by Anne Mather
Beth had said nothing. She couldn’t. She knew if she had attempted to argue with Linda they probably would have had an all-out row, and she couldn’t let that happen. All the same, it would be ironic if Linda asked her to leave, she thought bitterly. She wondered how the girl would feel if Beth told her the truth.
She sighed. Why was nothing ever simple? On the surface, she was here as Linda’s friend, but, underneath that facile fact, lurked a whole glut of complications.
She stopped brushing her hair and let her hands fall into her lap. Several strands of blonde silk clung to the bristles of the brush, and she picked them off rather cynically. It was just as well her hair was so fair, she thought. She was sure she must have a score of grey hairs by now.
And, as she sat there, the silence of the room gathered around her. Distantly, she thought she could hear the murmur of the ocean, but within these four walls she felt chillingly alone. Which was silly really, she told herself, glancing about her. No one could have asked for a more attractive apartment, and the maid had come in, while they were at dinner, and turned down the bed for her.
It was like being in a hotel, she thought. Everything had been thought of. From the array of toiletries in the adjoining bathroom, to the crystal bottles of expensive perfume on the dressing-table, her every need had been anticipated. So wasn’t it a pity she didn’t appreciate it?
The room was lit by a number of lamps, including the concealed strip over the dressing-table. But now Beth turned them all out, except for the bronze-shaded onyx beside the bed, and walked on bare feet to the window. The long, silk-printed curtains had been closed by the maid earlier, and she drew the folds aside to peer out.
The hem of the curtain brushed her ankle and she shivered. The loosely tied robe was all she was wearing, and it had parted to expose her leg from heel to thigh. Her skin felt strangely sensitive this evening, and even the light touch of the raw fabric caused a delicate tightening of her nerve-endings. She felt tense, unsettled; as if even the warm air in the room was actually pressing against her flesh.
It was stupid, but she was more aware of herself in this place than she had ever been before. Her nipples were puckered against the cream satin of her robe, and the muscles of her thighs were taut and anxious. If it weren’t such a ridiculous notion, she would have said her whole body ached, physically ached, and the need to escape the bands of her own frustration became an almost overwhelming force.
Dropping the curtain as if it burned her, she turned back into the room, crossing her arms at her midriff, and drying her damp palms on her sleeves. This was crazy, she told herself impatiently. It wasn’t as if Alex Thiarchos had done anything to warrant such a response. On the contrary, he had been unexpectedly civil, and no one could have guessed from his attitude this evening that their relationship had ever been anything more than what it appeared.
Perhaps that was the trouble, she thought, with an unwilling burst of honesty. Perhaps she secretly enjoyed their confrontations, got a certain satisfaction from matching his barbed comments with her own. Life was certainly not dull when Alex was around, and perhaps she was disappointed that he hadn’t made good on his threat.
But no!
The very idea that she might welcome another encounter with the man who had forced her to come here was ludicrous. Just because he had been half decent this evening was no reason to change her opinion of his behaviour. And both he and Linda had, in their own ways, implied that her presence here was superfluous. So what was stopping her from leaving in the morning?
Her mouth felt suddenly dry, and, going into the bathroom, she filled a glass with water and swallowed it down. But the dryness, like the fretful mood that was gripping her, was as much a psychological state as a physical one, and, setting down the glass, she walked back into the bedroom.
The curtains were still ajar, and although she went to close them the distant murmur of the ocean caught her imagination. Out there, beyond the gardens of the villa, the untamed beauty of the night was beckoning. Why didn’t she take a walk, instead of moping about here? The exercise might tire her, and it would certainly chase any unwelcome feelings of promiscuity away.
It only took a few minutes to shed the satin robe in favour of a T-shirt and shorts. She chose dark colours—a plum-coloured T-shirt and burgundy shorts—deliberately. She had no desire for anyone to observe her leaving the villa. No desire for anyone to feel obliged to accompany her.
She let herself out of the French doors that opened on to the cloistered walkway outside her room. A pillared terrace encircled the inner courtyard of the villa, edged by a low stone wall, covered with flowering vines and wistaria.
It occurred to her, as she left the terrace, that she hadn’t given any thought to the security arrangements at the villa. The two men she had seen on her arrival were unlikely to have gone off duty when it got dark. On the contrary, their numbers were likely to be supplemented with others, and maybe even a dog or two. Beth swallowed. The prospect of possibly meeting an angry Dobermann or Rottweiler almost had her heading back to the villa.
But common sense—or was it simple stubbornness?—kept her going. She couldn’t believe there was any real danger in taking a walk by moonlight. And there was a moon, an almost full one, and it felt so good to be out in the cool night air.
All the same, she was a little surprised that she saw no one lurking in the shadows. There wasn’t even the glow of a lighted cigarette to betray a watching presence. Well, perhaps body-guards didn’t smoke these days. After all, her only experience of them had been gleaned from old black-and-white movies.
Beyond the courtyard, shallow steps revealed the existence of a swimming-pool. A swath of green water was underlit to display a mosaic of classic tiles, with Poseidon and Aphrodite sporting on its base. There was a row of white-painted cabanas, nestling in a grove of pines, and the roof of a shadowy bell-tower, arching above the trees.
Beyond the pool, the ground was terraced, with rose-hung pergolas, and the rich scent of broom. The sound of the ocean was much stronger here, and when her rubber-soled shoes slapped against rock she saw that she was immediately above the sandy cove.
She paused for a moment, taking huge breaths of the salted air. Apart from the muted roar of the ocean, and the whisper of a breeze through the pines, there was little sound. Athens, with its busy airport and hectic streets, might have been hundreds of miles away. Here, there was peace, and a heady sense of isolation.
She looked down, and saw the moonlight glinting on stone steps cut into the hillside. Evidently, that was how you reached the cove, she reflected. If the Thiarchoses’ guests got bored with the pool, they could go and swim in the ocean. The cove was totally private, as she had seen on their arrival.
She hadn’t intended to go down to the beach. Already, her legs were aching with the effort of balancing herself against the curve of the downward slope, and she was tired. It had been a long day, physically and mentally, and she thought she might sleep now that her restlessness had been blunted.
But, as she stood there, gazing dreamily towards the water, she saw something moving in the shallows. She’d probably have thought nothing of it, if she hadn’t had that earlier awareness of a curious absence of security. She’d have assumed it was the shift of the moonlight, or her eyes playing tricks with her. Not tried to identify it, with an intensity born of fear.
It was a man. She was almost sure of it. Someone was down there, in the water; someone dark and sleek, with an absence of angles. Someone who might be wearing a wet-suit.
But who? And what ought she to do? She wished now she had seen one of the security guards. Even in her broken Greek, she was sure she could have made him understand.
And then the man stood up, and her breath caught in her throat. Like some Greek god rising from the waves, he trod through the shallows and on to the beach. With his arms raised to squeeze the water from his hair, overlong hair, which clung damply to the back of his neck, his identity was unmistakable. It was
Alex Thiarchos who had been swimming; Alex Thiarchos she had glimpsed in the water; Alex Thiarchos, who strode out on to the sand, lean, and muscled, and totally naked.
Beth exhaled shakily. She had never seen a man naked before, not like this, so naturally, and so careless that anyone might see him. That night at the flat—God! She could hardly remember how he had looked then!—was like another time, another world. She had been so afraid of doing something wrong, or letting him see how scared she really was. She supposed she had looked at his body; she certainly had touched it. But all she really remembered were the feelings he had aroused; the wild and frightening loss of all control.
Her breath quivered, and with it came an awarenesses of how she was feeling now. The needs she had suppressed in her bedroom earlier, the desperate needs that had driven her to take this walk in the moonlight, had all been rekindled. What price now the peace and seclusion she had thought she was seeking? The unashamed sight of Alex Thiarchos’s body had shown her just how artificial they had been.
An aching feeling was invading her lower limbs, a strange weakness, which was magnified a hundredfold when he bent and picked up his towel and started to dry himself. Yet still she lingered, held by an emotion that was as old as time itself. Curiosity, and the forbidden pleasure of watching him without his being aware of it, kept her where she was, and shivers of anticipation ran down her legs when he abraded his chest and thighs.
God, she would like to do that, she thought wildly. She would like to tangle her fingers in the fine hair that gathered between his pectoral muscles and ran, like a dark arrow, down between his legs. Her fingers itched to touch him, to caress his shoulders, and smooth his biceps, to glide over his abdomen, and shape his sex…
Her breath hissed out in an unsteady sigh, and she felt an unfamiliar dampness between her thighs. Dear God, she thought incredulously, as a haze of longing closed her eyes for a moment, she was becoming aroused. If Alex climbed the steps now, and took her in his arms, there wouldn’t be a thing she could do about it. Or want to, she admitted chillingly. What had begun as a seemingly foolproof exercise was rapidly deteriorating into chaos. It was hard to remember now how detached she had felt when she devised it. She had been so convinced that she wouldn’t get hurt, that she couldn’t get hurt, but she was wrong. It seemed as if she wasn’t so different from her mother and her sister, after all.
But she had to be, she told herself savagely. Any interest Alex Thiarchos had in her was purely physical. If he was attracted to her, and she thought perhaps he might be, it was because of how she looked and nothing else.
And she knew, better than anyone, how superficial that could be. Her mother’s beauty had led her into numerous affairs that had broken her husband’s heart. The fact that she had died in a freak skiing accident, when Beth was only eight years old, had not eased her husband’s pain. And Joy’s death only seven years later had ensured that her younger sister learned the lesson well. Joy had been a successful model, before she was injured in the plane crash. But the man she loved, the man she had been going to marry, had not been able to cope with the facial scarring she had suffered…
Now Beth opened her eyes again, eyes that had grown moist with the grief she still felt for her sister, and cast a final glance at the beach. At least thinking about Joy had dispelled the awful weakness in her knees. She would go to bed, and put all thoughts of Alex Thiarchos, and his sexy body, out of her head.
But the beach was empty. She blinked rapidly, half convinced that her tears must be blinding her, but even after she had rubbed the heels of her hands across her eyes the image remained the same. There was no one there. The beach was deserted. And, although she looked up and down the stretch of moon-silvered sand, she could see no evidence of anyone’s occupancy.
Had she dreamed it? she wondered. Had her own frustrated emotions conjured up the substance of the man? She’d only closed her eyes for a few moments. He couldn’t have disappeared. It wasn’t possible.
Yet he wasn’t there. That much was indisputable. Even the sand where he had been standing looked smooth and undisturbed. Of course, she couldn’t see it clearly from this angle, and perhaps the tide was coming in, but it certainly looked like it. Like a mirage in the desert, he had vanished into the night.
And once again she was as nervy and on-edge as she had been before. The brief respite that thinking of Joy had given her might never have been. Where was he? she demanded silently, glancing half apprehensively about her. Why had he done this to her? He had been there. She knew it. She wouldn’t sleep until she’d proved it.
With a feeling, half of impatience, half of dread, she started down the stone stairs. She was just going to the bottom of the steps, she told herself. Just to make sure she hadn’t been dreaming. She refused to consider what she might do if her conviction proved groundless. She was sure now that there was another way up from the beach and he had used it.
The sand was quite firm beneath her soles, and she guessed that at high tide the water came fairly close to the cliffs. Uncomfortably close, she thought, reluctant to move away from the steps. She would hate to get trapped down here. Particularly when there didn’t seem to be any other way of getting out.
‘Looking for me?’
The voice came from behind her, and Beth’s legs almost gave out on her. For all her suspicions, she had thought the cove was empty, and when Alex spoke to her she let out a little cry.
‘Well, what else was I supposed to think?’ he continued, moving away from the shadow of the rocks and emerging into the silvery light. ‘You have been watching me for the past fifteen minutes, haven’t you?’ One dark eyebrow quirked. ‘Do I take it that you liked what you saw?’
Beth sucked in her breath. It was difficult to think of anything to say, with him standing there watching her like a sphinx. Her only relief came from the fact that he had draped the towel around his hips to protect his modesty. Though, remembering how he had been acting earlier, she guessed it was more her feelings he was protecting than his own.
‘I—don’t know what you mean,’ she got out at last, and knew herself for a hypocrite when she saw his mocking mouth. ‘I—I was just going for a walk, that’s all. I—I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Nor could I,’ remarked Alex at last, evidently prepared to give her a little leeway. ‘That’s why I went for a swim. The water’s so beautiful at this time of night.’
‘I’m—sure.’ Beth swallowed. ‘Is—is it warm?’
‘Why don’t you find out?’ he suggested softly. ‘Just take off your clothes and help yourself.’
Beth gasped. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘Why couldn’t you?’
‘Well, I—I don’t—I’m not—wearing a bathing suit.’
‘So?’ His eyes darkened as they skimmed the taut curve of her breasts, and she prayed she was displaying no other signs of her arousal. ‘The beach is private. There’s no one else about.’
‘You—you’re about,’ she declared huskily, and he grinned.
‘So I am. But we’ve got nothing to hide from one another, have we, Beth?’ He let go of the towel and let it fall to the sand. ‘Come on. What have you got to lose?’
Beth turned her head away. ‘You’re—shameful!’
‘Shameless,’ amended Alex, putting out a hand, and cupping the sensitive nape of her neck. ‘Beth—what are you afraid of? You followed me here, remember? Not the other way about.’
‘I didn’t follow—’
‘All right, all right!’ He raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘So you didn’t follow me. You just came to find me, right?’
‘No—’ Beth turned to look indignantly at him, and then looked quickly away again. ‘All right, I did see you from the top of the steps. But when I looked again you’d disappeared.’
‘When you looked again?’ Alex sounded perplexed. ‘Funny, I thought you saw me cross to the steps. I was about to come up, when you started coming down.’
‘Well, I didn’t see you,’ said B
eth crossly, and Alex shrugged.
‘You didn’t move.’
‘I’d—closed my eyes.’ Beth gave him another fleeting glance. ‘I—I was thinking about my sister. I don’t care if you believe me or not. It’s the truth.’
Alex studied her bent head. ‘So—why did you come down?’
Beth made a dismissive gesture. ‘No reason.’
‘Oh, come on.’ Alex lifted a silky strand of her hair and drew it across her mouth. ‘You were curious where I’d gone. Admit it. You were looking for me. I think—I think you were wanting me just as much as I was wanting you.’
‘No!’
Beth’s denial was swift and indignant, but when his hands reached to cup her face she couldn’t pull away. She felt mesmerised by his touch, and although his mouth merely brushed hers she had to steel herself not to lean into him.
‘Sweet,’ he breathed, against her lips. ‘Theos, Beth, where have you been all these years?’
Beth panicked. She couldn’t let this happen again. She couldn’t let him do this to her. Hadn’t she just spent the last half-hour fretting over the fact that seeing him again had awakened all those half-forgotten feelings? Hadn’t she proved her vulnerability by coming down here, by watching him, and letting his arrant sensuality stir emotions she had once fooled herself she could control? She had to stop him; now; before she repeated the madness.
She lifted her hands to his throat, and although the temptation to slip them around his neck was paramount she balled her fists and pressed him away. ‘Let me go,’ she demanded, her voice high and desperate, and she was hardly aware that he had offered no resistance until she was fleeing across the sand.
