Deadly Rivals
CHARLOTTE LAMB
Sins Forbidden fruits… .Was Olivia just a prize Max had stolen from his rivals? When Olivia first met Max Agathios, she was young - and utterly captivated. But Max was her father's arch-enemy in business, so she was forbidden to see him again. Four years on, Olivia had agreed to marry Christos, Max's nephew; it was a match of which both their fathers approved.Then Max reappeared and staked his claim to Olivia, but now she realized that she was just the trophy in a battle that Max was determined to win. There was a way to end this deadly war, though: if Max could discover that he wanted Olivia for herself. But for that to happen, she had to give herself to him!Love can conquer the deadliest of Sins.
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#uc270f99b-e545-5f6f-ada7-59ad1a756e11)
Excerpt (#u92c65512-01a3-592e-a43b-617031d9dde3)
Dear Reader (#ub5f469b7-08ec-573e-9393-416e2cdfefef)
Title Page (#u0a8a2765-9906-5ec5-bb5c-d5012d65b68c)
Chapter One (#u42600b40-f8b1-5740-8979-bcdf98cf0b9c)
Chapter Two (#u99f30ee8-4db3-5ca0-a470-866cfbf22038)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Why did you get engaged to him when you didn’t love him?”
“I’m fond of Christos—it seemed a good idea.”
Max laughed harshly. “A good idea? You mean your father pushed you into it, and Christos’s father pushed him—they’re using both of you, ruthlessly. Your marriage is the cement in the unholy alliance between my half brother and your father. They don’t trust each other, with good reason, so they’ve each offered up a child, as a hostage for good behavior.” He looked into her eyes.
“That’s the truth, isn’t it, Olivia?”
Dear Reader,
The Seven Deadly Sins are those sins which most of us are in danger of committing every day, very ordinary failings, very human weaknesses, but which can cause pain both to ourselves and others. Over the ages, they have been defined as: Anger, Covetousness, Envy, Greed, Lust, Pride and Sloth.
In this book, I deal with the sin of Covetousness. To covet is to begrudge someone else’s possessions, to hanker after things owned by someone else. At some time or another, don’t we all wish we were millionaires or had a wardrobe full of designer clothes? Though daydreams are harmless, it is very different when a plot is hatched to take something valuable away from its rightful owner.
Charlotte Lamb
This is the second story in Charlotte Lamb’s gripping new series. Watch every month for five more romances—all complete stories in themselves—where this exceptionally talented writer proves that love can conquer the deadliest of sins!
Coming next month: HAUNTED DREAMS (Harlequin Presents #1828)…the sin of Envy. Have you ever felt that the grass was greener on the other side?
Deadly Rivals
Charlotte Lamb
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_cc9d4ad3-9a03-57c8-8de8-6e7a2fb06d6e)
THE little beach below her father’s villa was private and lay at the end of a long, narrow, winding, rocky road which could only be reached through the villa gardens. In the early mornings, the beach was always empty, a stretch of white sand and rocks, with a thin belt of pine trees fringing it, and Olivia went down each day before breakfast to swim in the warm blue sea, feeling like Eve in the Garden of Eden, but without the serpent or Adam. She never had company. Her father didn’t get up until much later, and any guests he had seemed to sleep late too.
Olivia loved the feel of the cool morning air on her skin as she wandered down the stony path, in her ropesoled sandals and sleek-fitting black swimsuit, hearing the murmur of the sea and the cry of gulls.
This morning a wave of such happiness broke over her that as she reached the beach she began cartwheeling over the sand, her smooth-skinned body supple in flowing movement.
A moment later she heard a harsh Greek voice shouting somewhere nearby, then the sound of running feet on the sand. Olivia was about to stand up when another body hit her violently.
The breath knocked out of her, she collapsed on the sand on her back with a man on top of her. A totally naked man.
Olivia screamed.
A hand hit her mouth, pressed down to silence her, muffling her cries. Olivia struggled against the bare male flesh, panic inside her.
Her golden-brown eyes huge, she threw a scared look up at him. He was big and powerful—that was her first impression. Wide, tanned shoulders, a muscled chest, flat stomach: it was an athlete’s body. His colouring was Greek to match that deep voice: he had black hair, dusted with powdery sand at the moment, an olive-skinned face, glittering black eyes.
He stared back, those eyes narrowing, his winged black brows arching in sardonic comment.
‘Blonde hair,’ he said in English. ‘A peaches-andcream complexion…you have to be Faulton’s daughter!’
Then his strong-featured face tightened in a grimace. ‘Sorry if I startled you. Now don’t scream again, there is no need to be alarmed. I’m not going to hurt you.’ He took his hand away from her mouth and rolled off her at the same time, getting to his feet.
Olivia scrambled up too, sick with relief, shaking slightly, and beginning to get angry because she had been so frightened.
‘Why did you do that?’ she almost shouted at him.
He had his back to her. For all her anger, she couldn’t help noticing how smooth and golden that back was: long, muscled, with a deep indentation running down the centre. He was winding a big white towel around his waist. Against the whiteness his skin was an even deeper tan, small dark hairs roughening his forearms and calves.
She looked away, swallowing on a sudden physical awareness, a pulse beginning to beat in her throat as she remembered that body lying on top of her, the forced intimacy of the brief contact. He turned and looked at her coolly. ‘You were about to crash into those rocks.’
Crossly she snapped, ‘Nothing of the kind! I knew they were there! I was just going to change course to avoid them.’
His brows rose again. ‘It didn’t look to me as if you were.’
‘Well, I was! I know every inch of this beach. If you hadn’t interfered I would have veered to the right and gone on down into the sea.’
Just behind him she saw a pile of clothes on the rocks: crumpled, well-washed jeans, a cheap cotton T-shirt.
She looked back at him, frowning. ‘Who are you? What are you doing on this beach anyway? It’s private. Have you got permission to be here?’
‘I’m staying at your father’s villa. I arrived late last night, after you had gone to bed. Your father told me you were staying here too.’
She had gone to bed early; she always did, so that she could be up at first light. Olivia hated missing a moment of the morning here. It was the best time of day; each dawn was like the birth of the world—radiant, clear, breathtaking.
‘My father didn’t tell me anyone else was arriving,’ she slowly said, running a still shaky hand through her short hair, which was cut in a bell shape, soft and silky like the petals of a yellow chrysanthemum, around her small, oval face. Olivia was only five feet four, and proportioned accordingly, with tiny hands and feet, a slender, fine-boned body. Her eyes were big, however, and wide-spaced, and her mouth was soft and generous, with something passionate in the warm curves of it.
The stranger’s mouth was wide, too, but hard, the line of it uncompromising, forceful. ‘I dropped in unexpectedly,’ he said, and suddenly smiled, if you could call the twist of that mouth a smile. Something was amusing him, but that smile made a shiver run down her back.
‘Where from? Do you live on Corfu?’ Her father’s guests were usually rich businessmen and their wivespeople she tried to avoid as much as possible, and who were often openly surprised, and curious, about her presence, because few people knew that Gerald Faulton had a child.
His marriage to her mother had ended in divorce when Olivia was six and she had remained in her mother’s custody afterwards, growing up in a small town in Cumbria, in the north-west of England. Gerald Faulton had remarried once the divorce was final, only to divorce again some years later, without having another child. He had been married four times now, but Olivia was still his only child, although they were hardly close; he didn’t keep in touch with her, except to send her a birthday and Christmas present each year, usually some expensive yet impersonal gift she suspected was chosen by his secretary. The only time they spent together was this fortnight every year in his Corfu villa, and even then he often had other guests to stay and saw very little of Olivia.
The dark Greek eyes were watching her small mobile face intently and she felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle. Surely her thoughts didn’t show in her face? It always made her sad to think of her father; she did not want this stranger guessing at her feelings.
But his voice was calm when he answered her. ‘No, I don’t live here. I sailed here. My boat is down in the harbour at Corfu Town.’
‘You sail?’ Olivia’s golden eyes glowed with interest at that. ‘I sail too. What size is your boat? Did you sail her single-handed, or do you have a crew?’
‘I sailed single-handed—the boat’s designed to be easy for one person to handle,’ he said, giving her a shrewd look. ‘Do you sail?’
‘Not here, back home. I live in the Lake District, in England.’
He smiled, teeth very white against that deeply tanned skin. ‘A lovely part of the country.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said with fervour. ‘Do you know it?’
He nodded, then, before she could ask him any more questions, he turned away, picked up his clothes and began to walk up the beach towards the pines behind which lay the white-walled villa.
Over his shoulder he said, ‘Have your swim. See you later.’
Olivia watched him walk away, a tall, swift-moving man, the white towel flapping against his naked brown legs. Who was he? He hadn’t told her his name or anything about himself, and she was consumed with curiosity, but it would have to wait until she met him again later back at the villa.
She turned and ran down into the sea, her body graceful as it dived through the blue water. Olivia swam like a fish. Her Cumbrian home was on the shores of one of the lakes which were the major tourist attraction in that part of England. She spent most of her leisure time on the water, sailing her small yacht, White Bird, and she had learned to swim at around the time she learned to walk. Her mother was a sports teacher at a local school and very keen on children learning to swim early, especially if they lived near water.
Olivia cut short her usual time on the beach that morning, but it was an hour later when she walked out on to the marble-tiled terrace where breakfast was eaten every morning in the shadow of the vines growing overhead. She had showered after her swim, her layered blonde hair was faintly damp, and she was wearing blue and white striped shorts which left most of her long, golden-brown legs bare, and a sleeveless yellow cotton top with a scalloped neckline.
Her father was at the table, reading yesterday’s English newspapers, drinking coffee, having eaten his usual slice of toast and English marmalade, no doubt. Gerald Faulton was a man of ingrained habit, and disliked any changes to his routine.
He looked round the paper and gave her his abstracted smile, which always made her wonder if he really knew quite who she was and what she was doing in his house.
‘Ah…good morning! Sleep well?’ A well-preserved fifty-five-year-old, her father’s once fair hair was now a silvery shade but his features were still as clear-cut and firm as ever because he dieted rigorously and exercised every day. His eyes were a piercing blue, a little cold, very sharp.
‘Very well. Did you?’
‘Yes. Been down to the beach, have you?’ Gerald approved of his daughter’s early rising and swimming, as he did of her glowing health and physical fitness.
‘Yes. You should come down, Father. It’s wonderful first thing in the morning.’
‘I swam in the pool, as usual.’ He didn’t quite trust the sea. The water in his swimming pool was treated and ‘safe’; there were no crashing waves to overwhelm you either.
Olivia never kissed her father; their relationship was far too distant for that. She smiled at him though, as she sat down opposite him, her golden eyes glowing with leonine warmth, but only got back that blank stare, as if Gerald Faulton found it hard to believe she was really his child.
Sighing a little, Olivia took one of the crisp, homebaked rolls put out in a silver basket in the centre of the table by the housekeeper, Anna Speralides, who looked after the villa whenever Gerald Faulton wasn’t using it. Spreading the roll with home-made black cherry jam, she said casually, ‘I met someone on the beach this morning. He said he was staying here, but he didn’t tell me his name.’
Her father looked up, eyes alert. ‘A Greek?’
‘He spoke English fluently, but with a Greek accent.’
Gerald Faulton nodded. ‘Max Agathios. Yes, he arrived late last night, unexpectedly.’ He spoke in a clipped tone, his lips barely parting, and was frowning; she got the impression he was annoyed about the unannounced arrival.
Yet he had invited the man to stay. Olivia wondered why, but knew better than to ask. Her father did not like her to ask questions.
Max, she thought, remembering the hard, dark face. It suited him. She had wondered what his name would be, thought of all the Greek names she could remember…Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus…but had to giggle at the idea of him being called anything like that.
‘Max doesn’t sound Greek,’ she thought aloud, tentatively watching her father.
For once Gerald Faulton seemed to be in a conversational mood. He shrugged. ‘He was given his father’s name—Basil, I believe—one of the major Greek saints, St Basil—but while old Agathios lived, to avoid confusion, they called the boy Max, which was his second name. I think he got that from his mother’s father.’ Gerald paused, frowning. ‘I did once hear that his mother’s family were Austrian. I must ask him. Max’s mother was a second wife. The first one died. She was Greek; she had a son, Constantine, then a few years later I gather she died in childbirth and old Agathios married again—a very beautiful woman, Maria Agathios—and Max was born.’
Her father seemed to know a good deal about the family. They must be wealthy, or important, or he wouldn’t be interested in them. The cynical little thought made Olivia bite her lip. Her father wasn’t that obsessed with wealth. It was simply that his mind was one-track, and business was what he lived for—if you weren’t involved in his business he wasn’t interested in you. Even if you were his own daughter.
She looked down at her breakfast and suddenly didn’t want it; she pushed the plate away.
‘Agathios,’ she murmured, for something to say, and the name suddenly rang a bell. ‘Aren’t they in shipping too?’ They would be, of course. What else had she expected?
Gerald Faulton gave her an impatient look. ‘They certainly are.’ His voice had a snap. ‘You should have recognised the name at once. I thought you had.’
She had offended him again; she was expected to know all about his company, and the other companies who were his competitors and rivals, both in the United Kingdom and worldwide.
He was frowning coldly. ‘I thought you did business studies at school? Don’t they teach you the names of the major shipping companies? Even if they don’t, it would be the easiest matter in the world for you to find out for yourself, for heaven’s sake! You might take an interest in my business. After all, one day you’ll inherit my shares in the company! I don’t have anyone else to leave them to!’
Angrily, he flapped his newspaper and went back behind it, instantly removed from her, absorbed once more into his normal world of business and finance.
Olivia wanted to shout at him that of course she knew all about his business! He had made sure of that, badgering her mother to put her through a business studies course at school and ever since sending her company brochures, talking to her endlessly about the company whenever she saw him, even though they spent so little time together. She had grown up with the subject permanently rammed down her throat.
Her father was the managing director of a British shipping line, Grey-Faulton, which had been built up after the Second World War by Gerald’s father, Andrew, who had married the daughter of John Grey, who owned a rather run-down ferry business operating around Scotland. Andrew Faulton had built this into a thriving shipping business, expanding from ferries into freight, and in due course Gerald had inherited it all. Olivia had barely known her grandfather, who had died when she was ten, but she knew from what her mother had told her that Gerald had modelled himself on his father. ‘I sometimes think that that ruthless old man was the only human being your father ever truly loved,’ her mother had once said. Certainly the business was her father’s driving obsession.
She should have guessed that the man she met on the beach was somehow involved in shipping from the fact that, for once, her father had talked so freely.
Sighing, Olivia felt the coffee-pot; it was lukewarm, but before she could ring for more coffee, her father’s housekeeper brought it, smiling at the girl as she put down the heavy silver pot.
‘Oh, fresh coffee…thank you! A lovely morning again, isn’t it, Anna?’ Olivia said, smiling back at her.
‘Beautiful day,’ agreed Anna. ‘I heard you coming downstairs, so I brought more coffee. Do you want toast?’
Her English was very good, but her accent was Corfiot; she had been born here. A woman of nearly forty, she was faintly plump, with long, oiled black hair which she wore wound on top of her head, warm olive skin, big dark eyes and a full, glowing pink mouth. Anna had the beauty of her island—fertile, sun-ripened, inviting. Olivia had met her every year for twelve years, ever since Anna took over managing the villa. Anna’s husband had worked there too, part-time. They had lived in a little annexe at the side of the villa, and Spiro had also been a fisherman. A few winters ago he had died in a storm, when his boat was lost, and there had been sadness in Anna’s big, dark eyes for some years, but today it seemed to Olivia that Anna was more cheerful, almost her old self again.
‘No, no toast, thanks, Anna,’ Olivia carefully said in Greek; she only knew a few words but each year she managed to add a little more to her vocabulary because she liked to help Anna in the kitchen, learning Greek cooking and the Greek language at the same time.
Anna laughed. ‘You’re getting a better accent, Olivia,’ she answered, in Greek.
The phone began to ring in the villa and Anna hurried off to answer it, returning a moment later to say to Gerald, ‘It is for you. A Greek voice—he said to tell you Constantine. From London. Shall I put it through to your study?’
He got up, nodding, and followed Anna back into the house, leaving Olivia to finish her breakfast alone.
Constantine? she thought—hadn’t her father mentioned that name just now? Oh, yes, Max Agathios had a brother called Constantine. Why was her father seeing so much of these Greek brothers? What was going on?
She had just finished her second cup of coffee when Max Agathios walked out on to the terrace. He was in his old jeans and T-shirt, but somehow they did not look shabby and disreputable on him. He managed to invest them with a sort of glamour, thought Olivia, staring at him.
He nodded to her. ‘Where’s your father?’
‘On the phone to your brother,’ she said, before she thought twice, and he gave her a quick, narrowed glance.
‘My brother?’
Uncertainly, Olivia said, ‘Well, I don’t know that, I just assumed…It’s someone called Constantine.’
‘Ringing from Piraeus?’
‘No, London.’ Olivia was worried now. Would her father be angry if he found out that she had told Max Agathios about this phone call?
‘Ah.’ Max turned and stared out towards the misty blue mountains on the horizon, the heat haze between them and the villa making them shimmer as if they were a mirage. A moment later he turned, his face calm. ‘Well, I’ll see him later. I’m going down to Corfu Town to check up on my boat. I needed some work done on the radio and I want to make sure it has been done properly.’
‘I’d love to see your boat!’ Olivia said wistfully.
‘Well, come with me,’ he said, at once. ‘If you don’t mind riding pillion on my motorbike.’
She was taken aback. ‘You ride a motorbike? Did you hire it here?’
‘No, I always have it on my boat. It’s more convenient to have your own transport, wherever you end up!’
‘Yes, it must be.’ Olivia flushed with excitement. ‘I’ve never ridden on a motorbike—I’ve always wanted to though!’ Yet she didn’t dare leave without asking her father’s permission. Gerald was unpredictable; he might not approve of her going off with Max Agathios, and she might return to find him icily angry with her. Olivia found her father far too alarming to risk that. She had never learned how to talk to him, or cope with his moods, except by keeping quiet and out of his way.
Anna came out to clear the table and Max Agathios turned to speak to her in Greek. Olivia watched them both, wondering what he was saying, what Anna was answering. Anna smiled at him and Olivia thought, She likes him! She had never seen Anna smile at her father like that. Anna’s olive-dark eyes had a lustre and a gleam that Olivia recognised, instinctively, as sensual. Anna found Max Agathios attractive; she was responding to him as a woman to a man she wanted, and Max smiled back at her with an unhidden appreciation of Anna’s ripe warmth.
Olivia looked down, feeling excluded, left out, like a child at a grown-up party.
‘OK, we can go—Anna will explain where we’ve gone,’ Max said, startling her by suddenly being closer than she had thought.
She looked up, her skin pink, her eyes bothered, and he gave her a mocking little smile, as if he knew what had disturbed her and was amused by her reaction.
Anna had gone. They were alone on the terrace. Olivia hesitated, biting her lower lip, but why should her father object? He took very little interest in what she did while she was staying here, and if he disapproved of Max surely he wouldn’t let him stay at the villa?
‘Will I be OK dressed like this?’ she uncertainly asked, and Max ran his eyes down over her slender figure in the brief striped shorts, the thin yellow top. That look made her breathless suddenly.
His brows lifted.
‘Don’t wear much, do you?’
‘I didn’t notice you wearing much on the beach this morning, either!’ retorted Olivia, and he grinned at her wickedly.
‘I wasn’t expecting company. Well, come on! My motorbike is in the garage.’
They walked round to the front of the villa and went into the spacious garage, which usually just contained the bright red sports car her father had hired at the start of his holiday, as he did every year. Today it held a motorbike too; Max wheeled out the gleaming black machine, which was obviously new, streamlined and light, for easy transport on the boat, no doubt. Max picked up the black and yellow crash helmet which had been left on the leather saddle and held it out to her.
‘Put this on.’
She hesitated. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m borrowing a spare one from the gardener,’ he said with amusement, shouldering into a black leather jacket.
She had seen the gardener coming to work on his old bike, wearing a scratched and battered helmet, and laughed at the idea of Max wearing it.
As she began fumbling with the straps of his helmet he pushed her hands aside and adjusted them for her, his long, deft fingers cool on her flushed skin. The black leather jacket made him look bigger, more formidable than ever.
‘Now put on this jacket,’ he commanded, helping her into a leather jacket which was much too big for her.
‘I feel ridiculous in it!’ she protested, the cuffs coming down over her hands.
‘It will be some protection for you though, supposing that we had a crash—not that that is likely; I’m a very experienced rider, but I’d be happier if you wore this,’ he said, zipping it up, and standing so close that she was reminded of that moment on the beach when he had lain on top of her, naked, his body pressing her down. The memory sent heated blood rushing round her body; she couldn’t look at him.
It was a deep relief when he helped her on to the pillion and swung in front of her. ‘Hold on to my waist!’ he ordered over his shoulder, and she tentatively slid her arms round him as he kick-started the powerful machine. His waist was slim, in spite of the leather jacket. Her fingers met on the other side.
A moment later they were riding up the stony private road to the public road running past the villa. It was only when they were out on the highway that Max let the throttle out and the motorbike really put on speed.
The ride was exhilarating. Olivia clung to Max’s strong body, feeling as if they were moulded together, letting herself move with him, leaning this way and then that as he took the corners, the wind blowing her short hair up into golden filaments, her thighs forced against his, his blue jeans rubbing against her bare skin.
They drove past the lush olive groves which grew all over the island, past whitewashed houses set back from the road among orange and lemon trees, the dark tongues of cypress trees curling up against the blue sky. The air was full of the scent of flowers. The heat of the day was beginning to intensify now that the sun was riding higher in the sky, and Olivia felt perspiration trickling down her back, her thin yellow top sticking to her hot skin under the over-large leather jacket.
Corfu was a fascinating town, the architecture an international muddle of styles: a Byzantine church here, an elegant French ironwork balcony there, a Venetian subtlety down near the harbour, and elsewhere neoclassical Greek columns to be glimpsed beside plain modern villas. They even passed a flat green space where you could see English cricket being played, with men in white clothes running between the two wickets and people in straw hats sitting in deckchairs to watch, lazily clapping.
Corfu’s history was complex; many races had come here over the centuries and left their mark behind them without making much impression on the Corfiots themselves, who continued to live as they always had, in the sun, growing their olives, looking after their sheep and goats on the herb-scented hills, where thyme and rosemary and basil grew wild, fishing in the rich blue sea, cooking in the tavernas and hotels, cheerfully accepting the tourists who flocked there.
As they rode down towards the harbour they passed a horse-drawn carriage slowly plodding along, under the fluttering awning a dreamy couple gazing out at the shops and tavernas they passed. The noise of Max’s motorbike made the horse start in alarm, tossing its head, and plunging sideways across the road. The driver swore in Greek and reined his horse back tightly, soothing it with clicking tongue and murmured reassurance, then, as Max roared past, shouted angrily at him in Greek.
Max shouted back in the same language, grinning at him.
The driver waved a fist at him, but was laughing now.
‘What did you say to him?’ Olivia asked.
‘You don’t want to know!’ Max turned his head to look at her, his dark eyes teasing. ‘You must learn to speak Greek.’
‘I am learning,’ she said, then admitted, smiling, ‘Slowly.’
‘Well, I shouldn’t learn what he just said!’ Max said and laughed, slowing as they arrived down at the harbour.
His yacht was bigger than she had expected, and very impressive: white, sleek, fast and amazingly compact both in the two cabins and in the engine-room. It had been designed to be sailed by one person, but obviously it could hold several comfortably. It had sails too, which meant that Max could choose the form of power he preferred in whatever weather he found.
‘She’s wonderful,’ Olivia said after the short tour of the vessel. ‘I envy you. I’ve only got a dinghy.’
‘Have you ever sailed around here?’
She shook her head.
‘Would you like to?’
Her golden eyes glowed eagerly. ‘I’d love to!’
He smiled at her, charm in the curl of his mouth. ‘OK, give me a chance to check my radio, then we’ll get under sail. There’s enough wind today. Why don’t you go and buy some food? Just bread, some cheese, a little salad— tomatoes and onions, a lettuce—and some fruit for a dessert. We’ll fish on our way, catch our lunch and cook it in the frying-pan. How does that sound?’
‘Blissful,’ she breathed, and his dark eyes glimmered.
‘I can see you and I have the same tastes. Do you know Paki? Why don’t we head that way? Have you been there?’
She turned her head out to sea, remembering the little islet which wasn’t far from the coast of Corfu. ‘Once, some years ago, by motorboat from the harbour here. I have a vague memory of a very green place, very peaceful.’
‘When I was a boy we spent our holidays on Corfu— we had relatives here—and we always sailed over to Paki, every time we came. There are underwater caves therefascinating places. If we have time I’ll show you. I stayed on Paki for weeks a few years back, did nothing but catch lobsters and fish for mullet and snapper all day. When I wasn’t fishing, I sunbathed and slept.’
‘It sounds wonderful.’ It sounded like the perfect holiday—she could imagine how it must have been. Paki was a tiny island covered in olive trees and vines and the maquis, that tangle of grass, herbs and spiky shrubs which in the sun gave out such an astounding scent, a scent which travelled for miles and met you long before you reached the island and which was the very essence of the Mediterranean coasts.
He watched her sensitive, revealing face intently, then said in a gentle voice, ‘Off you go and do the shopping— have you got any money on you?’
She shook her head anxiously.
He laughed and produced some notes from a pocket in the leather jacket. ‘This should be enough. Don’t go too far, and don’t be long. I won’t take more than ten minutes to check out my radio. Oh, yes…wait a second…’ He dived out of sight and came back a moment later with a red string bag. ‘Take this, you’ll need it.’
Olivia set off along the busy harbour, watching gulls chasing their shadows across the blue sky, fishermen mending nets or loading lobster-pots on to their boats, behind her the rattle of mast wires, the flap of the wind through sails, the slap of the water against the harbour walls. She felt almost light-headed with happiness and excitement. She couldn’t wait to set out for Paki.
She had been here on Corfu for ten days and nothing had happened until today—she had relaxed in the sun, swum, eaten delicious Greek food, read one of the paperbacks she had brought with her. She had barely spoken to her father, or he to her; there had not, this year, been any other visitors. Olivia had enjoyed herself, but it had not been an exciting experience, merely a peaceful one.
Since she met Max on the beach this morning everything had changed. She felt as if she had been asleep for years, and suddenly woken up. She felt so alive. She could almost feel the blood rushing round her body, the air pumping in and out of her lungs…
She had never felt like this before; she was scared of making too much of it. Max was probably only being pleasant to the daughter of a man he was doing business with; or maybe he was just bored and wanted someone to help him pass the time. It couldn’t mean more than that. Not with a man like Max Agathios. And a girl like her.
She made a rueful face. They were miles apart. Why try to deny it? He was a lot older, for one thing, and, for another…well, she wasn’t naïve; he was far too attractive not to have had a lot of other women, beautiful women, much more exciting women.
In fact, it was surprising he wasn’t married.
She stopped in her tracks, standing still in the middle of the bustling street. What made her think he wasn’t?
She hadn’t thought about it before, but, now that she did, of course it was possible—no, probable—that he was married, a man of his age.
‘Beautiful peaches,’ a voice murmured coaxingly in English at her elbow and she started, realising only then that she had stopped right outside a greengrocer’s shop.
She pulled a polite smile on to her face, answered in Greek, and saw the man’s lined face break into surprised smiles.
A few minutes later she walked back to the boat with her net bag full of food and saw Max waiting for her on deck, the sun glittering on his raven-black hair, striking blue lights out of the thick strands of it. He had taken off his leather jacket, and the wind blew his Tshirt up and showed the tanned, flat planes of his stomach. Olivia felt her own stomach cramp in overwhelming attraction and her legs begin to tremble oddly.
She had to stop this happening! She mustn’t lose her head over him. What did she know about him, after all?
He leaned on the polished wood rail and grinned down at her as she came aboard. ‘Did you get everything?’
She held out the string bag, and his change. ‘Yes. That was the first time I’ve ever shopped for food here—it was fun. I even managed to make myself understood in my pathetic Greek some of the time.’
He looked surprised. ‘You do speak some Greek, then?’
‘Anna teaches me while I’m here, and I have a tape I listen to every night while I’m here. Just tourist phrases—please, thank you, where is the bank? That sort of thing.’
‘Well, good for you—very few visitors bother to learn Greek, but it makes a big difference to us to have people trying to speak our language instead of expecting us to speak English.’ He smiled, handing back the string bag. ‘Will you put all this away in the galley and come back up to help me? We’ll leave at once. We can’t be away too long or your father might get worried.’
The galley was tiny and very compact—a place for everything and everything in its place—the fittings all in golden pine. Olivia put away the domed Greek bread, the salad and fruit and cheese, then hurried back up on deck to help Max set sail.
Minutes later they were moving out of the harbour with a stiffish breeze filling the sails, the water creaming past the sides of the boat. Max watched Olivia moving around, nodding approval of her deft handling of the ropes as they met the stronger waters of the sea outside the harbour.
They took a couple of hours to sail to Paki, and anchored off the coast just around eleven-thirty. Max fished over the side, rapidly catching a small squid, which he threw back, then some sardines, which he kept, and a couple of red mullet.
They filleted the mullet, left the sardines whole, unfilleted, then fried them all together, and served them with salad, which Olivia had tossed together while Max was fishing. She had squeezed a fresh lemon over the contents of the wooden salad bowl and sliced the crusty Greek bread, which smelt so good that her stomach clenched in sudden hunger at the scent of it.
They ate their lunch on deck, the boat riding underneath them. The fish was better than anything Olivia had ever eaten—she had never realised how good sardines could taste. There was almost nothing left for the screaming gulls which had gathered around at the smell of cooking fish.
After their white Greek cheese they turned their attention to the peaches Olivia had bought—big, yellow-fleshed, spurting with juice. Max made coffee in his battered old coffee-pot—not the usual Greek coffee, tiny cups of muddy black liquid syrup with sugar, but French coffee, served black, without sugar.
Olivia drank hers, then leaned back against the cushions propping her up and closed her eyes in the shadow of a canvas canopy Max had run out to give them some protection from the fierce afternoon sun.
‘You aren’t going to sleep, are you?’ Max murmured, and she smiled lazily.
‘Sounds wonderful to me.’
He laughed softly, his fingertip tracing the outline of her profile, his fleeting touch cool on her sun-flushed cheek.
‘We shall have to sail back in an hour or so, or we’ll find your father has raised an alarm for us. If you take a siesta, we won’t have time to land on Paki.’
She yawned, hardly able to take in what he was saying. ‘What?’
‘I suppose we can always come back tomorrow,’ he murmured. ‘We could make an earlier start, get here by ten, land and eat ashore at one of the tavernas on Paki.’
Her lashes gold against her cheeks, Olivia dreamily said, ‘That would be fun.’
She drifted off into blissful sleep and woke up with a start at the cry of a gull to find herself lying with her head on Max’s shoulder, his arm around her.
As she shifted he looked down at her, their eyes very close; she saw the dark glaze of his pupils, tiny, almost imperceptible flecks of gold around them.
‘Time to go back, I’m afraid,’ he said, and she couldn’t hold back a sigh of reluctance.
‘I suppose we have to…’
‘I don’t want this afternoon to end either,’ Max said softly and her heart turned over.
He slowly bent his head and Olivia lifted her own to meet his; their mouths touched, clung, in a slow, sweet, gentle kiss that set off a chain reaction through her whole body. Then she felt Max’s hand slide up from her waist to her breast and gasped, quivering.
His mouth lifted; he looked at her, smiled. ‘Am I going too fast for you? Don’t worry, we’ll take it at your pace, as slow as you like.’ He paused, then said in an odd, wry voice, ‘Olivia, am I crazy, or would I be…? No, not in this day and age, I don’t believe it…’
Bewildered, she asked, ‘What?’ and he watched her in that strange, almost incredulous way.
‘You’re very lovely, you know that, Olivia—and I can’t be the first man to notice the way you look, yet I get the feeling you haven’t actually slept with anyone yet… Tell me I’m crazy! Not that it would make any difference, but you’re so different from most girls I meet… So, are you?’
Very flushed now, she said, ‘Yes…No…I mean… I haven’t…’ She was so embarrassed that she jumped and started brushing down her hair, pulling down her top. ‘Shall we start back now?’
He got to his feet and started clearing the deck, a push of an electronic button sending the canopy back inside the top of the wheelhouse, the cushions all put away below. The anchor lifted, they set sail again, the breeze even stiffer now and blowing inshore so that they made good time back to Corfu.
While they sailed Olivia did the washing up and put things away in their accustomed places, relieved to be out of sight and out of his presence for a while. She was still getting over what he had said…the question he had asked. Had he really expected her to have slept with someone already? Admittedly, some girls she knew had already begun experimenting with boyfriends, but these days most people of her age were less likely to jump into bed at the first opportunity. AIDS had made that much of a difference.
They moored at Corfu harbour again, with the Judas trees which grew alongside casting their black afternoon shadows on them as they walked underneath to collect the motorbike from a nearby garage where Max had left it to be serviced while they were sailing.
They drove back to the villa as the heat of the day was dying down. Over his shoulder, Max shouted to her, ‘I’m afraid we’re quite late. I hope your father won’t be too annoyed.’
Her arms holding on to him tightly because he was driving fast, Olivia said huskily, ‘I hope not too.’ Her father didn’t normally mind what she did during the days she spent here; she wasn’t thinking much about him and his reactions. She was more disturbed by the pleasure it gave her to feel Max’s thighs against her bare inner legs, to press against his slim back, feel the motion of his body with hers as they swerved and swooped round corners with all the grace of a swallow in flight.
Ten minutes later they walked from the garage to the villa terrace, and met Gerald Faulton. Olivia’s nerves jumped at the icy expression on his face.
‘Where have you been?’ he bit out, looking at her wind-blown hair and flushed face with distaste.
It was Max who replied. ‘We left a message with your housekeeper—didn’t you get it?’
Gerald Faulton turned his bleak eyes on Max. ‘You’ve been gone since breakfast time. Do you know what time it is now?’
‘I told Anna we might take my boat out—didn’t she tell you that? We thought we would go over to Paki, fish, have lunch there. We’ve had a wonderful day.’
Her father did not look any happier. He stared at Olivia again, frowning. ‘You have been on his boat with him all day?’ he asked with ice on every syllable.
Max frowned too. ‘I’m a good sailor, Gerald, I know what I’m doing. She was perfectly safe with me.’
‘I sincerely hope she has been,’ her father said through tight lips. ‘I know some men find schoolgirls irresistible, but I didn’t think you were one of them.’
Max stiffened, staring at him. ‘Schoolgirls?’ He repeated the word in a terse, hard intonation that made a shiver run down Olivia’s back. He slowly turned his head to look down at her. ‘What does he mean, schoolgirls? How old are you?’
All the colour had left her face. She had thought he knew. It hadn’t occurred to her that he didn’t. She hadn’t pretended to be older than her age, she didn’t wear makeup, she hadn’t tried to fool him. Why was he looking at her like that? She couldn’t get a word out.
‘She was seventeen a couple of weeks ago,’ Gerald Faulton told him. ‘She has another year of school ahead of her, and I don’t want her distracted before her final exams. I want her to do well enough to go on to university. I deliberately sent her to a single-sex school—I don’t believe girls do as well if there are boys around. They are afraid to compete in case boys think they’re bluestockings.’
Olivia turned and ran into the villa, straight up the stairs to her bedroom. She knew there would be no trip to Paki tomorrow, no more rides on the back of Max’s bike.
She didn’t go down to dinner; Anna without comment brought her a crab salad on a tray an hour later, but she didn’t eat any of it. She went to bed early and didn’t sleep much.
She got up at dawn and went down to the beach as usual in the first primrose light of day, half hoping that Max might be there, half nervous in case he came. If they could talk, surely he would see—realise—that the years between them didn’t matter that much. He had thought she was older, hadn’t he? The essential person she was hadn’t changed just because he now knew she was only seventeen. How old was he? she wondered, as she had wondered all night, during her waking hours of darkness. Late twenties? Thirty? Not much more than that.
OK, it was a big gap, but when she was twenty-five he would still be in his thirties, so it wasn’t so terrible, was it? Men often married girls who were much younger than themselves. A lot of the businessmen who visited her father here brought much younger wives along with them.
If she could only talk to Max—but time passed, and he didn’t show up; the beach was as empty as usual. She sunbathed and swam, sat staring out to sea feeling depressed. It would have been such fun to sail that beautiful white bird of a boat again today, to feel the sea swell under their feet and the wind in their hair, the maquis scent drifting out to meet them from Paki, to go diving maybe, when they arrived, and investigate the underwater caves. Olivia was a trained diver; she loved to explore the depths of the lake she lived beside, or the clear blue seas around Corfu.
She sighed, remembering the feel of Max’s waist in her arms, the feel of his thighs pressing against hers as they rode along on the bike.
She should have known it couldn’t be real—that exciting feeling in the pit of her stomach, the quiver of awareness every time he looked at her. She had been kidding herself. She was crazy.
Or was she?
Hadn’t Max felt something too? He wouldn’t have been so angry otherwise, would he, if he hadn’t been attracted to her? She thought of the way his eyes had smiled at her, the way he had watched her on the beach early that morning, the way he had kissed her, his hands lingering as they touched her cheek, her throat, that soft brush of his fingers over her breast.
Colour crept up her face at the mere memory. She had been so deeply aware of him as a man, how could he not have been aware of her in the same way? Maybe she had imagined it. After all, she had never had a real boyfriend—only danced with boys at discos and had the odd kiss in a dark corner at a party. But could she have imagined everything that happened? The looks, the smiles, the tone of his deep, inviting voice?
Oh, what was the use of fooling herself? He had probably been nice to her for her father’s sake! And now he knew that, far from pleasing her father, he had annoyed him, he would probably be distantly polite to her for the rest of his stay.
She walked back up to the villa and showered and changed for breakfast. As she was coming downstairs again she met her father, who gave her a hard, frowning glance.
‘I want a word with you. Come into my study.’
Like a schoolgirl in front of the headmaster she stood while her father leaned against his desk, his arms folded. His gaze flicked down over her in that cold distaste he had shown when she returned with Max the previous day.
In a remote voice Gerald Faulton said, ‘You should not have gone off all day with Max Agathios. You know that, don’t you? It was reckless and foolhardy. You know nothing about the man.’
Flushed and upset, she burst out, ‘We sailed to Paki, he caught some fish and we cooked it and ate it on board, then sailed back. Nothing else happened.’ That wasn’t the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but she wasn’t telling him about the tenderness of that kiss, the brief brush of Max’s hand on her breast. Her father wouldn’t understand; he would leap to all the wrong conclusions.
‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ her father said, still distantly, then added in a dry voice, ‘But he has something of a reputation with women. I might trust him as a businessman, but not with a woman, and he knew very well that he shouldn’t take you out without getting my permission first.’ Gerald’s mouth twisted sardonically. ‘Believe me, if he were your father, Max Agathios would never trust you with a man like himself!’
Red-cheeked, Olivia muttered, ‘You’re making too much fuss about nothing. In this day and age it is ridiculous…’
‘I assure you, most Greek men would be just as protective towards their young daughters. They wouldn’t allow them to go off sailing alone, especially with someone like Max Agathios. They have more sense, and they understand their own sex. Left alone with an attractive woman, any man is tempted and, believe me, Max would never try this on with the daughter of one of his Greek friends.’
That wounded her. She knew it was true; she had far more freedom than many of the daughters of her father’s local business friends. It hurt to think that Max had treated her with less respect than he would treat a Greek girl.
‘What am I to do when I see him, then?’ she asked miserably. ‘Ignore him? After all, he is your guest…’
‘Not any more,’ her father said curtly. ‘He has left and he won’t be coming back.’
Olivia had been nerving herself to see Max again; she had sat on the beach and tried to work out what to say to him, how to thaw that hard, angry face back into human warmth. Now she felt as if a trapdoor had opened under her feet and she had dropped through into black, empty space.
He had gone, without even saying goodbye. She would probably never see him again.
Her father watched her pale face. ‘And I shall have to be leaving tomorrow too, I’m afraid. Urgent business in Athens. There is no point in coming back either, my holiday is more or less over. So I’ve booked you on a flight tomorrow too, back to England.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_5d01df48-9ac6-5a76-aee5-26b4ca636725)
MONTHS later, Olivia discovered why Max Agathios had paid that sudden, unexpected visit to her father. One of her friends at school showed her a newspaper whose business pages carried a story about Max’s shipping company.
‘Your father sold this Greek guy some old ships, Loll, and now he’s been made a director of the Greek company, it says here. And just look at the photo of the Greek guy!’ Julie sighed noisily, gazing at the rather fuzzy picture of Max at the centre of the newsprint. ‘If you ever meet him, tell him I think he’s dead sexy.’
Olivia took the paper and sat down on the grass beside the tennis court on which they would shortly be playing. Julie turned her attention to the game in progress.
‘Come on, you two! Speed it up! We’re booked in here in five minutes!’ she shouted at the girls playing, who yelled back rudely.
Olivia was reading the story with intent concentration. Julie had given her the gist of it succinctly enough: Max had bought two freight ships and a car ferry from her father earlier this year, the story ran, and now her father had been appointed to the board of directors of Agathios Kera, the shipping line operated by Max.
The story also told her something else—that Max and his brother Constantine had quite separate companies, and were in direct competition with each other, running ferries and freight ships between the Greek islands and mainland. The report claimed that both brothers had bid for Gerald Faulton’s ships, and that Constantine, the older brother, was furious at being outbid by his younger brother. So that explained her father’s phone call from Constantine! And Max’s odd smile when he heard about it.
Olivia gazed at the picture of Max, her breathing quick. Julie was right. Even in the grey newsprint he looked sexy. Julie should see him in real life! Then her eye caught something she had missed in her first hurried reading of the story. Right there in the first sentence, immediately after Max’s name, they had his age in brackets. Twenty-nine. She had been close enough in her guesswork then. He wasn’t yet thirty.
She was now two months short of her eighteenth birthday, which made her just eleven years younger. It wasn’t that big a gap, was it? she thought uncertainly, biting her lip.
Julie came back and flung herself down beside Olivia on the grass, her white skirts flaring, showing long, tanned legs. ‘Are you going to stay at your father’s Greek villa again this year?’
‘I expect so,’ Olivia said, mentally crossing her fingers.
Julie groaned. ‘You might meet this Greek guy—lucky you! Can I come too?’
‘Hands off,’ Olivia said. ‘He’s mine.’
They both laughed, but secretly Olivia was serious. She felt sure she would see Max again that summer; it was a wild, irrational belief but a fixed one. She couldn’t wait to get to Corfu.
A fortnight later she got a letter from her father telling her that he had sold his Corfu villa and was in the process of buying an apartment in Monaco. He suggested that this year they should stay at a hotel in the West Indies for their usual holiday together. She would probably find that more fun, he said; there would be plenty of young people of her own age around.
‘The West Indies!’ Julie said dreamily, reading the letter over Olivia’s shoulder. ‘I wish my dad would take me there, but he always goes back to Spain every year. As soon as I can afford to pay for my own holiday I am heading for the West Indies.’
Olivia wasn’t really listening to her. She was staring at her father’s immaculate handwriting, her golden eyes fixed and over-bright. She was saying goodbye to a dream. She had been living all year long on the hope that next summer there would be a re-run of the day she had spent with Max, and that this time there would be no abrupt ending, this time they would spend the whole summer together.
Now she knew it wasn’t going to happen. She even had the feeling that her father had sold his villa to make sure it never happened. He might do business with him, sit on Max’s board of directors, but she had picked up antagonism in him towards the younger man.
Olivia didn’t know why her father felt that way, yet somehow she had felt it from the beginning. She had seen the coldness in his eyes whenever he looked at Max. Gerald Faulton did not like him. Why? she wondered, frowning. Was it just one of those indefinable dislikes, a mere clash of personalities?
Or was it because Max was twenty years younger, and already running his own company, being very successful? Business was all her father had ever really cared about—she could easily believe that he would resent a younger man coming along and successfully building up a business which might one day out-perform Gerald Faulton’s company.
Of course, she could be imagining all this! Her father might have forgotten all about the day she spent with Max. He might have sold his villa for personal reasons of his own. No doubt he was buying a place in Monaco because it was a tax haven, whereas Corfu wasn’t.
None of that mattered. All she cared about was that she wouldn’t now be seeing Max.
Julie gave her a sideways look, her face curious. ‘Why are you looking as if your pet rabbit just died? Don’t you want to go to the West Indies?’
‘Not much,’ Olivia said truthfully.
In fact she didn’t go anyway, because her mother had an accident the day before Olivia was due to leave. Another car pulled out of a crossroads, crashing into the side of Ann Faulton’s car. When Olivia rushed to the hospital she found that her mother had serious injuries and would be kept in hospital for weeks, possibly months.
Olivia cabled her father the news, adding that she would not now be joining him in the West Indies. He sent her mother flowers and wrote to Olivia saying she was quite right to stay with her mother, and as soon as he had moved into his apartment in Monaco she must come to stay with him there.
Ann Faulton’s recovery was slow and painful, even after she left hospital. Instead of going to college that autumn, Olivia stayed at home to nurse her mother. It was another six months before Ann Faulton was well enough to resume a normal life.
After that, Olivia took a part-time job working as a receptionist in the casualty department of the local hospital. Her mother didn’t need her so much any more and Olivia would have been bored doing nothing all day while she waited to start her course in public relations and media studies at college in the following autumn.
Ann Faulton was fully recovered, although her accident and the months of pain that followed it had aged her. She looked ten years older than she had, and she could no longer manage her job as a sports mistress. She retired, but she too hated having nothing to do, so after a few months she decided to open a sports shop in the Lake District.
Olivia had chosen a college two hours away from home so that she could visit her mother quite often. During her first year there, she lived on the campus, in a narrow little room as bare as a monk’s cell, made a lot of new friends and learnt to live on very little, worked hard and went to a lot of parties.
She spent a fortnight with her father that summer in his elegant Monaco apartment with a view of the palace gardens, dark with cypress and brilliant with bougainvillaea. Gerald Faulton never mentioned either of the Agathios brothers, so eventually Olivia very casually asked over breakfast one day, ‘Are you still on the board of Max Agathios’s company?’
‘Yes, why?’ he asked, as if she might be an industrial spy, and she shrugged, still trying to look and sound totally offhand.
‘You always say you want me to be interested in your business affairs. I read in the newspapers that you had joined the board of Agathios Kera, that’s all…’ She paused, then asked, ‘Why Kera, by the way? What does that mean?’
‘Leon Kera is a sleeping partner who put up some of the money for the company—he’s a financier,’ her father said flatly. ‘The rumour is that Max Agathios is going to marry his daughter, which will keep the company in the family.’
Olivia’s skin turned cold. ‘Oh?’ She took a painful breath. ‘What’s her name?’ She had to know; she needed to know to believe it, to accept that Max was out of reach for her, that it was time to forget him.
‘Daphne,’ her father clipped out. ‘She’s Greek, a beautiful girl, typical Greek colouring—black hair, olive skin, dark eyes. She’s clever too, a good head on her shoulders. She works with Max. I usually see her at board meetings, sitting beside him. More coffee?’
She shook her head, too stunned to speak, and her father got up from the table, putting his newspaper under his arm.
‘Well, I have work to do,’ he said, walking away without looking at her, to her relief, because she hated to think he might read her expression and guess at her feelings.
The last remnants of her dream had just died. She hadn’t admitted it to herself, but she did now; for the past year she had gone on hoping that one day she would meet Max again and…
She broke off, biting down on her lower lip angrily. How stupid! She met a man once, spent a day with him, got kissed, and that was that. Why had she made such a big thing of it? He had probably forgotten her within a week.
Well, there were plenty of attractive guys around at her college. She had been keeping them all at a distance, turning down dates, refusing to get involved—but not any more. When she got back to college, she was going to have fun and forget Max Agathios.
* * *
The following two years were busy and enjoyable ones for Olivia. She did well in her course, and managed to get a good final result, and she was the centre of a lively social circle at her college. She went out with some of the best-looking men, but didn’t fall in love with any of them, although several claimed they had fallen in love with her.
One guy asked her to live with him; another asked her to marry him. She turned them both down. Kindly. But firmly.
From time to time she read about Max in the newspapers. His company seemed to be growing rapidly—he was now running a cruise line around the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. She saw advertisements for his cruises all the time. He still seemed to run ferries in the Aegean, and had ships carrying freight from island to island there too, she gathered, but cruise ships were now the major part of his business.
From the sound of it, Max’s company was now bigger than his brother’s, or her father’s. How did they like that? she wondered. They were both so competitive, and neither of them had much love for Max. It must be burning them up to see him forging ahead like this!
The summer of the year she left college she was invited to America for the whole summer by a guy she had been dating for months, but who was now returning for good to his Florida home after a year spent working in Britain.
His family had a beach house on the Keys in Florida; Gerry talked lovingly about brown pelicans and giant sea turtles, conch chowder and Key lime pie, mangrove swamps and glass-bottomed boats.
‘I want you to meet my folks,’ he said. ‘And they’re dying to meet you, they’ve heard so much about you. Oh, come on, Loll—if you don’t visit with us this year we may never see each other again!’
Her mother persuaded her to join her father though. After all, she pointed out, it was the only time they saw each other during a year.
‘OK, he isn’t a loving father, but by his own rather weird standards he’s always tried to act like a father, kept in touch, remembered your birthday and so on. I think you should go.’ Ann Faulton gave her a wry look. ‘And from what you’ve told me about this Gerry, he’s getting far too serious about you, but you’re not that way about him. If you spend the summer with him and his family he’ll be entitled to think you like him more than you do, Olivia.’
It was true, and, not for the first time, Olivia took her mother’s advice, told Gerry she was sorry but she couldn’t come to Florida, and went to Monaco instead.
The year since she last saw him showed her that her father was beginning to show his age. Gerald Faulton was now in his mid-fifties, and his hair was entirely silver, his skin lined from years of sun-worshipping. His regimen of diet and exercise had kept time at bay for a long time, and he was still very slim and upright, but Olivia felt a real pang of sadness as she realised that he was beginning to lose the battle. His neck was wrinkling, his jawline was no longer taut and firm, his eyes were set deeper in his tanned skin and he no longer moved with the same spring in his step.
His nature hadn’t softened with time either; he was as remote and cold of heart as ever. Within a couple of days, Olivia was wondering why on earth she had taken her mother’s advice and come. Why did her father go on inviting her when they had nothing in common, nothing to talk about, and there wasn’t a shred of warmth or affection between them?
At least the weather was good though; she could swim and sunbathe, and her father’s small apartment was comfortable, indeed elegant.
One night Gerald suggested that they visit the Casino at Monte Carlo, the old Palais Casino on the main square, with its baroque décor, ornate, gilded, elegant. Olivia felt no excitement around the tables. She didn’t want to play cards herself, or gamble on roulette; she soon grew bored with watching her father play baccarat, and instead began to wander around, looking at the salles privées, the silken brocade upholstery of chairs, the long swagged curtains, the paintings on the walls. She drank a glass of chilled white wine, a cup of coffee, nibbled nuts and crisps, watched over the bare white shoulders of a woman in black who was losing heavily at roulette, wondering how she could bear to throw her money away without a change of expression, and kept looking at her watch, hoping her father would show signs of getting bored.
Suddenly she realised that her father was no longer at the baccarat table.
He was standing near the main door of the big salon, talking to some people Olivia had never seen before— two men and a woman.
The older man was broad-set, wearing what she recognised as expensively tailored evening dress, his rather bull-like head set on heavy shoulders, his hair black, with a flash of silver at the temples. Olivia was not attracted by the ruthless force she read in his face and body, but she had read somewhere that power was an aphrodisiac, and she could believe it; some women might find him exciting.
Looking from him to the other, younger, man, Olivia saw such a strong likeness that it was obvious they were related; possibly brothers? No, the age gap was too great. They must be father and son.
The woman with them looked the right age to be the wife of the older man, yet she was so lovely Olivia found it hard to believe that she was the mother of a son in his twenties.
A slender, graceful woman with hair like black silk and eyes like jet, she wore a white dress that was elegant and yet sensual, clinging to her body from her shoulders to her ankles, covering everything and yet hinting at what lay underneath so that every man who passed her turned to stare as if wondering exactly what she was hiding.
Olivia watched her smiling sleepily, sensually, at Gerald Faulton, saw the way her father looked back, not even trying to hide the fact that he coveted the wife of another man, and was startled. She hadn’t seen her father look that way at any woman before. It was not in his rather chilly nature, not in his controlled temperament.
But there was no doubt about it. Her father had an almost tranced look on his face, a flush on his high cheekbones, a brightness in his eyes.
Quickly, Olivia looked at the man she had decided must be this woman’s husband. How did he feel about the way her father was watching his wife?
Or was she his wife?
Oh, yes, she thought, seeing a glitter in the man’s heavy-lidded eyes, a streak of angry red staining his cheeks. That was a possessive, angry look, the instinctive reaction of a man watching his wife with someone else, and then something odd happened—he deliberately lowered his rather heavy lids, veiling that expression, as if he didn’t want Gerald to see it.
Olivia was struck by that. Why was he afraid to let her father see his angry reaction?
Who was he? Someone who worked for her father? Someone who wanted to do business with her father?
It was very odd; she felt a distinct sense of familiarity whenever she looked at him. Had they met before, after all? She didn’t remember it. And yet there was something…
While she was struggling to pin down whatever memory was trying to surface, her father turned to stare in her direction, and all the others looked round too.
Gerald Faulton made a peremptory gesture, beckoning her.
Olivia sighed, but obeyed, walking across the hushed, crowded room towards them, edgily aware of being watched all the way.
She was wearing her only really good evening dress, a classic backless slipper satin, tawny-coloured, with a deep V-neck, which left her shoulders and arms bare, the long skirts clinging from her waist to her thighs and then flowing easily down to her feet. The colour gave depth and brightness to her blonde hair, matched the golden colour of her eyes.
Her father had bought it for her, after deciding that nothing Olivia had brought with her was good enough for a party they had been to the night after she arrived.
The lifestyle on Corfu had been very different—far more casual and relaxed, a real beach holiday in the sun with a party style to match. Here, Gerald Faulton moved in circles who loved any excuse for dressing up: putting on jewellery, clouds of perfume, expensive designer dresses, the women competing to look the most stunning, the men apparently wanting the best-looking woman on their arm each night.
Gerald had gone with Olivia to choose the dress. It was ready-made, but designed by a top French couturier, and luckily fitted her as if it had been made for her, but Olivia wasn’t quite comfortable in it—it was so formal, and yet left so much of her bare.
‘Ah, there you are, Olivia. I want you meet some friends of mine…You’ve heard me mention Constantine Agathios, haven’t you?’
She stiffened, her hand already held out, her eyes on the man’s heavy, olive-skinned face.
It was a shock, and yet it wasn’t. No wonder he had looked familiar! No wonder she had been increasingly sure she had seen him somewhere before.
He and Max might only be half-brothers, but they shared a family resemblance which was very marked, in spite of the age gap between them. She should have guessed at once. She was sure she would have guessed, sooner or later, if she hadn’t been told.
He took her hand and Olivia shivered involuntarily as those large, tanned fingers swallowed hers up. She almost wondered if he would let her hand go again; did he ever let anything go? Meeting those heavy-lidded eyes was even more unnerving. This was a difficult, complicated man, she thought, staring back at him.
There was something belligerent, choleric, in that face; he had a temper, from the look of him. Not an easy man to deal with, or maybe even like? A bull on the point of charging, she thought—that was the impression he left on her, and yet there was something else, a craftiness about the half-hidden eyes, the line of the selfish mouth. She remembered the angry glitter of his eyes when her father stared covetously at his wife, the way Constantine Agathios had swiftly veiled that look, hiding it away. This man was full of rage, but he was cunning enough to hide it, which made him disturbing.
‘I am delighted to meet you, Olivia—may I call you Olivia? You are very like your father. I feel I know you already, and you must be the same age as my son here, Christos,’ Constantine said, and smiled suddenly, full of charm which Olivia didn’t quite trust, although she blinked in surprise as it focused on her. That was something else he had in common with Max—Max had that charm, too, only in him it was genuine, full of warmth. She was sure that Constantine’s charm was skin-deep.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, flickering a look at the younger man. So she had been right—it was his son!
‘What a beautiful dress—that colour is perfect with your wonderful English complexion and hair,’ said the woman beside Constantine, in a deeply accented voice.
‘My wife, Helena,’ Constantine introduced her, letting go of Olivia’s hand at last so that she could shake hands with his wife, who smiled in that languid, sleepy way at Olivia, as she had at Gerald.
‘I always envy English women. They don’t have the problem of coping with too much sun, ruining their skins, giving them wrinkles and lines before they’re middle-aged. In my country, the sun is a woman’s enemy.’
‘We just have to cope with rain,’ Olivia said, smiling back.
‘You English always complain about your weather, but rain is so good for the skin that I only wish it rained in Greece every day!’
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