‘Greek father, English mother,’ he told her.
‘You don’t look at all English. What part of Greece do you come from?’
Markos thought of the dozen homes he’d had since a child—half of them in England and anywhere else in Europe that was fashionable—with his mother as she fought her interminable divorce battle with his father, and wondered which one would qualify as the part of Greece he came from. He’d never felt particularly at home in any of them.
Or anywhere.
So he gave the answer he always gave instead.
‘My family originally came from Turkey, one of the many Greek communities there. In the nineteen twenties my great-grandfather settled in Athens. But these days—’he smiled at her, his eyes privately washing over her ‘—I am footloose, calling nowhere home. Ah, the queue is moving at last.’
He was glad to change the subject. Home was not a word that had meaning to him.
‘More coffee?’
Vanessa shook her head. ‘No, thank you.’ She looked hesitant a moment, then said, ‘Um, I really ought to go.’
She was sitting under an awning outside a restaurant in a little square close to Nôtre Dame. Quite how she had ended up having lunch here she still wasn’t sure. It just seemed to have happened, she thought, bemused.
Markos Makarios. That was his name. He’d introduced himself on the topmost portion of the tower that they’d climbed up to, with all of Paris at their feet.
‘Now you’ll always associate me with the Hunchback of Nôtre Dame.’ He’d smiled at her, a teasing light in those dark, slate-grey eyes, the eyes she kept wanting to gaze into but knew she mustn’t.
Just as she should not have given her own name in return, or let him shake hands with her in mock solemnity, on the rooftop of Nôtre Dame, in the warm September sunshine, sliding her fingers into his strong, lean grip.
And she certainly should not have allowed herself, on their descent, to have her elbow taken, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, be strolled off across the parvis, and be informed that it was time for lunch by Markos Makarios, who was, despite his kindness in removing pests from her, still a stranger.
But somehow she had.
‘To Paris—and to your enjoyment of it.’ Markos lifted his glass to toast her, and she smiled back at him, and just for the merest moment something glinted in his eyes—something very deep, very brief—and a frisson went through her that had nothing to do with the wonder of being here in Paris, eating lunch in a little square on the Ile de la Cité, under an awning, surrounded by other Parisiens attending to that most important of all French pastimes: the consumption of beautifully cooked food.
But then the glint was gone, and the frisson was once again nothing more than the wonder of Paris itself.
Nothing to do with the man who, for some reason she could not quite explain, was having lunch with her.
It’s only lunch. That’s all. He’s just being polite. Civil. Kind. Friendly. Taking pity on an English tourist in Paris for the first time.
And who still had a busy itinerary ahead of her for the day.
She started to free her shoulder bag, secured by one of the chair legs—she could not afford to be careless with her belongings—and lifted it up on to her lap, delving into the interior for her wallet.
‘Would you be kind enough to ask for separate bills?’ she said.
Markos looked at her. He had wanted novelty—now he’d got it. No woman of his entire acquaintance had ever made even a token objection to his paying for her lunch, or anything else.
‘I will take care of that,’ he said dismissively, and beckoned the waiter. Normally he would have left such mundane details to Taki or Stelios, but they were seated in the square, apparently reading newspapers. Vanessa had not noticed them.
Vanessa. He played the name around in his mind. She had had to give it to him when he’d told her his. And that was another source of novelty. Women were usually extremely keen to be on first-name terms with him as soon as possible—hoping for more than the mere intimacy of names. This pre-Raphaelite beauty had seemed almost reluctant to give her name.
Almost shy.
His eyes flickered over her.
And yet she’d had lunch with him. He could see, with some amusement, that she wasn’t sure how that had come about. There was a faintly bemused look in her face, as though she could not really believe she had done it. Though it amused him, it also pleased him.
It was rare to find a woman who wasn’t all over him like a rash.
But then, Vanessa Ovington was a rare find indeed.