Читать книгу Eligible Greeks: Sizzling Affairs: The Good Greek Wife? / Powerful Greek, Housekeeper Wife / Greek Tycoon, Wayward Wife - Kate Walker, Robyn Donald - Страница 7

THE setting sun only barely lit the winding path that Penny was following, making it impossible for her to walk fast, however much she wanted to.

No, the truth was that deep down inside she wanted to run. She wanted to get away from the villa as quickly as possible, to run as far and as fast as she could possibly manage. She wanted to run and run and never come back, to get away from the poisonous atmosphere in the house she had left behind. But the truth was that up until now any such action had been impossible.

And now?

Well, now she knew that she could leave—perhaps she ought to leave. But doing so would be to admit to herself that there really was no longer anything more to hope for. That her dream of love and a future was over, gone for good. Dead like her fantasies.

Dead like…

No, even now she still couldn’t put Zarek’s name, her husband’s name, at the end of that sentence. If she did that then she was admitting that everyone else was right and she was the foolish one, the only one who had taken so long to let go.

To admit that she no longer had a husband. That the man she had adored and married was never coming home again.

Reaching the spot where the path petered out onto the shore, she kicked off her sandals and paced onto the pebbled beach. Out at sea, she could just make out the dark shape of a small rowing boat and the man who sat in it, broad shoulders hunched away from her, his head just a black silhouette against the sunset. He was wearing some sort of hat—a baseball cap pulled down low so there was no way she could decipher any of his features.

Even now the thought of someone on the water made her shudder inwardly. Out there, somewhere thousands of miles away, Zarek had lost his life. The depths of the ocean were his only grave. That was what she had had so much trouble coming to accept.

And she was going to have to accept one further, even more hateful truth. The fact that even when he had been alive Zarek had never truly loved her. Their marriage had been a lie, on Zarek’s part at least. To him it had been purely a cold-blooded plan for an heir, never the love match she had believed it. So why was she still holding onto his memory when it was so obvious that he wasn’t coming back?

Finding a smooth outcrop of rock just above the tiny horseshoe shaped harbour, she plonked herself down on the makeshift seat and rested her elbows on her knees, supporting her chin in them as she stared out at the small craft bobbing on the restless waves. Sitting there, just staring out into the darkness, she let her unwilling memory go back over the scene she had just left behind.

‘Penelope…’

The voice had come from behind her, just as she reached the front door of the villa and had her fingers on the handle, ready to turn it. It made her freeze into stillness, keeping her eyes directed away and fixed on the heavy wood in front of her.

‘Are you going somewhere?’

There was no mistaking just whose voice it was. Only one woman had that cold, distant tone that made her sound as if she were speaking through a cloud of ice, freezing the words in the air as they came out.

And only one woman called her Penelope in quite that way. Using the full version of her name to make it sound like a criticism or a reproach when everyone else—her own family or everyone who liked her—only ever used the shortened form of Penny or even Pen.

Not her mother-in-law. Or, to be more correctly precise, her stepmother-in-law.

‘I thought I’d go out for a walk.’

‘At this time of the day?’

‘It’s cooler in the evenings. And I prefer it that way.’

Still she didn’t turn round. She didn’t need to, of course, but more than that she didn’t want to. She could already see Hermione Michaelis’ elegant figure in her mind’s eye. Slender to the point of emaciation, her hair kept unnaturally jet black with the constant use of hair dye, so that the few streaks of grey that were starting to appear were carefully disguised in an attempt to look so much younger than her fifty-nine years.

‘I still haven’t really adjusted to the heat in the daytime.’

‘After so long?’ her mother in law queried, making Penny bring her sharp teeth down on the softness of her bottom lip in an effort to bite back the instinctive retort that had almost formed on her tongue.

‘So long’ was only a relative term, depending on who used it. To Hermione maybe the past two years or so had seemed like an age. An age in which she had to live with her unwanted daughter-in-law, who now stood between Darius Michaelis’ second wife and the full control of Odysseus Shipping, which was what she had been aiming for from the very first moment she had met Zarek’s father.

And ‘so long’ barely described the past two years that Penny had lived through ever since the news about Zarek’s fate had come through to the island. The news that had turned her life upside down, destroying the hope of future happiness, and taking away with it any chance of being able to tell her husband how she truly felt about him.

The brief time of her marriage seemed to have flashed by in the blink of an eye, but the two years since then had taken an eternity to live through. An eternity that had dragged out to seem longer and longer with every day of hope that perhaps this was the day he might return. And then the dreadful, appalling moments that had killed all hope of that for ever. Since then her life had been something to be endured, a desert to live through. Empty and arid, without the love she had once hoped for.

No, who was she kidding? Even before he had vanished—been killed, they said—Zarek had never offered her the love she dreamed of, Penny told herself with bitter realism. He had married her in a cold-blooded business arrangement, entering into a marriage of convenience because it suited him to do so, because he wanted an heir. And she was the one who had been fool enough to think it was something else.

‘My skin is sensitive to the sun—and I don’t want to burn. That can be so aging.’

The faint hiss of Hermione’s breath in between clenched teeth told her that her deliberate dart had hit home. The older woman was paying the price for a lifetime of sun worshipping and the effects that none of her hugely expensive facials and even a recent facelift could really eradicate.

‘So are you taking the dog?’ Hermione turned the last two words into an expression of total distaste.

There was only one dog that she could mean. Argus, the great black and white hound who had once been so devoted to his master Zarek and who seemed to be the only other living soul who along with Penny mourned his loss. In the first few weeks after Zarek had gone missing, she had feared that they would lose Argus as well as the big sheepdog had pined for his owner, turning his head away from all food. But in the end he had transferred his devotion to Penny herself and now followed at her heel almost everywhere she went, lying under her desk when she had to work.

‘I think not. He’s already had a long walk today and the last time I looked he was fast asleep.’

Fast asleep on her bed if the truth was told but there was no way she was going to admit as much to Hermione. Her mother-in-law was only looking for an excuse to get rid of the big dog and Penny wasn’t going to take any risks that way. Argus had kept her company when she had needed a friend most. His warm, reassuring bulk was there by her side in the darkness of the night. His long, shaggy fur had absorbed the tears she had shed on that dreadful night when the appalling truth that Zarek was in fact dead had been reported to them. The dog was the one living link to her lost husband and she would always love him for that.

‘Nasty flea-bitten creature.’

Penny could practically see Hermione’s mouth curl in disgust but she wasn’t going to turn and check if she was right.

‘There’s one thing I can assure you and that is that my dog does not have fleas.’

Wrenching the handle roughly, she pulled the door open and stepped forward, enjoying the rush of air, scented with the tang of the sea, that flooded into her face. She felt trapped and confined—a feeling that was becoming the norm in a way that made her lungs constrict so that it was almost impossible to breathe naturally.

‘Don’t be long. It’s getting dark already.’

Concern? Now that was new in a way that brought her head finally swinging round to meet Hermione’s black glittering eyes. Immediately she knew that if she had been thinking that the older woman had her safety at heart, she was wrong. The light that was in that gaze was cold and predatory. The look of a cold-blooded buyer eyeing up her investment to check that all was well. Or a breeder with plans for producing a number of prize-winning offspring from a rather skittish brood mare.

No, that had been Zarek, Penny forced herself to acknowledge inwardly. He was the one who had seen her only as breeding stock for his dynasty.

‘I’ll be fine…’

‘We need to talk to you…’

Penny’s voice clashed with Hermione’s, the sound of that ‘we need to talk to you’ making Penny’s heart clench and thud roughly against the side of her ribs.

She knew only too well just what that ‘need to talk’ would entail. She had to. It was the one thing that Hermione and the rest of the family always wanted to talk about.

‘I’ll be back when I’m back,’ she flung in defiance, pushing herself out of the door and into the freedom of the garden before Hermione could do anything to prevent her.

She almost ran down the path, her feet flying over the pebbles as they carried her as quickly as possible. She actually feared that Hermione would come after her, grab at her arm and drag her back, hauling her back inside the house to face ‘the family’ and the things they wanted to talk about. The older woman was capable of it.

Out at sea, the man in the small boat had given up on the fishing or whatever it was that had taken him onto the dark ocean this late. He was reaching for the oars, the powerful muscles in his arms and shoulders tensing under the white long-sleeved tee shirt as he began to pull against the waves. He must be a strong man, Penny reflected privately. Only someone with a great deal of muscular power could make that much progress against the swell of the tide. Watching him, she felt an unexpected shiver of awareness wash over her skin, perhaps as a result of the cooling breeze that blew in from the sea.

Or possibly it was the effects of the unhappy feelings that plagued her at the thought of that ‘talk’ that awaited her when she got back to the villa. When Hermione and her sons, Jason and Petros, would start on at her again, trying to persuade her to make the decisions they had been itching for her to come to for so long. At least they had had the sensitivity and the tact to let the last month go by without ever saying a word. They’d let her have the second anniversary of Zarek’s disappearance, the day that marked the announcement of his death, without their insistent demands that it was time to look ahead instead of back, to plan the future, to ‘move on’.

‘Oh, Zarek…’

Dropping her face into her hands, Penny pressed her fingers hard against her closed eyes. Sometimes the misery could still grab her by the throat and make her wonder how she could live the rest of her life without ever seeing him again. He might not have loved her but she had adored him.

‘I’ll never forget you…’

But the realisation of the truth made the words catch in her throat even as she whispered them behind her hands. Because the truth was that with each day that passed she was finding it harder and harder to recall exactly the devastating attraction of her husband’s forceful appearance, the powerful bone structure and sexual appeal of his stunning features. If she tried to visualise him against the darkness of her closed lids she found that the image danced and blurred before her and she could no longer form that oncebeloved face in her mind.

The banging of heavy wood against wood jolted her out of her reveries. The fisherman had reached the land, his boat thudding against the pillars of the small jetty as he came up close. As she lifted her head to watch she saw him reach out to pull the vessel even nearer, his oars taken from their locks and dropped at his feet.

He really was a big man, Penny told herself, watching as the lean, powerful frame was silhouetted against the last of the sun, now sinking finally beyond the horizon. Tall, but not bulky—his rangy figure had a controlled power about it as he vaulted easily onto the jetty, bringing with him a coil of wet rope, the drops of seawater that fell from it glistening in the lingering remains of the light. It was the first time in so very long that she had even been aware of a man and how his body looked that she felt her heart kick hard against her ribs in a sense of shock at what she was thinking.

This much closer, she should have been able to see his face but the baseball cap that was pulled down low over his forehead hid so much. And the little that was left was concealed by the thick growth of a dark and bushy beard, which together with the overlong black hair falling onto the straight, strong shoulders gave him a wild, rather primitive look that made her toes curl into the pebbles in slightly shocked response.

Perhaps it was time that she made him aware of her. Let him know she was here.

‘Good evening…’

No response. Clearing her throat carefully, she tried her amateurish Greek.

‘Kalispera.’

That brought his head swinging round in her direction. She caught the flash of dark eyes narrowed against the setting sun and he adjusted his hat, tugging it down even lower as a defence against the glare.

‘Kalispera.’

His voice was rough and unexpectedly non-friendly. Not aggressive; not hostile. Just very clearly not welcoming her approach. Which was unexpected and unusual. In all her time on the island never once had she approached the small town of Kioni without being greeted with warmth and friendliness from the locals so that her stumbling attempts at the Greek language had been no barrier at all to communication.

‘Is the fishing good?’

What had she said now to make him stare at her for a moment so searchingly and intently that she felt almost as if his hidden gaze were a laser directed straight at her, threatening to shrivel her where she stood? Suddenly apprehensive, she found she was tensing, nerving herself for some sort of attack—not knowing what or why. Too late she wished that she had bothered to take the time to go and collect Argus and take him out with her on this evening walk. Not for nothing had the big dog been given a name that meant vigilant guardian, and if he had been with her then this disturbingly cold and unapproachable male would very definitely know to stand back, keep his distance.

Not that he showed any sign of actually wanting to approach her, because having considered her question for an inordinately long amount of time he suddenly shook his head abruptly.

‘No,’ he growled, tossing the word at her like a discarded piece of litter. ‘Not good.’

And, turning away from her, he tugged hard on the rope to draw it up onto the jetty before looping it through an iron ring nailed into the wood and pulling it tight to fasten the boat to its mooring. A moment later he was crouching down to check that the knot was secure, the movement making the long, strong muscles in his legs and thighs bunch and flex as they took his weight

Again that disturbing shiver of response that Penny now knew had nothing to do with the cool of the evening in spite of the chill from the wind off the sea crept over her skin.

What was happening to her? Penny’s head seemed to swim under the impact of the unexpected sensations, the unwanted thoughts that assailed her.

Was it really possible that the senses she had thought had died with Zarek were now coming awake again? Was she, as everyone had told her she would, finally really starting to take an interest in life again—in other men? But why would this man, this scruffy bearded, rough-voiced fisherman pique her interest so much? Or was it just that tonight she felt so lost, so alone that any man would act as a distraction from the bleakness of her thoughts?

Feeling uncomfortable and restless, she pushed herself to her feet but then found that she couldn’t move, couldn’t get away. Instead her gaze stayed locked on the strong, lean form of the man before her. Her throat felt dry and tight too, her heart thudding disturbingly so that she found it hard to breathe.

She should never have come out like this. Her tense mood and the uncomfortable meeting she had had with Hermione, the ‘talk’ she knew was coming, had all combined to knock her off balance so badly that she was no longer able to think straight. In fact she wasn’t thinking at all, sitting here in the gathering dusk, her gaze hooked and held by a complete stranger. Yes, he had a good body—a great body—but was that enough to scramble her brain this way?

But then the fisherman stood up again and some movement of his head brought the little of it that was not concealed under the hat or the growth of beard into the light of a lamp at the side of the harbour. The sight of the jagged line of an ugly scar had Penny’s breath hissing in sharply between her teeth, a faint sound of shock and horror escaping her involuntarily. White against the tanned darkness of his skin, it marred the line of dark beard on the right side of his face, skimming his temple and disappearing into the shadows thrown by his cap.

‘Oh, my…’

The shocked exclamation died on her lips as something in her voice brought him swinging round to face her again. And everything about his stance, the way he held himself, the tension in the long straight spine and the way his hand clenched over the end of the rope that he held warned her that he had heard her response and that for some reason he didn’t like it.

‘That—that must have hurt…’ she managed, her own body tensing warily under the burn of his dark-eyed glare.

‘It did.’

His tone made it plain that he begrudged her the answer.

‘And n-now?’

‘Ohi.’

A shake of his head emphasised the denial.

‘So how—?’

Hastily Penny caught herself up. What was she doing? Had she actually been about to ask him what had happened, how he had come by the injury? She must be crazy. Here she was alone in the darkness with a dark, powerful and clearly unwelcoming stranger and she was pushing him for answers he clearly did not want to give.

And why, why, was she even remotely interested? What was it about this stranger that had so unsettled her that she had actually wanted to know what had caused the injury that had marked him so badly? Wasn’t the fact that it was so evidently the result of some terrible violence enough to clamp her foolish mouth shut?

‘So many questions,’ the fisherman mocked now, and the low voice carried over the silence to where she sat on her rock, some dark edge in it making her spine tense, her stomach twisting in sharp apprehension. ‘Why so curious?’

‘I…’

She was halfway to her feet, but the need to keep her eyes on the big, bulky figure silhouetted against the setting sun meant that she didn’t dare to move too fast or too obviously for fear that she would show him how keen she was to get away.

‘You…?’ he queried, that disturbing note in his voice deepening worryingly. And he took a step forward, towards her. Pushing her to her feet in a rush.

‘Penelope?’

Another voice broke in on them, coming out of the darkness along the shoreline. A male voice; a voice she knew and recognised.

‘Penny?’

‘Jason!’

She would actually have welcomed the arrival of any member of those she privately labelled The Family at this stage of things. But Jason was the only one of Zarek’s stepbrothers who was actually kind to her. Closer to Penny in age than any of the rest of the family, and startlingly handsome—conventionally good-looking where Zarek had been dark and devastating—he had been approachable, even warm and sympathetic from the moment she had arrived on Ithaca as a young, naïve bride.

And it had been Jason who had warned her that Zarek’s marriage plans had been the cold-blooded hunt for a wife who would give him an heir. A fact that Zarek himself had confirmed when she’d challenged him, asking why he’d proposed to her.

‘Isn’t it obvious? I couldn’t keep my hands off you,’ her husband had said. ‘And I knew we would make beautiful babies together—and that’s all that mattered.’

‘You OK, agapiti mou?’

The term of affection was new, but it was what she needed. It was enough to have her on her feet and swinging round to him, nervous steps taking her towards him in a rush that had her almost tripping over herself on the slipping sand. Like a bird winging home to its nest, she ran straight for Jason, unthinking, hands reaching out to him.

Jason opened his arms too so that she ran into them, almost collapsing up against his hard length and burying her face in the crisp cotton of his shirt. Long arms came round her, holding her tight.

And that was when second and then third thoughts forced themselves into Penny’s whirling brain, taking the instinctive, mindless fear that had pushed her into movement and pushing it aside, replacing it with a sudden feeling of having made a terrible mistake. Fear of the stranger was one thing, but from Jason’s reaction he had taken her response to mean much more than she had meant. He was holding her too tight, too close.

Too close for what she really wanted.

‘Penny…’

And that tone had altered, putting something new into the use of her name, a thickness she had never heard and certainly wasn’t meaning to encourage. The fisherman might have spooked her, twisting her nerves into fearful response, but a sudden slow crawl of unease down her spine gave her the unwanted sense of out of the frying pan and into the fire.

‘Jason…’ she tried experimentally, aiming to lift her head from where it was pressed against his chest, ease herself away from the limpet grip he had on her.

As she had feared his arms tightened round her, holding her still. Already unsettled by her encounter with the fisherman, and painfully aware of the fact that he must still be watching her, she felt as if her head was about to explode with stress. She didn’t want this and if Jason thought he had found the perfect time to make a move…

Suddenly she knew she had had enough. Enough of this situation, this family. She didn’t belong here and she never had. She had always been second best, unwanted and unpopular with Zarek’s stepmother and stepbrothers. And second best to Zarek too.

So why was she so determined to stay here where she wasn’t wanted? To cling onto memories that had never really been true, no matter how much she might wish they had. Perhaps if she escaped, she could leave, go home. She could be by herself and try to find another way of living. She could always take Zarek with her in her heart.

And that gave her the perfect way to distract Jason, to turn his thoughts onto other, more important things—more important to Jason, anyway. Even if Hermione’s aggression was not Jason’s way, he was every bit as hungry for control of Odysseus Shipping as his mother.

‘I want to call a board meeting for tomorrow,’ she said, raising her voice so that she could be heard over the crash of the waves.

It worked. She felt the change as soon as she spoke, the new and different tension in Jason’s body, the gleam in his eye that he couldn’t disguise as he looked down at her. He even loosened his hold on her so that she could step back away from him. ‘Why?’ he asked, not sounding at all as if he believed there was any reason other than the one she knew he was hoping for. ‘I’m sick and tired of this whole business, Jason.’ The tension that had gripped her earlier pushed the words out in a rush, giving them far more emphasis than she had planned.

‘I want to get away from here, start living again. I’m tired of treading water. It’s more than time this whole business was sorted out and everything finalised so that we can get on with our lives. I can’t inherit unless we have Zarek’s death declared and legalised. So let’s do that. Let’s put it all behind us—’

‘I’ll get onto it right away,’ Jason broke in on her, his tone revealing only too clearly how much her words had pleased him. He even gave her another hug but thankfully it had lost the sexual overtones of the earlier one. His ambition and greed were a more powerful force—or perhaps, more likely, the sexual flirtation had only been used with the hope of bringing things to this point. Another reason to be glad that she had made her decision.

‘Exactly how do you want to play this?’

But Penny had had enough. Painfully aware of their silent watcher, the unsettling atmosphere he had created, she just wanted to get back inside, seek the privacy of her room.

‘Not now, Jason. Not here. He—’

‘Who?’ Jason questioned sharply. ‘Who’s “he”?’

‘That man…’

Flinging out her arm, Penny gestured wildly in the direction of the harbour and the spot where the fishing boat was tied up.

‘What man?’

‘He…’

But Penny’s voice died away as she turned in the direction she’d indicated and saw only the boat bobbing at its mooring, the water lapping against the harbour side and the lamp illuminating an empty and silent space where the mysterious man had once been. He had gone silently and secretly, and she had no idea just what he had heard or seen or why it should bother her that he had overheard any of their conversation. But all the same, something uncomfortable and uneasy nagged at her mind at the thought that he had been there at all, and the rapid, uneven beat of her heart was the lingering effect of her unnerving and unsettling encounter with him.