She paused mentally, then finished the sentence. Felt obligated.
Wretchedness twisted inside her as painful memories came flooding back.
Vicky could hardly remember her father. She had always known that he had been born to riches, but to Andreas Fournatos his money was no more than a tool. At an early age he had taken his share of his patrimony and gone to work for an international aid agency, where he had met her mother and married her—only to die tragically when Vicky was not yet five. It had been his money, inherited by his widow, which had set up Freshstart, and Vicky’s mother had run the organisation until Vicky had taken over her role.
She had had very little contact with her father’s side of the family—except for her one uncle. Despite hardly knowing her, Aristides Fournatos had been so good to her, so incredibly kind and welcoming. She had always understood why her mother had withdrawn from her late husband’s family all those years ago—because it had simply hurt too much to be reminded of the man she had married and lost so early. So, although there had been Christmas cards and birthday presents arriving regularly for Vicky throughout her childhood from her Greek uncle, her mother had never wanted to return to Greece, and had never wanted Vicky to accept her uncle’s invitations.
Aristides had respected her mother’s wishes, knowing how much it pained his sister-in-law to remember her first husband after his premature death. And when Vicky’s mother had remarried, Aristides had been the first to congratulate her, accepting that she wanted to put all her emotional focus on her second husband—a divorced teacher with a son the same age as Vicky—and raise Vicky to be English, with Geoff as the only father she could remember. They had been a happy, close-knit family, living an ordinary, middle class life.
But when Vicky had been finishing her university course Geoff had been given the opportunity to participate in a teaching exchange in Australia. He and her mother had moved there, finding both the job and the lifestyle so congenial that they had decided to stay. Vicky could not have been more pleased for them, but, adult though she was, she’d still felt miserable and lonely, left behind in England.
That was when her uncle Aristides had suddenly swept back into her life. He had descended on Vicky and carried her off to Greece for a much needed holiday and a change of scene. And also for him to get to know his niece better. His arrival had had her mother’s blessing—she had accepted that it was only natural that her daughter should get to know, even if belatedly, her own father’s family, and now that she had emigrated to Australia she was beyond the painful associations herself.
Having been brought up in England, in an English family, it had been strange for Vicky to realise that she was, by birth, half-Greek. But far, far more alien than coming to terms with the cultural heritage she had never known had been coming to terms with another aspect of her paternal family. Its wealth.
Because her father’s money had been spent on charitable causes, she had never really registered just how very different the lifestyle of her uncle would be. But staying with Aristides in Greece had opened her eyes, and she had been unable to help feeling how unreal his wealthy lifestyle was compared to her own. For all his wealth, however, her uncle was warm, and kind, and had embraced her wholeheartedly as his brother’s child. A widower in late middle age, without children, he was, Vicky had seen with fondness, clearly set on lavishing on her all the pampering that he would have bestowed on a daughter of his own. While honouring his brother’s altruism, and accepting her mother’s desire to put the tragic past behind her, Aristides had nevertheless made no bones about wanting to make up for what he considered his niece’s material deprivation.
At first Vicky had tried to stop him lavishing his money on her, but then, seeing him so obviously hurt by her refusal to let him buy her the beautiful clothes that he’d wanted her to have, she’d given gave in. After all, it was only a holiday. Not real life. So she’d stopped refusing and had let herself be pampered. Her uncle had taken so much pleasure in doing so.
‘Andreas would be so proud of you! So proud! His so-beautiful daughter!’ he would say, time and again, with a tear openly in his eye, his emotion unashamedly apparent and, Vicky had found with a smile, so very Greek.
And so very Greek, too, she’d discovered, in his attitude to young women of her age. They were, she’d had to accept, though loved to pieces, treated like beautiful ornamental dolls who must and should be petted and pampered, but also sheltered from the real world.
It had been the same when she’d made her second visit to Greece. She had visited her mother and stepfather in Aust
ralia for Christmas the previous year, and Aristides had invited her to spend the next festive season with him in Athens. But that time as soon as he’d greeted her she’d been able to tell something was wrong. There had been a strain about him that she’d sensed immediately.
Not that Aristides had said anything to her when she’d arrived in Athens. He’d simply reverted to his cosseting of her, telling her she was too thin and working too hard, she needed a holiday, some fun, new clothes. Because she’d known that his concern was genuine, and that he took great pleasure in pampering her, she’d once again given herself to his unreal world, where all the women wore couture clothes which they changed several times a day, according to the social function they were attending next. As before, she had gone along with it—because she’d seen the pleasure it gave her uncle to show off his young half-English niece, whose natural beauty was enhanced by clothes and jewellery.
‘My late brother’s daughter, Victoria,’ he would introduce her, and she’d heard the pride in his voice as he did so, the affection, too. Family, she’d swiftly learnt, was of paramount importance in Greece.
For Vicky it had been fascinating, the glittering world she had dipped her toes into, where breathtaking consumption was the order of the day. Sitting around her uncle’s vast dining room table, laden with crystal and silverware, with the female guests glittering like peacocks in their evening gowns and jewels, and the men as smart as magpies in their black-and-white tuxedos, she’d found herself realising with a strange curiosity that, had her father not been so determined to abnegate his wealthy background, this could have been her natural environment. Except, of course, she’d amended, she would not have had her English upbringing but one decidedly Greek. It had been a strange thought.
But she’d known that, fascinating as it was to observe this rarefied social milieu, it was, all the same, profoundly alien. She’d felt as if she was at a zoo, observing exotic mammals that lived lives of display and ostentation that were nothing to do with reality. Their biggest challenge would be which new yacht to buy, which designer to favour, or which Swiss bank to keep their private accounts in.
Not that their wealth made them horrible people—her uncle was kindness personified, and everyone she’d met so far had been gracious and charming and easy to talk to.
All except one.
Vicky’s expression took on a momentary darkening look.
She hadn’t caught his name as her uncle had brought him over to be introduced to her before dinner, because as she’d turned to bestow a social smile on him it had suddenly frozen on her mouth. She’d felt her stomach turn slowly over.
Greek men were not tall. She’d got used to that now. But this man was tall. Six foot easily. Tall, and lean, and so devastatingly good-looking that her breath had congealed in her lungs as she’d stared at him, taking in sable hair, a hard-planed face already in its thirties, a blade of a nose, sculpted mouth and eyes—oh, eyes that were black as sloes. But with something hidden in them…
She’d forcibly made herself exhale and widen her smile. But it had been hard. She’d still felt frozen all over. Except for her pulse, which had suddenly surged in her veins. Mechanically she’d held out her hand in response to the introduction, and felt it taken by strong fingers and a wide palm. The contact had been brief, completely formal, and yet it had felt suddenly, out of nowhere, quite different. She’d withdrawn her hand as swiftly as politeness permitted.
‘How do you do?’ she said, wondering just what his name was. She’d missed her uncle saying it.
‘Thespinis Fournatos,’ the man acknowledged.
She was getting used to being addressed by her birth father’s name. At home she’d taken Geoff’s surname, because when her mother had married him he’d adopted her, and it was easier for them all to have the same surname. But understandably, she knew, her uncle thought of her as his brother’s son, and to him she was Victoria Fournatos, not Vicky Peters.
But there was something about the way this man pronounced her Greek name that sent a little shiver down her spine. Or maybe it was just because of the low timbre of his voice. The low, sexy timbre…
Because this man, she realised, with another surge of her pulse, was an incredibly attractive male. Whatever it was about the arrangement of his limbs and features, he had it—in buckets.
And he knew it, too.