The Greek Tycoon's Achilles Heel (5 page)

Petra had soon understood. She was loved, but she wasn’t essential. She’d tried to take it lightly, saying that it didn’t matter, because she’d found that this was one way to cope. Eventually it had become the way she coped with the whole of life.

But it had mattered. There, always at the back of her mind, had been the little sadness, part of her on the lookout for someone to whom she was vitally necessary. Her. Not the money and glamour with which her mother’s life surrounded her, but
her
.

And perhaps that was why a young man’s agony and desperation had pierced her heart on a roof in Las Vegas fifteen years ago.

‘But your grandparents died,’ Lysandros said. ‘Who do you have now?’

She pulled herself together. ‘Are you kidding? My life is crowded with people. It’s like living with a flock of geese.’

‘Including your mother’s husbands?’

‘Well, she didn’t bother to marry them all. She said there wasn’t enough time.’

‘Boyfriends?’ he asked carefully.

‘Some. But half of them were simply trying to get close to my mother, which didn’t do my self-confidence any good. I learnt to keep my feelings to myself until I’d sized them up.’ She gave a soft chuckle. ‘I got a reputation for being frigid.’

They were mad, he thought. No woman who was frigid had that warmth and resonance in her voice, or that glow on her skin.

‘And then I met Derek,’ she recalled. ‘Estelle was making a film with a winter sports background and he was one of the advisors. He was so handsome, I fell for him hook, line and sinker. I thought it had happened at last. We were happy enough for a couple of years, but then—’ she shrugged ‘—I guess he got bored with me.’

‘He
got bored with
you?
’ he asked with an involuntary emphasis.

She chuckled as though her husband’s betrayal was the funniest thing that had ever happened to her. He was becoming familiar with that defensive note in her laughter. It touched an echo in himself.

‘I don’t think I was ever the attraction,’ she said. ‘He needed money and he thought Estelle Radnor’s daughter would have plenty. Anyway, he started sleeping around, I lost my temper and I think it scared him a little.’

‘You? A temper?’

‘Most people think I don’t have one because I only lose it once in a blue moon. Now and then I really let fly. I try not to because what’s the point? But it’s there, and it can make me say things I wish I hadn’t. Anyway, that was five years ago. It’s all over. Why are you smiling?’

When had anyone last asked him that? When had anyone had cause to? How often did he smile?

‘I didn’t know I was smiling,’ he said hastily.

‘You looked like you’d seen some private joke. Come on. Share.’

Private joke! If his board of directors, his bank manager, his underlings heard that they’d think she was delusional.

But the smile was there, growing larger, happier, being drawn forth by her teasing demand.

‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘What did I say that was so funny?’

‘It’s not—it’s just the way you said “It’s all over”, as though you’d airbrushed the entire male sex out of your life.’

‘Or out of the universe,’ she agreed. ‘Best thing for them.’

‘For them, or for you?’

‘Definitely for me. Men no longer exist. Now my world is this country, my work, my investigations.’

‘But the ancient Greeks had members of the male sex,’ he pointed out. ‘Unfortunate, but true.’

‘Yes, but I can afford to be tolerant about them. They helped start my career. I wrote a book about Greek heroes just before I left university, and actually got it published. Later I was asked to revise it into a less academic version, for schools, and the royalties have been nice. So I feel fairly charitable about the legendary Greek men.’

‘Especially since they’re safely dead?’

‘You’re getting the idea.’

‘Let’s eat,’ he said hastily.

The waiter produced chicken and onion pie, washed down with sparkling wine, and for a while there was no more talking. Watching her eat, relishing every mouthful, he wondered about her assertion that men no longer existed for her. With any other woman he would have said it was a front, a pretence to fool the world while she carried on a life of sensual indulgence. But this woman was different. She inhabited her own universe, one he’d never encountered before.

‘So that’s how you came to know so much that night in Las Vegas,’ he said at last. ‘You gave me a shock, lecturing me about Achilles.’

She gave a rueful laugh. ‘Lecturing. That just about says it all. I’m afraid I do, and people get fed up. I can’t blame them. I remember I made you very cross.’

‘I wasn’t thrilled to be told I was sulking,’ he admitted, ‘but I was only twenty-three. And besides—’

‘And besides, you were very unhappy, weren’t you?’ she asked. ‘Because of
her
.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t remember.’

Her gentle eyes said that she didn’t believe him.

‘She made you trust her, but then you found you couldn’t trust her,’ she encouraged. ‘You don’t forget something like that.’

‘Would you like some more wine?’ he asked politely.

So he wasn’t ready to tell her the things she yearned to know, about the catastrophe that had smashed his life. She let it go, knowing that hurrying him would be fatal.

‘So your grandfather taught you Greek,’ he said, clearly determined to change the subject.

‘Inside me, I feel as much Greek as English. He made sure of that.’

‘That’s how you knew about Achilles? I thought you’d been learning about him at school.’

‘Much more than that. I read about him in Homer’s
Iliad
, how he was a hero of the Trojan war. I thought that story was so romantic. There was Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, and all those men fighting over her. She’s married to Menelaus but she falls in love with Paris, who takes her to Troy. But Menelaus won’t give up and the Greek troops besiege Troy for ten years, trying to get her back.

‘And there were all those handsome Greek heroes, especially Achilles,’ she went on, giving him a cheeky smile. ‘What made your mother admire Achilles rather than any of the others?’

‘She came from Corfu where, as you probably know, his influence is very strong. Her own mother used to take her to the Achilleion Palace, although that was chiefly because she was fascinated by Sisi.’

Petra nodded. ‘Sisi’ had been Elizabeth of Bavaria, a romantic heroine of the nineteenth century, and reputedly the loveliest woman of her day. Her beauty had caused Franz Joseph, the young Emperor of Austria, to fall madly in love with her and sweep her into marriage when she was only sixteen.

But the marriage had faltered. For years she’d roamed the world, isolated, wandering from place to place, until she’d bought a palace on the island of Corfu.

The greatest tragedy of her life was the death of her son Rudolph, at Mayerling, in an apparent suicide pact with his mistress. A year later Sisi had begun to transform the Palace into a tribute to Achilles, but soon she too was dead, at the hands of an assassin. The Palace had subsequently been sold and turned into a museum, dedicated to honouring Achilles.

‘The bravest and the most handsome of them all, yet hiding a secret weakness,’ Petra mused.

She was referring to the legend of Achilles’ mother, who’d sought to protect her baby son by dipping him in the River Styx,
that ran between earth and the underworld. Where the waters of the Styx touched they were held to make a man immortal. But she’d held him by the heel, leaving him mortal in the one place where the waters had not touched him. Down the centuries that story resonated so that the term ‘Achilles heel’ still meant the place where a strong person was unexpectedly vulnerable.

Of all the statues in the Achilleon, the most notable was the one showing him on the ground, vainly trying to pull the arrow from his heel as his life ebbed away.

‘In the end it was the thing that killed him,’ Lysandros said. ‘His weakness wasn’t so well-hidden after all. His assassin knew exactly where to aim an arrow, and to cover the tip with poison so that it would be fatal.’

‘Nobody is as safe as they believe they are,’ she mused.

‘My father’s motto was—never let anyone know what you’re thinking. That’s the real weakness.’

‘But that’s not true,’ she said. ‘Sometimes you’re stronger because other people understand you.’

His voice hardened. ‘I disagree. The wise man trusts nobody with his thoughts.’

‘Not even me?’ she asked softly.

She could tell the question disconcerted him, but his defences were too firmly riveted in place to come down easily.

‘If there was one person I could trust—I think it would be you, because of the past. But I am what I am.’ He gave a self-mocking smile. ‘I don’t think even you can change me.’

She regarded him gently before venturing to touch his hand.

‘Beware people you think you can trust?’ she whispered.

‘Did I say that?’ he asked quickly.

‘Something like it. In Las Vegas, you came to the edge of saying a lot more.’

‘I was in a bad way that night. I don’t know what I said.’

A silence came down over him. He stared into his glass,
and she guessed that he was shocked at himself for having relented so far. Now he would retreat again behind walls of caution and suspicion.

Was there any way to get through to this man’s damaged heart? she wondered. And, if she tried, might she not do him more harm than good?

‘I’
M SORRY
,’ Lysandros said quietly. ‘This is me; it’s who and what I am.’

‘You don’t let anyone in, do you?’ Petra said.

He shook his head with an air of finality. Suddenly then he said, ‘But I will tell you one thing. It may only be a coincidence, but it’s strange. After I’d taken you back to your room I returned to the tables and suddenly started winning back everything I’d lost. I just couldn’t lose, and somehow that was connected with you, as though you’d turned me into a winner. Why are you smiling?’

‘You, being superstitious. If I’d said all that you’d make some snooty masculine comment about women having overly vivid imaginations.’

‘Yes, I probably would,’ he admitted. ‘But perhaps you just exercise a more powerful brand of magic.’

‘Magic?’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve studied the Greek legends without discovering magic?’

‘Yes,’ she conceded, ‘you meet it in the most unexpected places, and the hard part is knowing how to tell it from wishful thinking.’

She spoke the last words so softly that he barely heard
them, but they were enough to give him a strange sensation, part pleasure, part pain, part alarm.

‘Wishful thinking,’ he echoed slowly. ‘The most dangerous thing on earth.’

‘Or the most valuable,’ she countered quickly. ‘All the great ideas started life as wishful thinking. Wasn’t there an ancestor of yours who thought,
I wish I could build a boat
? So he built one, then another one, and here you are.’

‘You’re a very clever woman.’ He smiled. ‘You can turn anything around, just by the light you throw on it. The light doesn’t just illuminate; it transforms all the things that might have served as a warning.’

‘But perhaps they should be transformed,’ she pointed out. ‘Some people become suspicious so quickly that they need to come off-guard and enjoy a bit of wishful thinking.’

‘I said you were clever. Talking like that, you almost convince me. Just as you convinced me back then. Maybe it really is magic. Perhaps you have a brand of magic denied to all other women.’

There was a noise behind him, reminding him that they were in a public place. Reluctantly he released her hand, assuming a calm demeanour, although with an effort.

A small buzz came from his inner pocket. He drew out his phone and grimaced at the text message he found there.

‘Damn! I was planning to go to Piraeus tomorrow in any case, but now I think I’d better go tonight. I’ll be away for a few days.’

Petra drew a long breath, keeping her face averted. Until then she’d told herself that she wasn’t quite sure how she wanted the evening to end, but now she had to be honest with herself. An evening spent talking, beginning to open their hearts, should have led to a night in each other’s arms, expressing their closeness in another way. And only now that it was being denied to her did she face how badly she wanted to make love with him.

‘Will you be here when I get back?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I’m staying for a while.’

‘I’ll call you.’

‘We’d better go,’ she agreed. ‘You have to be on your way.’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘Don’t be,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It’s been a long day. I was fighting to stay awake.’

She wondered if he would actually believe that.

When they reached the Lukas villa the great gates swung open for them, almost as though someone had been watching for their arrival. At the house he opened the car door and came up the steps with her. She looked up at him, curious about his next move.

‘Do you remember that night?’ he asked gently. ‘You were such an innocent that I made you go to bed and saw you to the door.’

‘And told me to lock it,’ she recalled.

Neither of them mentioned the other thing he’d done, the kiss so soft that it had been barely a whisper against her lips—a kiss without passion, only gentle concern and tenderness. It had lingered with her long after that evening, through days and weeks, then through years. Since then she had known desire and love, but nothing had ever quite erased the memory of that moment. Looking at him now, she knew why, and when he bent his head she longed for it to be the same.

He didn’t disappoint her. His lips lay against hers for the briefest possible time before retreating, almost as though he’d found something there that disconcerted him.

‘Goodnight,’ he said quietly.

He left her before she could react, going down to the car and driving away without looking back, moving fast, as though making his escape.

‘Goodnight,’ she whispered.

It was only when he was out of sight that she remembered she hadn’t asked him how he’d known her phone number.

Petra soon found that her hours were full. Her reputation had gone before her, ensuring that several societies contacted her, asking her to join their excursions or talk to them. She accepted as many invitations as possible. They filled the hours that passed without a word from Lysandros.

One invitation that particularly attracted her came from The Cave Society, a collection of English enthusiasts who were set on exploring an island in the Aegean Sea, about twenty miles out. It was a mass of caves, some of which were reputed to contain precious historical relics.

Nikator was scathing about the idea, insisting that the legend had been rubbished years ago, but the idea of a day out in a boat attracted her.

‘Mind you, the place I’d really like to see is Priam House, on Corfu,’ she told him. ‘Is it true that Lysandros owns it?’

He shrugged. ‘I think so.’

She was mostly free of Nikator’s company. He spent much time away from home, leaving her free to explore Homer’s magnificent library. Sometimes she would take out a tiny photograph she kept in her bag and set it on the table to watch over her.

‘Like you watched over me when you were alive, Grandpa,’ she told the man in the picture, speaking in Greek.

He was elderly, with a thin, kindly face and a hesitant smile. When he was alive that smile had always been there for her.

He had told her about her father, which Estelle hadn’t been able to do very fully. And he’d shown her pictures, revealing her own facial likeness to the young man whose life had been cut short.

But there had been another likeness.

‘He had a hasty temper,’ Grandpa had said sadly. ‘He didn’t
mean to be unkind, but he spoke first and thought afterwards.’ He’d looked at her tenderly. ‘And you’re just the same.’

It was true. She was naturally easy-going, but without warning a flash of temper would come streaking out of the darkness, making her say things she afterwards regretted. She’d fought to overcome it and had succeeded in dampening it down to the point when few people ever detected its existence. But it was still there, ready to undermine her without warning.

In the final months of her marriage it had made her say things that would have made a reconciliation impossible, even if she’d wanted one. Right now it was probably a good thing that Lysandros wasn’t there to hear the thoughts that were bouncing around like Furies in her brain, demanding expression.

One evening Nikator returned home suddenly and locked himself in his room, refusing to open to anyone, even Petra.

‘Perhaps Debra will come to see him,’ she suggested to Aminta, the housekeeper.

‘No, she’s gone back to America,’ Aminta said hurriedly.

‘I thought she was here until next week.’

‘She had to leave suddenly. I should be getting on with my work.’

She scuttled away.

It might mean anything or nothing, Petra thought, and she would probably never know. But for a while Aminta avoided her.

Nikator finally emerged, with a slight swelling on his lips which he refused to discuss beyond saying he’d had a fall. Petra didn’t feel like pursuing the subject, but she made a mental note to spend as much time out of the house as possible.

Since the evening of the wedding she’d seen Lysandros only once and that was by chance at a grand banquet given by the city authorities. He’d made his way over to her and said courteously that he hoped she was enjoying Athens. He’d
mentioned contacting her again in the next few days, but made no specific plans.

He seemed to be alone. No lady had been invited to accompany him to this occasion, just as her own invitation had made no mention of a guest. She was left wondering at whose behest she had been invited.

After their evening together she had been in turmoil. Behind Lysandros’s civilised veneer she sensed a man who was frighteningly alone, locked in a prison of isolation, seeking a way out, yet reluctant to take it. It didn’t matter that their first meeting had been so long ago. It had left them both with the sense that they knew each other, and under its influence he’d begun the first tentative movements of reaching out to her. Yet he’d been able only to go so far, then no further. Try as he might, the prison bars had always slammed shut at the last moment.

Her heart ached for him. The pain he couldn’t fight had affected her, and she would have rescued him if she could. But in the end it was his own nature that stood in the way, and she knew she could never get past that unless he allowed her.

At night she would relive the brief kiss that he’d given her. Any other man would have seized her in his arms and kissed her breathless, which, truth to tell, she’d half hoped he would do. Instead, he’d behaved with an almost Victorian propriety, caressing her lips in a way that called back that other time when he’d thought only of protecting her. And in doing so he’d touched her heart more than passion would ever do.

But there was passion, she knew that. She couldn’t be so close to him without reading the promise of his tall, hard body, the easy movements, the power held in check, ready to be unleashed. Nor could she misunderstand the look in his eyes when they rested on her, thinking her unaware. Some day—and that day must come soon—she would break his control and tempt him beyond endurance.

But gradually her despondency gave way to annoyance. Now she could hear the strange woman at the wedding again, warning her that she was one of many and would yield as easily as the others.

‘No way,’ she muttered. ‘If you think that, boy, have you got a shock coming!’

Briskly she informed the household that she would be away for few days, and was in her room packing a light bag when her phone rang and Lysandros’s voice said, ‘I’d like to see you this evening.’

She took a moment to stop herself exploding at his sheer cheek, and managed to say calmly, ‘I’m about to leave for a few days.’

‘Can it wait until tomorrow?’

‘I’m afraid not. I’m really very busy. It’s been a pleasure knowing you. Goodbye.’ She hung up.

‘Good for you,’ Nikator said from the doorway. ‘It’s about time somebody told him.’

‘It’s kind of you to worry about me, Nikki, but I promise you there’s no need. I’m in charge. I always have been. I always will be.’

The phone rang again.

‘I know you’re angry,’ Lysandros said. ‘But am I beyond forgiveness?’

‘You misunderstand,’ she said coolly. ‘I’m not angry, merely busy. I’m a professional with work to do.’

‘You mean I really am beyond forgiveness?’

‘No, I—there’s nothing to forgive.’

‘I wish you’d tell me that to my face. I’ve been inconsiderate, but I didn’t…that is…help me, Petra—please.’

It was as though he’d thrown a magic switch. His arrogance she could fight, but his plea for help reached out to touch her own need.

‘I suppose I could rearrange my plans,’ she said slowly.

‘I’m waiting by the gate. Come as you are; that’s all I ask.’

‘I’m on my way.’

‘You’re mad,’ Nikator said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

She sighed. ‘Yes, I guess so. But it can’t be helped.’

She escaped his furious eyes as soon as she could. Now she could think of nothing but that Lysandros wanted her. The thought of seeing him again made her heart leap.

He was where he’d said he would be. He didn’t kiss her or make any public show of affection, but his hand held hers tightly for a moment and he whispered, ‘Thank you,’ in a fervent voice that wiped out the days of frustrated waiting.

Darkness was falling as Lysandros took her into the heart of town, finally stopping at a small restaurant that spilled out onto the pavement. From here they could look up at the floodlit Parthenon, high on the Acropolis, dominating all of Athens.

The waiter appeared, politely enquiring if they were ready to visit the kitchen. Petra was familiar with this habit of allowing customers to see the food being prepared, and happily followed him in. Delicious aromas assailed them at once, and it took time to go around trying to make a choice. At last they settled on fried calamari followed by lamb fricassee and returned to the table.

For a while the food and wine occupied her. Sometimes she glanced up to find him watching her with an intense expression that told her all she wanted to know about the feelings he couldn’t put into words. For her it was enough to know that he had those feelings. The words could wait.

At last he said politely, ‘Have you been busy?’

‘I’ve been doing a lot of reading in Homer’s library. I’ve had some invitations to go on expeditions.’

‘And you’ve accepted them?’

‘Not all. How has your work been?’

‘No different from usual. Problems to be overcome. I tried to keep busy because…because…’ his voice changed abruptly ‘…when I was alone I thought of you.’

‘You hid it very well,’ she pointed out.

‘You mean I didn’t call you. I meant to a thousand times, but I always drew back. I think you know why.’

‘I’m not sure I do.’

‘You’re not like other women. Not to me. With you it has to be all or nothing, and I—’

‘You’re not ready for “all”,’ she finished for him. Without warning her temper gave a sudden, disconcerting flare. ‘That’s fine, because neither am I. Are you suggesting that I was chasing you?’

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ he said hastily. ‘I was just trying to apologise.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said.

In fact it wasn’t all right. Her contented mood of a moment ago had faded. The strain of the last few days was catching up with her, and she was becoming edgy. She’d wanted him and he’d as good as snubbed her.