It was Eleni who stood up, a faint flush on her perfect cheekbones, to enquire politely after Leah’s health.
‘I’m very well, thank you.’
‘You look wonderful, Nik.’ Eleni smiled with real warmth and the abrupt transformation from cool reserve to vivacity quite startled Leah.
Mrs Andreakis signalled to Leah with an imperious gesture of one hand. Ponia was standing beside the older woman, her pretty face set and flushed. ‘My grandmother would like me to introduce you to everyone,’ she said stiffly.
‘Doesn’t she speak English?’ Leah whispered.
‘Of course she does...she’s just being blasted rude!’ the teenager hissed shamefacedly. ‘I thought you were supposed to be the guest of honour and then Eleni arrived, and she was obviously invited!’
Leah was ruefully amused by Ponia’s partisan sympathies. ‘Nik and Eleni are old friends.’
‘The family don’t see it in quite that light. Eleni and her husband have just split up!’
A maid was serving them coffee in tiny, fragile porcelain cups. Leah was aware of being the covert cynosure of many eyes, but equally aware that absolutely nobody was approaching her.
‘Leah...did you hear what I said?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, they’re hoping like hell that Nik dumps you and takes up with her again. It’s disgusting,’ Ponia hissed. ‘That’s why you’re being treated like the invisible woman.’
Leah wanted to giggle. Whether it was true or simply the produce of a feverish teenage imagination she didn’t care. Nothing could touch her in the mood she was in. She was still dizzily remembering Nik’s trembling intensity in the limousine. Nik was hers, maybe not in the way she had once naïvely dreamt of but there was certainly enough there to build on...and next year maybe a family. An abstracted smile tilted her mouth as she pictured a little boy with black hair and liquid dark eyes.
‘You’re really not all here, are you?’ Ponia was frowning at her.
‘Don’t worry about it. But please introduce me to everybody.’
Within an hour Leah had met most of the members of the Andreakis family, and almost without exception she had been received with a stilted formality and brevity which would have struck horror into the bones of a daughter-in-law expecting more of a welcome. It slowly dawned on her that Ponia had not been joking. She felt like the centre of contagion in a room full of health fanatics.
And then Nik drifted back to her side, rested a hand supportively on her taut spinal cord and their whole reception of her changed with a speed that was almost comic. Everyone talked to Nik, everyone listened to Nik, but from two of his sisters and their respective adult children she sensed the lack of any real warmth behind their effusiveness towards him. He kept the lot of them, Ponia had told her bluntly on the island. Only her parents were independent of either Nik’s financial support or his employment.
‘Come and meet my mother,’ Ponia urged impatiently.
Ariadne was seated alone at the back of the room, a slender, quiet woman who seemed very nervous. Her hands were tightly clasped together, her whole bearing so tense when she glanced up and saw them approaching that Leah found herself smiling in what she hoped was a friendly fashion. She was already disposed to like Ponia’s mother.
‘This is Leah,’ the girl announced.
‘Please sit with me. Have some more coffee brought,’ Ariadne instructed her daughter tautly. ‘Nik is looking very happy, I think,’ she said then abruptly. ‘You are happy too?’
‘Very,’ Leah murmured after a disconcerted pause.
‘For so long I wish to meet you...now I not know what to say.’ Ariadne gave an uneasy laugh. ‘You are very beautiful...and clever, Nik tells me. You are a musician and you speak French and German too. I learn English from my daughter,’ she imparted in a rush, treating Leah to an anxious smile. ‘Perhaps next time you come to Greece you come visit me. I like that very much.’
‘I think I would like it too.’ Leah watched Nik’s sister send a skittering glance around the room and decided that Ariadne was afraid of being seen to depart from the family line of accepting Nik’s wife only on sufferance. ‘I became very fond of Ponia while she was staying with us.’
‘You were very kind to have her. Nik spoils her...’ Her voice trailed away as a tall man with greying hair entered the room and then rose again as she said with perceptible relief, ‘Here is my husband, Stavros.’
Leah’s gaze narrowed. There was something about the older man’s wide smile and the deep set of his eyes which seemed vaguely familiar, and it had almost gone before she grasped it. Momentarily he had reminded her of Nik and she might have commented on the fact had Stavros not broken into instant voluble speech with all the confidence that his wife lacked.
What did she think of Greece? What did she think of the family? He pulled a face, untroubled by Ariadne’s gasp. ‘You want real Greek hospitality, you come and stay with us!’ he told her cheerfully, his deep, carrying voice reaching all corners of the room. ‘We love to entertain young people. Sadly we married late and were fortunate indeed to be blessed with a child but our life is sometimes a little dull for our daughter. She thinks we have one foot in the grave!’
Nik crossed the room. Greetings were exchanged. Considering that Stavros was treating him to the warmest reception he had yet had from any of his relatives, Leah was a little surprised by her husband’s constraint—but then she stopped thinking altogether when she encountered the ebony flare of his expressive gaze whipping over her then lingering with a devastating effect that she could feel right down to her toes.
‘You’re looking very tired,’ he murmured.
She went scarlet but Nik was already drawing her upright, extracting her from his aunt and uncle’s company with social dexterity. She found herself carried off and she glanced back apologetically over her shoulder and glimpsed a very hurt look stamped on Ariadne’s face and then she remembered that Nik hadn’t actually spoken to his sister at all and she said so.
‘Of course I did,’ he asserted dismissively.
‘I don’t think so,’ she muttered.
At the foot of a gracious winding staircase he silenced her by hauling her into his arms and kissing her breathless. She emerged from the embrace with starry eyes and an inability to think straight. Quite uninhibited by any fear of being seen by his murderously correct relatives, Nik bent and swept her off her startled feet.
‘So what do you think of my family?’ he enquired smoothly as he took a first step up the stairs.
‘You want candour?’
‘I wouldn’t have asked otherwise,’ he said drily.
‘They’re ghastly.’ And then she groaned and shut her eyes, afraid to look up at him. ‘Of course they’re probably a lot warmer than they seem!’
‘Probably colder.’
Her eyes flew wide. ‘Oh, Nik...’ she whispered in sudden pain on his behalf.
‘Don’t be wet,’ he told her with a sardonic smile. ‘I’m a big boy now.’
‘Stavros and Ariadne are really, really nice and they seem to be very fond of you,’ she burbled helplessly in consolation. ‘And Stavros even looks like you...yes, that was what made me think I’d met him before!’
Nik froze on the sweeping marble landing. ‘Are you crazy?’ he demanded with sudden ferocity. ‘I’m not even related to him!’
Leah blinked. Of course he wasn’t, she registered belatedly. Stavros was only a relative by marriage, a brother-in-law, and furthermore...an
d furthermore... ‘But you’re not related to any of them!’ she heard herself exclaim, and the minute she said it she knew what she had done and she wanted to bite her tongue out after one glimpse at Nik’s shattered face.
Ten seconds later she was being forced to stay upright on her own power after Nik strode into a bedroom, kicked the door shut with violence and practically dropped her from a height.
‘Say that again,’ he invited rawly.
Leah gave up the fight and backed off to sink wretchedly down on the foot of the bed. Her eyes swam with sudden tears. ‘I’m sorry...I forgot I wasn’t supposed to know.’
‘Obviously...and for how long have you known?’ Nik raked down the length of the room at her.
‘If I tell you, you have to promise me that you won’t be angry with the person who told me you were adopted.’ She practically whispered the word since Nik’s reaction to her even knowing was so explosive. ‘She thought I knew, you see—’
‘She?’
Alcohol didn’t aid diplomacy or secrecy, Leah registered dismally.
‘Nobody in my family would have told you!’ Nik continued harshly.
‘Ponia did—’
‘Ponia?’ Nik surveyed her in blatant disbelief.
Reluctantly, Leah recounted the conversation that the teenager had initiated. Nik shook his dark head in visible shock. ‘All this time she has known? Theos mou, I never dreamt she knew!’
‘I told her that it was a private matter and I honestly don’t think she’ll mention it again. She was terribly cut up about it,’ Leah hastened to tell him, swallowing back her opinion that it was surely unnecessary for such desperate secrecy to be observed.
After having met the Andreakis clan, she could well imagine them behaving as though adoption were a dreadful, never-to-be-revealed revelation, and if Nik had been raised with that same kind of attitude—which he clearly had been—then it would be an extremely sensitive subject which he was not accustomed to talking about.