‘Would you consider an extension to our contract?’
‘No.’ This time it was her rapid-fire response that took him by surprise. He jerked back, as if she’d fired a shot from a gun. ‘I mean, I’m not sure that’s possible, with this course, and everything I’ve got planned.’ She plucked at a crease in her dress, her mind in turmoil. Leaving after another two weeks would likely be hell. How would she calmly walk away if she stayed longer?
‘I’ll double what I’m paying you. Two million Australian dollars.’
‘It’s not about the money!’ And it wasn’t. Just lately the thought of being paid for what she was experiencing here on Santorini sat uneasily on her. If he’d been a bully and as ruthless as he’d first seemed, she might have felt as if she
deserved it for putting up with him, but he wasn’t like that. He was kind and generous and he seemed as if he cared.
‘But you like it here. You like being with me.’
She pushed herself out of her chair, striding to the balustrade, her hands grasping at its reassuring solidity. The season was warming up. Three cruise ships lay at anchor today, lighters zipping through the spring mist between them and the port with their cargo of today’s photo-hungry tourists.
‘It’s no crime to trust someone.’
His words came back to her. Andreas was right. It was no crime to trust someone. Once. But it was a fool who let themselves be burned a second time.
How could she tell him she was scared? He was a businessman. He dealt in contracts and clauses and certainties. Those he understood. Those he lived by. And that would have to be her angle.
She sensed when he joined her at the terrace edge, on the very lip of the ancient crater where the fresh salty wind met the sky. Her skin prickled, her blood fizzed and her flesh became alive with want.
‘You
do
enjoy my company, don’t you?’
There was no point answering his question. The truth would get her nowhere. ‘We have two weeks left, Andreas. Maybe we should just make the most of them.’
A noise alerted him, something other than the cry of seabirds or the distant buzz of conversation and exclamation as tourists wended their way through the narrow paths and came upon another magnificent photo opportunity. He swung his head around and saw her standing there, in the doorway leading to the terrace.
Gamoto
. How much had she heard?
‘Petra, what can I do for you?’
‘
Kalimera
, Cleo,’ she started. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, but, Andreas, your phone was switched off and I had to talk to you.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ He didn’t care if he sounded rude. The last thing he needed was Petra spying on them. Already she’d somehow wormed more information out of Cleo than he had wanted her to, and if she’d been here while he’d been talking about the contract…
‘I am sorry. But you must excuse me. I’m not feeling very well, Andreas. I wanted to let you know I really think I’m not much good in the office today. I’m hoping it’s all right with you to go to my apartment and lie down.’
Damned time of the month again, he supposed, though why all of a sudden she had to fall victim to the curse, he didn’t know.
‘Are you still feeling unwell?’ Cleo asked, moving away from him to take Petra by the arm. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘I really don’t want to interrupt you,’ Petra protested, and then with a smile, ‘but that would be so sweet. I am feeling a little dizzy.’
And Andreas watched in bemusement and not a little frustration as the woman he had brought here to deflect the attentions of another was now giving that woman all of hers.
‘Come straight back,’ he called out to her. ‘I want to take you shopping.’ And she waved her hand to him, acknowledging she’d heard, even as she shepherded Petra into the building. It wasn’t really a lie, he thought as he paced the length of the terrace waiting for her, watching the last of the morning mist burn off the deep blue waters of the flooded crater. She wasn’t big on shopping, preferring to explore the churches and villages than the flash boutiques and jewellery stores, but there was something he wanted to buy her, something special he knew would remind her of the intense blue of the sun and sea of Santorini and would at the same time be the perfect complement to her eyes.
And something that might even help persuade her to stay.
Why she was so vehement about leaving, he didn’t understand. She loved it here, she loved all of it, even coming to terms with the fact the islands were part of a volcanic system that had been changing over thousands of years and would keep on changing.
But he was determined to make her change her mind and he was confident he could do it. Everyone had their price. A million dollars had got her here.
He didn’t care how much it took to keep her.
An hour later, Andreas excused himself to make a phone call and Cleo happily agreed to wait, a rack of blue-beaded key rings catching her attention. It was probably time she thought about buying a few souvenirs to take home. The last two weeks had gone in a flash. The next couple of weeks would probably fly past even quicker.
She dodged out of the way of a group of tourists taking up the width of the street. The streets of Fira were busy today, the day tourists growing in number by the minute, making the narrow lanes and streets even more crowded. If she’d known, she might have stayed at home.
Home.
Now there was a notion. Since when had the mansion she was temporarily occupying ever been her home?
A silver donkey key ring caught her eye, strung on blue cotton with blue beads that looked like eyes. She selected two. Her half-brothers would both love one. She found another, with spinning letter beads that spelt out SANTORINI with more of the eye beads and a beautiful blue stone at the base. Her mother, she decided instantly, slipping it from the rack.
Now she just needed something for her step father. She looked over the racks and decided that with the blue beads there
was nothing ‘blokey’ enough, so her gaze widened, her eyes scanning the contents of the store for that perfect easy-to-pack memento.
And that was when she saw him.
H
E WAS
checking out the postcards, his face and chest puffier than Cleo remembered, or maybe that was just because they were both pink from the sun, and his arm looped around the shoulders of a girl who looked as stringy as her hair.
He was here.
The key rings slipped from her fingers, clattering to the floor.
‘I’m sorry to leave you so long.’ She registered Andreas’ voice, clung onto the sound like a lifeline even as he bent down to pick up the items she’d dropped. ‘Cleo, what’s wrong? You look ill.’
‘That’s him,’ she croaked through a throat clamped as tight as every muscle and organ in her body. ‘That’s Kurt.’
Kurt chose that moment to widen his own search, scanning the shop for opportunities. He looked around, the skin between his eyes creasing into a frown when he saw Andreas scowling at him, a frown that became confused when he looked at the woman alongside the stranger, until the moment he recognised her and his expression became one of abject terror. He tugged, already half outside the shop himself, at the girl next to him who was busy trying on sunglasses. Kurt didn’t care, the need to escape clearly paramount, as he dragged his protesting girlfriend
out with him, the unpurchased sunglasses still covering her eyes.
‘Stay here,’ Andreas said, barking out orders to the proprietor in Greek in the same breath before he took off after Kurt. A moment later a woman brought Cleo a chair, insisting she sit down, clucking over her like a mother hen as she pressed a bottle of spring water into her hands. Cleo didn’t argue. She was still punch-drunk from seeing Kurt.
So he’d come to Santorini. All that talk of the Greek Islands hadn’t been for nothing. But who was the girl? Someone he’d picked up on the Internet who did make the grade? She didn’t want to feel hard done by, she had had a complete wardrobe and cosmetic makeover, but surely even before all that she’d been a cut above her?
God, was she that much of a loser that she couldn’t even hang onto a man like Kurt?
The woman returned to her side, pressing a small plastic Santorini shopping bag into her hands. The key rings of course, she thought as she felt the beads inside. Andreas must have passed them on to her. She reached for her purse but the woman waved her away. ‘No charge,’ she said, smiling, bowling Cleo over with more of the warmth and hospitality she’d found everywhere on the island, so that her eyes threatened to spill over with it.
It seemed to take for ever but it was probably only fifteen minutes and Andreas was back. She stood to greet him. ‘How are you feeling now?’ he asked, collecting her inside his arm.
‘Better, thanks. What happened to Kurt?’
‘I’ll tell you once we’re alone.’ And she understood why. There was a crowd gathered around the store now, sensing the excitement, wanting to find out what was happening and be part of the action, a crowd that seemed suddenly fascinated in blue-beaded key rings and postcards and bookmarks featuring church domes and cats.
She turned to the beaming proprietor, who was busy exchanging Euros for trinkets, but not too busy to be able to do two things at once.
‘Efharisto poli,’
she said, in her slowly improving Greek, repeating it in English in case she’d made a complete hash of the words. ‘Thank you, so much,’ and the woman beamed and nodded and replied with a torrent of words Cleo was at a loss to understand. ‘What did she say?’ she asked as soon as they’d re-entered the busy street and he’d steered her towards the mansion.
Andreas didn’t look at her, his gaze fixed somewhere ahead, his jaw tight. ‘She said we would have beautiful children.’
‘Oh. How…quaint.’
Andreas didn’t answer. He was too busy wanting to believe it.
‘I believe this is yours.’ Staff had brought coffee and pastries to a table on the mansion terrace overlooking the caldera that Cleo knew should be listed as one of the wonders of the world, when Andreas handed her the envelope.
She eyed it suspiciously. ‘What is it?’
He pressed the envelope into her hands. ‘Take a look.’
She opened the flap and peered inside. A stack of notes sat plump and fat inside. She frowned. ‘What is this?’
‘I had a chat to your former friend.’
‘You mean Kurt? You’re kidding! You got Nanna’s money back. I don’t believe it!’
‘It seemed he was only too happy to refund you the money he’d borrowed from you in order to escape a charge of shop lifting, plus a bonus for the inconvenience he caused you along the way.’
‘Shoplifting?’
‘The sunglasses. His girlfriend didn’t have time to put them back on the rack. It ended up being a handy levering device.
It seems he didn’t want to hang around on Santorini and explain it to the police when his cruise ship was sailing tonight.’
It really didn’t matter how or why, it didn’t matter that soon Cleo would have more than enough money to repay her many times over, the simple fact was it was her grandmother’s money she was getting back, the money she had entrusted to Kurt and haplessly thrown away in the same instant. And getting it back was as if she hadn’t lost it at all. ‘Thank you,’ she said, throwing her arms around his neck. ‘I love you so much.’
It wasn’t so much hearing her own words. It was feeling his hands still at her sides that alerted her. She slid down his body, appalled at the gaffe she’d just made. ‘That’s just a figure of speech in Australia. A kind of thank you. Because I really appreciate what you’ve done.’
‘I understand,’ he said, but still putting her away from him as he was suddenly craving distance. ‘I need to drop by the office, check everything is all right, given Petra is sick. Will you be okay?’
She nodded stoically, thinking that if Andreas had wanted her to stay longer before, he’d no doubt now want her gone tomorrow. ‘Of course. I’ll see you later.’
And then Andreas was gone and Cleo was left alone, in the sun and breeze and clear blue sky. There were clouds gathering in the distance, she noted absently, thinking that maybe they were in for a storm, while at the same time wishing that one day she would learn not to be so impetuous and admit things she didn’t really feel.
Because she hadn’t really loved Kurt. She could see that now. She was in love with the idea of being in love and being loved and she’d wanted it to work. So desperately that she’d thought that once they’d had sex, she should tell him that she loved him.
And she didn’t really love Andreas either. Not really. He was
just kind and she was just grateful and it was crazy to think, that just because he had behaved better to her than Kurt, this gratefulness she felt for him was somehow love.
Liar.
An inner voice brought her to task. She didn’t want to stay because she knew what would happen. Not that she was at risk of falling in love with him, but because she would be at risk of loving him more.
Because she already loved him.
The wind whipped stronger around her, the cruise ships below straining at their chains. Kurt was down there, she realised, on board one of those ships and soon to sail once more out of her life.
But Kurt was nothing to her now. As Andreas had said, that first night they’d made love—
had sex
—Kurt had given her nothing.
It was Andreas who had given her everything. It was Andreas who had opened her heart.
It was Andreas she loved.
Andreas reread the fax with increasing frustration. There was a problem with the paperwork on the takeover of Darius’ hotel. The bank needed more signatures. His. Or the papers could not be processed and the transaction could not proceed and Darius would retain ownership by default.
He would have to go to London.
It would take no time. A day. Two at the most. Cleo could come with him.
‘I love you so much.’
Her words came back to him in stark relief. Sure, she’d tried to explain it away, to get him to accept it was some kind of Australian equivalent for thank you. But he wasn’t buying that.
There was no way he could take her. As much as he wanted her and hungered for her, as much as he’d wished she’d been already incubating his child—maybe it was better that she didn’t come with him.
Maybe, he thought with a tinge of reluctance, maybe it was even better that he sent her home early. He’d never wanted to get involved with virgins and with good reason.
Cleo had been the closest he’d got to having a virgin and maybe this experience had proven him right. Virgins and almost virgins. They were looking for someone to love, looking for someone special to make this huge physical leap they were taking into something emotional. Even if there was nothing there.
Except that his mother wanted a grandchild.
Cleo would be beautiful pregnant, her body rounded and blooming, her belly swelling with his seed, but she didn’t want to stay and now he wasn’t sure she should.
Maybe his trip away would do them both good, and put things into perspective, a perspective he was admittedly having trouble with himself. And then it would all make sense when he came back.
The idea appealed. Logic appealed.
Although, strangely, leaving her again didn’t.
She’d blown it. Whatever sense of camaraderie had been building between them, she’d blown it with a few thoughtless and ill-timed words. He’d told her he was leaving in one breath and he was gone in the next, with barely a backward glance and even less warmth. She hadn’t even rated a peck on the cheek.
It hurt, his physical withdrawal from her. It hurt more than the fact he would be gone for a day or two, because eventually he would return to Santorini, but things would be different between them.
At least it would be easier for her now to leave. Now there was no way he would want her to stay.
Restless and unable to settle into her books, she wandered into the town, to a small travel agent she’d seen tucked away alongside a heaving souvlaki shop. There was no reason why she shouldn’t make enquiries about flights to Australia, the two weeks she had left would soon pass, but still she felt guilty, as if she were going behind Andreas’ back. Which was ridiculous, she told herself as she forced herself to enter the narrow shop-front. It was not as if he didn’t know she was going to leave. Not as if he didn’t know when. What harm would it do to ask?
Then she saw it on the cover of one of the faded and tatty brochures that lined the walls, a picture of Ayers Rock amid a sea of red dust, and a wave of homesickness crashed over her. That was her world, a dusty, hot land where it never seemed to rain. That was where she belonged, not this island paradise, with its to-die-for-views and romantic sunsets and a man who would never really be hers.
A little over two weeks and she could be home.
Maybe it would be wise to make a booking now.
She found Petra in their suite, rifling through the drawers on Andreas’ side of the bed. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Ha!’ the woman said, clearly not feeling guilty in the least as she turned, holding up a fistful of papers. ‘There was nothing in the office but I knew I’d find it here.’
‘What is it?’ she asked, while fear uncurled in her stomach like a viper, hungry and hissing. ‘What have you got?’ But Cleo knew what it was. Andreas’ copy of the contract. Their contract. And she remembered being out on the terrace and discussing an extension and them turning to see Petra watching them. Listening. She swallowed as the woman’s greedy eyes drank in the details. ‘That’s none of your business.’ She
marched across the room and tried to snatch it from Petra’s hands, but Petra whipped it away, staring at Cleo with such a look of triumph that Cleo was momentarily afraid.
‘One million dollars! He’s paying you one million dollars to sleep with him?’
‘No, he’s not! Give that back!’
‘What does that make you? Some kind of high-priced whore?’ Her eyes raked her as effectively as a blast of burning-hot Kangaroo Crossing dust. ‘More like an overpriced one.’
‘It’s not like that. I didn’t have to sleep with him.’
‘No? But you are, aren’t you? I’ve seen the way you look at him. I know what you’re doing. How is that not selling yourself? How is that not whoring?’
‘Get out! It’s nothing to do with you.’
‘Isn’t it? I wondered where Andreas had dredged you up from, acting more like some frightened schoolgirl than one of his women. I knew something was up the minute you stepped from the plane. It was all a charade, all for my benefit.’
‘What are you talking about? Why should it be for your benefit?’
‘Because Andreas was my lover, until you showed up!’
Cleo reeled, feeling blind-sided. ‘What?’
‘And he didn’t know how to tell me it was over. So he employed you—’ she gave a theatrical toss of her head ‘—to be his whore.’
‘Andreas wouldn’t do that.’ But even as she put voice to the words, the doubts she’d had from the start doubled and redoubled in her mind. Why had he needed someone to act as his mistress? To deflect gold-diggers generally, or one woman in particular? She couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.
‘But why couldn’t he just tell you? Why go to so much trouble?’
‘To totally humiliate me, why else?’
The other woman glared at her, as if she belonged here in this place and Cleo didn’t, and a wave of revulsion rolled over her. Had Petra occupied this bed in this room before her arrival? Had Petra spent the nights lacing her long legs around Andreas’ back as he drove himself deep into her? She closed her eyes, trying to block the pictures out.
No wonder the woman didn’t like her. She’d been right from the start: Petra’s edgy friendship had been laced with hidden meaning and snide digs.
But whatever his tactics and however repugnant they might be, Andreas had clearly made up his mind. It gave Cleo a much-needed foothold in the argument. ‘So Andreas didn’t want you, then.’ It was her turn to smile. ‘And you just can’t take no for an answer.’
‘You bitch! Do you really think he wants you, a woman who is so stupid she falls for someone over the Internet and loses everything? Do you really think he would prefer your type than someone who can talk business with him and understands his needs?’