Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
Odysseus sipped his coffee and waited, keeping his gaze trained on the street leading to the little backwater café where Grace had suggested they meet.
It was an out-of-the-way spot largely unfrequented by tourists and as he watched the locals coming and going, he was reminded that this wasn’t just a holiday destination of breathtaking beauty but a place where people lived normal lives.
Two businessmen drinking wine together beneath a shady canopy.
A working boat unloading crates to the back entrance of a small restaurant, to the sounds of whistling from within.
A young child, walking with his mother, school finished for the day, smiling contentment on the little boy’s face.
And he wondered what it must be like to grow up like that…
By rights he should be high above the Adriatic on his private jet right now, thinking about the meeting which had just taken place between him and the grandfather he had been schooled to despise.
His father had always been vitriolic about the old man, blaming him for his wife’s untimely death and reinforcing that terrible loss whenever he got the opportunity.
Odysseus felt his jaw clench, remembering that the finger of culpability had sometimes pointed in other directions, too…
Yet, unexpectedly, his shock sighting of Grace working as some kind of maid in his grandfather’s house had temporarily driven the torturous past from his mind.
Or maybe it was simply the realisation that Vincenzo Contarini was never going to express any remorse for what he had done—so why bother kicking against a locked door?
It had been easier to focus on Grace and the reaction which had flooded through him when she’d walked into the room with her hair scraped back, her slim body swamped by that ugly grey uniform.
His disbelief at her dowdy appearance had warred with a vivid and visceral flashback of easing himself into her slick tightness and hearing her gasps of pleasure.
Unusually compromised yet strangely turned on by the unspoken but apparent need for secrecy, he had pressed his business card into her hand, feeling the unmistakable shiver which had rippled over her damp palm as their eyes had met.
Was that the moment when he’d realised how much he still wanted her?
But wasn’t the truth that he hadn’t stopped wanting her since she’d walked out of his hotel suite that morning, leaving him high and dry and aching?
His erotic recall cleared as he saw her making her way towards him, over a narrow bridge which crossed the canal.
Small. Unremarkable. Straight brown hair streaming over her shoulders, though the sunlight revealed the occasional warm highlight.
The drab grey dress had given way to jeans and trainers and some sort of raincoat, which was knotted tightly around her waist. He’d half wondered if she would show, after that stilted conversation when she’d phoned him, speaking in a stage whisper as if afraid of being overheard.
But then he’d reasoned that of course she would.
She couldn’t afford not to. Wouldn’t she want to know why he was meeting with her boss, as much as he wanted to know why she was working there?
She came into the café, said something in Italian to the man behind the bar and slipped into the seat opposite him.
Undoing her trench coat, she hung it on the back of the chair and he could see the stiff set of her shoulders as she turned her face to his.
Beneath the subdued artificial lighting of the café, her bare lips looked as though they were trying not to tremble and her hands were clasped together in her lap.
He narrowed his eyes, still trying to work it out, his usual cynicism banished by the intriguing riddle in front of him. Not one woman but three, he mused.
A virgin temptress.
A downtrodden servant.
But now…
Odysseus ran his thumb along the rough edge of his jaw.
Now she was simply an ordinary, fresh-faced young woman who was radiating good health and vigour.
Her eyes were shining and her lips were bare.
Her eyebrows were thick and dark and her hair was spilling over her shoulders in a cascade of natural colour.
Not his usual type at all. And then his attention was caught by a fragment of scarlet nail varnish, clinging to the edge of one fingernail, when all the rest were unpainted.
She must have missed it in her hurry to erase evidence of last night’s ball, he thought, assailed by the provocative memory of those red talons stroking over the taut flesh of his straining erection.
And, surprise, surprise, he thought wryly.
It was happening all over again. Uncomfortably, he shifted his weight in an attempt to divert his attention from his hardening groin.
‘So.’ Swallowing against the sudden dryness in his throat, he leaned back against the wooden chair. ‘That was some entrance you made.’
Her amber eyes were bright and very direct and only the faint shadows beneath hinted at the fact that she’d had very little sleep last night.
‘Are we talking about last night, or this morning?’ she enquired.
‘We both know what I’m talking about, Grace,’ he snapped. ‘And it isn’t your skill in managing to close a pair of shutters under the obviously suspicious gaze of your employer.’
She pursed her lips together. ‘Thank you for not saying anything.’
‘What was I going to say? That I was pleased you’d found your way home safely at that time in the morning, or that I was sorry I’d made you miss out on so much sleep?
I found your obvious need for secrecy…intriguing.
And curiously tantalising.’ There was a pause.
‘Do you realise, I don’t even know your surname? ’
‘Foster,’ she supplied unwillingly.
‘So, Grace Foster.’ He flicked his gaze over her bloodless cheeks. ‘Why did you look so scared when you saw me?’
‘Why do you think?’ she demanded heatedly.
‘I work in an old-fashioned environment and my boss is really particular about status.’ She picked at the single red fingernail before continuing.
‘Believe me, it would have gone down like a lead balloon if he knew that I’d spent the night with a… friend of his.’
‘He’s no friend of mine,’ he said, his voice harsh.
‘No. I thought not.’ Her amber eyes were huge in her face. ‘So…who exactly are you?’
There was a pause as the waiter deposited a glass in front of her and began to pour water and seemingly inexorable seconds ticked by before the bottle was emptied.
But Odysseus was grateful for the brief hiatus before the man walked away, because it gave him time to work out how to answer the inevitable question.
He had told nobody about his meeting with Contarini—not even his assistant—because there was nobody in his life close enough for him to ever make such a disclosure.
He guarded his personal space obsessively.
He didn’t want people getting to know him and bought silence whenever he could.
And though he could do nothing about the inevitable conjecture which came with the territory of being a billionaire—he never confirmed or denied rumour.
Whenever anyone tried to get him to open up—as they invariably did—he blocked their interest with a smooth expertise which was second nature to him.
His upbringing might have been lacking in many of the things other children took for granted, but it had helped him develop a stony carapace which protected him from the chaos of feelings.
He prided himself on his emotional self-sufficiency and it should have been easy to bat away a question from a woman with whom he had shared nothing but a brief night of sex.
To tell her it was none of her damned business.
Yet inexplicably, in this tiny café, in a glittering city which had fascinated him ever since he had found out about his mother’s birthplace, Odysseus found himself wanting to do the opposite.
Was it because she was someone who lived on the inside of a life which, by rights, should have been part of his?
A life he had never known and never would.
Today’s terse meeting had confirmed what he had always suspected—that there was never going to be a fairy-tale ending with Vincenzo Contarini.
The blood ties severed before he had been born weren’t going to magically meld together.
He wasn’t going to find himself in the difficult position of having to ‘forgive’ the old man.
And wasn’t that a kind of liberation, of sorts?
‘I am Vincenzo’s Contarini’s grandson,’ he informed her.
She looked completely shocked. Her amber eyes had widened and she gripped the table as if for support. Was that surprise genuine? he wondered cynically.
‘His grandson ?’
‘You didn’t know?’
‘No! He’s never mentioned a grandson before.’
‘Why would he?’ he said, surprised by the sudden harshness which had entered his voice. ‘We don’t exactly have what you’d call a traditional relationship.’
‘I’d kind of worked that out for myself. But even so.’ She pressed her fingertips to her lips. ‘I mean, I had no idea you even existed—’
‘Are you sure?’ He leaned forward. ‘What about when you first met me?’
She blinked in confusion. ‘You mean, at the ball?’
‘As far as I am aware, that was our first encounter.’
The bewilderment on her face changed to a look of comprehension. ‘Are you suggesting I deliberately targeted you?’
‘Well, you did,’ he pointed out. ‘There were a hundred men you could have chosen, yet you chose me.’
‘ How am I supposed to have targeted you when you were wearing a mask and a hat and I didn’t even know you existed? I’m not that smart!’
‘So why, then?’ he persisted coolly. ‘Why me?’