His Mistress for a Million (11 page)

Ice slid down his spine. ‘What’s wrong?’

There was a moment’s hesitation and he sensed her wavering, almost able to see his mother holding onto the edge of the table for support. ‘Come to Athens.’

There would no doubt be a breeze later, she’d learned enough about the weather since she’d been here to know that it would whip up over the clifftops around midday, but for now the waters of the caldera showed barely a ripple under the perfect spring sun, and the waters of the infinity pool stretching out before Cleo showed even less. In the distance she could hear the odd group of tourists passing by, exclaiming over the perfect photo opportunity—there seemed to be one around every corner on Santorini—but the pool deck was private and tucked away from the main tourist trails and their voices and snatched words drifted away and all was quiet again. She was breathless from the slow laps she’d done but that was good. She had a pile of books on Santorini, its history and archaeological
treasures to read, and that was good too. She needed to keep busy, given Andreas wouldn’t be back until at least tomorrow.

She clamped down on the stab of disappointment that accompanied that thought. Soon enough she wouldn’t see him at all. Surely she could live with his absence for a couple of days?

But after the bliss of their last few days and nights together, the news that Andreas had taken the helicopter to Athens and would be away overnight had been a major disappointment. She liked being with him. She liked his company and his conversation and she’d surprised herself by loving being in his bed. Then she’d received the message he would be another night at least.

Two days to fill. Two nights alone in his bed, with the smell of him on his pillow and the empty space alongside her where he should be.

How quickly she’d become accustomed to his touch. And how quickly she’d abandoned the concept of pretending to be his mistress.

Every night they made love. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t have to pretend. To all intents and purposes, she was his mistress, in every sense of the word.

She put down the book she couldn’t concentrate on and dived back into the pool. She needed to do more laps. The more tired she was, the less she would notice the empty space beside her in bed and the better she would sleep. And the better she slept, the less she would miss his magic touch.

Strange, how she could think his touch so magic after just a few nights. But for the first time in her life, she had felt like a woman. Andreas had done that, unleashing sensations within her that she’d never imagined were there, sensations that yearned to be released again.

Lap after lap she drove herself until, weak limbed and
gasping, she staggered from the pool and collapsed into a lounger. She closed her eyes and tried to blank her mind, but it was still pictures of Andreas she saw, pictures of what they might do together on his return. She’d already decided it was time to be more proactive, to take matters into her own hands.

She could hardly wait to surprise him.

‘
Kalimera
. I hope I’m not disturbing you.’

Cleo came to with a start. With Andreas away she’d assumed Petra would be busy in charge of the office. She hadn’t expected her to turn up poolside wearing the black-scrap-of-nothing bikini with tie-around skirt that, given its brevity, did nothing to protect her modesty and everything to accentuate her endless legs.

‘
Kalimera
,’ Cleo replied with almost the extent of her Greek, instantly on edge. Her own bikini was a Moontide original that Mme Bernadette had insisted she take, swirls of blue and green that accentuated her eyes and complemented her skin now that it was starting to take on the tan she’d lost while in England. She knew she looked good in it, but compared to the tall, slender Petra she felt awkward and lumpy. And definitely too exposed. ‘I didn’t expect to see you,’ she said, reaching for a towel to cover her on the pretext of drying her knotted hair. Anything to protect her from the other woman’s laser-sharp scrutiny. ‘I thought you’d be flat out in the office with Andreas away.’

Petra unhitched the tiny skirt and let it flutter to the lounger alongside, an action clearly designed to draw attention to her legs. It worked. Cleo instantly felt short and squat. ‘It is very busy, of course, but I was feeling a little queasy this morning and thought a swim would refresh me before the afternoon’s appointments.’ She put an impeccably manicured hand to her waist.

Cleo followed the movement and wished she hadn’t. Did the woman not have a bulge anywhere? ‘You’re not well?’

The woman gave a shrug and checked her hair. ‘We had a reception with lunch yesterday. Most likely just something that disagreed with me.’ She walked lithely to the water’s edge, descending the stairs into the pool’s liquid depths as regally as a Miss Universe contestant, where she breast-stroked two lengths of the pool without a splash, emerging from the water with her hair as sleek and perfect as when she’d gone in.

‘Ah, that’s wonderfully refreshing,’ she said as she lowered herself to the lounger. ‘And finding you here is even better. We haven’t had much of a chance to get to know one another, have we? Andreas selfishly keeps you all to himself.’

‘I guess not.’

‘I love your swimsuit,’ Petra said, patting herself dry with a towel. ‘Those colours are wonderful on you.’

Cleo blinked. The words sounded sincere enough, and she wondered if she’d misjudged the woman. All she’d had to go by was one car trip from the airport and she’d been tired. Maybe she’d imagined the snippiness. ‘Thank you. Yours looks gorgeous too.’

Petra smiled and nodded her thanks. ‘You’re Australian, aren’t you?’

Cleo relaxed a little. At least here was a safe topic. ‘That’s right. From a little outback town called Kangaroo Crossing. It’s dry and dusty and nothing at all like here.’

‘I’ve always wanted to go to Australia. Tell me about it.’

Cleo obliged. It was good to talk of home, of a place that was so much a different world from this one that it could have been on another planet, of a place of endless drought and struggling families and mobs of kangaroos jumping across paddocks of red dust. And the more she spoke of home, and
the more the other woman smiled and laughed, the more she relaxed. It was good to talk to another woman. She’d missed that in London.

‘Now I simply must go and visit your homeland. But Andreas said you met in London. What were you doing so far from home?’

Cleo shook her head. ‘You really don’t want to know. You’d think me a total fool if I told you.’

‘Oh, no, never.’ She reached one long-nailed hand over to Cleo’s and patted it. ‘It’s all right. You can tell me. I’ll understand, I promise.’

And then, because it had been so long since Cleo had been able to pour her heart out to anyone, it all came out in a rush, how she’d found Kurt through an Internet chat room and how he’d seduced her with his promises of romance and travel and how she’d fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. She didn’t tell her about his making love to her, of relieving her of her virginity and then casting her aside. She’d had no choice but to tell Andreas, but that part was nobody else’s business.

‘So you were stuck in London? You poor thing. But surely you had a return ticket?’

She shook her head. ‘I’d only enough money for one way. I never thought I’d need to head home so soon. Except my nanna had lent me the return fare just before I boarded the bus to the city, just in case the worst happened. Only I didn’t have a bank account so Kurt said he’d look after it for me…’

‘And he took your money? What kind of man was he?’ She patted her arm again. ‘You are much better off without him and here in Santorini.’

‘I know.’ She took a deep breath. It felt surprisingly good to get that all off her chest. All the emotions and guilt and self-flagellation that had plagued her every day since he’d dumped
her felt as if they were sloughing away, as if she’d confessed her sins and all would be right with the world.

‘And how fortunate for you to meet Andreas after all that had happened to you. You must feel very lucky.’

‘I do,’ Cleo agreed, sure Petra hadn’t meant that to sound as it had.

‘So how are you enjoying Santorini, then?’ she asked, changing tack. ‘This is your first time here?’

Cleo relaxed again, certain she’d been reading too much into the other woman’s tone. Santorini was another topic she could easily and honestly enthuse about. ‘It’s so beautiful! You’re so lucky living here, being surrounded by all this—’ her arm swept around in an arc ‘—every day. The sights and atmosphere, even the history is amazing.’

‘I’m so glad you’re enjoying it. We’re very proud of our island home. We want visitors to be happy here.’

‘I’m very happy. The sunsets are amazing.’

‘Honeymooners come here just to experience Santorini’s sunset. It’s supposed to be very romantic. What do you think?’

Cleo suddenly felt too tied in knots to answer. It was romantic, or it would be, if you were here with the right person. But Andreas wasn’t the right person, was he? They’d just been forced together by circumstances and soon she would leave. Although the way he’d looked at her the other night on the terrace…‘I guess it could be, if you were here with the right person.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m making you uncomfortable.’

‘It’s okay. It’s not like I’m here for the romance exactly.’

The other woman’s eyebrows arched approvingly. ‘No? Well, I guess in your place that’s the best way to think about it. Andreas has quite a reputation for moving on. And now I must get back to work. Thank you so much for talking with
me. I feel like we’re going to be good friends while you’re here.’

‘Are you feeling any better?’ she asked as Petra retied the tiny skirt around her hips.

‘Oh, I’m feeling
much
better, thank you.’

Cleo watched her slip on her gold sandals and wander away, wondering why it should be that she was suddenly feeling so much worse.

‘It’s just a lump, Andreas. There’s no need to go on about it.’ Sofia Xenides stiffened her spine and sat her slim body higher on the chaise longue, her ankles crossed demurely beneath her, her coffee balanced on her knees. Andreas knew the posture, recognised it as his mother closing the subject down again.

To hell with that.

‘You should have told me.’

‘You were busy. In London apparently. And then with who knows what?’

He bristled. ‘You could have called me on my cell phone.’

‘And told you what? That I had a lump? And what could you have done besides worry?’

‘I would have made you see a doctor.’

‘Which is exactly what I did do. And tomorrow I will get the results of the biopsy and we will know. There was no point worrying you unnecessarily before, but I am glad you will be with me tomorrow. And now we have more important things to discuss. When were you planning on telling me what exactly you were doing in London?’

Andreas sighed. ‘You know, then?’

‘Petra tells me you found Darius. Is that true?’

‘I found him. He’d gambled the last of the money away, all he had left was a seedy hotel filled with mould and rising
damp. He was ripe for a low-interest loan in order to fund his gambling habit.’

‘So you found him, and you exacted the revenge you have been looking for all these years. I imagine you ruined him in the process.’

‘It is no more than he did to us!’

‘Andreas,’ she sighed, ‘it is so long ago. Perhaps now you can put the past behind you?’

‘How can you say that? I will never put the past behind me. Don’t you remember what he did to us, what it was like back then? He destroyed Father and he walked away and left us with nothing.
Nothing!
’

She shut her eyes, as if the mention of her late husband was still painful, but a breath later she was still firm. ‘And it has driven you all these years, my son. Now that you have achieved the goal you have aimed for all your life, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?’

Andreas stared blankly out of the window and shrugged, the question unnerving him. Hadn’t he been feeling an unfamiliar lack of motivation lately, avoiding the office because suddenly it was all too uninspiring? Below the terrace lay the rolling expanse of Athens city, apartment blocks jostling with antiquities in the sprawling city. No, he was just temporarily distracted with Cleo, that was all. Soon she would be gone and he would refocus on his work again. ‘I will go on with my business,’ he said, resolutely. ‘Already the Xenides name is synonymous with the most prestigious accommodation on offer across all of Europe. I will make it even bigger, even better.’

She gave another sigh, except this one sounded less indulgent, more impatient. ‘Maybe there is another goal you might pursue now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Perhaps it is time you thought about family.’

‘I have never neglected you!’ Even though he felt a stab of guilt that he’d never returned her call as he’d intended.

‘Did I say you had? But the time for looking backwards is past. It is time to look to the future, and to a family of your own.’

He sighed. If this was about getting married again…And then something he’d never seen coming hit him like a brick. ‘You want grandchildren.’

‘I am a Greek mother.’ She shrugged. ‘Of course, I want grandchildren. Maybe now you have satisfied this lifelong quest for vengeance, you might find the time to provide me with some, while I can still appreciate them.’

‘Mother—’

She held up one hand to silence him. ‘I am not being melodramatic. It is not just that I have had this scare and I must face the prospect of the results not going the way I would prefer, but you are not getting any younger, Andreas, and neither am I. I do not want to be too old or too sick to appreciate my grandchildren when they eventually come.’

‘Stop talking this way! I’m not about to let you die.’

‘I have no intention of dying! At least not before you bestow upon me the grandchildren I crave. I am not blind. You have quite a reputation with the women, I believe. After all this experience, do you not know what kind of woman would suit you for a wife?’

It was ridiculous to feel like blushing at something his mother said, and he wouldn’t, but still her veiled reference to his many lovers made him so uncomfortable he couldn’t bring himself to answer. Besides, could he in all honesty answer? The women he had through his bed had one resounding attribute, but it hardly made them wife material.