She felt the tiny shiver turn from one of awareness to one of resistance. It wasn’t that he was looking at her in any kind of suggestive way. It was more, she could tell, that he was perfectly used to women reacting to him the way that she had. So used to that reaction, in fact, that he took it for granted. Instantly she schooled herself against him, making herself ignore the breathless fluttering in her insides. Instead, she glanced at her uncle, who made some remark to the man in Greek, which Vicky did not understand. She knew a few Greek phrases, and a smattering of vocabulary, and was with practice and effort just about able to read Greek script haltingly, but rapid speech was completely beyond her.
‘You live in England, I believe, Thespinis Fournatos?’ The man turned his attention to her, with the slightest query in his voice. More than a query, thought Vicky—almost disapproval.
‘Yes,’ she said, leaving it at that. ‘My uncle very kindly invited me for Christmas. However, I understand that in Greece Easter is the most important time of the year—a much more significant event than Christmas in the calendar.’
‘Indeed,’ he returned, and for a few minutes they engaged, with Aristides, in a brief conversation about seasonal celebrations.
It was quite an innocuous conversation, and yet Vicky was glad when it finished—glad when a highly polished, dramatically beautiful woman, a good few years older than herself, came gliding up to them and greeted the tall man with a low and clearly enthusiastic husk in her voice. She spoke Greek fluently, and made no attempt to recognise Vicky’s presence.
Although Vicky could sense that Aristides was annoyed by the interruption, she herself took the opportunity to murmur, ‘Do please excuse me,’ and glided off to talk to some of her uncle’s other guests.
She was equally relieved when the seating arrangements at dinner put her at the other end of the table, away from the man with the devastating looks and the disturbing presence. The Greek woman who had accosted him was seated beside him, Vicky saw, and she was glad of it. Yet for all the woman’s obvious intention to keep the man’s attention turned firmly on herself for the duration, Vicky was sure that every now and then those sloe-dark eyes would turn in her direction.
She didn’t like it. There was something that disturbed her at the thought of that tall, dark and leanly compelling man looking at her. She could feel it in the tensing of her body.
Why was she reacting like this? she interrogated herself bracingly. She knew she was physically attractive, had learnt to cope with male attention, so why was this man able to make her feel so self-conscious? As if she were a schoolgirl, not a grown woman of twenty-four.
And why did she get the uncomfortable feeling that he was assessing her, observing her? It wasn’t, she knew, that he was eying her up—though if he had been she would not have liked that in the slightest. Maybe, she chivvied herself, she was just imagining things. When his dark eyes intercepted hers it was nothing more than a trick of her line of sight, of her being so irritatingly aware of him. An awareness that only increased during the meal, along with her discomfort.
It was as the guests were finally leaving, late into the night, that the tall man whose name she had not caught came up to her. His dinner jacket, she noted abstractedly, sat across his shoulders to perfection, honing down to lean hips and long legs. Again she felt that irritating flurry of awareness and was annoyed by it. There was something unnerving about the man, and she didn’t like it.
‘Good night, Thespinis Fournatos,’ he said, and looked down at her a moment. There was a look in his eyes that this time she could not mistake. It was definitely an assessing look.
Her back stif
fened, even as her pulse gave a sudden little jump.
‘Good night,’ she replied, her voice as formal as she could make it. As indifferent as she could get away with. She turned to bid good night to another departing guest.
Afterwards, when everyone was gone, her uncle loosened his bow tie and top shirt button, poured himself another brandy from the liqueur tray, and said to her, in a very casual voice, ‘What did you think of him?’
‘Who?’ said Vicky, automatically starting to pile up the coffee cups, even though she knew a bevy of maids would appear to clear away the mess the moment she and her uncle retired.
‘Our handsome guest,’ answered her uncle.
Vicky did not need to ask who he meant.
‘Very handsome indeed,’ she said, as neutrally as possible.
Her uncle seemed pleased with her reply.
‘He’s invited us for lunch at the yacht club tomorrow,’ he informed her. ‘It’s a very popular place—you’ll like it. It’s at Piraeus.’
I might like it more without Handsome there, she thought. But she did not say it. Still, it was a place she had not seen yet—Piraeus, the port of Athens. But, instead of saying anything more on that, she found herself changing the subject.
‘Uncle, is everything all right?’
The enquiry had come out of nowhere, but it had been triggered by a sudden recognition that, despite the smile on her uncle’s face, there was tension in it, too—a tension that had been masked during the evening but which was now, given the late hour, definitely visible.
But a hearty smile banished any tension about him.
‘All right?’ he riposted, rallying. ‘Of course! Never better! Now, pethi mou, it is time for your bed, or you will have dark circles under your eyes to mar your beauty. And we cannot have that—we cannot have that at all!’ He gave a sorrowing sigh. ‘That Andreas were still alive to see how beautiful his daughter is! But I shall take care of you for him. That I promise you. And now to bed with you!’
He shooed her out, and she went, though she was still uneasy. Had she just been got rid of to stop her asking another question in that line of enquiry?
Yet the following day there was no sign of the tension she thought she’d seen in him, and when they arrived at the prestigious yacht club, clearly the preserve of the extremely well-heeled of Athens, her uncle’s spirits were high. Hers were less so, and she found her reserve growing as the tall figure at the table they were being conducted to unfolded his lean frame and stood up.
Lunch was not a comfortable meal. Though the majority of the conversation was in English, Vicky got the feeling that another conversation was taking place—one that she was not a party to. But that was not the source of her discomfort. It was very much the man they were lunching with, and the way his dark, assessing eyes would flick to her every now and then, with a look in them that did not do her ease any good at all.