Читать книгу The Greek's Secret Passion - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 12

BUT after Dimitri had gone, Molly did something she had not allowed herself to do for years. She ran upstairs, to the clutter of the junk room which lay at the very top of the house. Here there were books and documents and certificates: things you told yourself you might need one day, but rarely did—yet things you didn’t dare throw away, just in case.

The old leather box was dusty, packed with shells, an old charm-bracelet, a lucky four-leaf clover sel-lotaped to a piece of card. In here was a sentimental record of the years, and, right at the bottom, a photograph.

She pulled it out and looked at it. Her and Dimitri, frozen in time, their arms tight around each other, carefree smiles on their young faces. The only photo she had.

Visual images had the power to drag you right back, to take you to a place which you had kept firmly out of bounds, and as Molly stared in Dimitri’s heartbreakingly beautiful young face she stepped right back into the past.

A holiday job on the Greek island of Pondiki had seemed like heaven to an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl in the long vacation before she went to university. One minute she was hurling her blazer across the room, the next she was stepping out onto the blistering tarmac of Pondiki’s tiny runway on a high summer’s day. Grown up and free—with a suitcase full of cotton dresses and bikinis and not a care in the world.

There were just three hotels on the island and at that time it was off the beaten tourist-track. Most people opted for the bigger, livelier Greek destinations, and only discerning travellers and students had discovered the unspoilt beauty of the mouse-shaped paradise, with its lemon groves and pine trees and the towering Mount Urlin which dominated it.

Molly was a waitress in one of the tavernas and she worked lunchtimes and evenings. Afternoons, she was free. The work was undemanding—though she developed strong arms from carrying trays of beer and wine—and she was given her own small, shuttered room which overlooked the main square, which at night was lit by rainbow-coloured lights. When she lay in bed, after the busy shift had ended, she could hear the sound of the waves lapping on the soft white sands and sometimes she thought she had died and gone to heaven.

She made friends with the daughter of the owner—a Greek girl named Elena who was as keen to learn English as Molly was to learn Greek.

It wasn’t easy. Greek was a difficult language.

‘You should get one of the boys to teach you,’ ventured Elena shyly.

Molly wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m not into boys,’ she said.

It was true; she wasn’t. She had no interest in the youths whose dark eyes followed her as she walked across the sunlit square in a cotton dress, with a straw sunhat to protect the blonde hair which seemed to fascinate them.

And then she met Dimitri and suddenly everything changed.

She and Elena had borrowed a scooter and ridden round to the opposite side of the island, where Pondiki’s most exclusive hotel lay sheltered in splendid isolation, and they had just sputtered to a halt when they heard an angry shout, and as Molly had turned around her heart had turned over.

She fell in love with him right there and then, it was as simple as that. She didn’t know why or how she knew it, she just did.

It wasn’t just because he seemed like a man, and not a boy—though he was only a few months older than her. Nor because his dark good looks made him look like some kind of diabolical angel. Nor the fact that his hard brown torso was bare and he wore just faded denims which clung to the narrow jut of his hips and his long, muscular legs.

It was something in his eyes. Something indefinable in the look he directed at her. It was a look which her upbringing should have made her rebel against. A swift, assessing look. Almost judgemental. But it made her feel as if she had come home—as if she had spent all her life seeking just that look.

Except that, for now, it was a very angry look.

And it was only afterwards that she discovered he made every English girl who visited Pondiki feel the same way, but by then it was too late. If only someone had told her—yet if they had, would she have listened?

‘Who is that?’ she whispered.

‘It is Dimitri,’ whispered Elena, as if indeed it really were the devil himself.

‘Dimitri who?’

But Elena shook her head, because he was striding towards them. He completely ignored Molly and let out a torrent of furious Greek which was directed solely at Elena.

Molly listened uncomprehendingly for a moment or two. ‘What’s the problem?’

Dimitri stopped speaking and turned to look at her, his heart beating fast, and it was more than his usual instinctive and hot-blooded reaction to a beautiful blonde. She was English. He had heard about her, of course, but he had been too busy helping his father to go looking for himself, and this was the first time he had seen her.

He was Greek through and through and he loved beautiful women. He took and enjoyed what was on offer, but it lasted only as long as his interest—which was never long.

Yet there was something indefinably different about this woman. A goddess of a woman, her icy-blue eyes almost on a level with his own, with a beauty he found almost overwhelming. But he saw the returning spark of interest in her eyes and this normal state of play was enough to allow his naturally arrogant masculine superiority to reassert itself.

‘Are you crazy?’ he hissed, in English, from between clenched white teeth.

As an opening gambit, she had heard better, but Molly didn’t care. She had never seen anyone like this before—with his flashing black eyes and his perfect body and an air of strength and devil-may-careness that you simply didn’t get with Englishmen.

‘Sometimes.’ She smiled at him, and cocked an eyebrow. ‘Aren’t you?’ she said gravely. ‘Crazy is good.’

He was expecting a tongue-tied and stumbling answer—not a cool retort in a voice as confident as his own.

There was a moment’s pause—a heartbeat and a lifetime of a pause—before he began to laugh, and it sounded as delicious as the sprinkle of fresh water on sun-baked stone.

But then his eyes grew serious.

‘You are not wearing helmets,’ he growled. ‘These roads are not like your English roads.’

‘You can say that again,’ murmured Molly. She thought of the fumes and the bad-tempered drivers back home, and compared them to Pondiki’s clean and silent beauty.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘You will both come with me,’ he ordered abruptly. ‘And you will wear helmets back.’

It was ironic that if anyone else had spoken to her like that, then Molly would probably have refused, on principle. But now that she had found him, she didn’t want to lose sight of him and, quite honestly, if he had told her that she was going to be put in handcuffs for the return journey, then she couldn’t have seen herself uttering a word of objection.

He ordered coffee and they drank it on the terrace of his father’s hotel, with its breathtaking views over the sea. Only Molly found it hard to concentrate on the view.

So did Dimitri. He shook himself slightly, as if trying to shake off the inexplicable spell she seemed to have cast over him.

Beautiful young women came to his island every summer and he was no innocent. Greek men lived very defined lives. Greek women were strictly out of bounds until marriage. If a man had trouble-free temptations of the flesh, then why not enjoy them while he could?

But this Molly was different, and he could not work out why. It was not just her pure, clean beauty, nor the sparkle of mischief which lit her ice-blue eyes. She had something which he wanted, something which made him ache unbearably.

He gave them helmets and saw them safely away, but just before Molly put hers on he lifted a hand to lightly brush a stray strand of hair away from her brow and their eyes met in a long, spine-tingling moment.

It felt like the most erotic thing which had ever happened to her, but then maybe it was—for what fumbled kisses could compare to the touch of a man like Dimitri?

‘Can I take you for a drive some time?’ he said, and felt her tremble.

She didn’t hesitate. She wouldn’t play games. Games were a waste of time when she only had six weeks on this island and she wasn’t going to squander a single moment of them.

‘Oh, yes, please,’ she answered.

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow,’ she agreed.

And that was how it started.

She slept with him that very first day—she couldn’t not have done—and afterwards she wept with sheer pleasure as he held her tightly, his expression fierce as he looked down at her, smoothing his palms over her damp skin, his eyes burning as brightly as lanterns.

‘You were a virgin,’ he stated, and his voice sounded strained.

‘Not any more.’ She touched her lips to his arm.

He closed his eyes, his feelings confused. He hadn’t been expecting that, not from someone who looked like her. And he wondered if her virginity had been the indefinable something he had wanted. He had never slept with a virgin before, even though one day his wife would inevitably be one. And somehow it made it different. It shouldn’t do, but it did. His kisses were tender on her eyelids and he pulled her closer against his bare skin.

‘Sweet Molly,’ he said softly.

‘Sweet Dimitri,’ she said drowsily.

She was slipping in deep and then deeper still, and maybe it showed because Elena tried to warn her. ‘Molly, you know that Dimitri—’

‘Yes, I know. Believe me, I know. He’s Greek. I’m English.’ She saw Elena’s concerned face and smiled. ‘I’m only here for the summer,’ Molly said gently. ‘Then I’m off to university. Don’t worry, Elena—I’m not expecting to buy a white dress and have the people of Pondiki pin money onto it!’

Yet it was funny how you could know something on an intellectual level, but that didn’t stop your foolish heart yearning for more. But she never showed it. Not to Dimitri, nor to Elena. She even tried to deny it to herself. And even though she sometimes wove little fantasies which involved her changing her university course to read Greek and returning here to help Dimitri run his hotel, she just tried to live each day for what it was. Paradise.

His parents, naturally enough, disliked her. She had never actually been introduced to them, but the couple of times she saw his mother at the weekday market in the square she was met with a stony-eyed look of hostility. But she understood that, too. They probably thought that she was some kind of loose-moralled tourist out for a summer of hot sex and there were enough of those on the island. She could hardly go up and explain that her son had captured her heart as well as her body, could she?

And there was a girl, too—a beautiful dark-eyed girl with a curtain of raven hair which fell to her slender waist. Molly saw her sometimes, and caught her looking at her with a sad, reproachful look.

‘Who is that girl?’ she asked Dimitri one afternoon.

He stared out to sea. ‘Just a girl,’ he said, and his voice sounded distant.

Something in his voice made her narrow her eyes, but she didn’t ask another question; afterwards she suspected it was because she’d known what the answer would be.

Her time on Pondiki was slipping away like the soft white sand she trickled through her fingers, and, with only a couple of weeks until she had to return home, some American guys came to stay at the hotel.

One of them was gorgeous. Textbook perfect. James, with eyes as blue as her own and a lazy, outgoing manner. He liked her; he made that clear, and Molly thought how much simpler life would be if she liked him back.

But life was never that simple and she had eyes for only one man.

And then Dimitri rang, cancelling their date. It was her Sunday off and he had planned to take her climbing to the very top of Mount Urlin.

His voice sounded oddly strained. ‘Molly, agape mou, I cannot make it. Not today.’

Molly bit her lip, trying not to feel disappointed, determined not to quiz him, but for once her resolution failed her.

‘Oh, why, Dimitri?’ she asked him plaintively. ‘I’ve only got a couple more weeks and you’ve been promising to take me up there for ages!’ Her voice softened. ‘I’ve been so looking forward to it.’

And so had he. The summit of Mount Urlin was as stunning and as beautiful a spot as he had ever seen and he had planned to make love to her up there. The heat of desire warred briefly against the brick wall of duty. He sighed, then scowled at his reflection in the mirror. ‘I know. And there will be another time—just not today. It’s a family party.’

‘Oh, I see.’ And suddenly she did. Perfectly. Naturally, she would be excluded from anything which involved his family—his real life—for what did their time consist of other than deep, passionate kisses with their inevitable conclusion?