Damian caught up with Oriel as she followed the others, holding one of the containers of amphorae. ‘You haven’t seen our lab yet, have you?’ he said. ‘We call it the lab, but it’s not much more than a warehouse. From the outside it looks like a humble fishing shed, but it has surprisingly modern security systems in place. Everything we find from the various archaeology sites on Helios is brought here.’
Oriel stepped inside, on to the concrete floor of a large room, illuminated by strip lighting. To her left, a wall was lined with several tall lockers, each one numbered and padlocked. To her right stood a stainless steel lab bench and stools. Glass-fronted cupboards extended along the right-hand wall, holding chemicals, measuring equipment, scraping tools and a pair of microscopes. It was here that the men were now depositing their boxes.
Oriel went over to where the intact amphora she had recovered from the argosy had been lifted on to the steel bench. She peered at it thoughtfully, then retrieved tools and a chemical solution from the cupboard behind her and set to work, carefully scraping encrustation from the seal. Damian was equally absorbed, laying out the contents of one of the boxes opposite with Alexis.
Finally, Oriel straightened up and Damian, sensing her movement, raised his eyes enquiringly. She beckoned him over and he came to stand beside her. She was acutely aware of his closeness as he bent over to look at the seal. ‘Look, here,’ she said, just managing to keep her voice even. ‘This is the trader’s mark. I think it’s a trident …’
‘You’re right. Wait, it looks as if something’s wound around the shaft. Could be a sea serpent. Do you see?’
Oriel had to lean in close, so that their heads were only inches away from each other. She forced herself to quieten her beating heart and her breathing. ‘Oh, yes, so there is. Look, here at the base. SES … see there?’
Damian nodded pensively. ‘You should research the insignia.’
‘Yes, each Roman shipping magnate had their own individual two- or three-letter name abbreviation. We’ll know a great deal more about the wreck if I can discover who SES was.’
Oriel and Damian spent the rest of the afternoon working alongside the other men, sorting, photographing and cataloguing the treasures. No words were exchanged between them that did not concern work and, when he looked at her, it seemed as if he was no longer reacting to her as a woman. She was one of the men now.
‘Go home and rest,’ Damian told the crew at five o’clock. ‘I’ll choose a night during the week to celebrate at Manoli’s.’ His suggestion was met with roars of hurrahs.
As Oriel was heading towards one of the Jeeps with Stavros, Damian called out: ‘Despinis Anderson, you’re coming with me, or have you forgotten that you live at Heliades?’ She followed Damian to his Jeep, where he held open the door for her. ‘I hope you’re not too tired after all the excitements of today?’
‘I think I’ll survive. If you’re a diver, it rather goes with the territory,’ she observed as he took his place beside her. ‘It was a little scary, yes, but I enjoyed every minute of it. Very different from the last job I had in Norway. Much more exciting!’ She grinned at him as he put the key into the ignition.
Damian put the car into gear and accelerated out of the warehouse’s small parking area. As the Jeep made its way back to Heliades, they were absorbed in talk of the finds of that day, and the wreck itself, until they fell into companionable silence. Soon they had the cliff in sight, bathed in a most translucent naked light that flashed off the sea.
Damian finally spoke. ‘I hope that the incident with Spyros didn’t put you off diving with the team,’ he said. ‘You’re just what this project needs.’ Oriel shook her head, smiling. For a moment, she thought of Yorgos’s doomladen predictions regarding Damian as a boss; in many ways his words were unfounded and certainly disloyal. Damian seemed perfectly prepared to give praise where it was due, whether he was dealing with a man or a woman. True, he could be hard on his employees but only – she suspected – when faced with incompetence. As Stavros had so rightly said, his boss was not a man who suffered fools gladly.
As if he could read her mind, Damian arched a brow enquiringly and Oriel resumed the conversation quickly. ‘The wreck is the most exciting project I’ve ever handled,’ she acknowledged. ‘I can’t wait to dive it again. After Alexis brought up the Alexander bronze I knew we were dealing with a very special site indeed. A once-in-a-lifetime chance for any archaeologist.’
Damian glanced at her with a half smile as he steered the Jeep, and she couldn’t help reflecting that he looked like a basking lion – luckily for her, at this moment, uninterested in bringing down a prey animal, even one who’d strayed so close. ‘Tell me, Calypso,’ he asked, ‘how did you become so keen on archaeology?’
‘My father used to tell me tales of Atlantis as a child,’ she said. ‘After that, I read anything I could lay my hands on, especially stories about lost cities … Bells tolling mysteriously under the water, that sort of thing.’
‘We have more in common than you might think,’ said Damian, his voice a caress, ‘although my lost cities were always Greek. Have you heard of Helice?’
‘The seaport mentioned by Homer, the one no one has ever found?’
‘Yes. It’s supposedly somewhere on the Gulf of Corinth. We know it was engulfed by a giant tidal wave and that the Ionians had built a temple there, dedicated to Poseidon, but little else.’ Damian’s eyes had a look of boyish excitement as he recollected his childhood passion. ‘Although there was a ferryman who was quoted a century after the disaster saying that he could remember seeing a massive bronze statue of Poseidon lying there, like a hazy mirage under his boat, in the midst of the drowned ruins.’
‘Under many feet of mud now, I imagine,’ noted Oriel wryly. ‘Mind you, it’s the dream of such finds that keeps us archaeologists going.’ She paused, his mention of Poseidon setting off a recollection in her mind. ‘Near the Minoan Temple site there was an old woman who gave me some figs from her garden. She said something obscure about Poseidon submerging everything under the sea.’
Damian nodded. ‘We have a strong oral tradition here on Helios. People are always telling stories about the gods. Given the seismic activity of the place over the past decades it’s not surprising that so many of our local stories contain fire and brimstone, people being swallowed up by the angry gods and suchlike. It could have been any one of our legends.’
Oriel wrinkled her brow, trying to remember the old woman’s words. It was more than that, she was sure … something specifically about Damian and the vengeance of the gods. She glanced at him, wondering what could have caused the woman to look so troubled. Pure superstition perhaps? ‘She seemed very wary of us digging around and disturbing the dead.’
‘But that’s our job, isn’t it?’ he said, flashing her a broad smile.
Oriel’s gaze drifted back to the passing landscape. ‘Yes, of course. We’re a strange mix of boring scientist, sifting and recording, and romantic adventurer, I always think.’
‘I imagine the romantic adventurer in you was uppermost, Calypso, the night we first met,’ he said silkily, taking his eyes off the road for a second and, not for the first time that day, a faint pink hue rose in her cheeks.
Luckily she was able to refrain from replying as suddenly Damian swerved the Jeep to avoid a goat that had stumbled across the road. He swore robustly, making Oriel give a breathless laugh despite herself. Raking a hand through his hair, he glanced at her sheepishly, then grinned, looking straight ahead.
Oriel looked silently at the disfigured profile of the man sitting beside her. She could see it clearly now, the badly maimed skin that had turned the once-beautiful classical Greek face into something that some women might find repellent. Still, Damian appeared neither self-conscious nor embarrassed by it, and that was maybe why she, like others, seemed able to forget the shock of it. She turned away, hoping he wasn’t aware of her scrutiny.
‘Like my face?’ he asked after a few minutes, as the
car climbed up the cliff road. His tone of voice was ultra-mocking, yet Oriel caught the flare of fiery arrogance in his eyes as he turned to look at her.
She shrugged. ‘I’ve told you before, it’s neither here nor there. When you don’t draw attention to it, you have enough charisma to make your scars almost unnoticeable,’ she told him quietly.
‘So kind … so kind and patronizing, dear Calypso. Or should I stick to calling you Despinis Anderson?’
‘I’m telling you the truth.’
Damian fell silent for a moment.
‘Charisma or not, I’m no longer the man you knew in Aegina, am I, eh? You were adventurous enough for a one-night stand with a stranger back then, but now … now you cannot bear to let me make love to you, isn’t that so?’
Oriel felt the heat rise in her cheeks and had to steady her voice before she answered. ‘I am an employee, and you can just imagine the gossip any intimacy between us would raise, especially on a pagan sort of island like Helios.’
He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Pagan?’
Oriel winced slightly at her own choice of words but it was too late to take them back. ‘You have to admit, there’s a touch of primitive superstition embedded in the islanders’ view of their world …’ She began stumbling over her words. ‘I mean, the people here seem primitive, as if they belong to a different era.’
‘And you’re unnerved by pagans, eh?’ he asked softly. ‘You have changed then, dear Calypso. I seem to remember a young woman who made love with a certain uninhibited primitive instinct that some might describe as almost pagan.’ He laughed, the sound low and sensual, and infinitely disturbing.
A quiver ran through Oriel at his outrageous remark. Damn the man! He knew exactly what those words, those evocative memories, were doing to her. Later, when it was too late, the appropriate stinging retort to his insolence would undoubtedly come to her; at the moment, however, even if she had had the presence of mind to know what to say, Oriel could not trust her voice to remain steady.
Damian’s gaze dwelt on her face with its shocked look. His silver-grey eyes were brilliant with cynical mockery. ‘Don’t worry, beautiful, irresistible Calypso, I will stick to our bargain and not lay a finger on your delectable silk-like skin,’ he said with a sardonic smile.
They had arrived at Heliades, and Oriel leapt out of the car, not waiting for Damian to come round and open the door for her.
‘I’ll meet you here in an hour. We’re going to Santorini for dinner,’ she heard him say to her back.
Oriel turned and paused on the terrace steps. ‘What? No, I don’t think—’
‘That’s right, Calypso, don’t think, just come with me. It’s been an exciting day. We both need to unwind and celebrate our finds.’
She hesitated. If she refused then it would seem as though he had got under her skin. At least that’s what she told herself. ‘Santorini? That’s quite far from here.’
Damian grinned. ‘Not by plane it isn’t.’
‘Plane?’
‘Yes, I’ll fly us there in the Saratoga. I just feel like getting out of Helios tonight and the island of Santorini seems a good idea. Just wait until you see the magnificent views of the caldera, Santorini’s active volcano crater, and the surrounding islands of the Aegean.’
‘It’s another of those places linked to Atlantis because of its massive volcanic eruption,’ Oriel murmured almost to herself, her interest genuinely piqued.
‘Indeed. More to the point, I know of a charming place in Oia, where they serve excellent crustaceans. The sunsets there are spectacular. Every evening in Oia, it’s a special event to watch the sun go down from the Sunset Serenade point, high up in the village. I’ve seen it myself. For a few moments, the view of the white houses and the caldera capturing the colours of the setting sun is breathtaking … something not to be missed.’
‘I’ve never been to Santorini. I must admit I’ve always wanted to go.’
Damian ambled up the front steps until his gaze was level with hers. ‘Well then, you’ve just given me another excellent reason for us to go there tonight.’
Oriel was falling into that silvery gaze that pinned her to the spot, the way it always did. Her mind stumbled backwards. ‘Did you say you personally were going to fly us there?’
‘Yes, that’s right. I’m a fully qualified pilot.’
She laughed and shook her head. ‘Why does that not surprise me?’
He gave a wolfish grin. ‘Because I’m hugely talented, and with me you’ve learnt to expect the unexpected?’
Secretly she was thinking something similar but had no intention of adding to his arrogance by admitting to it. Instead she rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help smiling. ‘How long does it take to get there?’
‘Only an hour. If we want to catch the sunset, we can just make it if we leave within the hour. It’s usually crowded with couples at this time of year, especially at sundown, but I’ll ring my friend Demetris, whose nightclub overlooks the caldera and the sea. His restaurant has already acquired two Michelin stars and I think he’s hoping to receive another one this year. VIPs from all over the world come by yacht or fly down for the evening to dine there. He has a landing strip for small aircraft where I’ll be able to put down.’
After only a moment’s hesitation Oriel nodded, suppressing a smile as she tried to hide the excitement bubbling up in her chest. ‘It sounds great, I’ll be ready.’
She hurried into the house and went straight up to her apartment. Her body was on fire, her mind in turmoil as fears and hopes chased inexorably around it. More than ever, it was clear that Damian wanted her with the same passion that was driving her crazy, too. His eyes, his voice, his evocative words had been as powerful in arousing her as if he had trailed his scorching mouth all over her flesh. And now he was whisking her away to Santorini for dinner in time to watch the spectacular Oia sunset. Oh, this could be so dangerous!
Would it be wrong to give in to this overwhelming desire, just for one night? Who was she fooling? Things were never that simple. There would be another night, and then another; the nights of passion would turn into a fully fledged affair and, before she could blink, this assignment would be over in a flash and she would find herself going back to the drawing board, her dreams in pieces. Damian would have no interest in her after the job was finished. It was a litany that Oriel had repeated to herself umpteen times since her arrival on Helios, but sensible words did not relieve her fever–this obsession had become a sickness.
She rushed into the bathroom, tore off her clothes and stepped into the shower, turning on the cold water. As it trickled over her she trembled and shuddered. It felt refreshingly icy against her burning skin and she stood there for a long while, savouring the calming sensation as the tension gradually seeped out of her. Next, she dried her hair and gave it the one-hundred-strokes treatment, which she did from time to time when she was giving particular care to her appearance, but tonight her brushstrokes were much more vigorous, as though she was trying to brush her feelings for Damian out of her system. At the end of it her heavy platinum mane looked even shinier and silkier than usual, hanging loose over her shoulders. She glanced at herself in the mirror and gave a little shiver of anticipation. Yes, this could be a dangerous evening indeed.
* * *
Oriel was deliciously aware of her own feminine power as they sat on the wide terrace of the nightclub, Kallísti, in Oia, waiting for the day to die, while drinking a fresh lime pressé and eating oversized olives that came from the trees in Demetris’s garden. An array of appetizers was laid out before them, with delicious pita bread that must have been baked that evening. Kallísti was a whitewashed building, like most on Santorini, with a domed glass ceiling designed to capture the view of the starlit night; inside, everything was black-and-white minimalist chic, with huge photographic prints adorning one wall of the club and a large semicircular window opposite, framing the vista of sea and horizon beyond. Another entire side of the club opened on to the terrac
e, and here a raised platform formed a dancefloor, stretching from the interior out into the open air.
The setting was perfect: the sky was flushing from blue to lavender as the time of sunset drew near. Here, at the top of the cliffs, the heat was fading to an agreeable coolness as the day began to decline. A smouldering warmth lay upon the sea, which looked like beaten gold in the light of the dying sun.
Damian’s compelling silver eyes glittered with fires that Oriel recognized only too well as they gazed insistently on her lips and dipped to the rounded fullness of her chest. His mouth quirked. ‘For an archaeologist, you have a very enticing evening wardrobe, may I say, Despinis Anderson?’
Oriel smiled shyly, her cheeks dimpling. ‘I like to have a few emergency nice outfits in my travel case. It’s a weakness of mine.’
His gaze intensified. ‘And is this an emergency?’
She laughed. ‘I’m not sure yet.’ She took a sip of the lime to cool her throat.
Oriel knew that she looked good, and it gave her a thrill to see such undisguised masculine appreciation in Damian’s gaze. The form-fitting black jersey maxi dress she had chosen had a deep V halter neckline at the front, hinting at the curve of her breasts, and an open back. It was held up by straps in a diagonal cross design and with cut-out detailing. The day spent on the boat had given Oriel a healthy, golden tan which made her wide eyes appear even greener than usual.
Aphrodite's Tears Page 18
