by Anne Mather
Hectic colour flooded his cheeks. ‘That wasn’t true—’
‘I know that now.’
‘Milos told you?’
‘No. Maya.’ Helen saw the way his mouth tightened at the news. ‘I don’t think she wants us here.’
Sam shook his head, his impatience evident now. ‘It’s not her call,’ he said. ‘This is my house, not hers.’ He pushed nervous hands deep into the pockets of his cotton trousers. ‘I have to ask: does my deception make a difference?’
Helen lifted slim shoulders. ‘It does, of course. But I don’t know how I feel.’ She saw Melissa watching her and went on carefully, ‘Perhaps we ought to take one day at a time.’
‘Would you have come if I hadn’t pretended to be ill?’ he demanded fiercely and Helen had to admit that the answer was probably no. And, as if he was able to read her thoughts, he went on, ‘So now you know why I did it.’
‘I suppose so.’
He took a deep breath then, glancing up and down the hall outside. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’re tired. You’d like a rest.’ He frowned. ‘Have you had anything to eat?’
‘We had some coffee.’
‘But nothing to eat?’ Her father nodded and glanced at his watch. ‘Okay. It’s nearly half past ten. Why don’t I have Sofia bring you some rolls and some fresh coffee? Then you can relax until lunchtime.’
‘That sounds good to me.’ Helen glanced at Melissa. ‘What do you think?’
‘Well, I don’t want to rest,’ said Melissa with her usual perversity. She looked at her grandfather. ‘Can’t I go with you?’
‘Melissa!’
Helen was about to object when Sam Campbell said, ‘Why not?’ A smile warmed his rather austere features. ‘If your mother doesn’t mind.’
Helen could think of no reason why Melissa shouldn’t go with him. ‘Um—no,’ she murmured. And then another thought occurred to her. ‘Is Milos still here?’
Melissa rolled her eyes again at this, but thankfully her grandfather didn’t see her. ‘No, he’s gone,’ he said, suddenly more cheerful. ‘Okay, Melissa, I’ll give you the guided tour, eh? And introduce you to Alex.’
‘Alex?’
Both Helen and her daughter spoke in unison and once again a momentary hesitation crossed his face. ‘Alex. Alex Campbell,’ he said with some reluctance. ‘Maya’s son.’
Melissa came back before lunch, full of herself and of the things she’d seen.
‘This is some place, Mum,’ she exclaimed, flinging herself onto Helen’s bed with a complete disregard for the silk coverlet. ‘Did you know they make wine here as well as grow the grapes?’
Helen hadn’t known that but she was quite content to let Melissa tell her all about it. Having spent the morning unpacking both her suitcase and Melissa’s backpack and taking a shower, she felt much more optimistic about the trip. If it helped to show her daughter there was more to life than skipping school and hanging about on street corners with kids whose main pastimes were smoking pot and shoplifting, she’d be more than happy.
A vain hope, perhaps, but at least it was a beginning and Melissa seemed to have enjoyed herself.
‘He took me down to the mill,’ she said, tugging on the rings that circled her ear with a careless finger. ‘It was good. He let me taste some of the wine they’d made last year.’
‘Really?’ Helen restrained herself from saying that drinking wine at her age and at this hour of the morning wasn’t very sensible. ‘So what was it like?’
‘The wine? Okay, I guess.’ Melissa didn’t sound impressed. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be an alcoholic.’
Helen breathed a little easier. ‘That’s a relief.’
‘Why?’ Melissa looked at her from beneath lowered lids. ‘Are you afraid I’m gonna take after Richard?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’ Melissa looked as if she wanted to say something more and then thought better of it. ‘Anyway, Sam treats me like my opinion matters. I like that.’
I bet, thought Helen, but all she said was, ‘Did he tell you to call him Sam?’
‘No.’ Now Melissa pouted a bit. ‘But I can’t call him Granddad, can I?’
Helen acknowledged that might be a stretch. ‘I guess not. So—did you meet Alex?’
‘Oh, sure.’ Melissa was annoyingly casual. ‘But to begin with, I had some breakfast. He was going to take me on a tour of the house,’ she added, ‘but Maya kept complaining we were getting in her way, so we got in the Jeep and went down to the mill.’
‘I see.’
‘That’s when I met Alex.’ Melissa’s lips quirked. ‘He’s cool.’
Cool? Helen couldn’t help herself. She was curious. ‘You liked him?’
‘What’s not to like? At least he was friendly.’
‘He speaks English?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So—how old is he?’
Melissa was deliberately obtuse. ‘Older than me.’
‘Melissa!’
‘Oh, okay.’ Melissa rumpled her hair. ‘He’s not your brother, if that’s what’s worrying you. He’s twenty-six. Maya was like you. She was only seventeen when Alex was born.’
It was a couple of days later when Milos decided to check up on Sam’s house guests.
It wasn’t anything to do with him, he knew, but something drew him back to the vineyard. It was easy to tell himself that, as he’d collected them from the ferry, he felt some responsibility for their well being. But the truth was, Helen and her unlikely daughter intrigued him. He wanted to know more about them. He wanted to know more about her.
Sam was having a late breakfast when he arrived. Milos guessed his friend had already been down to the winery to check on developments there, and now he was enjoying a lazy repast, seated at the table that had been laid in the shade of a clump of lemon trees.
‘Milos,’ he exclaimed, when the younger man emerged from the shadows of the villa. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. Will you join me?’
‘For coffee, only,’ said Milos, shaking the other man’s hand and urging him to resume his seat. ‘I was—passing, and I thought I might enquire how your daughter and granddaughter are enjoying their holiday.’
‘Oh …’ Sam pulled a wry face. ‘Well, I think Helen is glad of the break. She’s had a pretty tough time since her husband was killed. Richard—well, Richard seems to have been a bit of a waster, if you ask me. Why else would Helen have had to give up her own home and move back in with her mother unless money was tight?’
Milos wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this. Talking about the man who had lived with Helen all those years aroused mixed emotions inside him. It wasn’t that he was jealous, he assured himself. How could you be jealous of a dead man? But the fact remained, he didn’t like the sound of Richard either. Was he the reason Melissa was so obviously out of control?
Maya emerged from the house at that moment and both men rose automatically to their feet. A swarthy, attractive woman in her early forties, she was of medium height, but rather generously proportioned. She tended to wear long flowing skirts that disguised her figure, yet the blouse she’d chosen revealed a liberal amount of cleavage. She was a distant cousin of Milos’s mother, and she never let him forget that they were related.
‘I thought I heard voices,’ she exclaimed, coming towards them and reaching up to bestow a wet kiss on Milos’s cheek. She spoke in her own language, which she much preferred to English. ‘I didn’t know you were here, Milos,’ she went on reprovingly. ‘Sam, haven’t you offered our guest some refreshment?’
‘I have, and he only wants coffee,’ replied Sam, sinking back into his own chair. ‘Perhaps you’d ask Sofia to fetch some, Maya? This pot is definitely getting cold.’
Maya’s lips tightened. ‘Just call and she’ll come, Samuel,’ she retorted impatiently. ‘She has little enough to do, goodness knows.’ She turned to Milos again. ‘It’s so good to see you.’ She tapped his arm in a playful gesture. ‘You don’t visit half often enough.
’
Milos managed a polite disclaimer, but he was beginning to think he’d made a mistake in coming here. He doubted Maya would approve of his reasons for doing so. She’d made her feelings very plain the morning Helen and her daughter had arrived. And Helen herself was unlikely to be glad to see him. He remembered the tension that had been there between them on that drive up from the harbour.
‘He’s come to see Helen,’ Sam put in then, settling the matter. ‘Where is she, Maya? I haven’t seen her this morning.’
‘That’s because she doesn’t get up as early as we do,’ declared Maya crisply. She turned a smiling face to Milos again. ‘Will you stay for lunch?’
‘Oh, I don’t—’ Milos was beginning when Helen herself appeared from around the side of the villa, and Sam rose eagerly to his feet.
‘Well, here she is,’ he exclaimed, reverting at once to English. He went to meet his daughter with evident pleasure. ‘We thought you weren’t up yet.’
‘Did you?’
Helen had a smile for her father, but then her eyes moved beyond him to where Milos and Maya were standing together. Her lips tightened, as if she’d attributed that misapprehension jointly to both of them, and Milos felt his own instinctive rejection of her assumption.
Struggling to remember why he was here, he managed a polite, ‘Kalimera,’ separating himself from his cousin almost involuntarily. ‘How are you?’
Helen took a visible breath. ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she said, the slim hand she used to check the upswept pony-tail at the back of her head revealing a nervousness she was trying hard not to show.
But Milos noticed. Noticed, too, that in a sleeveless top and navy shorts she looked younger, less on edge. The sun had already touched her skin with a rosy glow, and, although he suspected the hectic colour in her cheeks owed more to her mood than the climate, it suited her.
‘Kala,’ he said now. ‘Good.’
‘Milos wondered how you were settling in.’
Once again Sam chose to move the conversation on, and Milos saw the way she responded to this news. It was hardly flattering.
‘Really?’ she said, as if she didn’t believe him, and Maya clicked her tongue.
‘Greek men are sometimes too considerate for their own good,’ she remarked pointedly, and Helen gave her stepmother a studied look.
‘Do you think so?’ she remarked casually, and Milos realised she’d already got Maya’s measure.
‘I think so?’ said Maya shortly, and although Milos had sympathised with Helen’s attitude her words caught him on the raw. Dammit, they’d been lovers. She was acting as if they were total strangers.
‘Have you been for a walk?’ asked Sam, not allowing the hostility between the two women to deter him, and Helen turned back to her father with another warm smile.
‘I was just in the garden,’ she said. ‘There are so many exotic flowers here and Melissa was showing me the fountain.’
‘Melissa’s with you?’ Sam looked back the way she’d come. ‘Where is she?’
‘Poking her nose where it is not wanted, I expect,’ murmured Maya, barely audibly, but Helen’s ears were sharp.
‘I think we’re all guilty of that at times, don’t you?’ she countered, before turning back to her father. ‘She’ll be along presently. She’s discovered a litter of kittens behind a water barrel and she’s absolutely entranced.’
‘Ugh!’ Maya shuddered. ‘Well, I hope she does not attempt to bring any of them into the villa.’
‘She won’t,’ said Sam impatiently, but he looked to his daughter for confirmation.
‘I hope not,’ she agreed, but Milos saw the way her lips twitched in sudden amusement at the thought.
Her lower lip was fuller than her upper one, and Milos knew an almost feral urge to brush his thumb across its plump contours. Relaxed, as it was now, her mouth was incredibly soft and sexy, and with amazement he found how easy it was to recall how sensuous it had felt beneath his …
Skata!
‘I think perhaps I ought to be going,’ he said abruptly, and both Sam and Maya showed their surprise.
‘But you haven’t had coffee,’ protested Sam at once, walking to the villa door and summoning the maidservant. ‘Coffee for my guests, Sofia,’ he ordered when she appeared, and Milos was obliged to accept that he couldn’t walk out now.
‘Look, I have to go back to the mill for a while,’ his host continued, ‘but Helen will look after you, won’t you, my dear?’ And, without giving her a chance to reply, ‘Come along, Maya. I have something I want to discuss with you.’
In a matter of minutes, they were alone, but Helen made no attempt to sit down. A pregnant silence, broken only by the clicking of the cicadas, enveloped them until Sofia appeared again with the requested refreshments.
She set the tray on the table and then departed again and Milos decided he had been ignored long enough.
‘Do you want coffee?’ he asked, and Helen, who had been standing some distance away from him, staring at the view, gave him a careless glance over her shoulder.
‘No, thanks.’
Milos’s jaw tightened, but he was determined not to give her any reason to walk out on him. ‘As you wish,’ he said, strolling across the paved terrace towards her. ‘It will give us more time to get to know one another again.’
Helen’s expression was not encouraging. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you just get in your very expensive car and go away? I won’t tell my father if you don’t.’
Milos suppressed the angry response that rose to his lips. ‘Why would I do that?’ he inquired instead. ‘Your father would like us to be friends.’
Helen snorted. ‘My father doesn’t know you as I do.’
‘I’ll give you that.’ Milos refused to be provoked. ‘I’m not in the habit of sleeping with members of my own sex.’
‘You surprise me.’ She was deliberately insolent. ‘From what I’ve read, men like you are more than willing to try every—ouch!’
She didn’t get the chance to finish what she was saying. She had just stepped beyond the point of no return and Milos’s hand shot out and gripped the soft flesh of her arm just above her elbow. He jerked her towards him with little care for her sensibilities, enjoying the brief sense of power it gave him.
‘What is it with you?’ he demanded, anger thickening his voice. ‘We both know that what happened between us all those years ago wasn’t exactly unexpected. And what was it, after all?’ he added as a disturbing drift of her flowery fragrance invaded his nostrils, briefly making him forget what he’d been going to say. ‘We had sex. Pretty good sex, as I recall, but so what? It’s what men and women do when they’re attracted to one another.’
‘Women from your background,’ she retorted, not prepared to give in even though he was sure he must be hurting her. He was hurting himself, for God’s sake, but in an entirely different way. ‘I’m not like you.’
‘Oh, but you are,’ he countered harshly. ‘Whatever that—youth you married was like, when we were together you didn’t care who I was.’
‘That was because I didn’t know who you were,’ she exclaimed. ‘And don’t—don’t speak about Richard. He—he was a decent man.’
‘That’s not what your daughter says,’ Milos taunted recklessly. ‘As far as I can gather, he definitely had faults of his own. Why did you marry him, Helen? Did you really love him? Or was it just to stop your mother from finding out what a promiscuous creature you’d turned out to be?’
‘You bastard!’
She wanted to strike him then. For a heart-stopping moment, she stared at him, and although the hostility between them was palpable there were other, less-identifiable emotions swirling in the violet depths of her eyes. She tried to jerk back, but she didn’t make it, and the raging heat of her body against his sent the blood rushing to his groin.
‘Did you really believe we could be indifferent to each other?’ he asked thickly, aware of a violent desire to kiss her,
to pull the quivering curve of her thighs even closer to his aching shaft. This wasn’t meant to happen, the voice of sanity warned him, but right then he was deaf to everything but his own urgent needs.
‘Hey—what’s going on?’
The child’s voice provided the necessary draught of cool air to bring him to his senses. His hand dropped instantly to his side and he stepped back on legs that were almost as unsteady as Helen’s own.
‘Melissa,’ he said, and he was amazed to hear how controlled he sounded in the circumstances. ‘Um—your mother had something in her eye. I was just trying to get it out.’
CHAPTER FOUR
MILOS was persuaded to stay for lunch, after all.
Helen had been hoping he would go so that she could sort out her chaotic feelings. But with Melissa adding her support to Maya’s renewed invitation, for some reason Milos had acquiesced.
Helen dared not wonder why. He was a devil, she thought, viewing her flushed face in the bathroom mirror. She’d sought refuge in her own suite of rooms, leaving Melissa and Maya to entertain their visitor, desperate to avoid another destructive altercation with him.
But she knew that sooner or later she had to go down again and behave as if nothing had happened. As it was, leaving Melissa with him had been a calculated risk. Who knew what her daughter might say if she was asked personal questions about the man she believed to be her father? After the way she’d spoken in the car, it was obvious she retained little respect for Richard.
However, what worried Helen most was her own unwelcome response to Milos. She’d never dreamt he might behave as he had, or that what had begun as a childish provocation should so quickly deteriorate into a mindless assault on her senses. She’d sensed he’d wanted to kiss her, and the awful thing was she’d wanted it, too. Wanted more, if she was honest.
Dear God, she must be crazy!
Lunch itself wasn’t quite the ordeal Helen had anticipated. Her father joined them and Melissa seemed to be easier to manage when he was there. Not that he’d persuaded her to abandon her jeans in favour of a pair of her mother’s shorts, but Helen had noticed that her daughter no longer smeared black lipstick all over her mouth whenever they left their rooms.
