And to being stared at. Not just by you, but by everyone as I walked in here. And not just because we’ve got Georgy with us. This time they are staring at me, too, and I’m not used to it. It’s never happened to me in my life before and I feel so, so conspicuous!
‘You are not used to being beautiful,’ Anatole answered, his expression softening. ‘Don’t poker up again. I said beautiful,’ he told her, ‘and I meant it.’
And he did, too. Her beauty, so newly revealed, was not flashy or flaunting. No, it was subtle and graceful. He wanted to gaze at it, study it.
Enjoy it.
But it was clear she was finding that difficult. Goodness knew why, but she was.
Ever mindful of her sensitivities, he made an effort to stop gazing at her, but it was almost impossible. Thoughts rippled through his head as he made that realisation, eddying and swirling out of the depths of his consciousness. Something was changing, something about the way he was thinking about her—but he couldn’t give time to it. Not right now. He would think about it later. Right now he wanted her to feel comfortable. To enjoy lunch with him.
He gave her a smile. The kind he was used to giving her. Kindly and encouraging.
‘What do you think you’d like to eat today?’ he asked.
He started to go through the menu with her, and the exercise gave them both some time to regroup mentally. So did Georgy’s requirements. He’d already had his lunch, in the children’s café in the store’s toy department. He’d relished it with enthusiasm—if rather more messily than Anatole had been prepared for. But he’d mopped up Georgy—and himself and the tabletop—manfully, and then purchased another top for him to wear, which he was now sporting colourfully. Spotting it, Lyn remarked upon it, and their conversation moved on to an account of Georgy’s entertainment that morning.
‘Sounds like you coped really well,’ said Lyn. It was her turn to be encouraging. Having sole care of an infant could be quite a challenge, but Anatole was not shy of undertaking it.
‘It’s a delight to be with him,’ Anatole said frankly.
He smiled, catching Lyn’s eyes in mutual agreement, and a little rush went through her. Oh, Anatole might look like a Greek god, and be a high-powered millionaire business tycoon from a filthy-rich top-shelf Greek dynasty, but his loving fondness for his baby second cousin shone through! It was the one indisputable shared bond between them.
‘A delight,’ he repeated. ‘But definitely full-on!’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Lyn meaningfully, glancing down at Georgy in his carrier, snoozing peacefully after all the excitement of the morning.
Anatole closed the leather-bound menu with a snap. ‘After lunch,’ he announced, ‘we shall attend to the rest of your new wardrobe. There is a great deal to buy.’
She looked startled. Anatole reached across the table to take her hand. The delicately varnished nails glowed softly, and her skin was soft and warm. It felt good to hold her hand...
‘Do not look so alarmed,’ he said. ‘It will be fine. I promise you. Trust me.’
She gazed at him. She was trusting him with so much already. Trusting him to ensure she could keep Georgy. Trusting him to sort out all the legalities. Trusting him to know the best way to ensure Georgy would never be wrenched from her.
With a little catch in her throat, she nodded. ‘I will,’ she said.
For a moment their eyes met, gazes held.
Then, with an answering nod, Anatole released her hand.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what I want to hear.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘IT’S A BEAUTIFUL day. Since we can’t leave for Greece yet, let’s go for a drive in the country,’ Anatole announced.
His mood was good—very good. It had been good ever since Lyn had walked out of the beauty salon looking so totally unlike the way she had looked before that he had scarcely been able to credit the transformation.
Now, as he smiled at her across the breakfast bar in the kitchen of the apartment, he still could hardly credit it. She was wearing one of the outfits they’d purchased the previous afternoon after their leisurely lunch, and it emphasised her amazing new look.
His eyes rested on her warmly. Georgy, securely fastened in his throne-like highchair, was waving a spoon around and blowing bubbles. But for once Anatole’s primary concern was not Georgy. It was wondering just how Lyn had got away with looking so drab for so long when she could have looked the way she did this morning.
Her hair was clasped back into a loose ponytail, but the new style with its flattering colour tint made all the difference. So did the subtle, understated make-up she was wearing—little more than mascara and lipgloss, but all that was needed to turn her face from a collection of blank features into a face that had contours and depths. As for the sweater she was wearing—well, it was a million years away from the baggy items she’d used to hide herself in. The soft lambswool jumper she had on, a light caramel, shaped her beautifully.
His eyes slid to her breasts. Before her makeover he’d never even noticed she had any.
But she does—she has beautiful rounded breasts. Slight, but well shaped...
Unbidden, the thought slid between his synapses.
What would she look like bare? Her slender body revealed to me? The sweet mounds of her breasts beneath my touch?
Joltingly he grabbed at his coffee. It was inappropriate to think in those terms.
Up till now he never had. But since her makeover those thoughts, questions, speculations had made themselves conscious in his head.
He pushed them aside.
‘So, what do you think?’ he said. ‘Shall we get out of London today? Take Georgy out for the day?’
Lyn busied herself getting Georgy out of his highchair. The way Anatole was looking at her was making her colour.
I didn’t know that was going to happen—I didn’t think!
It was confusing—disturbing—to have his sloe-dark eyes resting on her like that. As if he was seeing her for the first time—for the first time as a woman...
Confusing—disturbing—making her blood pulse in her veins...
She forced her mind to focus on what he’d said—not on the effect his gaze was having on her, making her so self-conscious, making her body feel alive, somehow, in a way it never had been. Making her breasts feel fuller, rounder.
‘That would be lovely!’ she said brightly. ‘Whereabouts do you want to go?’
‘Heading south sounds good,’ said Anatole.
And so it proved. Once across the girdle of the M25, the North Downs behind them, the Weald stretched before them. With Georgy safely secured in his car seat, Lyn was seated in the passenger seat next to Anatole. She could feel her eyes drawn to the way his strong hands were shaping the wheel, his eyes focused on the road ahead. She wanted to gaze at him, drink him in.
Instead, she made herself tell him what she knew about this part of the country.
‘It’s called the Weald—from the Saxon word for forest— like the German Wald,’ she said. ‘It’s completely rural now, but it was actually the industrial heartland of England for centuries.’
‘How so?’ Anatole asked, glancing at her. He wanted to go on looking, because in profile she was well worth looking at, but he had to keep his eyes on the road—which he was finding a nuisance.
‘The wood was used for charcoal, and that was used for iron smelting,’ she explained. ‘And many of the trees were cut down for shipbuilding as well.’
She went on to talk about some of the more notable events in English history that had taken place in this part of the country.
‘Including the Battle of Hastings?’ Anatole said knowledgeably.
‘Yes.’ She sighed. ‘The end of Anglo-Saxon England. The Norman Yoke was harsh to begin with, imposed on a conquered people.’
‘Ah...’ said Anatole, commiserating. ‘Well, we Greeks know about being conquered. We spent nearly four hundred years being ruled by the Ottoman Empire.’
The conversation moved to the subject of Greece’s history as the powerful car ate up the miles. From the back seat Georgy gazed contentedly out of the car window, but when they pulled over at a pleasant-looking pub for lunch he was ready to get out. The weather had warmed significantly, and they decided to risk eating in the garden—helped in their decision by the presence of a children’s play area complete with sandpit.
‘Don’t let him eat the sand!’ Lyn warned as Anatole lowered him onto its fine, dry golden surface.
‘Georgy, a sensible boy never eats sand!’ Anatole admonished him, as the baby rashly prepared to break this wise edict.
Memory stabbed at Lyn. In her head she heard Anatole similarly admonishing Georgy not to eat his watch, that first time he’d been with him.
How totally and irrevocably her life had changed since then!