Mark put down his pen and leaned back in his chair. ‘How long will you be away this time?’
‘I’m touched. You are missing me already?’
‘Like a dog deprived of his fleas.’
‘An unpleasant analogy, but in answer to your question, I don’t know. A week seems probable.’ He explained why he was going.
‘So why the interest?’ asked Mark. ‘What’s so special about these hotels that you feel you have to make another of your boardroom raids on them?’
‘When I have so much already? Is that what you’re getting at?’
‘Yes. Exactly that.’
‘Aha, the same old Mark. What a delight it is to know that despite your own success you still despise mine. It is quite simple. I want the hotels because they are there. They are available. If not me putting money on the table, it will be somebody else making a ruthless hostile bid. And, forgive my arrogance, but I believe I will offer Yiannis Karabourniotis the best deal.’
‘What will you do with them?’
‘Make them highly successful, of course.’
‘But what makes you think you can succeed where he has failed?’
‘I will not have two greedy sons milking my company.
And if you have finished prosecuting me, I must go and pack. Then I shall wander next door and see Izzy.’
He had little to pack: running two households meant that he had everything he needed in both places. Each of his wardrobes was a mirror image of the other: suits, shirts, ties and shoes, as well as a selection of more casual clothes were duplicated. It was an extravagance — a bloody crime, as Mark frequently told him — but one he could easily justify. Packing consisted of a simple reorganisation of his briefcase for the week ahead. He then phoned his housekeeper in Athens to warn her that he would be arriving later that afternoon. Katina had worked for him for many years and knew his habits well. She lived close by so his unpredictable comings and goings were of little inconvenience to her. She assured him that she would have everything ready for his arrival. When he had put down the phone he changed into a suit and went next door.
It had been a curious week since he had told Izzy what he felt for her. Even more curious was that, during his busy week of travelling between Athens and Corfu, his feelings for her had not changed. She was never far from his thoughts. While she had been held captive at Villa Petros resting her ankle, the chance to see her alone had been non-existent. To his annoyance and frustration, there always seemed to be somebody about. He had thought of calling her from Athens on several occasions, but had known that there would have been people all around her making it impossible for them to have the kind of conversation he desired. The Fates, it seemed, were conspiring against them.
Or were they?
Surely if he really wanted to get her alone he would have made it happen. Wasn’t that what he excelled at? Didn’t he always make things happen according to his wishes? So why, then, had he not scooped up the lovely Izzy in his arms, carried her away and made love to her as he wanted to?
Was he frightened of doing that? Because in taking that step he might destroy what he had so carefully built up? She was so wary of him that he knew he still had a long way to go in gaining her confidence and her trust. If he moved in too fast he might jeopardise everything.
But there was another possibility to explain why he was treating her with such patience. It was a theory with which Mark had confronted him over supper one evening. ‘You fancy yourself in the role of a disillusioned, soul-searching, worldly man wanting to be redeemed by the love of a sweet young girl. You see her as Jane Eyre to your Rochester, Rebecca to your Maxim de Winter, Fanny Price to — ’
‘Yes, Mark, I have grasped the subtlety of your words, you are not the only one to have trawled the pages of these fine books. But I’m afraid I think you are spending too much time in the world of fiction. You are so used to making things up, you don’t know what is real and not real.’
‘Oh, come on, own up to it. You’re intrigued by the idea of harnessing a love as refreshing as the one you think Izzy can offer you. But what then? What will you do when you have succeeded in capturing her heart?’
‘At the rate I’m going, I doubt that will ever happen.’
‘Of course it will. You never fail at anything you’re determined to have.’
‘In business that might be true, but this is different. Izzy is not a commodity to be negotiated for.’
‘I’m relieved to hear it.’
And this was what had started to worry Theo. With his sledgehammer comments, had Mark come close to what was really going on between him and Izzy? Had the division between his professional and his personal life become blurred? Did he view her as one of those must-have businesses? Was there a chance that his feelings for her were based purely on the desire always to have his own way? Was it the thrill of the chase that excited him? And if so, as Mark had said, ‘What then?’ Having won her heart, was there a danger that he would grow bored with it and search for another?
And wasn’t that what he had always done?
But he didn’t want to believe this. He wanted to believe that, at long last, the impossible had happened: Theodore Vlamakis had finally met the woman for whom he would forsake all others.
He was so deep in thought, his head bowed in concentration, that he let out a startled cry of surprise when he came face to face with the very woman he had been thinking about. ‘Izzy,’ he said when he had recovered himself, ‘I was just on my way to see you.’ Looking down at her ankle, he added, ‘Should you be putting so much strain on it?’
She smiled. ‘I’m testing it, but the others don’t know, so please don’t tell them. They’ll be very cross with me.’
‘And I, too, shall be very cross with you if you come to any more harm. Where are you going?’
‘Down to the beach. I’m tired of just staring at it.’ She indicated the bag on her shoulder. ‘I wanted to find some driftwood to sketch. I feel like an escaped prisoner on the run.’
‘May I join you?’
She looked at his clothes doubtfully. ‘Won’t you spoil your suit?’
‘I promise I will be very careful with it.’
‘You make a lot of promises, don’t you?’
‘But, I promise you, I keep them all.’ He flashed her one of his best star-bright smiles. ‘Now, I won’t take any arguments, you must give me your hand.’
Why, thought Izzy as she slipped her hand through his, does he make everything sound so provocative? And why does he still scare me so much?
Laura had said it was because he made her reconsider everything she thought she knew about herself. ‘He makes you wonder what it would be like to live a little dangerously. Instead of watching everyone else having a good time from behind the glow-white net curtains of your so-called respectable upbringing, Theo challenges you to dance naked in the street while kicking over the milk bottles and rattling the neighbours’ dustbin lids.’
Maybe Laura was right.
When they were down on the beach, sitting on the stones, Theo, having removed his jacket and checked that his trousers wouldn’t come to any harm, said, ‘Do you realise this is my first opportunity to be with you on your own since you hurt your ankle? I might be forgiven for thinking that you have been hiding from me.’
Ignoring the implication of his words, she dug around in her bag for her sketchpad. Keeping her head down, she said, ‘Up on the path you mentioned that you were coming to see me. Why?’
He selected a perfectly white stone the size of an egg from between his polished shoes and wrapped his fingers around it. ‘I have to return to Athens again and I wanted to see you before I went. I am leaving in half an hour.’
‘Will you be away for long?’
‘A week. Perhaps longer. It depends how quickly I can get what I want.’
He threw the stone into the water and turned his head to fix his dark eyes on hers. There was a determination in his gaze that made her realise that no matter how hard she tried to have a normal conversation with him, he always had his own agenda.
It depends how quickly I can get what I want.
He never missed a trick, did he? ‘You’ll miss Max and Laura’s party tonight,’ she said, hunting through her bag again, this time for a pencil.
‘I will miss more than that. I will miss you.’
‘No, you won’t,’ she said brightly, ‘you’ll be far too busy.’
A hand came to rest on hers through the canvas of the bag. She glanced up to see a look of annoyance on his face. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘do not take that oh-so-English mother-knows-best tone with me. If I say I will miss you, Izzy, I mean exactly that.’
He’s just like a little boy, she thought. The moment he thinks he isn’t being taken seriously, or there’s a danger he can’t get his own way, he takes offence. While she was pondering on this, he said, ‘I have something for you.’
From the inside pocket of his jacket, he pulled out a mobile phone.
She looked at it, puzzled.
‘It is so that I can speak to you in private while I am away. Switch it on late at night when you are no longer chaperoned and I will call you while you are in bed.’ And as though to show her that his cross-little-boy act had gone, he grinned and said, ‘Every night I will tell you a bedtime story.’
She laughed nervously. ‘With a happy ending, I hope.’
‘Well, Izzy, I would say that depends on you, doesn’t it?’ He leaned in and very gently kissed her. It was a small, brief kiss. Nothing to get too worked up over. But a tiny knot of panic tightened in her stomach. ‘The ball,’ he murmured, while stroking a finger the length of her jaw, ‘as you English say, is in your court.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
Once Theo had left for the airport, Mark concentrated on the chapter he had started that morning. He was keen to finish it, and in view of the prolonged roll he was on, it seemed a shrewd move on his part to capitalise on his current good fortune.
It had been like this ever since he had overcome the problem of creating a credible will-they-won’t-they love-interest scenario between his protagonist and the killer’s next victim. He was feeling so confident about the way the book had developed a life of its own that he was beginning to think it was his best yet. And it was all down to one person. It was a shame, though, that he would never be able to give her the credit for inspiring him. That was out of the question. His actions might easily be misconstrued and he didn’t want to cause any ructions. Least of all between himself and Theo.
As unexpected as it was, the source of his inspiration was none other than Izzy. Without her knowing it she had freed his imagination and enabled him to create a far more realistic sub-plot than he had hitherto put together.
Bones would have a field day with what he had done. ‘You’re nothing but a grave robber,’ he could hear the man saying, ‘stripping people of their lives for your own gratification.’ And, yes, he supposed he was a bit of a Dr Frankenstein when it came down to it. He never thought twice about hoovering up snippets of other people’s lives; it was simply part and parcel of being a writer. But in this instance, he had gone one step further. He had helped himself to a whole person; he had dropped Izzy into his novel. He didn’t kid himself that she would be flattered by what he had done, not if she knew she had become his protagonist’s lover, and certainly not if she knew she was next in line to get the chop at the hands of a psychotic killer. It was hardly the most honourable thing to do, or the best way to ingratiate himself with a fellow human being.
The idea had come to him the evening he had failed in his duty to get Izzy safely home — a point Theo had been at pains to labour when he had returned to Villa Anna. ‘Did I ask you to chase her up the path and make her nearly break her neck? No! I asked you to make sure that she reached home in one piece.’ He had been unable to sleep that night and as he lay tossing and turning, listening to the waves gently lapping against the rocks down in the bay, the solution had suddenly come to him. Switching on the bedside lamp, he had reached for his notebook and pen and feverishly scribbled the tumble of thoughts rushing to get out of his head. By the following morning he had the next three chapters planned and was eager to make a start.
Previously he had tended to echo the seriousness of the book’s theme in his protagonist’s sexual relationships, which meant that the bedroom scenes, in his view, lacked spontaneity. Graphic and raw, there was no tenderness, no love, not even a sense of euphoria when his protagonist finally got his leg over. It was sex to order. Sex in the name of duty. Just doing my job, ma’am.
But now he saw a way to change all that. Why not create a contrast of emotions within the book? Like the chiaroscuro effect of light and dark in a painting, could he not employ the same technique in his writing? And wouldn’t the juxtaposition of some light-hearted sexual interaction make the evil undercurrents of the story appear even more threatening? It would surely add another dimension. The reader would be lulled into a false sense of security, making the outcome all the more shocking. Instinctively he had known it was the right course to follow and had got to work with renewed vigour.
As absurd as it was, it had been nothing more than the act of staggering up the hillside with Izzy in his arms and their shared laughter that had triggered off this new change of direction. But as simple and seemingly insignificant as this moment might have appeared to anybody else, for him it had allowed the chapters that had earlier floored him to flow effortlessly from his pen. When Theo had commented on the noticeable increase in his output and asked where the inspiration had come from, Mark had kept quiet, feeling slightly ashamed that he was using Izzy in such a dubious manner. He was acutely aware that it was wholesale exploitation and he didn’t want Theo to know the depths to which he had sunk. Especially as during the last week or so Theo had shown all the signs of becoming possessively protective of Izzy. He didn’t like to think of the outrage Theo would feel if he knew that the woman with whom he fancied himself in love was being vicariously exploited by his oldest friend.