His Penniless Beauty

The gypsy skirt she was wearing the first time I set eyes on her, swirling around her long, long legs… The peach dress she wore to dinner that evening, accentuating every pliant line of her body… The ivory evening gown she wore to that gala, the first night I took her out…

Through his head she walked like a procession, each vision a wound. Roughly, he banished them. They were the past, and the past was over. Now, only the immunisation programme was ahead of him. Nothing else.

He led the way out to the car, and opened the passenger seat. For a moment she seemed to balk, then climbed in, settling the seat belt across her, her face inexpressive.

But behind the blank expression she was fighting down emotion. Crushing down the memories that tried to come crowding into her head. Don’t think…don’t remember. It was all she could do, all she could tell herself. And don’t, above all, look at the man sitting beside you, his powerful frame so close you could almost brush your sleeve against his.

As Nikos gunned the engine she felt the G-force thrust her back in her seat. He drove as he had always driven, with ultra-masculine assurance, and the powerful car creamed down the driveway and out on to the public highway, revving strongly as he roared through the quiet countryside. To distract her flailing emotions she looked about her, at rolling fields and woodland, anywhere but at the man driving her. Where they were she still had no idea, and didn’t care anyway.

After about ten minutes he pulled off the main road and drew up in front of a prosperous-looking inn, with mullioned windows, overhanging eaves, and flower boxes along the sills. It looked pretty and old and immaculately kept. Judging by the kind of up-market cars parked, it was clearly the kind of place that attracted a well-heeled clientele.

They went inside, Nikos ducking his head as they stepped into the old-world interior. As always, as Sophie remembered, he received instant attention, and within a few minutes they were installed at a spacious table set inside a glassed-in extension to the rear of the building, overlooking a close-mown lawn that stretched down to a little river. Cool air wafted in from wide-open French windows.

Sophie sat, feeling mixed emotions trying to jostle their way past the glaze she had forcibly imposed on herself since the moment she had climbed into Nikos’s car. Why Nikos was doing this she had no idea. Her only priority was to get through this ordeal intact.

But it was going to be torture to endure his company, to have to go through the hideous mockery of dining with him as if they were actually a couple….

As once they had been….

No—stop that! Stop it now—right now. She said the words to herself fiercely, inside her head.

Just shake the napkin on to your lap, smile at the waiter, look through the menu, make a choice—any choice; it doesn’t matter—then put the menu aside, pick up your glass of water, look out of the window, look at the river, the lawn, the flowers, the countryside. Look at anything, anything at all, but don’t look at Nikos…don’t look at Nikos—

Her eyes went to him. Hopelessly, helplessly. How could she do anything else except look at him? Look at the perfect sculpture of his face; its every contour known to her, every glance, every expression, an image on her very heart—once, so long, long ago.

But no longer. And never again. That was what she had to remember. All she could permit herself to think.

With a silent intake of breath she shifted her eyes away as he studied the menu, reached instead, idly, for the little card that sat within the centrepiece of the table, flanked by pepper and salt and a tastefully arranged spray of flowers. She glanced at the card, with its printed sketch of the front of the inn and the address. They were somewhere in Hampshire, so it seemed, close to a village Sophie had never heard of. It didn’t seem particularly important to her where she was, so she replaced the card. Then, resolutely, she turned her head to look out over the view again.

‘Sophie?’

Her head snapped round. Nikos was looking at her, one eyebrow quirked questioningly. A waiter had materialised beside the table and was clearly ready to take their order. She swallowed, and murmured her requests, then Nikos gave his.

He was choosing lamb for his entrée, and memory stabbed at her. It had always been his favourite, and she could vividly remember him telling her about all the traditional Greek methods of cooking lamb, baking it so slowly that the meat fell from the bones because it was so tender.

‘You must come to Greece—then you will see,’ he had said. And she had felt her heart give a little lift, as though it were already on its way to heaven. Why would he take her to Greece except to meet his parents, introduce her as the girl he loved, wanted to marry? Oh, please, please let it be so! She had loved him so much, so much—