High, gray stone fortress walls surrounded the city, protecting it from both the sea and from invaders. The buildings were constructed of the same stone and topped by red-tile roofs.
Helena sat and sketched her view of the walled city, her pencil almost on autopilot, while her subconscious and the wind, water and waves took her back again fifteen years ago to the freighter.
She’d been sketching then, too, as the workers finished unloading, and the handsome owner of the jacket wiped his perspiring face on his shirt. She should have been disgusted, but she hadn’t been. He’d looked over at her with a quick grin and a shrug, and she’d smiled back.
Then he’d walked over to her with long, sure strides as his companions nudged each other and watched.
She quickly flipped her sketch pad closed.
“Hello,” he said in slightly accented English. “I’m Nikolas.” He had a tousle of dark hair, cut short, and wide, intelligent gray eyes that didn’t miss a thing. They took her in like a caress.
Nikolas wiped his hand on his pants before extending it to her.
She looked down ruefully at her own charcoal-smeared fingers. Then she wiped them on the inside cover of her sketch pad and took his hand. He laughed and they shook.
“I haven’t gotten any smudges on your jacket—I promise,” she said with a laugh of her own. “I’m Helena, and I thank you very much for letting me borrow it.”
“Helena,” he repeated. “After Helen of Troy?”
She felt heat climb her cheeks. But she nodded. “My parents had some romantic notions.”
“The face that launched a thousand ships,” he murmured, her hand still captured in his.
Actually, it’s my father’s face that launches them. And his checkbook. But she didn’t say anything out loud about Elias Stamos or his maritime empire.
“What are you sketching, Helena?”
“Nothing much.”
She kept the pad snug under one arm and tugged her hand out of Nikolas’s big, warm one, though he was clearly reluctant to let it go.
“Nothing much? You don’t want to show off your work?”
Definitely not! Not when she’d been drawing him all afternoon.
She shook her head. “Just silly gesture drawings and contour drawings, for warm-up. What we do in class for the first half hour.”
“You’re an art student?”
“Yes. I’m at Parsons School of Design in New York.”
He lifted his brows. “Very impressive.”
She felt suddenly shy. Impressive? No, she just liked to doodle and smear paint around on canvas. It beat writing dull research papers.
“As you can see, at the moment I’m at the Freighter Institute of Higher Learning, specializing in physical labor,” Nikolas said, his eyes dancing. “But I’ll be entering the navy in a couple of months. One day I’ll command my own ship.”
He’d look so handsome in uniform. “That’s great. I’m sure you will.” She didn’t doubt it for an instant, after seeing the way he worked.
They stood without speaking for a moment. She felt oddly tongue-tied, which was unlike her. But his physical presence almost overwhelmed her. He was big and perfectly proportioned, and he had the sexiest neck she’d ever seen. As an art student, she probably noticed things that other people didn’t. Her sister, Katherine, would think she was daft for fixating on the nape of a man’s neck, but Helena was fascinated by the sheer strength of it, the way his head sat proudly on it and how those powerful shoulders flowed from it. The musculature of the man got to her.
I’m a crazy art student. Why don’t I look at his butt, like any other girl? She flushed as she clearly recalled doing that, too.
“I should give back your jacket,” she said, starting to shrug out of it. But he caught the lapels and held her lightly by them, smiling down at her.
My God, his eyes. They were thick-lashed, beautiful and as dependable as regular rain in a New York spring. This was a man who was trustworthy; she’d swear it.
“Keep it for the moment. You’re cold, and I’m overheated. You can give it to me later. Meet me on deck at the stern of the ship this evening, when I go off duty.” His gaze held integrity, honesty and something intense that she couldn’t define. She was fascinated by the clean and commanding line of his jaw. And then there was his mouth, the curve of his lips. She knew an urge to feel them against hers, fit the two of them together like living, breathing puzzle pieces.
Without even thinking, Helena nodded. “All right. I’ll meet you later.”
“You have my word that I’ll smell better,” he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling.
“I didn’t notice,” she said honestly. The only scents she’d caught were those of the salt air and the ship’s diesel fumes.
“Nick!” shouted one of the other workers. The man gestured that he was needed.
“I have to go,” he said. “But I’ll see you this evening. Seven o’clock?” He touched his fingers to hers, not greedily but reassuringly.
She nodded. “All right. Don’t work too hard.”
He gave her a supremely masculine shrug and a wry smile. “Who says this is work? I’m enjoying myself—because you’re here.”
She watched him walk away, her eyes once again on his powerful shoulders. She had a feeling she’d just met someone quite remarkable, someone she wouldn’t easily forget.
THE HARSH CRY of a gull brought Helena back to the present, and she shook herself out of her reverie, glancing at her slim gold watch. Almost time to meet Gemma.
She went back inside the suite and closed the veranda door. She got dressed, pulling on black slacks and a cobalt-blue tank. She rummaged in a quilted bag full of costume jewelry and excavated a pair of dangly earrings that looked like peacock feathers. And she applied a crimson lipstick and some bronzer to her pale, drawn face. She thought about dispensing with eye makeup, but she didn’t want to scare Gemma, after all. By the time Helena left to walk down to the day-care center to see her niece, she resembled a chic department-store mannequin, albeit a short one.
If Gemma didn’t have plans after her shift, she could come to dinner with her aunt at the American Grille, one of the ship’s more casual restaurants. Helena didn’t feel up to making small talk with six to eight strangers at a formal dinner this evening.
She walked past the hot tubs, tennis courts, fitness center and the Starlight Theater of the open Helios deck, and decided to take the scenic route through the Court of Dreams, since a check of her watch told her she had fifteen minutes or so until Gemma’s shift ended.
On the Artemis deck, the Court of Dreams dazzled everyone who saw it. It was the ship’s main lounge, with monumental Doric columns that spanned three stories.
Over the vast open space hung a fiber-optic chandelier, which made it appear that stars twinkled in the mezzanine ceiling. Among the stars playful cherubs cavorted between clouds and greenery, bringing the Renaissance to the passengers of Alexandra’s Dream.
A sweeping divided staircase featuring ornate gold railings took her down to groupings of white-and-gold upholstered chairs and sofas, the satellites to a large, black grand piano.
Multitudes of roses and other blooms greeted her from extravagant floral masterpieces, and over all of it presided statues of Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena and Poseidon.
Helena passed the indoor pool called the Mermaid Lagoon before descending another level to the Bacchus deck, where she made her way to the Rose Petal Tearoom, the room she’d designed in honor of her mother. A portrait of Alexandra Rhys-Williams Stamos hung on one wall.
Hi, Mama. Alexandra wore a gentle, refined smile and a diamond pendant on a fine gold chain. She gazed out of her gilt frame at a virtual English garden furnished in Wedgwood pastels, chintz and dark wood. A gold harp stood in one corner, complemented by gold-tiered serving stands and touches of gold in the large Chinese vases that held plants.
The tearoom seemed to reflect everything about Alexandra, the English rose Elias had spi
rited away to the Greek isles. She had traveled far from her original home, but kept many of her English traditions.
Alexandra had always served afternoon tea to the children and Elias, though in truth he preferred a good single-malt Scotch or grappa. She’d often made tiny tea sandwiches for them herself, and served lovely English biscuits with clotted cream. Helena smiled at the memory.
Why couldn’t she be more like her mother? What drew her to modern art instead of refined antiques, brash, saturated color instead of dignified pastels? She didn’t know.
Her sister, Katherine, was more like Alexandra, yet Gemma seemed to take after her aunt.
Helena left the Rose Petal and finally headed back to the Helios deck, where the children’s center was located. There she found Gemma surrounded by young children and a few toddlers and looking a little frayed. She didn’t appear to have much help, since the other intern was working with the older kids.
“Hi, Gem,” Helena said as one of the toddlers gleefully tore off the pull-ups her niece had just attached to his bottom, and waved the disposable pants in the air.
“Aunt Helena!” Gemma’s face lit up and she rushed over for a hug and a kiss. Then she turned away again. “No, sweetheart, you have to keep those on.”
Ignoring her, he dropped the pull-ups and pointed at a plastic vehicle another little boy had in the sandbox area. “Twuck! Twuck!”
“Very good,” said Gemma. “Yes, that is a truck.”
“Want twuck!” he howled, while a pair of little girls began to wrestle over a coloring book and another child bashed his companion over the head with an Elmo toy.
The toddler wriggled into the sandbox naked and pulled the truck away from the older boy, who yelled, “Mine!” and knocked the little one over.
The little one spat sand out of his mouth and then launched into a meltdown of epic proportions.
“Dear God!” said Helena, horrified.
Gemma took it all in stride. “Adam, we do not hit other children. If you do that again, I will put Elmo away. Tomas! You know better than that. We never, ever, push anybody down. That’s not nice. And he’s smaller than you.”
“But it’s mine!”
“It’s not yours. We share toys here. But Alexei should have asked you if he could play with you. Right, Alexei?”
“Whaaaaaaaah,” the little boy blubbered.
“You’re all right, sweetheart. It’s just a little sand in your mouth. Come here….”
The squabble between the little girls over the coloring book escalated and Helena jumped in to help where she could. Thankfully, the children wore name tags.
“Thalia, if you two put the book flat on the art table and open it up, you can each have a drawing to color. Like this, sweetie. See how that works? Giannina, you sit here. Now, just be careful not to bump Thalia’s arm while you’re coloring, okay? Perfect.”
“Thank you, Auntie H!” called Gemma, busy with the naked toddler’s pull-ups.
“You’re welcome. I came down to see if you’d like to have dinner after your shift.”
“Love to! Just let me survive the next—” she looked at her watch “—seven and a half minutes.”
Helena chuckled.
They were on their way to the American Grille twenty minutes later, after Gemma had a chance to take a quick shower and jump into a simple dress.
Gemma wiped her brow in a classic gesture and laughed. “Whew! What a circus.”
Helena had to agree. “So have you talked with your mother lately?” she asked.
Katherine handled public relations for the Liberty Line cruise ships, and sometimes Helena wondered how she could take the stress.
Gemma nodded. “Grandpa is pushing her and my dad to take a romantic vacation together, but they’re both so busy. Neither of them has the time.”
Good old Elias—meddling in his other daughter’s life, too. Helena wasn’t surprised.
Gemma echoed her thoughts without realizing it. “I know he loves us all, but sometimes Grandpa tries to run the family like he runs his business.”
Helena chuckled. “You’re very observant.”
They had almost reached the door of the American Grille when a hearty male voice boomed, “Helena Stamos! How are you, beautiful?”
Ugh. She knew that voice. Helena and Gemma turned as one to find Giorgio Tzekas behind them. “Hello, Giorgio.” She unwillingly kissed him on both cheeks. “You remember my niece, Gemma?”
“Of course I do,” he exclaimed, bringing his lips to her hand. “There was a time when I might have been your father.”
Gemma’s social smile became fixed and Helena almost snorted. Katherine had barely given him the time of day.
To be polite, she asked about his parents and siblings, but kept edging toward the American Grille.
“So you’re having a nice casual dinner tonight?” Giorgio asked, and they nodded. Helena felt forced by good manners to ask if he’d like to join them. After all, his father was a good friend of her father’s, and they’d been in and out of each other’s homes when they were younger.
“I wish I could, but I’m on duty starting in just a few minutes.”
Thank God for small mercies.
He let his eyes rove over her body in an ungentlemanly way.
She flushed.
Then he did the same thing to Gemma, looking as if he liked what he saw there, too.
She’s seventeen, you lecher. Helena took Gemma by the arm. “The poor girl is starving after working all day with the children, Giorgio. I must get her fed or I’ll have to answer to my sister.” She flashed a cool smile at him.
“Of course, of course. Wonderful to see you.” And Tzekas departed, to her relief.
“I don’t like him,” said Gemma baldly.
Helena squeezed her shoulders. “You have excellent instincts, my dear. I don’t, either.”
THE MAN TRAVELING under an alias watched the little rich bitch flirt with the first officer. Yesterday she’d been making eyes at the captain. What a whore.
He held his espresso cup to his lips and flicked his tongue back and forth along the rim in a habitual gesture. It helped him think, calmed him.
Women—they were all the same. Rich, poor, big, small, smart or dumb: good for one thing, and one thing only. He liked screwing them, but he liked even better to show them who was boss. Humiliate them a little, put them in their places. Just thinking about it got his blood going.
Helena Stamos was only marginally attractive—he liked them blond and tall with more generous assets. She didn’t fit the bill, but while he had zero interest in Ms. Stamos physically, he’d watch her. Because she might be useful, judging by the way the captain looked at her when he thought nobody noticed.
Yes, she might be useful, the man mused. He didn’t know how yet, but he’d sleep on it.
He held the small cup to his lips again and after sucking in some of the hot, bitter black liquid, he fastened his teeth around the rim and continued to rub his tongue on the edge, harder this time.
For too long his quarry had eluded him. But no longer. He would get a location out of Pappas even if he had to blow off every one of the man’s extremities to encourage him to talk.
But it would be tricky getting Pappas alone, somewhere they wouldn’t be interrupted. Somewhere relatively soundproof.
The man narrowed his eyes again on Helena Stamos. Yes, she could be quite useful in executing his plan. And if anything were to happen to Helena while the ship was under the command of Nikolas Pappas, Elias Stamos would be most displeased.
The disgrace Pappas had faced at Blue Aegean? That was nothing. He would be shamed beyond recovery this time. And dead, to boot. Corpses couldn’t defend their reputations.
The man smiled grimly and drained his espresso, amused when Helena turned and looked into the crowd of diners as if she could feel someone’s eyes upon her.
Enjoy the sensation, bitch. Because I certainly do.
CHAPTER FIVE
ALEXANDRA
’S DREAM was docked in Corfu. Nick gazed out at the island from the Helios deck while passengers disembarked by the hundreds. He loved the myths of Corfu more than the island itself, which tended to be overrun by wild partiers participating in all kinds of illicit activities. He’d much rather think of the Corfu in Homer’s Odyssey and in the ten labors of Hercules.
Legend had it that Corfu was put on the map when Poseidon fell in love with a nymph, Korkyra, the daughter of the river Asopos. Not one to take no for an answer, Poseidon abducted her and brought her to an unnamed island, which he named after her. Corfu, or Kerkyra, became her new home.
Corfu’s history was just as complicated as Dubrovnik’s, full of battles and conquests and drama. Today the island was still enclosed by two castles and dubbed an official Kastropolis, or Castle City, by the Greek government.
Nick was standing in his shirtsleeves, lost in thought at the rail, when Helena unexpectedly appeared in enormous Jackie O sunglasses and a black bikini printed with jasmine blossoms. A matching silk kimono hung over her arm and she carried a straw bag full of suntan lotions, a book and a sketch pad.
She looked as if she’d just stepped out of a magazine, and he struggled to reconcile her with the girl he remembered in paint-stained cargo pants, hair streaming down her back in a dark, exotic river.
She hesitated when she saw him then put her things down on a chaise and came over to join him. They’d parted so awkwardly the day before that he didn’t know quite what to say to her. Are you here to spy on me? No, that didn’t seem like a winning opener.
“Enjoying the cruise?” he said, feeling that this greeting, too, was entirely inadequate.
She cast him a glance that told him she’d play along. “Yes, Captain, I certainly am. And how are you today?”
“Very well, thank you.”
They stood there woodenly, looking out at Corfu and Pontikonisi Island. Nick could smell her perfume, a light floral scent, and perhaps it was addling his brain. He felt like a supreme jackass. Think, Nick. Think of something interesting to say.
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