‘We’re not deceiving them,’ Michael whispered urgently. ‘And the reason we’re doing this is because they’re nice people. Please don’t back out on me now, Abby. Please.’
‘And another thing,’ she said uneasily. ‘Your brother suspects something.’
‘What?’
‘Well, for a start he thinks that I’m after your money.’
Michael grinned at that. ‘Well, that’s okay. He’s way off target, then.’
‘True, but the fact is that he’s going to probe until he finds out the truth.’
‘He’s here for three days, Abs. How much probing can one man do in the space of three days?’
A normal man, she wanted to say, not much, but your brother, more than I feel happy about.
‘I suppose I could just keep out of his way for the whole time,’ Abby said, more to herself than to Michael. ‘I mean, it shouldn’t be too difficult. I can just stick to whoever happens to be around and make conversation.’
‘Which would really make him think that you’ve got something to hide,’ Michael mused with a frown. ‘On the other hand, it might be better if you just try and convince him that he’s wrong. I mean, talk to him, give him the impression that you and I adore one another. Which, incidentally, also wouldn’t be a lie.’ The boyish grin was infectious and Abby found herself reluctantly drawn into his optimism.
‘And don’t worry; we’re only here for a week, then we’ll be back in England and everything will return to normal once more. Look, I’ll get dressed and we’ll have breakfast and then what say we head down to the town and do a bit of touristy stuff?’ He pulled back the covers, stood up and pulled her into his arms so that he could wrap her up in a big reassuring hug.
After the tension of being in Theo’s company Abby gave in to the hug with relief. One of the most wonderful things about Michael was the friendship he so unstintingly gave her. She had agreed to the engagement because she loved him and she succumbed to the wonderful mixture of tenderness and affection that he inspired in her.
‘But you just need to spend some time with him,’ he said into her ear. ‘Honestly, I know Theo can be a bit overwhelming but he has always been the fairest man I have ever known.’
‘If he was that fair…’
‘Fair but frighteningly old-fashioned in his beliefs. You have nothing to fear in his company. You’re not after my money and we do care deeply for one another. So give me a few minutes and we’ll head down for breakfast together. Okay?’
Half an hour later, they emerged to find that the household had finally awakened. From where he was sitting out on the front veranda, Theo watched as they joined in with the other guests, chatting and easy, their body language speaking of a certain closeness which he couldn’t believe was all it was made out to be.
She had tied her hair back into two very loose plaits and it irked him to see how genuinely warm her expression was as she made conversation with the other relatives milling around the buffet, helping themselves to the warm breads and fruit and cheeses. She turned around to say something to Michael and his brother grinned at whatever she had said and bent towards her to murmur something. Some sweet nothing, Theo thought, watching the display through narrowed eyes. The poor fool. Take one sexy woman and one gullible man and you get a divorce within a year and a hefty settlement for a gold-digger.
He frowned. When had he stopped thinking of her as a girl with no figure to speak of and started thinking of her as a sexy woman?
The main thing, he mused to himself, still following them as they helped themselves to some breakfast and took their seats at the far end of the table with his mother and two uncles, was that he was there to look out for his brother. It was what families did. They protected one another at all costs.
As though suddenly aware of him staring at her, Abby lifted her eyes and stared across the room and out towards the veranda, to where he was sitting, watching them and sipping his coffee. Theo met her gaze with cool, speculative eyes and was quietly satisfied when she gritted her teeth together and hurriedly looked away. She might have taken his brother for a fool but he was damned if she was going to think that he was the same.
He drained his cup and sauntered back into the villa, pausing where the group was sitting and chatting and leaned on to the table, palms spread to support his massive body-weight.
‘So,’ he drawled, ‘what are the plans for today?’ He was addressing the group as a whole but his eyes were fixed on Abby, who ignored him by concentrating on her croissant.
His uncles and their wives were staying put, it seemed, so that the wives could help prepare for the party and begin receiving the flood of guests to the villa, while their husbands, in typical Greek fashion, relaxed by the pool and refrained from doing anything too active.
‘We wouldn’t want to get in the way, would we, Nick?’ Dimitri said in a self-sacrificing voice and, amid the laughter, Theo looked at his brother, eyebrows raised in a question.
‘We’re off to explore the town,’ Abby inserted quickly. Five minutes ago, she had been relaxed. Now she felt as though a tiger had entered the flock of sheep and was prowling around with her set firmly in its sights. The minute she had spotted him over there, sitting outside with his coffee, she had known that he had been watching her. She should have smiled but had found that she couldn’t. Those cool black eyes stripped her of all her normal reactions. She had had time to brace herself for him now, though, and she gave him a wide, bright smile.
‘Michael’s been telling me a few things about Santorini and I’m dying to have a look around. What about you? Will you be helping with the preparations or just relaxing?’ Abby tried to imagine Theo Toyas helping with preparations but that was enough to stretch anyone’s imagination. She doubted he knew how to chop an onion, never mind doing anything more elaborate, although, from what she had gathered, caterers were being flown in for the party and would pretty much be doing the lot without any intervention needed from anyone.
‘We all want it to be just right,’ Michael’s mother had confided to her earlier. ‘There will be his favourite foods. Everything will be perfect. I have even arranged for the flowers and napkins to be in his favourite colours. He is eighty and do not be fooled by his joviality. George has a heart problem and none of us knows whether this will be the last birthday he will be celebrating.’
This had not come as news to her. Michael had said very much the same thing himself before they left England. Reading between the lines, she realised that part of his urgency for this engagement was to produce the girlfriend his grandfather had always wished him to have, to at least let him see that his grandson now had the promise of stability within his reach.
‘I have work to do.’ Theo broke into her thoughts.
‘Now that is a real shame,’ Michael said, and they both looked at him. ‘Darling, I know I promised to take you into Santorini, spend the day driving around and showing you the sights, but…’
In a split second Abby knew what was coming and she gave him as much of a warning glance as she could. He smiled blandly and ruefully at her and only flinched a little when she smartly jabbed him on his shin with her foot under the table.
‘No matter, we can do it another time,’ Abby said, knowing exactly what he had in mind and doing her best to avert that course of action.
‘I was going to ask you if you could take my place, Theo. Abby’s been really looking forward to our little excursion and I hate to disappoint her, but I had an email last night from my head chef in one of the restaurants, and there’s some kind of problem with the seafood consignment.’
‘Surely Tom can handle that at home,’ Abby inserted grimly, which warranted another sad shake of the head.
‘Would you believe that Tom’s been struck down by a mystery bug?’
‘Frankly, no. He’s always been as healthy as a horse.’
Michael ignored the interjection. ‘No matter if you have work to do, though, Theo. Perhaps you could take the car into town on yo
ur own, Abby, or would that be too boring? Actually, you could be driven in and then simply call when you want collecting. Bit disappointing having to do the tourist bit on your own, but…’ He looked utterly crestfallen at this turn of events. ‘Maybe I could grab an hour and meet you for lunch…no…best not to promise…you know how long these problems can take to sort out…’
‘My work can wait,’ Theo said decisively. It was obvious that the last thing Abby Clinton wanted to do was go anywhere with him, and he reasoned why. Too high a chance of being caught out in her little web of deceit.
Abby tried not to look appalled.
He stood up and for the first time Abby realised that, somewhere along the line, the rest of the guests had left the table. She had not even noticed their departure, so compelling had been Theo’s hold over her and the invisible threat he promised. She had also been quite wrapped up in a natural urge to throttle Michael.
‘It will be…delightful to show you around our little island…’ He smiled and Abby gazed back at him with barely disguised horror. ‘So why don’t you meet me here in an hour’s time?’ Theo found himself enjoying the prospect of spending the day with his unwilling companion. His smile broadened considerably. He actually had work to do, but that could wait. He’d barely had the opportunity to get to know the girl, or rather to get her to know where he was coming from. Several hours on their own should do the trick…
CHAPTER THREE
THEO was waiting for her outside. Her heart plummeted like a stone when she spotted him standing in the drive by one of the cars, casually leaning against the bonnet with his back to her, speaking into a cellphone.
Her intention to strangle Michael had fizzled out at the first hurdle. He had smiled winningly at her and somehow managed to puncture her annoyance by pleading with her to be nice to his brother. It was the fastest way of squashing his suspicions, he had assured her. An open, friendly person, he had argued with that boyishly persuasive smile of his, was a person with nothing to hide, and his brother would quickly lose interest if he saw for himself that that was the case. Abby had reluctantly agreed but had felt constrained to remind him that he owed her big time.
Michael had always had the ability to get around her and she knew why. She trusted him. There was no dark, hidden agenda.
Still, standing here now and looking at Theo’s broad back and lazy pose, she couldn’t contain a certain amount of apprehension.
She had apologised profusely to Lina, in the hope that the older woman might see fit to consign her to party preparation duties, but no such luck. Instead she had smiled charmingly, promised longer conversations just as soon as all this hectic stuff was over and expressed delight that she was getting along so famously with Theo, who could be a handful.
He swung round to face her as soon as she began walking towards the car, snapping his cellphone shut and shoving it into his pocket.
He was wearing a pair of khaki coloured Bermuda-style shorts and a short-sleeved shirt which hung loosely over the waistband of the shorts. He looked cool, casual and very, very sophisticated, especially with the dark shades which shielded his eyes from her and made it virtually impossible for her to know what he was thinking.
‘You really don’t need to do this,’ Abby announced flatly when she was within speaking distance of him. ‘You have work to do and I’m more than happy to occupy myself by the pool or out in the garden with a book.’
Theo accepted her remark with a slight inclination of his head and, instead of answering, pulled open the passenger door of the car for her to get in.
‘Not much of an adventure when you’ve been promised a sightseeing tour of the island, though, is it? Reading a book in a garden?’ he murmured once inside the car. Behind the dark shades, she could only imagine the triumph in his eyes as he contemplated a morning of vicious cross-questioning.
‘I didn’t come here for adventures,’ Abby said. ‘I really didn’t even expect that I would get much of a chance to explore the island. Michael said that once the party was out of the way, we would return at a later date and catch up on all the sightseeing we wouldn’t be able to do this time round.’ Faced with a day out in the hot sun, trailing along behind Theo and trying to deflect his arrows, Abby had changed out of her cropped jeans into something cooler—a short lime-green drawstring skirt that fitted on her hips and a small sleeveless white vest. Now she felt hideously exposed even though she knew that Theo wasn’t interested in looking at her legs.
‘So what did Michael tell you about the island?’
‘It’s small and has some very good boutiques.’
Theo felt his mouth twitch. ‘Remind me to tell him never to consider a job in the tourist industry. Okay, here are some facts. This island is one of the most violent volcanoes on the planet. Some think that three thousand years ago it wiped out the entire Minoan civilisation. And, believe it or not, there was no tourism to speak of until fairly recently, when people realised that add one famous crater to amazing black sand beaches and you get a must see resort.’
‘And you don’t approve?’ Abby felt herself grudgingly drawn into the conversation. If her mission was to be super-friendly and allay any suspicions, then this was as good a place to start as any because she was genuinely interested in the history of the place.
‘What small island really approves of tourism?’ He glanced briefly at her and she wished again that he would remove the sunglasses.
‘The ones that make a packet of money out of it?’ Abby ventured.
‘Doesn’t mean that the natives like it,’ Theo pointed out. He interrupted himself to point out various sights, drawing her attention to the colour of the rocks and the nature of the landscape, comparing it to other Greek islands. ‘Of course,’ he said, resuming his original topic, ‘they all work towards promoting tourism because it involves promoting their own standard of living, but do you not agree that it deadens the authenticity of a place?’
‘If I had the choice of a roof over my head and food in my stomach, and the price was to be polite to a few tourists for a few months of the year, then I know what I’d choose.’
‘Ah, a practical woman.’ Or something else. ‘And here I was thinking that all women were romantics at heart.’
‘Because someone is sensible doesn’t mean that they’re not romantic as well,’ Abby said.
He wanted to dwell on the significance of what she had said, but decided to go down the tantalising route of finding out just a little bit more about her.
‘I suppose wandering the land with your parents may have resulted in you not getting a large enough dose of reality to extinguish the notion of romance.’
Abby tore her eyes away from the impressive scenery to stare at him. Remember you’re being nice and friendly and open, she thought. ‘Maybe, although I must say I had a large dose of reality in the form of temporary housing and dodgy neighbourhoods. No, I tell a lie, we never really stayed anywhere dodgy. Wolf and River preferred villages to cities.’
‘Wolf and River?’
Abby hadn’t meant to say that. Not even Michael knew about those stupid names her parents had called themselves. Just uttering it out loud made her cringe with embarrassment. She stared resolutely ahead, chin tilted, and didn’t say anything.
‘Your parents were called Wolf and River?’ Theo stole a glance at the stubborn profile. So she was a slightly more complex gold-digger. Probably why she had succeeded with Michael, who had never been one to fall for the obvious.
‘They explained that they needed names to suit the people that they were. Course, I carried on calling them Mum and Dad.’
‘Bet they loved that.’
‘They accepted that I…wasn’t like them. Anyway, that’s all very boring. Tell me some more about the island. You said it’s volcanic. Isn’t that dangerous?’
Theo’s eyes strayed fleetingly to her slender thighs, abundantly exposed thanks to the short skirt which had ridden up, and he tried to focus on the mission at hand.
‘Did you have a nickname? Should I say a Freedom name?’
‘Stream,’ Abby said shortly. ‘I made them promise never to call me that in public. You were telling me about the volcano danger?’
‘I suppose it could have been a bit embarrassing in front of your peer group.’
Abby had a sudden memory of waiting to be collected by her parents and the tide of shame that had washed over her when they had arrived at the school gates and called her by their pet name. Her brief spell at that particular school had not been one of her happiest.
Even more amazingly, she was almost tempted to confess that little nondescript memory to the man sitting next to her. Fortunately she caught herself in time and instead made some innocuous remark about the island and was relieved when he picked up the thread of the conversation and began explaining to her about the place. The huge eruption that had occurred some three thousand six hundred years ago, he informed her, had produced tsunamis that had reached as far as Turkey. In the aftermath of that upheaval, new craters had been formed.
‘They’re sleeping,’ he added. ‘But under constant surveillance.’
‘That’s reassuring. Don’t sleeping things have a nasty habit of getting up, though?’
‘Hopefully not. Now, I’m going to take you on a ride.’
‘What kind of ride?’ Abby asked cautiously and he turned to grin at her. His teeth looked amazingly white against the sleek bronze of his skin and she shivered at the sudden awareness she had of him, the kind of sexual awareness that a woman has for a man.
‘A white knuckle one. Then we’ll go and do a bit of shopping.’
The white knuckle ride turned out to be a breathtaking cable ride from the capital down to the old port. Abby found that she was clutching on to Theo as the cable car soared off the edge of the volcano, down past solidified lava flows and rock formations. She couldn’t bring herself to look down at several points and turned her face into his shoulder, not at all caring that she could feel him shaking with laughter. By the time they made it down, she was virtually shaking.
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