As you would have expected, when Leandros threw his weight around, the hotel manager came out of his hideaway at great speed to begin apologising profusely in Greek. Leandros answered him in equally profuse but incisive Greek. The conversation was so swift and tight that Isobel couldn’t follow it all. By the time the little man had hurried away again, Leandros was letting her ease away from him, and she then had to brace herself to face their audience.
Which made it the third time in one day she’d had to do it. Well, they said that bad things always come in threes, so maybe her luck was about to change, she thought hopefully as she glanced from hot face to hot face.
Her mother was staring at her as if she couldn’t quite believe that her daughter had just wept all over her estranged husband. Lester Miles had put his jacket back on and was looking invigorated because he had been given something to do. Clive had come to his feet and was weighing up the competition. If he had any sense, it was all he would do, Isobel thought, then took in a deep breath and decided it was time to introduce him to Leandros.
‘Clive, this is my husband Lean—’
‘Silvia, thoes! You do not look well.’ Cutting her off with a brusque exclamation, Leandros didn’t even glance at Clive as he went to lean over her mother. ‘This has been too much for you,’ he murmured concernedly and took possession of one of her hands. ‘You must accept my sincere apologies on behalf of Athens. You will give me five minutes only and I will make your life more comfortable, ee pethera, I promise you. If the manager is doing as I instructed then a car
is on its way here as I speak. It will carry you with air-conditioned swiftness away from this miserable place.’
As Isobel watched, her stubborn, tough, I-hate-this-man mother melted before her very eyes. ‘This hotel was all we could afford,’ she told him miserably. ‘Isobel wouldn’t listen to sense. She wouldn’t let you pay. And she wouldn’t let me stay in my own home where at least I could make myself a cup of tea if I pleased.’
‘Away to where?’ Isobel cut in on this very enlightning conversation.
‘To our home, of course,’ Leandros replied. ‘Isobel is a very stubborn woman, is she not?’ he conspired with her mother. ‘Which she gets from you, of course,’ he added with a grin.
‘I don’t cut my nose off to spite my face,’ Silvia pointed out.
‘What do you mean, to your home?’ Isobel gasped in outrage.
‘Our home,’ he corrected. ‘I am relieved to hear that, ee meetera. It is such a beautiful nose. Perhaps between us we could persuade Isobel to leave her nose where it is?’
‘You always were an inveterate charmer, Leandros,’ Silvia huffed, but her cheeks were now flushed with pleasure rather than heat.
‘Leandros. We are not going to stay at your house,’ Isobel protested. ‘The power cut will be over in a minute or so, then everything here will be back to normal!’
‘And if it happens again when your mother is in her room?’ he challenged. ‘Is it worth risking her being trapped up there?’
‘Just what I’d been about to say before you arrived.’ Her wretched mother nodded.
Isobel threw herself into one of the chairs and gave up the fight. ‘What about Clive and Mr Miles?’ she tossed into the melting pot of calamities that were befalling her today. ‘They will have to come too.’
There was a sudden and stunningly electric silence. Then Leandros rasped, ‘Your lover can sleep where the hell he likes, so long as it is not in my house.’
Her mother stared at him. Clive looked as if he had turned to stone. Lester Miles just watched it all avidly, like a man watching some gripping drama unfold.
Isobel’s heart stopped dead. Oh, dear God, she groaned silently and covered her eyes and wished the world would swallow her up. Too late, she remembered that she’d left Leandros with the impression that she and Clive were lovers.
She couldn’t take any more. She stood up. ‘I’m going to my room,’ she breathed shakily, and headed for the stairwell on legs that shook.
By the time she’d climbed up four flights and felt her way down a dingy inner corridor to her room, she was out of breath and so fed up that she headed straight for the telephone and got Reception to connect her with the airport. If she could get them home tonight then they were going, she decided grimly. Even if that meant travelling in the cargo hold!
No such luck. When a day like this began it didn’t give up on turning one’s life into a living hell. No seats were available on any flight out of Athens. She was stuck. Her mother was stuck.
‘I’m sorry,’ a voice said behind her. ‘My coming here seems to have made a lot of problems for you.’
‘Why did you come, Clive?’ She swung round on him. ‘I don’t understand what you aimed to gain!’
He was standing propping up the doorway. ‘I thought I might be of some use.’ His shrug was rueful. ‘Your mother agreed. It didn’t occur to me that your husband would view my presence here with such suspicion.’
He didn’t just suspect—he knew because she had told him! Oh, heck, she thought and sighed heavily. ‘He’s been having me watched,’ she explained. ‘When he heard that you were here he automatically assumed the worst.’
‘It’s nothing to do with him any more what I am to you,’ Clive responded curtly. ‘You came here to agree a divorce, not ask his permission to take a lover.’
Isobel released a thick laugh. ‘Leandros is a very powerful, very arrogant, and very territorial man. The moment he heard about you, the divorce thing was dropped. Now I’m stuck with a man who has decided to work on his marriage rather than give me up to someone else.’
‘That’s primitive!’