From Dirt to Diamonds

‘Apfelsaft,’ Angelos enlightened. ‘Sussmost, as the Swiss call it. It’s non-alcoholic.’

She sipped it cautiously and found it very refreshing.

‘How are your feet?’

‘OK,’ she said cautiously.

He nodded. ‘Tomorrow we’ll rest. You don’t want to overdo it when you’re inexperienced at mountain walking.’

She said nothing. What should she say? That she didn’t want to be here in the first place? That she wanted to go home, to try and pick up what was left of her life now? Instead, she just followed Angelos through into the dining room—another comfortable room, with a large pine table, another open fire, and heavy dark green curtains on metal rings. There were thick candles on the table, already lit, although wall lamps gave the room light as well. She took the chair Franz held for her at the foot of the table, sitting down in the wide-based armed chair, padded with cushions. The whole effect was, she thought as she looked around, like a luxurious Alpine farmhouse. But it was warm and welcoming and homely. It was an odd description for a place owned by a man like Angelos Petrakos.

As Franz and the younger manservant, Johann, started to serve dinner, Thea realised, as she had at lunch, that she was hungry. The food was hearty and delicious. A rough pâté, followed by breaded escalopes with fried potatoes and a root salad. It was probably about a million calories, but right now she didn’t care. She tucked in.

Angelos watched her. ‘It’s the mountain air,’ he observed. ‘It gives an appetite. And the exercise, of course.’

She looked up.

‘You’re eating properly.’ He explained his comment. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you could.’

‘You get used to chronic malnutrition as a model,’ she responded dryly.

‘You really don’t like the profession, do you?’ he returned, his voice even drier. Then his tone changed. ‘Was that one of Giles Brooke’s attractions—he’d be taking you away from modelling? Apart, of course, from his title and his money,’ he finished jibingly.

She was very still for a moment. Then she spoke. ‘No.’

‘Do you claim you were “in love” with him?’ The jibe was still there.

‘No. But I cared for him, and I would have made him the best wife I could.’

‘Even though your marriage would have been based on a lie?’

She swallowed, looking away. She would not seek to placate him by saying she had accepted she had been wrong to deceive Giles. Why should she care what Angelos Petrakos thought of her? He was nothing to her—nothing! Except the man she hated …

From across the table Angelos’s gaze rested on her. This evening she had made no effort to dress as she had in London and Geneva. Yet the casual attire did nothing to play down her beauty. The leggings highlighted the length of her legs, the long soft top skimmed her breasts and slender hips, the undressed hair, cinched at her nape, flowed down her back like a pale waterfall. Her face needed no make-up, no deepening of the eyes or reddening of the mouth. Her beauty was her own, whatever name she gave herself. Once again he felt the emotion he would not name flow through him.

She was so still … unmoving. She sat there making no reply, as if he had not spoken. Another emotion pricked within him—a familiar one. She was closing him out as if he had no effect on her. It angered him, as it had before. His fingers tightened on his knife and fork as he cut into his meat. He did not want her closing him out. He did not want her sitting there so still, as if he had no effect on her.

He knew better. She had stood there, motionless, while he had touched her, caressed her—kissed her. And he had known with every instinct, every certainty, that though she had come to him with nothing more than a venal motive she had, for all that, dissolved at his touch …

For a timeless moment it was vivid in his mind, that indelible memory. She had stood in front of him and he had explored the fineness of her skin, the contours of her face, tasted the softness of her mouth, silenced from its provocative insolence at last.

Memory—vivid, real—fused over his vision as his eyes rested on her now. He felt that unnamed emotion flow within him again. Compelling, ineluctable.

He picked up his glass, breaking the flow of that unnamed emotion. As he drank, he saw her start to eat again.

‘So,’ he began, setting down his glass, deliberately putting aside the thoughts that swirled inside his head, ‘did you enjoy the walk this afternoon?’

Thea took a forkful of food. ‘Yes.’ She would be honest—why shouldn’t she be if he wanted, for whatever inexplicable reason, to make polite conversation with her? But why he was doing so, why she was here at all, was beyond her comprehension. And certainly beyond her caring. She had no choice but to be here.

‘You looked as though you did,’ he said slowly. In his mind’s eye he saw her again, sitting in the shelter of the rocks, gazing out over the vista, watching the eagles soaring. Quiet. Contemplative. Still.

As if she were at home there.

He put the thought aside, moved on from it.

‘Next time we’ll try a longer walk. But tomorrow you’d better take it easy. We’ll drive down to the village and take the cable car up to the restaurant at the top of the ski slopes. It stays open for the summer season. There’s a glacier nearby that makes summer skiing possible.

She looked up. ‘I’ve never seen a glacier.’