‘The flowers were special, Tino, very special, and so was the thought behind them. I can’t believe I didn’t realise they were your gift to me.’
The way she was looking at him now, with her eyes so wide and troubled, touched something deep inside him, and feelings welled up from some hidden place so that he wanted to go to her and hold her in his arms.
‘I couldn’t believe you would do something like that for me, that anyone would.’
She made a helpless gesture, as if she was hunting for the right words with the same lack of success he had run up against when he had first arrived. ‘Won’t you sit down with me?’ he suggested gently.
She came to then, and stared at him with sharper focus. ‘No—I’d better not. And, Tino, that toast we made—’ She frowned as she looked at her glass. ‘When I said, ‘‘to us’’, of course I meant ‘‘to us’’ independently.’
‘Of course.’ He kept his expression neutral. ‘Us. Independently,’ he added dryly.
This awkwardness between them was new. They could rage at each other, or deal analytically with each other across a boardroom table quite comfortably, but this tiptoeing around each other was like starting over, working through something very carefully to find out if it could be safe…
‘I can’t bear to be hurt, Tino.’
The frank confession made him doubly alert. She was looking at him, totally oblivious to the fact that she had her arms wrapped around her waist in a defensive gesture.
‘I have to protect myself.’
‘From me?’
She looked away.
‘Lisa, please believe me… I do know what you’re trying to say. Trust doesn’t come in a rush, it grows slowly with time…and that’s the same for everyone, not just you and me.’
She flinched at that. ‘There is no you and me, Tino. There never can be. We’re no good for each other. Surely you must know that. You need someone strong.’
‘How do you know what I need?’
‘I heard you cry out in the night, Tino. I may not know much about you, but that night proved to me that you’re not the product of an ordinary childhood.’
‘An ordinary childhood?’ he repeated her words softly. ‘Whatever that might be.’
‘I don’t pretend to know what happened to you, Tino. I only know what I see in front of me now, and what I heard that night when you cried out in terror like a little boy who was very frightened.’
He looked at her searchingly. ‘No one has ever told me I do that before.’
‘Maybe you’ve never done it before.’
‘Maybe I’ve never felt safe enough to do it before.’ He stopped. He’d gone too far and automatically pulled back. ‘Truce?’ Now it was his turn to feel awkward.
‘Truce,’ Lisa agreed softly, ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered, as if that was all he had on his mind, ‘I won’t tell anyone.’
‘I never thought that you would.’
He reached out, and then stopped himself, clenching his hands to prevent himself from weakening. After another period of silence had elapsed and the tension between them had subsided, he tried again. ‘You say we’re no good for each other? I think you’re wrong.’
‘You would think that, but then you always believe you’re right.’
He was relieved to see that as she made the comment it almost brought a smile to her lips.
Neither of them moved for a while, but then she surprised him, coming to sit down as he had hoped she would on the sofa at his side. For a moment he thought she had opened her heart to the possibility that there was another way than to live without love, but he was soon disillusioned. She had only come close to him to drive her point home…
Clenching both her fists, she pressed them into her chest so hard her knuckles turned white. ‘There’s nothing in here, Tino.’
He couldn’t bear to see the look on her face. ‘No!’ Was that voice his? Without thinking, he dragged her to him.
‘Please, Tino, let me go… I have nothing inside me… I’ve got nothing to give you.’
‘No, Lisa, you’re wrong. I can see inside you, and you’re beautiful.’
And when she searched his face, and he saw the doubt fighting with her need to believe him, he shook his head and smiled tenderly at her. ‘Don’t you see, Lisa? We’re the saving of each other…’ And then he held her as if he would never let her go until she finally relaxed, and began to shudder uncontrollably in his arms.
‘Do you really think so?’
Her voice was tiny like a child’s and it made him want to cry for the first time he could remember…for both of them. ‘I know it.’
Still sensing her doubt, he cupped her chin and brought her to face him again. ‘I know it’s true, because I love you, Lisa. I love you so much you’ve got no idea.’ He kissed her then, and it was a beginning… It was as if they had never kissed before; it was a revelation to them both, like coming home.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LISA was still warm from the bath. How could he have forgotten how wonderful she felt in his arms when the need rose in them both like a white-hot flame?
‘It was good, wasn’t it?’ she whispered when he finally stopped kissing her.
‘Is good,’ Tino corrected, still holding her, staring into her eyes. ‘Better than good.’
How could she hold back her feelings when she didn’t want to? How could she hold firm when her body, her heart, her mind, her soul called out to him, and when she only felt complete when she was with him? ‘I love you, Tino.’
‘Are you asking me, or telling me?’
They both laughed, and she buried her face against his chest. ‘Do I still sound so uncertain?’ She watched his lips tug up in a half-smile, ‘I…love…you.’
He swept her up into his arms and carried her to the bedroom to seal the pledge they had made to each other. Lowering her down onto the bed, he dropped the towel he had been wearing round his waist, and slipped beneath the covers, drawing her into his arms. Stroking her hair, he dropped kisses on her eyes, on her cheek, on her brow…
‘This is good,’ he said tenderly. ‘The best thing in the world is being in bed with you.’
‘It’s so much softer than a table,’ she teased him. ‘The worktable in a florist’s shop,’ she reminded him, ‘the boardroom table.’
‘Yours, or mine?’
‘Both, if I have my way.’
‘Then it’s to be hoped you do—I‘m keen to make sure our lovemaking never becomes predictable.’
‘No chance of that—’ Lisa gasped as Tino moved down the bed, kissing every inch of her on the way. He flung back the covers so that the subdued light from the bedside lamp played across her naked body, turning it a deeper shade of peach.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he murmured, tracing the contours of her breasts and belly with the lightest touch to bring her pleasure. ‘I want to taste you.’
Throwing her head back on the soft bank of pillows, Lisa moaned softly as he moved between her thighs, pressing her legs back with his warm palms until she was completely open for him, completely ready… She could refuse him nothing…not even her heart.
His dark hair was so glossy in the lamplight, so silky to her touch as she laced her fingers through the thick waves to urge him on… His tongue was every bit as skilful as his fingers, and there was no part of her he did not understand, or know how to play for the greatest pleasure. But as her excitement grew to fever pitch he drew back, smiling down at her, his eyes dark with passion, and his smile wolfish in the half-light.
‘Don’t keep me waiting—’
‘Or?’ he demanded.
‘If you’re naughty, I shall have to punish you.’
Arousal hit them at the same moment, and as their eyes locked Tino knew they were thinking the same thing. They had both suffered the consequences of violence, but they had worked through their fears together, and it had brought them closer than either of them had anticipated. They could push the boundaries because they loved each
other, and because they could trust each other completely, and because, at last, they both knew without any doubt at all that they were safe.
‘Better?’ he asked Lisa later when she lay quiet in his arms.
‘Can’t speak…no strength.’ Her body was floating on another dimension. She couldn’t have called it back even had she wanted to.
‘All the shadows gone?’
‘Shadows?’
‘We both have them,’ Tino told her, shifting his head on the pillows to meet her gaze. ‘You can’t hide from someone who has spent his whole life blanking out the past—’
‘That works both ways, Tino.’
‘I know about the commune,’ he said. ‘I know about all the terrible things you saw while you were living there. I understand your reasons for running away, and for going back to live with your father. You were right to do that, Lisa. And in the end your mother did her best for you. No child should have been exposed to the dangers you were exposed to, and I believe she helped you to get out of there just in time.’
‘Who told you all this?’
‘Does it matter?’
It had to be Mike, Lisa realised. She hadn’t confided the truth about her mother’s extreme lifestyle to another living soul.
‘Don’t be angry with Mike,’ Tino said as he read her mind. ‘He only has your best interests at heart.’
‘I’m not angry. It’s just that I never talk about the past in case anyone thinks I’m looking for sympathy, or help. I know that no one can help me. I can only help myself.’
‘If you thought of it as understanding, rather than sympathy, you might find other people out there just like you. You can share the road back with someone else, Lisa, someone who is also trying to break free from the past.’
‘With you, Tino?’
‘Why not? Just because your mother’s life was chaotic doesn’t mean you have to order your own life with such an unforgiving hand.’
‘I’m getting better.’ She viewed their sated forms with a wry glance.
‘You are better, because you know you can trust me, and you know that violence will never have any part to play in our relationship. Why shouldn’t lovemaking be fun? Who’s to say what’s right or wrong between consenting adults, as long as no one else is hurt by their actions? What happens between us in the bedroom stays between us. And if you don’t like something, you only have to tell me.’
‘I like everything,’ Lisa assured him, snuggling close, already feeling her body starting to yearn for his attention.
‘Not yet,’ Tino whispered, soothing her with long strokes down her back. ‘First we talk.’
‘First you talk.’ Lisa raised herself on one arm to stare at him. ‘You know so much about me, and I need to understand your nightmares. Tell me about the past, Tino.’
‘I don’t want to burden you.’
Putting one finger over his lips, she shook her head, silently encouraging him, prepared to wait for however long it took.
‘Stella Panayotakis took care of me when I was a boy,’ he said at last.
‘Didn’t your mother take care of you?’
‘I never knew my mother—she didn’t want anything to do with me.’
‘Tino, I’m so sorry… I had no idea.’
‘No one does. That’s the joke. Tino Zagorakis, the Greek tycoon, doesn’t even know if he is a Greek.’
‘But your name?’
‘I took it from the van that came to the orphanage each week.. ‘‘Zagorakis Cleaning Services’’. What a joke, eh?’
‘The orphanage? Oh, Tino.’ This was no joke, and Lisa fell silent the moment he started speaking again.
‘Everything inside the orphanage was grey until the day that Stella Panayotakis came to work there. Stella taught me that life could be bigger than my life in the orphanage. She said my life could be exciting. She told me about the world outside the orphanage—a world that was raw, and vivid, and only waiting for me to take my part in it. She put dreams into my head, and promised they would all come true if only I believed… It was hard, Lisa, really hard and Stella Panayotakis made me believe.’
‘And when you were successful you gave her an apartment building.’
‘She told you that?’
‘Stella is your greatest fan.’
‘And now, I have more plans, bigger plans.’
Tino’s enthusiasm was infectious. ‘What are your plans, Tino? Please tell me about them.’
‘Well…I am going to have more places like Stellamaris.’
‘More islands?’ Lisa drew up in amazement.
‘I’m sorry, pethi mou, you do not know.’
‘I don’t know what?’
‘When I bought Stellamaris, I named it for Stella, and then I used it as my base.’
‘Your base? You mean for your business?’
‘For my other business.’
‘Stop talking in riddles,’ Lisa warned, dropping a kiss on his chest.
‘I bring young people to Stellamaris, and some older people too…to find themselves. The island is a sanctuary, a place to start again, and for some, a place to start. Many of the people on Stellamaris began their lives in orphanages. I make sure there is training there for everyone, and that Stella visits frequently. Stella was my inspiration, and now she is theirs.’
‘Now I understand why you’re so close to Arianna.’
‘Stella was a single mother, and it was very hard for her back then. Don’t look so impressed, Lisa. I don’t deserve any praise. I did nothing special…it was all Stella’s doing. All I have ever done is give people the tools to help themselves. Their achievements are all their own.’
‘And now?’ Lisa looked at him intently. ‘Tell me about your new plans?’
‘They’re not so much new, as an extension of my existing scheme. I have accumulated massive wealth, and now I want to use that money to help others as Stella helped me. I want to extend my programme right across Greece to begin with.’
‘Nothing too ambitious, then,’ Lisa teased him gently.
‘Very ambitious,’ Tino admitted, ‘and because of that I will need someone at my side. I can’t even start the work I want to do until I find that one special person—someone who shares my aims, my desires, my dreams…someone who knows what it feels like to be on the outside looking in. Can you be that person, Lisa?’
‘Are you offering me a job?’
Tino tilted his head as he pretended to consider this. ‘Can you think of anyone better qualified to take on this task than a successful businesswoman who has accepted that she can delegate some of her duties to other members of her team at Bond Steel, a woman who has suddenly discovered she has a heart, a woman who knows what it is to be an outcast, a woman of principle, a woman who is every bit as driven as I am, a woman who has recently declared she is looking for radical change in her life?’
Closing her eyes, Lisa took time over framing her answer. ‘All this—’ she touched his face gently in wonder ‘—and a new job in just one working week.’
‘Exactly as we planned,’ Tino pointed out. ‘We make a great team.’
‘And if I was looking for something more?’
‘Something more?’
‘More than just a job, more than simply joining your organisation to help you with this new project?’ She tensed as Tino stretched beyond her to reach for his clothes. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Looking for something…’
Seeing the velvet case, Lisa exclaimed with concern. ‘You were supposed to take those back.’
‘Surely you didn’t expect me to take them back to the shop after you’d worn them, did you?’
Remembering where she’d worn them, Lisa blushed. ‘Perhaps not.’
‘Oh, look, here’s another one.’ Falling back onto the pillows, Tino dragged her down with him. Now there were two velvet boxes. ‘Which one? You choose.’
‘You shouldn’t be buying me presents.’
‘Buying gifts for you is one impulse I will
never allow you to control,’ he informed her. ‘Now, which one do you choose?’
‘They say all the best things come in small packages.’
‘Not always.’
‘But maybe you are right this time,’ Tino conceded. ‘Why don’t you open the small box and find out?’
Taking it from him, Lisa pressed the small gilt catch and gasped as the lid flew open. The emerald ring was a perfect match to the fabulous earrings. ‘What’s this? A down payment on my first month’s wages?’
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