Had Saskia seen that betraying surge of his body before he had turned away from her? Athena had. Athena... Andreas’s mouth hardened.
At fifteen, and still a schoolboy, he had tried to convince himself that he was mature enough to take over his father’s role, strong enough to support and protect his mother and his sisters. But a part of him had still been childish and he had often ended up crying alone at night in his bed, confused and angry and missing his father, wondering furiously why he had had to die.
That period had surely been the worst of his life: the loss of his father and then Athena’s attempt to seduce him. Two events which together had propelled him into an adulthood and maturity he had in no way been prepared for.
Athena’s desire for him had held none of the classic ‘Mrs Robinson’ allure. She had been coming on to him for weeks, ever since he had returned home from school for the summer holidays, but he had never dreamed that she was doing anything other than playing some mysterious adult female game that was beyond his ability to comprehend—until the day he had found her in his room—naked!
When she had handed him the vibrator she was stroking herself with, commanding him to use it on her, it had been all he could do not to turn on his heels and run. But boys ran, and he hadn’t wanted to be a boy, but a man...the man his father would have wanted him to be, the man his mother and sisters needed him to be.
‘I don’t think you should be in here, do you?’ he had asked her woodenly, avoiding looking at her naked body. ‘You are engaged to be married.’
She had laughed at him then, but she hadn’t been laughing later, when he had held open his bedroom door and commanded her to leave, warning her that if she didn’t he would have no compunction in getting a couple of members of staff to physically remove her.
She had gone, but not immediately, not until she had tried to change his mind.
‘You have a man’s body,’ she had told him angrily. ‘But like a fool you have no knowledge of what to do with it. Why won’t you let me show you?’ she had coaxed. ‘What is it you are so afraid of?’
‘I’m not afraid,’ he had responded stoically, and truthfully. It hadn’t been fear that had stopped him from taking advantage of what she was offering but anger and loathing.
But Athena was a woman who couldn’t endure to accept that he didn’t want her. Tough! Her feelings, if she genuinely had any—which he personally doubted—were her problem. His grandfather was a very different matter, though, and even without the cloud currently hanging over his health, Andreas would have been reluctant to quarrel with him—though he felt that the old man was being both stubborn and difficult. How much of the blame for that lay with Athena and how much with his grandfather’s fiercely guarded fear of growing old and the future Andreas could only hazard a guess at.
It was ironic, really, that the means he had adopted to help him overcome his problems should have resulted in causing him even more. An example, perhaps, of the modern-day ethos behind the ancient Greek mythology Saskia had expressed a love of. She might love Greek mythology but she most certainly did not love him. Andreas frowned, not wanting to pursue such a line of thought.
* * *
‘THAT IS A VERY pretty little ring you are wearing,’ Athena commented disparagingly as she got up off the lounger and came to stand next to Saskia.
They were alone at the poolside, Athena’s accountant having gone to make some telephone calls and Pia having left to help her mother, who was preparing for the arrival of her father.
‘But an engagement ring is no guarantee of marriage,’ Athena continued. ‘You look like a sensible girl to me, Saskia. Andreas is a very wealthy and experienced man. Men like him get so easily bored. You must know that yourself. I suspect that the chances of you actually walking down the aisle and marrying Andreas are very limited indeed, and they will become even more slender once Andreas’s grandfather arrives. He doesn’t want Andreas to marry you. He is very old-fashioned and very Greek. He has other plans for his only grandson and for the future of the business he has built up.’
She paused, watching Saskia calculatingly, and Saskia knew what she was thinking. Athena too had other plans for Andreas’s future.