, forcing people to swerve and go around them.
She put her hands on her hips, filled with indignation.
‘That’s outrageous. Some of the most successful people on the planet have dyslexia.
If anything it means you’re above average because you’ve had to mask or engineer your way through life in a way that takes serious ingenuity and intelligence. ’
Ares looked at her, eyes glinting, a minuscule smile playing around his mouth. ‘That’s quite a defence.’
Cassie flushed, embarrassed. ‘There was a girl in my school who was constantly sidelined and put at the bottom of the class, just because she had difficulty reading and writing. It made me so mad. Anyone could see she was more intelligent than the rest of us.’
‘You pitied her.’
Cassie let out a short sharp laugh at the thought of the only friend she’d really made at boarding school allowing anyone to pity her. ‘No way, she pities me. She’s a force. She’s already working at the UN.’
Cassie started walking again, following the flow of tourists to the best vantage point for watching the sunset. She gestured to Ares, who kept pace easily beside her. ‘You’re one of those success stories.’
His mouth compressed and he said, ‘It’s more that I was bred to be a success no matter what.’
Cassie thought to herself that she was sure it was more than just breeding, but Ares put his hand on her elbow to steer her through thickening crowds and that made any more words dissolve on her tongue.
They were approaching the promontory now, a vantage point that afforded a ringside view for the setting sun, which was slowly but steadily getting closer and closer to the horizon.
Ares guided Cassie to one of the few spots that hadn’t been taken and they sat down, surrounded by chattering tourists, all facing the same way, oohing and ahing as the sky started to go through a veritable kaleidescope of colours.
‘You know, you’d be getting just as specatacular a view from your boat and it wouldn’t be half as crowded.’
But I’d be lonely. Cassie wondered if she would have had the nerve to come and do this if she’d been on her own. She liked to think so but she hadn’t thought twice with Ares. Even if he was here at the behest of her brother and not because he wanted to be. That stung a little.
‘Oh, be quiet and enjoy the view,’ she said.
Be quiet. Ares had never been told to be quiet by a woman. Or anyone, for that matter. And yet he wasn’t insulted. He knew he was grumbling like a petulant teenager. This woman seemed to bring out aspects of him that he’d never encountered before.
And he had never, ever, willingly revealed to anyone about his dyslexia. The army had known, and his staff knew but that was because he would never let his dyslexia compromise a security situation. By now he managed it pretty well, but Cassie was right, he’d had to mask it for a long time.