by Sarah Morgan
He needed to find a tactful way of ejecting her.
He showered, shaved and returned to the bedroom. Expecting to find her still asleep, he was thrown to find her dressed. She’d stolen one of his white shirts and it fell to mid-thigh, the sleeves flapping over her small hands as she talked on the phone.
‘Of course he’ll be there.’ Her voice was as soothing as warm honey. ‘I’m sure it’s a simple misunderstanding...well, no I agree with you, but he’s very busy...’
She lay on her stomach on the bed, her hair hanging in a blonde curtain over one shoulder, the sheets tangled around her bare thighs.
Nik took one look at her and decided that there was no reason to rush her out of the villa.
They’d have breakfast on the terrace. Maybe enjoy a swim.
Then he’d find a position they hadn’t yet tried before sending her home in his car.
Absorbed in her conversation, she hadn’t noticed him and he strolled round in front of her and slowly released the towel from his waist.
He saw her eyes go wide. Then she gave him a smile that hovered somewhere between cheeky and innocent and he found himself resenting the person on the end of the phone who was taking up so much of her time.
He dressed, aware that she was watching him the whole time, her conversation reduced to soothing, sympathetic noises.
It was the sort of exchange he’d never had in his life. The sort that involved listening while someone poured out their woes. When Nik had a problem he solved it or accepted it and moved on. He’d never understood the female urge to dissect and confide.
‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘There’s nothing more upsetting than a rift in the family, but you need to talk. Clear the air. Be open about your feelings.’
She was so warm and sympathetic it was obvious to Nik that the conversation was going to be a long one. Someone had rung in the belief that talking to Lily would make them feel better and he couldn’t see a way that this exchange would ever end as she poured a verbal Band-Aid over whatever wound she was being asked to heal. Who would want to hang up when they were getting the phone equivalent of a massive hug?
Outraged on her behalf, Nik sliced his finger across his throat to indicate that she should cut the connection.
When she didn’t, he was contemplating snatching the phone and telling whoever it was to get a grip, sort out their own problems and stop encroaching on Lily’s good nature when she gestured to the phone with her free hand.
‘It’s for you,’ she mouthed. ‘Your father.’
His father?
The person she’d been soothing and placating for the past twenty minutes was his father?
Nik froze. Only now did he notice that the phone in her hand was his. ‘You answered my phone?’
‘I wouldn’t have done normally, but I saw it was your dad and I knew you’d want to talk to him. I didn’t want you to miss his call because you were in the shower.’ Clearly believing she’d done him an enormous favour, she wished his father a cheery, caring goodbye and held out the phone to him. The front of his shirt gapped, revealing those tempting dips and curves he’d explored in minute detail the night before. The scrape of his jaw had left faint red marks over her creamy skin and the fact that he instantly wanted to drop the phone in the nearest body of water and take her straight back to bed simply added to his irritation.
‘That’s my shirt.’
‘You have so many, I didn’t think you’d miss one.’
Reflecting on the fact she was as chirpy in the morning as she was the rest of the day, Nik dragged his gaze from her smiling mouth, took the phone from her and switched to Greek. ‘You didn’t need to call again. I got your last four messages.’
‘Then why didn’t you call me back?’
‘I’ve been busy.’
‘Too busy to talk to your own father? I have rung you every day this week, Niklaus. Every single day.’
Aware that Lily was listening Nik paced to the window, turned his back on her and stared out over the sea. ‘Is the wedding still on?’
‘Of course it is on! Why wouldn’t it be? I love Diandra and she loves me. You would love her, too, if you took the time to meet her and what better time than the day in which we exchange our vows?’ There was a silence. ‘Nik, come home. It has been too long.’
Nik knew exactly how long it had been to the day.
‘I’ve been busy.’
‘Too busy to visit your own family? This is the place of your birth and you never come home. You have a villa here that you converted and you don’t even visit. I know you didn’t like Callie and it’s true that for a long time I was very angry with you for not making more of an effort when she showed you so much love, but that is behind us now.’
Reflecting on exactly what form that ‘love’ had taken, Nik tightened his hand on the phone and wondered if he’d been wrong not to tell his father the unpalatable truth about his third wife. He’d made the decision that since she’d ended the relationship anyway there was nothing to be gained from revealing the truth, but now he found himself in the rare position of questioning his own judgement.
‘Will Callie be at the wedding?’
‘No.’ His father was quiet. ‘I wanted her to bring little Chloe, but she hasn’t responded to my calls. I don’t mind admitting it’s a very upsetting situation all round for everyone.’
Not everyone, Nik thought. He was sure Callie wasn’t remotely upset. Why would she be? She’d extracted enough money from his father to ensure she could live comfortably without ever lifting a finger again. ‘You would really want her at your wedding?’
‘Callie, no. But Chloe? Yes, of course. If I had my way she would be living here with me. I still haven’t given up hope that might happen one day. Chloe is my child, Nik. My daughter. I want her to grow up knowing her father. I don’t want her thinking I abandoned her or chose not to have her in my life.’
Nik kept his eyes forward and the past firmly suppressed. ‘These things happen. They’re part of life and relationships.’
His father sighed. ‘I’m sorry you believe that. Family is the most important thing in the world. I want that for you.’
‘I set my own life goals, and that isn’t on the list,’ Nik drawled softly. Contemplating the complexity of human relationships, he was doubly glad he’d successfully avoided them himself. Like every other area of his life, he had his feelings firmly under control. ‘Would Diandra really want Chloe to be living with you?’
‘Of course! She’d be delighted. She wants it as much as I do. And she’d really like to meet you, too. She’s keen for us to be a proper family.’
A proper family.
A long-buried memory emerged from deep inside his brain, squeezing itself through the many layers of self-protection he’d used to suppress it.
It had been so long the images were no longer clear, a fact for which he was grimly grateful. Even now, several decades later, he could still remember how it had felt to have those images replaying in his head night after night.
A man, a woman and a young boy, living an idyllic existence under blue skies and the dazzle of the sun. Growing up, he’d learned a thousand lessons about living. How to cook with leaves from the vine, how to distil the grape skins and seeds to form the potent tsikoudia they drank with friends. He’d lived his cocooned existence until one day his world had crumbled and he’d learned the most important lesson of all.
That a family was the least stable structure invented by man.
It could be destroyed in a moment.
‘Come home, Niklaus,’ his father said quietly. ‘It has been too long. I want us to put the past behind us. Callie is no longer here.’
Nik didn’t tell him that the reason he avoided the island had nothing to do with Callie.
Whenever he returned there it stirre
d up the same memory of his mother leaving in the middle of the night while he watched in confusion from the elegant curve of the stairs.
Where are you going, Mama? Are you taking us with you? Can we come, too?
‘Niklaus?’ His father was still talking. ‘Will you come?’
Nik dragged his hand over the back of his neck. ‘Yes, if that’s what you want.’
‘How can you doubt it?’ There was joy in his father’s voice. ‘The wedding is Tuesday but many of our friends are arriving at the weekend so that we can celebrate in style. Come on Saturday then you can join in the pre-wedding celebrations.’
‘Saturday?’ His father expected him to stay for four days? ‘I’ll have to see if I can clear my diary.’
‘Of course you can. What’s the point of being in charge of the company if you can’t decide your own schedule? Now tell me about Lily. I like her very much. How long have the two of you been together?’
Ten memorable hours. ‘How do you know her name?’
‘We’ve been talking, Niklaus! Which is more than you and I ever do. She sounds nice. Why don’t you bring her to the wedding?’
‘We don’t have that sort of relationship.’ He felt a flicker of irritation. Was that why she’d spent so much time on the phone talking to his father? Had she decided that sympathy might earn her an invite to the biggest wedding of the year in Greece?
Exchanging a final few words with his father, he hung up. ‘Don’t ever,’ he said with silky emphasis as he turned to face her, ‘answer my phone again.’ But he was talking to an empty room because Lily was nowhere to be seen.
Taken aback, Nik glanced towards the bathroom and then noticed the note scrawled on a piece of paper by his pillow.
Thanks for the best rebound sex ever. Lily.
The best rebound sex?
She’d left?
Nik picked up the note and scrunched it in his palm. He’d been so absorbed in the conversation with his father he hadn’t heard her leaving.
The dress from the night before lay neatly folded on the chair but there was no sign of the shoes or his shirt. He had no need to formulate a plan to eject her from his life because she’d removed herself.
She’d gone.
And she hadn’t even bothered saying goodbye.
* * *
‘No need to ask if you had a good night, it’s written all over your face.’ Brittany slid her feet into her hiking boots and reached for her bag. ‘Nice shirt. Is that silk?’ She reached out and touched the fabric and gave a murmur of appreciation. ‘The man has style, I’ll give him that.’
‘Thanks for your text. It was sweet of you to check on me. How was your evening?’
‘Nowhere near as exciting as yours apparently. While you were playing Cinderella in the wolf’s lair, I was cataloguing pottery shards and bone fragments. My life is so exciting I can hardly bear it.’
‘You love it. And I think you’re mixing your fairy tales.’ Aware that her hair was a wild mass of curls after the relentless exploration of Nik’s hands, Lily scooped it into a ponytail. She told herself that eventually she’d stop thinking about him. ‘Did you find anything else after I left yesterday?’
‘Fragments of plaster, conical cups—’ Brittany frowned. ‘We found a bronze leg that probably belongs to that figurine that was discovered last week. Are you listening to me?’
Lily was deep in an action replay of the moment Nik had removed the mask from her eyes. ‘That’s exciting! I’m going to join you later.’
‘We’re removing part of the stone mound and exploring the North Eastern wall.’ Brittany eyed her. ‘You might want to rethink white silk. So am I going to hear the details?’
‘About what?’
‘Oh, please—’
‘It was fun. All right, incredible.’ Lily felt her cheeks burn and Brittany gave a faint smile.
‘That good? Now I’m jealous. I haven’t had incredible sex since—well, let’s just say it’s been a while. So are you seeing him again?’
‘Of course not. The definition of rebound sex is that it’s just one night. No commitment.’ She parroted the rules and tried not to wish it could have lasted a little more than one night. The truth was even in that one night Nik had made her feel special. ‘Do we have food in our fridge? I’m starving.’
‘He helped you expend all those calories and then didn’t feed you before you left? That’s not very gentlemanly.’
‘He didn’t see me leave. He had to take a call.’ And judging from the reluctance he’d shown when she’d handed him the phone, if it had been left to him he wouldn’t have answered it.
Why not?
Why wouldn’t a man want to talk to his father?
It had been immediately obvious that whatever issues Nik might have in expressing his emotions openly weren’t shared by his father, who had been almost embarrassingly eager to share his pain.
She’d squirmed with discomfort as Kostas Zervakis had told her how long it was since his son had come home. Even on such a short acquaintance she knew that family was one of the subjects Nik didn’t touch. She’d felt awkward listening, as if she were eavesdropping on a private conversation, but at the same time his father had seemed so upset she hadn’t had the heart to cut him off.
The conversation had left her feeling ever so slightly sick, an emotion she knew was ridiculous given that she hadn’t ever met Kostas and barely knew his son. Why should it bother her that there were clearly problems in their relationship?
Her natural instinct had been to intervene but she’d recognised instantly the danger in that. Nik wasn’t a man who appreciated the interference of others in anything, least of all his personal life.
The black look he’d given her had been as much responsible for her rapid exit as her own lack of familiarity with the morning-after etiquette following rebound sex.
She’d taken advantage of his temporary absorption in the phone call to make a hasty escape, but not before she’d heard enough to make her wish for a happy ending. Whatever damage lay in their past, she wanted them to fix their problems.
She always wanted people to fix their problems.
Lily blinked rapidly, realising that Brittany was talking. ‘Sorry?’
‘So he doesn’t know you left?’
‘He knows by now.’
‘He won’t be pleased that you didn’t say goodbye.’
‘He’ll be delighted. He doesn’t want emotional engagement. No awkward conversations. He will be relieved to be spared a potentially awkward conversation. We move in different circles so I probably won’t ever see him again.’ And that shouldn’t bother her, should it? Although a one-night stand was new to her, she was the expert at transitory relationships. Her entire life had been a series of transitory relationships. No one had ever stuck in her life. She felt like an abandoned railway station where trains passed through but never stopped.
Brittany glanced out of the window at the street below and raised her eyebrows. ‘I think you’re going to see him again a whole lot sooner than you think.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because he’s just pulled up outside our apartment.’
Lily’s heart felt as if it were trying to escape from her chest. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Well there’s a Ferrari parked outside that costs more than I’m going to earn in a lifetime, so, unless there is someone else living in this building that has attracted his attention, he clearly has things he wants to say to you.’
‘Oh no.’ Lily shrank against the door of the bedroom. ‘Can you see his face? Does he look angry?’
‘What reason would he have to be angry?’ Brittany glanced out of the window again and then back at Lily. ‘Is this about the shirt? He can afford to lose one shirt, surely?’
‘I don’t
think he’s here because of the shirt,’ Lily said weakly. ‘I think he’s here because of something I did this morning. I’m going to hide on the balcony and you’re going to tell him you haven’t seen me.’
Brittany looked at her curiously. ‘What did you do?’
Lily flinched as she heard a loud hammering on the door. ‘Remember—you haven’t seen me.’ She fled into the bedroom they shared and closed the door.
What was he doing here?
She’d seen the flash of anger in his eyes when he’d realised it was his phone she’d answered, but surely he wouldn’t care enough to follow her home?
She heard his voice in the doorway and heard Brittany say, ‘Sure, come right on in, Nik—is it all right if I call you Nik?—she’s in the bedroom, hiding.’ The door opened a moment later and Brittany stood there, arms folded, her eyes alive with laughter.
Lily impaled her with a look of helpless fury. ‘You’re a traitor.’
‘I’m a friend and I am doing you a favour,’ Brittany murmured. ‘The man is seriously hot.’ Having delivered that assessment, she stepped to one side with a bright smile. ‘Go ahead. The space is a little tight, but I guess you folks don’t mind that.’
‘No! Brittany, don’t—er—hi...’ Lily gave a weak smile as Nik strolled into the room. His powerful frame virtually filled the cramped space and she wished she’d picked a different room as a refuge. Being in a bedroom reminded her too much of the night before. ‘If you’re mad about the shirt, then give me two minutes to change. I shouldn’t have taken it, but I didn’t want to do the walk of shame through the middle of Chania wearing an evening dress that doesn’t belong to me.’
‘I don’t care about the shirt.’ His hair was glossy dark, his eyes dark in a face so handsome it would have made a Greek god weep with envy. ‘Do you seriously think I’m here because of the shirt?’
‘No. I assume you’re mad because I answered your phone, but I saw that it was your father and thought you wouldn’t want to miss his call. If I had a dad I’d be ringing him every day.’
