CHAPTER THREE
JILL was chatting quite happily when they re-entered the drawing room a little while later, and although Sophy was pleased to see her sister apparently relaxed and at her ease she felt a moment’s disquiet too. Jill had always been the one to take everyone at face value and blithely assume people were as nice and straightforward as they appeared to be, and Sophy had picked up the pieces of her sister’s trusting heart more than once when things had gone wrong when they were young girls. But this wasn’t a case of schoolfriends being two-faced or a boyfriend letting her sister down. This was the Karydis family—Jill’s in-laws and Michael’s grandparents—and that was something very different. And it could be very dangerous.
Michael ran to his mother immediately, full of the swimming pool and the cars, and as Sophy stood in the doorway for a moment Andreas turned and looked straight at her. His voice was low as he murmured, ‘Smile, Sophy. My parents will think you do not like them if you look at them like that, and that would never do,’ but in spite of the silky sarcasm coating the words the threat underlying them was very plain.
She started slightly before she could control the action and then responded immediately to the challenge, her eyes fiery and her gaze fearless as she said, ‘No one tells me what to do, Mr Karydis. Least of all you,’ her voice as quiet as his but with a quality that made his mouth tighten. ‘Remember that, will you?’
She had annoyed him. Good. Sophy brushed past him and walked across to the others, the satisfaction she felt at puncturing his massive male ego just the slightest putting a smile on her face as she said politely, ‘You have a beautiful home, and the grounds are quite magnificent,’ as she glanced at Dimitra and Evangelos.
‘Thank you, my dear.’ Dimitra smiled back at her. ‘And I understand you have been a tower of strength to Jill since—’ She faltered and then swallowed quickly, continuing almost immediately, ‘Since Theodore died.’
Sophy opened her mouth to make some polite social reply, but then as she looked into Theodore’s mother’s eyes she saw what Jill had seen. Pain, anguish, an almost tangible desperation that her son’s wife and sister-in-law would like her, and it swept away anything but the desire to comfort the grieving woman in front of her. She sat down and then leant towards Dimitra.
‘I’ve helped a little,’ Sophy said gently, ‘but I know how important it was to Jill to come here and meet you, and for Michael to get to know his grandparents.’
Dimitra’s gaze moved to Michael as she murmured, ‘So much lost time. So many wasted years and heartache.’
‘But now Jill and Michael are here and this is a new beginning,’ Andreas’s voice said just behind Sophy, the warmth of his breath touching the slender column of her neck and making her shiver inside. ‘Yes? And you will have many happy sunny days gossiping and putting the world to rights, no doubt.’
His voice had been tender, indulgent, and as different to the way he had spoken to her as it was possible to be, Sophy thought. But she didn’t understand any of this. According to Theodore, the break from his family had become set in concrete when he had married an English girl, and yet here was his family welcoming Jill with open arms. Something didn’t add up.
She continued to worry at the thought like a dog with a bone once the little maid, Ainka, had shown her to her truly sumptuous room next to Michael’s, Jill’s being on the other side of her son’s. It had been suggested the two women rested before they freshened up and changed for dinner at eight. Andreas had offered to take Michael to the pool for a swim—an invitation his nephew had accepted with alacrity—before the child had his own tea and was put to bed by his mother, and now the house was quite silent.
Sophy lay down on t
he massive double bed the room boasted but after five minutes or so gave up all thought of a nap, and walked across to the wide glass doors leading on to her balcony.
The luxurious bedroom and marbled en-suite were decorated in cool pinks and pastel blues and lilacs, reminiscent of a bunch of sweet-peas, and the efficient air conditioning had made the temperature comfortable, but as Sophy drew back the gossamer-thin voile curtains and opened the doors the heat struck with renewed force, reminding her she was in a foreign country.
The balcony was furnished with a small table and two chairs, and was a riot of colour with masses of white and purple hibiscus and bougainvillaea winding over the wrought iron, and tubs of scarlet geraniums set on the biscuit-coloured tiled floor. The scent was heady and the tiles were so hot they burnt her feet before she flopped down on to one of the chairs with a little sigh of pleasure. This was more like it!
She was wearing a thin, sleeveless summer dress which she now hoisted up to her thighs as she stretched her long legs out to the rays of the sun, letting her head relax back over the edge of the chair as she shut her eyes and let the warmth toast every bit of her. Gorgeous. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. It would do Jill the world of good to relax and soak up some sun for a couple of weeks, and it was clear Michael intended to make the most of his unexpected holiday. Perhaps things would work out?
And for herself? She continued to slump motionless in the chair as her thoughts moved on. She’d been in dire need of a break for months, if she was being honest. Although she and Matthew had decided a family wasn’t for them for years, and that they would both put all their energies into their careers and then each other—in that order—it had been different after he had died. She had driven herself at a frantic pace then, and it had somehow become a habit. The rewards had been great, of course, and her job was certainly one in a million and she counted herself incredibly fortunate to be in such a position, but…nevertheless she was worn out. Exhausted. She hadn’t realised just how much until this moment. She felt she could sleep for a week.
She must have fallen into a light doze because when she heard voices below the balcony it was as though she was emerging from thick layers of cotton wool. She opened her heavy lids slowly and moved just as cautiously as she silently straightened in the chair, wincing slightly as her neck muscles gave protest at the awkward position she’d adopted as she slept.
‘Can we come to the pool again tomorrow, Uncle Andreas? Please? Can we?’ Michael’s voice, high with excitement, caused Sophy to peer through the screen of green leaves and flowers which hid her from sight as effectively as a small wall.
Michael was below, his curls wet and dripping and his small body gleaming like a baby eel’s, but it wasn’t her nephew who caused Sophy to become transfixed as her heart almost stopped beating and then raced in a most peculiar way.
Andreas was walking at the side of his small charge and he had clearly been more than a watchful bystander, as his brief—very brief—black trunks and the towel slung casually over one broad male shoulder indicated. His thickly muscled torso was tanned, and the black hair on his chest glistened with droplets of moisture before narrowing to a thin line bisecting his flat belly as it disappeared into the swimming trunks.
There wasn’t a shred of fat anywhere on the hard, lean frame, nor on the powerful thighs or sinewy arms and legs. He was a magnificent male animal in the prime of life, and the easy way he was moving and the total lack of concern at the fact that he was as near naked as he could be showed how comfortable he was with his body.
Sophy was not comfortable. Anything but, in fact. She knew she was ogling him—there was really no other word for this shameful, clandestine spying—but once she had seen him she found she just couldn’t draw her eyes away.
Growing up in an all-female household had caused her to be a little shy with the male sex in her youth, and Matthew’s fair, almost hairless body had not prepared her for what she was seeing now. Nothing had prepared her for what she was seeing now! It was one thing to have the odd fantasy about idols of the silver screen, or indulge in a little imagining of how this icon or that would appear unclothed and in the flesh, but quite another to have that flesh—acres and acres of it, or so it seemed to her fevered gaze—hitting her between the eyes. Because that was what it felt like. And she couldn’t ignore it.
She had been holding her breath in stunned fascination and then, as Andreas and Michael walked past on the ground below and disappeared into the house, she let it out in a long, low whoosh and sank back in the chair again, her heart pounding.
She held her hands up to her cheeks and discovered they were burning, which was ridiculous—really ridiculous—she told herself irritably. She wasn’t some nervous little schoolgirl or a weak, trembling sort of female, for goodness’ sake.
Her career brought her into close contact with strong, determined and often ruthless individuals of both sexes, and she was used to dealing with any eventuality on a day to day basis. And she had been married; the male form held no mystery for her. At least she’d thought it didn’t.
She bit her lip as she gazed over the balcony into the blue sky above, the sun now pleasant rather than hot as evening began to temper its heat. She wasn’t going to think about this any more, she told herself firmly. She was going to go back into the bedroom and take a shower, and once she had washed her hair and sluiced away the strain of the journey—and Andreas Karydis—she would use lashings of the new, expensive body lotion she’d treated herself to just before leaving England.
She had well over an hour to pamper and titivate herself and she needed every minute because—and here her eyes became midnight blue—she intended to look like a million dollars tonight. She needed to show Theodore’s brother that she was a cool, composed and sophisticated woman of the world and that all his nasty taunts and obvious dislike of her didn’t mean a thing. She couldn’t care less, in fact. He could be a cardboard cutout for all the effect he had on her!