Chapter Twelve #2
The temperature was higher than expected and the village further away than she thought and Grace was boiling by the time she reached the gleaming waterside.
Wiping her clammy brow with the back of her hand, she looked around.
The place was completely deserted—the fisherman must have returned with their catch hours ago and there was nobody else to be seen.
By now her water bottle was almost empty and as she spotted a tiny taverna, she decided to get a drink and a refill.
Blinking a little as she went inside, she felt as if she were in one of those old Western movies her nana used to watch.
Everyone stopped talking and stared at her.
Did they know who she was? Did the sparkle of the fabulous yellow diamond engagement ring on her finger proclaim her as the new bride of the island’s owner?
Using the small amount of Greek she’d learned, she bought a glass of fizzy water and gulped it down while her water bottle was being replenished.
Looking around the small bar at the other customers, she was just psyching herself up for the long walk back when she saw someone she recognised.
Sitting playing cards at the back of the room was Marinos, Evangelia’s son, and Grace’s heart lifted as he got up and came towards her.
‘Marinos. Yiasu! ’ She smiled. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to see a familiar face.’
‘Kyria Diamides.’ His smile was rather cautious. ‘You are a long way from home.’
She wondered what the shy student would say if she told him that Odysseus’s lavish villa didn’t feel remotely like home—but she guessed that was the story of her life. ‘I’ve come much further than I thought,’ she admitted.
‘If you like, I can take you back.’
She opened her mouth to refuse, but making her way back up those cliffs in the soaring heat was the sort of foolhardy escapade which gave the English such a terrible reputation on the continent. ‘That’d be great. Have you got a car?’
He shook his head and grinned. ‘I have my motorbike.’
Once outside, he handed her a spare helmet which was strapped to the bike, and after cramming it on and folding up her straw hat, Grace climbed gingerly on the back.
‘I’ve never been on a motorbike before,’ she warned him.
‘It’s easy,’ he reassured her. ‘Once you know how.’
He showed her which way to lean when they went round a bend and, considerately, kept his speed down and Grace found the journey back nothing short of exhilarating.
Back at the estate, she thanked him and made her way through the grounds where the glorious air-conditioned cool of the villa greeted her.
Slipping off her sandals, she padded barefoot up the delicious cool of the marble staircase and as she pushed open the door of their bedroom, her only thought was to stand beneath the welcome jets of a cold shower and put on a clean dress.
She didn’t see him at first.
Why would she, when she hadn’t expected him to be there?
When he blended so well with the shadows—this man of intense shade, rather than light?
He was sitting in an alcove in one corner of the room, a computer open in front of him but he wasn’t looking at the screen.
Despite her barefooted noiselessness, he must have heard her come in because he turned round, and she could see the flicker of something she didn’t recognise glittering in the depths of his blue eyes.
‘Good day?’ he questioned evenly.
Grace didn’t know why she’d been holding her breath, only that it was leaving her mouth in a gentle hiss.
But her sense of unease remained and she didn’t know why.
‘Great, thanks. I went out for a walk only I went further than I intended and nearly ran out of water and I ended up in a taverna and…’ She was aware that she was babbling but couldn’t seem to stop herself.
‘And Marinos was there and he brought me back on his motorbike.’
‘So I believe.’
‘Oh?’ She looked at him in confusion. ‘Do you have spies patrolling the island, or something?’
But the unsmiling set of his mouth made clear that her feeble attempt to lighten the atmosphere hadn’t worked. ‘I heard the sound of his motorbike roaring up the cliff road and I saw you. With your hair streaming behind you,’ he added softly.
Grace frowned, because surely the detail about her hair was superfluous. And was that censure underpinning his words? She should have let it go, but some stubborn voice of objection was stirring up inside her and refusing to be silenced. ‘Why do you say it like that?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Like what?’
‘Oh, come on, Odysseus.’ Suddenly all the frustration and fear she’d been suppressing since her wedding night came bubbling to the surface and now it started rushing out in a hot and angry torrent.
‘You might do your best never to engage in normal human interaction and most of the time you succeed, but I can tell you’re bluffing.
You know exactly what I mean. Like you disapprove. ’
There was a pause. ‘Maybe because I do.’
She drew in an unsteady breath. ‘Why?’
‘Why do you think, Grace?’ He rose to his feet, dominating every atom of space around him, and suddenly some of his habitual composure had slipped. ‘You are my wife and it is entirely inappropriate for you to accept rides from the housekeeper’s son!’
She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I thought—given your experience of life—that the last thing you’d be was a snob!’
‘This is nothing to do with snobbery,’ he iced out furiously. ‘It’s about the messages you’re sending out.’
‘And what messages might they be?’ she goaded as his words halted because wasn’t there something almost thrilling about the anger she could see on his face?
A muscle had begun to work at his temple. ‘You don’t think that feeling your arms around his waist and knowing the whip of the wind is exposing your creamy thighs might make him regard you differently?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Her mouth fell open. ‘He’s years younger than me!’
‘And?’ he demanded dangerously. ‘You didn’t stop to think that he might get the wrong idea when you leapt onto the back of his motorbike like someone he’d just picked up in a nightclub?’
Maybe it was the unexpectedness of his response which made a slew of thoughts rush through Grace’s mind and not all of them were negative.
Why, Odysseus sounded jealous of the university student and if that were the case, wouldn’t it imply he cared about her more than he was letting on?
The hopeful stab of her heart lasted only as long as it took to think it through.
Because caring implied thoughtfulness, didn’t it?
And sensitivity. And neither of those qualities were evident in the forbidding set of her husband’s powerful shoulders, or the suddenly rigid composition of his features.
This was all about possession, she realised suddenly.
As if she were something he owned, just as he owned a plane and a colossal villa and a stack full of stocks and shares. As if she were an object, not a person.
‘What are you imagining is happening here?’ she whispered.
‘That I’m making love to you by night, and plotting to have Marinos in my bed by day, when you’re not around?
That I’ve gone from virgin to whore in a few short weeks?
Is that what you think, Odysseus? That I’m planning to be unfaithful to you? ’
For possibly the first time in his life, Odysseus found himself lost for words, because he didn’t know what was happening to him.
Only that he had suddenly found himself in the grips of something he didn’t recognise.
Something he hadn’t allowed himself to think about and thus, to identify.
But he certainly didn’t intend rising to her bait and turning this into the kind of emotional ping-pong he despised.
‘No, of course I don’t think that,’ he conceded coldly.
‘How good of you!’ she declared sarcastically.
‘What is it, then? Should I have run it past you first? Is that what you wanted, which you forgot to lay down in those pre-wedding rules of yours? Did you intend to police every single person I speak to? Should I have sought your permission like a good, docile wife? No wonder Evangelia looked so shocked when she discovered I was actually leaving the villa without telling you. I know we’re married now but this kind of expectation is positively medieval ! ’
‘Now you’re just being ridiculous.’
‘I am not being ridiculous!’ she howled.
He frowned, taken aback by the fervour of her attack, and instinct made him step away from it, to coat his words with reason, to behave as if he were in an irksome meeting with a client who was refusing to see sense.
But it wasn’t easy, not when she looked so magnificent in her righteous rage and all he wanted to do was to kiss her.
But not just kiss her, he realised grimly.
He wanted to quieten her too. He wanted to quash this kind of discussion and ensure it never happened again.
He sucked in a steadying breath. ‘It just might have been courteous if you’d let me know. ’
‘How?’ she demanded. ‘When you’re holed up in your office all day—bringing new meaning to the term workaholic—and you practically have a sign on the door, telling me to keep out!’
‘You know that I have a whole heap of things I need to do before our trip,’ he thundered.
‘So you keep telling me. So rather than waiting around here all day until the master deigned to grace me with his presence, I decided to go for a walk. Is that such a big deal—that I didn’t want to get it signed off in triplicate?
It was a spur-of-the-moment thing and you’re just not a spur-of-the-moment man, Odysseus, are you? ’