Kissing his forehead, Pia released him and hurried to the door, pausing as she opened it to give Saskia an impish grin and remind her, ‘Wear the black!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Andreas apologised after the door had closed behind her. ‘I asked her not to disturb you.’
So he hadn’t been deceived by her fib, Saskia recognised.
‘I don’t mind. I like her,’ Saskia responded, this time telling him the truth.
‘Mmm... Pia’s likeability is something I’m afraid she tends to trade on on occasion. As the baby of the family she’s a past mistress at getting her own way,’ he told Saskia in faint exasperation, before glancing at his watch and informing her, ‘You’ve got half an hour to get ready.’
Saskia took a deep steadying breath. Something about the revelations Pia had made had activated the deep core of sympathy for others that was so much a part of her nature. Somewhere deep inside her a switch had been thrown, a sea change made, and without her knowing quite how it had happened Andreas had undergone a transformation, from her oppressor and a dictator whom she loathed and feared to someone who deserved her championship and help. She had a role which she was now determined she was going to play to the very best of her ability.
‘Half an hour,’ she repeated in as businesslike a manner as she could. ‘Then in that case I should like to use the bathroom first.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘SO, SASKIA, HOW do you think you will adjust to being a Greek wife—if you and Andreas do actually get married?’
Saskia could hear Pia’s indrawn gasp of indignation at the way Athena had framed her question, but she refused to allow herself to be intimidated by the other woman. Ever since they had all taken their places at the dinner table Saskia had recognised that Athena was determined to unnerve and upset her as much as she could. However, before she could say anything Andreas was answering the question for her.
‘There is no “if” about it Athena,’ he told her implacably. ‘Saskia will become my wife.’
Now it was Saskia’s turn to stifle her own potentially betraying gasp of shock, but she couldn’t control her instinctive urge to look anxiously across the table at Andreas. What would he do when he ultimately had to back down and admit to Athena that their engagement was over? That was his problem and not hers, she tried to remind herself steadily.
Something odd had happened to her somehow; she was convinced of it. Andreas had walked out of the office adjoining ‘their’ bedroom earlier this evening and come to a standstill in front of her, saying quietly, ‘I doubt that any man looking at you now could do anything other than wish that you were his, Saskia.’
She had certainly never had any desire to go on the stage—far from it—and yet from that moment she had felt as though somehow she had stepped into a new persona. Suddenly she had become Andreas’s fiancée and, like any woman in love, not only was she proud to be with the man she loved, she also felt very femalely protective of him. The anxiety in her eyes now was for him and because of him. How would he feel when Athena tauntingly threw the comment he had just made back in his face? How must he have felt when he had first realised, as a boy, just what she wanted from him?
‘Wives. I love wives.’ Aristotle, Athena’s accountant, grinned salaciously, leaning towards Saskia so that he could put his hand on her arm.
Immediately she turned away from him. Saskia fully shared Pia’s view of Athena’s accountant. Although he was quite tall, the heavy, weighty structure of his torso made him look almost squat. His thick black hair was heavily oiled and the white suit he was wearing over a black shirt, in Saskia’s opinion at least, did him no favours. Andreas, on the other hand, looked sexily cool and relaxed in elegantly tailored trousers with a cool white cotton shirt.
If she had privately thought her black dress might be rather over the top she had swiftly realised how right Pia had been to suggest that she wore it once she had seen Athena’s outfit.
Her slinky skintight white dress left nothing to the imagination.
‘It was designed especially for me,’ Saskia had heard her smirking to Andreas. ‘And it is made to be worn exactly the way I most love—next to my skin,’ she had added, loudly enough for Saskia to overhear. ‘Which reminds me. I hope you have warned your fiancée that I like to share your morning swim so she won’t be too shocked...’ She had turned to Saskia. ‘Andreas is like me, he likes to swim best in his skin,’ she had told her purringly.