It was an arrogant thing to say, but in view of her occupation an extremely accurate one—except that in this case she had not been checking up on him. ‘Why on earth should I want to? The waiter mentioned that you were a friend of Kirios Kollitsis, that’s all.’
He relaxed again, his mind drifting back to a long-ago summer. ‘That’s right. His son and I met when we were travelling around Europe—we ended the trip here, and I guess I kind of fell in love with the place.’
‘And—let me guess—you’ve come back here every year since?’
He smiled. ‘One way or another, yes, I have. How about you?’
‘First time,’ said Catherine, and sipped her wine again, in case her voice wobbled. No need to tell him that it was supposed to have been a romantic holiday to make up for all the time that she and Peter had spent apart. Or that now they would be apart on a permanent basis.
‘And you’ll come again?’
‘I doubt it.’
Her heard the finality in her voice. ‘You don’t like it enough to repeat the experience?’
She shook her head, knowing that Pondiki would always represent a time in her life she would prefer to forget. ‘I just never like to repeat an experience. Why should I, when the world is full of endless possibilities?’
She sounded, he thought, as though she were trying to convince herself of that. But by then Nico had appeared. ‘Do you know what you’re going to have?’ Finn asked.
‘Fish and salad,’ she answered automatically. ‘It’s the best thing on the menu.’
‘You are a creature of habit, aren’t you?’ he teased. ‘The same table and the same meal every night. Are you a glutton for stability?’
How unwittingly perceptive he was! ‘People always create routines when they’re on holiday.’
‘Because there’s something comforting in routines?’ he hazarded.
His dark blue eyes seemed to look deep within her, and she didn’t want him probing any more. That was her forte. ‘Something like that,’ she answered slowly.
She ordered in Greek, and Nico smiled as he wrote it down. And then Finn began to speak to him with what sounded to Catherine like complete fluency.
‘You speak Greek!’ she observed, once the waiter had gone.
‘Well, so do you!’
‘Only the basics. Restaurants and shops, that kind of thing.’
‘Mine isn’t much beyond that.’
‘How very modest of you!’
‘Not modest at all. Just truthful. I certainly don’t speak it well enough to be able to discuss philosophy—but since what I know about philosophy could be written on the back of a postage stamp I’m probably wise not to try.’ He gazed at her spectacular green eyes and the way the wine sheened on her lips. ‘So tell me about yourself, Catherine Walker.’
‘Oh, I’m twenty-six. I live in London. If I didn’t then I’d own a dog, but I think it’s cruel to keep animals in cities. I like going to films, walking in the park, drinking cocktails on hot summer evenings—the usual thing.’
As a brief and almost brittle biography it told him very little, and Finn was more than intrigued. Ask a woman to tell you about herself and you usually had to call time on them! And less, in some cases, was definitely more. His interest captured, he raised his eyebrows. ‘And what do you do in London?’
She’d had years of fudging this one. People always tended to ask the same predictable question when they found out what she did: ‘Have you ever met anyone famous?’ And, although Finn Delaney didn’t look a predictable kind of man, work was the last thing she wanted to think about right now. ‘Public relations,’ she said, which was kind of true. ‘And how about you?’
‘I live and work in Dublin.’
‘As?’
Finn was deliberately vague. Self-made property millionaire sounded like a boast, even if it was true, and he had seen the corrupting power of wealth enough to keep it hidden away. Especially from beautiful women. ‘Oh, I dabble in a bit of this and a bit of that.’
‘Strictly legal?’ she shot out instinctively, and he laughed.