Читать книгу Modern Romance December 2016 Books 1-4 - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 14

CHAPTER FIVE

TALIA WOKE TO sunlight streaming through the latticed shutters of her bedroom and the sound of the surf outside. Buoyed by both the light and sound, she threw off the covers and went to the window, opening the shutters wide.

The sight that greeted her was enough to make her sigh in pure pleasure. Sunlight gilded a perfect paradise: blue-green waters and soft white sand, the riot of pink and red flowers tumbling all the way to the beach. Leaning her elbows on the sill she inhaled the scents of flowers and sand and sea, the prospect and possibilities of the next six weeks filling her with something close to joy.

When had she last had an adventure or felt excitement at what the day might bring? Smiling at the thought, she reached for her smartphone to send a quick email to her grandfather.

Arrived in Greece safely. Having a surprising and wonderful time.

Love, T.

Tossing her phone on the bed, she acknowledged that she wasn’t actually having a wonderful time. Yet. The memory of her dinner last night with Angelos and his scathing assessment of her still stung. But Angelos was leaving today, and she’d be spending most of her time with Sofia. Wonderful might be just around the corner.

She was just getting dressed in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt when the loud, insistent sound of a helicopter starting up sent her to the window again. She watched as the helicopter she’d flown in last night lifted off the helipad and like some large, ugly insect rose in the sky and began to move away.

Angelos was leaving already? It wasn’t even eight in the morning. Clearly he couldn’t wait to get away from Kallos, a thought that made her frown. She wondered how much time Angelos spent with his daughter, if any. And then she reminded herself, as Angelos had told her last night, that it wasn’t her concern.

Dressed, her hair caught back in a practical ponytail, Talia headed downstairs. She found Maria in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for lunch. She barely glanced at Talia before nodding to the table, where two places had been set. Talia could see from one of the settings that Sofia had already eaten, and so she sat at the other and spooned yogurt and honey into a bowl.

‘Sofia?’ she asked the housekeeper, searching for some of the Greek phrases she’d tried to memorise. ‘Apu pu iste?’ she tried, and Maria looked at her, clearly amused.

‘Where am I from?’

‘Oh.’ Talia stared at her, nonplussed. ‘You speak English.’

‘A bit,’ Maria answered. ‘I am from Naxos.’

‘Sorry, I meant where Sofia is. Currently.’ Talia shook her head. ‘I admit, my Greek is severely limited. But last night you seemed like you didn’t speak English at all.’

‘Well.’ Maria let out a huff of breath. ‘I wasn’t sure of you.’

Talia laughed at that. ‘And now you are?’

‘No,’ Maria answered bluntly, ‘but you didn’t make eyes at Kyrie Mena last night, so I am reassured that you are not trying to seduce him.’

‘Seduce...’ Talia nearly choked on her mouthful of yogurt. ‘I most certainly am not. He is doing his best to terrify me though.’

Maria nodded sagely. ‘That is what Kyrie Mena does. And rather well.’

‘You speak more than a bit of English,’ Talia exclaimed, and Maria smiled slyly.

‘I’m a quick learner.’

Talia laughed again and shook her head. Somehow she seemed to have made an ally of the housekeeper, and for that she was glad. She had a feeling she would need allies. ‘So...are you telling me that some of the other nannies have tried to...to seduce Kyrie Mena?’

Maria pursed her lips and then turned back to her vegetables, beheading a bunch of carrots with one swift chop. ‘You could say that. If a woman crawls naked into a man’s bed, it is a seduction, ne?’

This time Talia did choke on her yogurt. She grabbed a napkin and pressed it to her mouth, gazing at Maria in stunned disbelief. ‘Not really...’ she finally managed.

Maria nodded grimly. ‘It is true. The woman was shown the door that night. Kyrie Mena did not even wait until morning to have her back on the mainland.’ She gave Talia a quick, sideways glance. ‘But I do not gossip.’

‘No, of course not.’ Talia took another spoonful of yogurt, her mind now full of rather salacious images of some eager nanny spread out like a centrefold, lying in wait for Angelos. And Angelos coming into his darkened bedroom, loosening his tie, unbuttoning his shirt...

Before she could stop herself she was imagining his brisk strip tease, the way he’d shrug out of a shirt, and how solid and muscular his chest would be, the moonlight casting silver shadows over his olive skin...

Good grief. A blush rose to Talia’s face as she realised just how far she’d strayed into fantasy territory. And about Angelos Mena of all people, whom she didn’t even like. He certainly had no regard for her. What on earth was she thinking?

‘Sofia is upstairs,’ Maria said, and Talia was grateful for the distraction. ‘She is waiting for Ava, who comes for her lessons.’

Talia nodded and quickly finished her breakfast, taking her dishes to the sink before going in search of Sofia.

She still felt weirdly affected by that stupid little fantasy, as if someone might be able to guess the nature of her thoughts just from looking at her. All right, Angelos Mena was a handsome man. A very handsome man. A stunningly virile and sexy man, fine. And maybe she had extremely limited experience with the opposite sex. A boyfriend at seventeen, a couple of kisses. So what?

It didn’t mean she had to fantasise about the first good-looking man who came into her orbit. And anyway, it wasn’t as if Angelos Mena was the first good-looking man she’d ever seen. William Talbot III, whose portrait she had painted just a few months ago, was very attractive. Admittedly, he thought so too, and he’d insisted on being painted with his golf clubs and two yappy terriers, but still. He was, objectively speaking, a good-looking man.

But he was, Talia acknowledged wryly, no Angelos Mena.

She walked down the hallway, checking several spare rooms, before she finally found Sofia in a large, airy room at the end of the hall, its gabled windows overlooking the sea. Sofia was curled up in the wide window seat, looking out at the glittering waters.

‘Kalimera,’ Talia tried as she came into the room. Sofia turned to look at her, smiling shyly although Talia could still see sorrow in her big, dark eyes.

‘Hello.’

‘We’re both learning,’ Talia approved. She came to sit on the window seat next to Sofia. ‘You have lessons this morning?’ With a bit of miming of reading and writing, Talia was able to communicate what she meant, and Sofia nodded.

They sat in silence for a moment before Talia ventured, ‘Papa? Yia sou?’ She mimed waving goodbye, and Sofia shook her head.

‘Papa...not...say,’ she said in halting English.

‘He didn’t say goodbye?’ Talia struggled to keep the dismay from her voice. Sofia shook her head again.

‘Ohi...no. But...’ She pointed to a sheet of paper in her lap, the single page filled with strong, slanting handwriting.

‘He wrote you a letter,’ Talia surmised, and Sofia nodded.

The letter was in Greek, of course, and Talia would never read someone else’s correspondence, yet she found she was intensely curious to know what Angelos had written to his daughter...and why he hadn’t said goodbye.

The sound of a motorboat cut through the still air, and Sofia leaned out the window to wave to the woman approaching the dock. ‘Ava,’ she said, turning back to Talia, and then said something in Greek Talia didn’t understand but could guess the nature of.

‘Your teacher,’ she said, and Sofia repeated the new word.

‘Teacher. Ne. Yes.’

A few minutes later Ava, a friendly woman in her forties, came upstairs. Fortunately she spoke English, and when Talia had explained who she was she offered to help her learn Greek after her lessons with Sofia.

‘I’ll have to ask Kyrie Mena,’ Talia said, suspecting that Angelos would want to hear about any changes in plan. ‘But I’m sure he’d like me to know more Greek.’

Ava laughed knowingly at that and Talia headed downstairs while Sofia had her lessons. Maria had disappeared from the kitchen, and so after standing uncertainly in the spacious hallway for a moment, Talia decided to go outside.

The air was hot and dry even though it was only a little past nine in the morning, and the sun shone brightly above, glinting off the sea.

Talia made her way through the garden, enjoying the colour and scent of the jumble of flowers. The gardens at the estate back in New York were lovely, but in a careful, manicured way. She liked the wildness here, felt its surprising answer in herself.

Funny, really, to think that Angelos Mena, of all people, would have a wild garden. But perhaps he wasn’t here enough to keep it in order.

The thought made her frown as she stepped onto the beach, slipping off her sandals so she could feel the warm sand between her toes.

She made her way to the water’s edge, letting the warm sea lap at her toes. She imagined Angelos back in Athens, sitting down at some important business meeting, making his so-called swift decisions. Athens was only an hour away, and yet he’d said he wouldn’t be back for weeks. Why couldn’t he make the trip more often, for Sofia’s sake?

Talia knew it wasn’t her concern; Angelos had certainly said as much. Besides, she was only here for six weeks, and she could hardly entangle herself in the lives of the Menas.

And yet...thoughts and questions whirled through her mind. The portrait of the secretly smiling woman; the fire Angelos refused to speak about. The sorrow she saw in Sofia’s eyes, and the letter that had lain on her lap.

And of course the book. The real reason she was here, she reminded herself, was to find Giovanni’s book. Sighing, Talia turned from the beach and headed back up to the villa.

Sofia was still in her lessons so Talia stayed in the kitchen with Maria, watching her as she kneaded bread. She’d offered to help, but Maria had vociferously refused, instead sitting her back down at the table, this time with a cup of what she called mountain tea. Talia took a cautious sip—Maria had made it by boiling what looked like a bunch of stems and leaves in a little brass pot—and found it surprisingly pleasant, a cross between chamomile and peppermint.

‘It cures everything,’ Maria assured her, ‘except heartbreak. But you are not heartbroken, are you?’

‘No, definitely not,’ Talia assured her.

‘You did not come all this way to Greece because of a failed romance?’ Maria asked, sounding almost hopeful. Talia smothered a smile at the housekeeper’s not so subtle attempt at digging into her past.

‘No failed romances,’ Talia answered. ‘No romances at all, unless you count the boy I dated when I was seventeen.’

‘You’re waiting for someone special,’ Maria said sagely. ‘That is good.’

‘I think I might be waiting a long time.’ Talia shrugged the woman’s sympathy aside. ‘I’ve been happy on my own. I still am.’

‘Every woman needs a man.’

Talia decided not to argue this point. ‘But you don’t want me crawling into Angelos’s bed, do you?’ she joked, only to flush as Maria eyed her appraisingly.

‘It was Kyrie Mena this morning.’

‘It still is,’ she promised. ‘That was a slip. Trust me, I’m not going to be crawling into anyone’s bed but my own.’ She closed her eyes briefly, wondering if this conversation could actually get any more awkward.

‘You do not want to set your sights on Kyrie Mena,’ Maria said firmly. She gave the bread dough a few firm kneads. ‘He is not a whole man.’

Intrigued, Talia leaned forward. ‘Not a whole man?’ He certainly looked like a whole man, devastatingly attractive in every part. ‘What do you mean by that?’

Maria shook her head. ‘I should not have said it. It is only there has been much tragedy in his life. He is not able to give a woman all she would need here.’ Maria pressed a hand to her heart.

So Angelos was emotionally repressed? Not exactly a surprise. ‘When you say tragedy,’ Talia asked, ‘do you mean the fire?’

Maria pressed her lips together. ‘I should not have said.’

Talia could tell she wasn’t going to get anything else out of the housekeeper about that, and so she asked if there was a library instead.

‘A library? You want a book?’

‘I thought I might see if there was anything to read,’ Talia demurred, squashing a feeling of guilt at her duplicity. She did want a book, one specific book. But she had no idea if it was on Kallos, or in Angelos’s possession at all.

‘There is a room at the top of the house,’ Maria said. ‘Above the bedrooms. You will find some books there.’

Since Sofia was still busy with her teacher, Talia followed Maria’s directions, up a winding staircase to a single, airy room on the top floor, with windows in every direction and bookshelves lining all the walls.

She stood in the centre of the room for a moment, enjoying the view of the sea all around her, before she began to study the books lining the shelves. Angelos had an eclectic collection of books: history, politics, art and music, even a little light fiction. None of the books looked like the one Giovanni had described, handcrafted with a cover of tooled leather.

Sighing, Talia berated herself for hoping it could be so simple. Did she actually think she’d just find the rare book lying on a shelf for anyone to pick up? She didn’t know if it was on this island, or even in Angelos’s possession. If he did own it, he might well keep it in Athens, in a safe. And maybe he didn’t own it. The only way she would know, Talia acknowledged, was by asking the man himself.

She was just about to head back downstairs when Sofia popped her head up over the banister. ‘I look for you!’ she exclaimed in English, and Talia laughed.

‘And you found me. How was your lesson?’

‘Good,’ Sofia said, and ducked her head in shy pride at how much English she’d spoken. Then she pointed to Talia. ‘You now.’

‘My Greek lesson?’ Talia surmised. ‘Bring it on.’ She followed Sofia downstairs, where Ava was waiting.

* * *

Ten days passed by faster than Talia felt she could blink. It was easy to lose herself in the sunny haze of days; she spent the mornings reading or sketching or simply lazing on the beach, and then had a Greek lesson with Ava. The afternoons were with Sofia, either inside doing crafts or playing games, or outside walking, swimming and exploring some of the island.

She and Sofia managed to communicate through miming and bits of broken English and Greek, improvement showing on both sides with every passing day.

And with each day Talia saw Sofia becoming more confident and comfortable, although whenever Angelos came into the conversation a cloud passed over her face, and shadows came into her eyes. Talia started trying to keep her employer out of the conversation, even as her heart ached for Sofia and the lack of a loving parent in her life.

Several times she tried to find out more information about her grandfather’s book, but when she asked Maria if Angelos liked poetry, she received an utterly blank look.

‘Poetry? No.’

‘He seems an educated man,’ Talia tried. ‘He has so many books upstairs... I thought he might enjoy a bit of poetry.’

‘Are we talking about the same Kyrie Mena?’ Maria asked with raised eyebrows. ‘The man I know does not like poetry. He certainly doesn’t read it.’ Her gaze narrowed as she glanced at Talia. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘No reason,’ Talia answered with a weak smile, guilt flashing through her. In the ten days since she’d arrived on Kallos she’d grown close to both Maria and Sofia, and Ava as well. She hated the thought that she was deceiving anyone, but she didn’t know how to admit the truth without hurting everyone involved, and potentially enraging her boss.

Although she tried not to talk to Sofia about Angelos, Talia spent an inordinate amount of time wondering about him. How long had he been a widower? Had he loved his wife very much? Sometimes she would pause in the dining room and gaze up at the portrait of Xanthe Mena, with her heavy-lidded look and small, secretive smile, and wonder what she’d been like, and how she’d captured the heart of her husband.

Not that she was concerned about Angelos Mena’s heart, Talia told herself. She was just curious. It was only natural.

Ten days into her time on Kallos her grandfather wrote her an email, asking about the book. Talia read the few lines with a growing sense of guilt, because she knew that she’d only made a few half-hearted attempts to find out any information.

When Angelos returned, she decided, she’d ask him about the book flat out. She’d try, at least.

Quickly she typed an email back to Giovanni.

Dear Nonno,

I am doing my best. I hope to have news soon. But please don’t worry about me. I am having a good time and I hope you are keeping well.

Love, Talia.

For a second she pictured him in the conservatory where they’d shared so many meals, and a wave of homesickness washed over her. He’d become so frail in the last few months, his once robust and commanding figure diminished by age and illness. She hated the thought that she was missing time with him, precious days and weeks she’d never have again.

Which made her more determined than ever to find his book.

She was just pressing Send when she heard a distant whirring. She left her laptop open on her bed and hurried to the window, where she saw a helicopter touch down on the helipad. Her heart seemed to leap in her throat as the hatch opened and a familiar figure stepped out before striding down the path to the house.

Angelos Mena was home.