Conveniently His Omnibus (23 page)

Without giving him any opportunity to refuse, Saskia went to his side and said gently, ‘Perhaps you will allow me to walk with you to it...’ Levelly she met and held the look he was giving her.

‘Perhaps I should,’ he capitulated.

It took longer to reach the car than Saskia had expected, mainly because the old man was plainly in more distress than he wanted to admit. As they reached the car Saskia was relieved to see the driver’s door open and the driver get out, immediately hurrying towards them and addressing some words to her companion in fast Greek. The old man was now starting to look very much better, holding himself upright and speaking sternly to the driver.

‘He fusses like an old woman,’ he complained testily in English to Saskia, adding warmly, ‘Thank you, my dear, I am
very
pleased to have met you. But you should not be walking the streets of Athens on your own,’ he told her sternly. ‘And I shall—’ Abruptly he stopped and said something in Greek to his driver, who started to frown and look anxiously up and down the street.

‘Yannis will walk back with you to
your
car and wait there with you until your driver returns.’

‘Really, there’s no need for that,’ Saskia protested, but her new-found friend was determinedly insistent.

‘There really is no need for you to come with me,’ she told the driver once they were out of earshot of the older man. ‘I would much rather you stayed with your employer. He looked quite poorly when I saw him in the street.’

To her relief, as she finished speaking she saw that her own driver was getting out of Andreas’s car.

‘See, there is no need to come any further,’ she smiled in relief, and then frowned a little before saying anxiously to him, ‘Your employer... It is none of my business I know...but perhaps a visit to a doctor...’ She paused uncertainly.

‘It is already taken care of,’ the driver assured her. ‘But he... What do you say? He does not always take anyone’s advice...’

His calmness helped to soothe Saskia’s concern and ease her conscience about leaving the older man. He was plainly in good hands now, and her own driver was waiting for her.

CHAPTER SIX

SASKIA
DARTED
a brief look at Andreas, catching back her gasp of pleasure as she stared out of their plane and down at the blue-green of the Aegean Sea beneath them.

He had been frowning and preoccupied when they had met up at the airport, not even asking her if she had enjoyed her sightseeing trip, and now with every mile that took them closer to his home and family Saskia could feel her tension increasing. It seemed ironic, when she reflected on how she had dreamed of one day spending a holiday in this part of the world, that now that she was actually here she was far too on edge to truly appreciate it.

The starkness of Andreas’s expression forced her to ask, more out of politeness than any real concern, she was quick to assure herself, ‘Is something wrong? You don’t look very happy.’

Immediately Andreas’s frown deepened, his gaze sweeping her sharply as he turned to look at her.

‘Getting in some practice at playing the devoted fiancée?’ he asked her cynically. ‘If you’re looking for a bonus payment, don’t bother.’

Saskia felt a resurgence of her initial hostility towards him.

‘Unlike you, I do not evaluate everything I do by how I can best benefit from it,’ Saskia shot back furiously. ‘I was simply concerned that your meeting hadn’t gone very well.’

‘
You?
Concerned for
me
? There’s only one reason you’re here with me, Saskia, and we both know that isn’t it.’

What did he expect? Saskia fumed, forcing herself to bite back the angry retort she wanted to make. He had, after all, blackmailed her into being here with him. He was using her for his own ends. He had formed the lowest kind of opinion of her, judged her without allowing her the chance to defend herself or to explain her behaviour, and yet after all that he still seemed to think he could occupy the higher moral ground. Why on earth had she ever felt any sympathy for him? He and Athena deserved one another.

But even as she formed the stubborn angry thought Saskia knew that it wasn’t true. She had sensed a deep coldness in Athena, a total lack of regard for any kind of emotion. Andreas might have done and said many things she objected to, but there was a warmly passionate side to him...a
very
passionate side, she acknowledged, trembling a little as she unwillingly remembered the kiss he had given her... Even though it had merely been an act, staged for Athena’s benefit he had still made her feel—
connected
at a very deep and personal level. So much so, in fact, that even now, if she were to close her eyes and remember, she could almost feel the hard male pressure of his mouth against her own.

‘As a matter of fact my meeting did
not
go well.’

Saskia’s eyes opened in surprise as she heard Andreas’s abrupt and unexpected admission.

‘For a start my grandfather was not there. There was something else he had to do that was more important, apparently. But unfortunately he did not bother to explain this to me, or to send a message informing me of it until I’d been waiting for him for over half an hour. However, he
had
left instructions that I was to be informed in no uncertain terms that he is not best pleased with me at the moment.’

‘Because of me...us?’ Saskia hazarded.

‘My grandfather knows there is no way I would or could marry a woman I do not love—his own marriage was a love match, as was my parents’, even if my mother did have to virtually threaten to elope before she got his approval. When my father died my grandfather admitted how much he admired him. He was a surveyor, and he retained his independence from my grandfather.’

‘You must miss him,’ Saskia said softly.

‘I was fifteen when he died. It was a long time ago. And, unlike you, at least I had the comfort of knowing how much he loved me.’

At first Saskia thought he was being deliberately unkind to her, and instinctively she stiffened in self-defence, but when unexpectedly he covered her folded hands with one of his own she knew that she had misinterpreted his remark.

‘The love my grandmother has given me has more than made up for the love I didn’t get from my parents,’ she told him firmly—and meant it.

His hand was still covering hers...both of hers...and that funny, trembly sensation she had felt inside earlier returned as she looked down at it. Long-fingered, tanned, with well-groomed but not manicured nails, it was very much a man’s hand: large enough to cover both of hers, large enough, too, to hold her securely to him without any visible effort. It was the kind of hand that gave a woman the confidence to know that this man could take care of her and their children. Just as he was the kind of man who would always ensure that his woman and his child were safe and secure.

What on earth was she thinking? Agitatedly Saskia wriggled in her seat, snatching her hands from beneath Andreas’s.

‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ she asked him slightly breathlessly as she tried to concentrate on the reality of why she was sitting here next to him. ‘I mean, if your grandfather already doesn’t approve of our engagement...’

It was so long before he replied that Saskia began to think that her question had annoyed him but when he did answer her she recognised that the anger she could see darkening his eyes wasn’t directed at her but at Athena.

‘Unfortunately Athena claims a blood closeness to my grandfather which he finds flattering. His elder brother, Athena’s grandfather, died some years ago and whilst there is no way at all that Athena would allow anyone, least of all my grandfather, to interfere in the way she runs her own financial empire, she flatters and encourages him to the point where his judgement is sometimes not all that it should be. My mother claims that the truth will out, so to speak, and that ultimately my grandfather will see through Athena’s machinations.’

‘But surely she must realise that you don’t want to marry her,’ Saskia suggested a little bit uncomfortably. It was so foreign to her own way of behaving to even consider trying to force anyone into a relationship with her that it was hard for her to understand why Athena should be driven to do so.

‘Oh, she realises it all right,’ Andreas agreed grimly. ‘But Athena has never been denied anything she wants, and right now...’

‘She wants you,’ Saskia concluded for him.

‘Yes,’ Andreas agreed heavily. ‘And, much as I would like to tell her that her desires are not reciprocated, I have to think of my grandfather.’

He stopped speaking as their plane started to lose height, a small smile curling his mouth as he saw Saskia’s expression when she looked out of the window down at their destination.

‘He can’t possibly be intending to put this plane down on that tiny piece of land,’ she gasped in disbelief.

‘Oh, yes, he can, It’s much safer than it looks,’ Andreas said reassuringly. ‘Look,’ he added, directing her attention away from the landing strip and to the breathtaking sprawl of his family villa and the grounds enclosing it.

‘Everything is so green,’ Saskia told him in bemusement, her eyes widening over the almost perfect oval shape of the small island, the rich green of its gardens and foliage perfectly shown off by the whiteness of its sandy beaches and the wonderful turquoise of the Aegean Sea that lapped them.

‘That’s because the island has its own plentiful supply of water,’ Andreas told her. ‘It’s far too small to be able to sustain either crops or livestock, which is why it was uninhabited—as you can see it is quite some distance from any of the other islands, the furthest out into the Aegean.’

‘It looks perfect,’ Saskia breathed. ‘Like a pearl drop.’

Andreas laughed, but there was an emotion in his eyes that made Saskia’s cheeks flush a little as he told her quietly, ‘That was how my grandmother used to describe it.’

Saskia gave a small gasp as the plane suddenly bumped down onto the runway, belatedly realising that Andreas had deliberately distracted her attention away from their imminent landing. He could be so entertaining when he wanted to be, so charming and so easy to be with. A little wistfully she wondered how much difference it would have made to his opinion of her had they met under different circumstances. Then she very firmly pulled her thoughts into order, warning herself that her situation was untenable enough already without making it worse by indulging in ridiculous fantasies and daydreams.

There was a bleak look in Andreas’s eyes as he guided Saskia towards the aircraft’s exit. There was such a vast contradiction in the way he was perceiving Saskia now and the way he had perceived her the first time he had seen her. For his own emotional peace of mind and security he found himself wishing that she had remained true to his first impression of her. That vulnerability she fought so determinedly and with such pride to conceal touched him in all the ways that a woman of Athena’s coldness could never possibly do. Saskia possessed a warmth, a humanity, a womanliness, that his maleness reacted and responded to in the most potentially dangerous way.

Grimly Andreas tried not to allow himself to think about how he had felt when he had kissed her. Initially he had done so purely as an instinctive response to his awareness that Athena was in his apartment—that appalling overpowering scent of hers was instantly recognisable. Quite how she had got hold of a key he had no idea, but he suspected she must have somehow cajoled it from his grandfather. But the kiss he had given Saskia as a means of reinforcing his unavailability to Athena had unexpectedly and unwontedly shown him—
forced
him to acknowledge—something he was still fighting hard to deny.

He didn’t
want
to want Saskia. He didn’t want it at all, and he certainly didn’t want to feel his current desire to protect and reassure her.

Athens had been hot, almost stiflingly so, but here on the island the air had a silky balminess to it that was totally blissful, Saskia decided, shading her eyes from the brilliance of the sun as she reached the ground and looked a little uncertainly at the trio of people waiting to greet them.

Andreas’s husky, ‘Here you are, darling, you forgot these,’ as he handed her a pair of sunglasses threw her into even more confusion, but nowhere near as much as the warm weight of his arm around her as he drew her closer to him and whispered quite audibly, ‘Our harsh sunlight is far too strong for those beautiful Celtic eyes of yours.’

Saskia felt her fingers start to tremble as she took the sunglasses from him. They carried a designer logo, she noticed, and were certainly far more expensive than any pair of sunglasses she had ever owned. When Andreas took them back and gently slipped them on for her she discovered that they fitted her perfectly.

‘I remembered that we didn’t get any in London and I knew you’d need a pair,’ he told her quietly, leaning forward to murmur the words into her ear, one arm still around her body and his free hand holding her shoulder as though he would draw her even closer.

To their onlookers they must look very intimate, Saskia recognised, which was no doubt why Andreas had chosen to give them to her in such a manner.

Well, two could play at that game. Without stopping to think about the implications of what she was doing, or to question why she was doing so, Saskia slid her own arm around
his
neck, turning her face up to his as she murmured back, ‘Thank you, darling. You really are so thoughtful.’

She had, she recognised on a small spurt of defiant pleasure, surprised him. She could see it in his eyes—and she could see something else as well, something very male and dangerous which made her disengage herself from him hastily and step back. Not that he allowed her to go very far. Somehow he was holding her hand and refusing to let go of it, drawing her towards the small waiting group.

‘Mama. This is Saskia...’ he announced, introducing Saskia first to the older of the two women.

Warily Saskia studied her, knowing that if she and Andreas were really in love and engaged her heart would be in her mouth as she waited to see whether or not she and Andreas’s mother could build a true bond. Physically she looked very much like Athena, although, of course, older. But the similarity ended once Saskia looked into her eyes and saw the warmth there that had been so markedly lacking from Athena’s.

There was also a gentleness and sweetness about Andreas’s mother, a timidity almost, and intuitively Saskia sensed that she was a woman who, having loved only one man, would never totally cease mourning his loss.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Latimer,’ Saskia began, but immediately Andreas’s mother shook her head chidingly.

‘You are going to be my daughter-in-law, Saskia, you must call me something less formal. Helena is my name, or if you wish you may call me Mama, as ‘Reas and my daughters do.’ As she spoke she leaned forward and placed her hands gently on Saskia’s upper arms.

‘She is lovely, ’Reas,’ she told her son warmly.

‘I certainly think so, Mama,’ Andreas agreed with a smile.

‘I meant inside as well as out,’ his mother told him softly.

‘And so did I,’ Andreas agreed, equally emotionally.

Heavens, but he was a wonderful actor, Saskia acknowledged shakily. If she hadn’t known how he really felt about her that look of tender adoration he had given her just now would have...could have... A man like him should know better than to give a vulnerable woman a look like that, she decided indignantly, forgetting for the moment that so far as Andreas was concerned she was anything
but
vulnerable.

‘And this is Olympia, my sister,’ Andreas continued, turning Saskia towards the younger of the two women. Although she was as darkly Greek as her mother, she too had light-coloured eyes and a merry open smile that made Saskia warm instantly to her.

‘Heavens, but it’s hot down here. Poor Saskia must be melting,’ Olympia sympathised.

‘You could have waited for us at the villa,’ Andreas told her. ‘It would have been enough just to have sent a driver with the Land Rover.’

‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Olympia told him starkly, shrugging her shoulders as her mother made a faint sound of protest. She looked anxiously at her, saying, ‘Well, he has to know...’