He straightened up, snapping the atlas shut. Without speaking he got to his feet and went across to an alcove. In a few moments music was flooding out into the room. It was Bach, or Vivaldi, or something like that, she vaguely recognised. Bright and fast and corruscatingly brilliant. She was glad of it, and sat back into a corner of the sofa, drawing up
her shoeless feet on to the seat, picking up her coffee cup, making a show of listening to the music.
She wondered whether Angelos was going to start talking again, but he stayed silent, one long leg casually crooked across the other, occupying the rest of the sofa, seeming content to do as she was doing—drinking coffee and listening to the music. In the hearth, the pine logs crackled and spat, making the room warm, the atmosphere somnolent. The music slowed, and after a while Thea felt her eyelids grow heavy.
‘You’re falling asleep,’ she heard Angelos say, and blinked. ‘It’s the fresh air and exertion. Go to bed, Kat.’
Slowly, sleepily, she uncoiled herself and set down the coffee cup, getting to her feet. For a moment she didn’t quite know what to say. His expression was unreadable. Then she simply said, ‘Goodnight,’ and went to bed.
That night she slept even better, though her dreams were vivid of high, windy places and brilliant sun, and she dreamt she was still walking. When she awoke Trudi was hovering. Breakfast, so it seemed, was waiting for her, and the morning was advanced.
It was another bizarre day. After breakfast Angelos drove them down to the village and up to the cable car station. Soon they were suspended high above the now green ski slopes, traveling up to the restaurant poised beside the piste. They lunched out in the open on the decked surround, and once again Angelos proved an informative companion. Once again, Thea simply went along with it. What else could she do? All she could do was accept the situation—accept that it served his purpose for her to be here. Accept too, that—bizarre as it seemed—Angelos was treating her, as he had the previous day, without any sign of his habitual anger.
He took her to see the glacier after lunch—a short walk across the col—and pointed out its features, the sun dazzling on its ravined, icy surface. They talked of how the glaciers were shrinking in the Alps, and everywhere, and of global warming, and he told her how he had started a new division of Petrakos International to develop green technologies. Again she found her mind stimulated, her interest engaged, curiosity aroused. It helped, she knew, that in the bright sunlight dazzling off the glacier his dark glasses veiled his eyes from her, veiled hers from him. It seemed—safer.
The sun was already starting to dip behind the peaks opposite as they descended in the cable car again, and by the time they reached the village it was dusky and shadowed in the deep valley. But the little village was attractive, with summer window boxes and traditional wooden-framed shops and houses. She did some toiletries shopping, and then Angelos paused outside a konditterei.
‘Tempted, Kat?’ he murmured.
Thea gazed at the trays of exquisite chocolates. Then she shook her head. It was madness to think of eating such horrendously calorific sweetmeats. It took her a moment to realise Angelos had gone into the shop. He exited a few minutes later with a huge box, done up with an even huger bow. He presented the box to her with a flourish.
‘For you,’ he said.
And suddenly, out of nowhere, Thea felt her throat tighten. ‘Th-thank you,’ she heard herself say, taking the box.
Dear God, what was the world coming to? Angelos Petrakos buying her chocolates …
As if he did not hate her …
Immediately she repudiated the thought. Impossible—impossible to believe he did not hate her! Yet as the day turned into an evening spent as the one before, quietly over dinner and then in the lounge listening to music, that same strange rapprochement seemed to hold.
In the days that followed they settled down into what gradually became a familiar routine—heading off on one long Alpine walk after another, trekking in the dazzling sunshine across the close-cropped turf, along the steep, precipitous ridges. She could not but start to accept that, for a reason she could not fathom, it really did seem that Angelos had, inexplicably, dropped his long-held hostility towards her. He made no more jibes or challenges to her. Instead, as the days passed, he seemed to be treating her as if she were truly a guest—someone he’d chosen to spend time with. Someone whose life he had never destroyed.
It was the strangest realisation. And, whilst that was strange, she found her own response even stranger, even more inexplicable. Little by little, day by day, she started, in return, to find satisfaction in the long, strenuous walks that ranged far and wide over the slopes and ridges, to find stimulation in their talking over dinner, the time she spent with him. And with every passing day she realised, with confused disbelief, that in spite of everything that had passed between them she was beginning to feel, of all things, quite extraordinarily and totally against all expectations, a kind of rapport with him … finding herself content both to trek in peaceful silence and to converse animatedly, incisively, on any and every subject.
Yet even as her guard against him lowered, so her physical awareness of him—which had always disturbed and dismayed her—grew. Fervently she tried to suppress it, tried to ignore it, but it was there running like a silent, powerful river deep inside her. She could not rid herself of it, could not make herself insensible to it. It was there all the time, growing. She knew her eyes were always going to him—they were now, as they crossed a col towards the next peak, on the taut planes of his face, the strong features, the wind-ruffled sable hair, the lean, powerful body. He was imprinting himself more and more on her consciousness.
It was troubling and disturbing. And very, very potent, bringing with it, slowly and inexorably, the most troubling realisation of all.
She stopped dead in her tracks. Her mind sheered away, like an eagle urgently beating its wings to gain uplift against the plunging wind.
No—that could not be—could not! It was impossible-impossible …
Stumbling, she forced herself to move again, missing her footing for a moment, so that she had to exert all her balance to recover. To recover more than her footing …
Her eyes went to the man ahead of her, striding onwards.
And she felt her lungs hollow as if all the air around her had been sucked away, leaving nothing in its place but a truth she had to face. A truth that drained the blood from her face.
She didn’t want to leave. Didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to go back to a world, a life, that seemed more and more unreal—more and more far away. Wanted only to go on being here, in this high, remote place.
With Angelos.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A CRESCENT moon was lying like a sliver of silver light, just above the dark mass of the mountains. Angelos stood on the balcony, hands curled over the balustrade, ignoring the chill of the night.
What was happening to him? For days now he’d taken Kat out across the mountains, walking for hours across the roof of the world, and with every passing day his thoughts about her had been changing. He knew it—could feel it. Could feel the emotions flowing through him like a watercourse finding a new path.