Greek Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress

That weekend Atreus returned to his London life early, and he did not visit the following week. Whenever he thought of his country home, he thought of Lindy, a fact which infuriated him since he had never considered himself to be remotely sensitive or even imaginative. Regardless, his memory threw up images of Chantry in which she always featured, and the merest hint of the scent of lavender made him grit his teeth.

He remembered the melting taste of her ginger fudge shortcake and wondered if he was entering his second childhood. He remembered how terrified she had been when he’d put her on a horse, although nothing would have made her admit the fact. He remembered that she never said a bad word about anyone, and that when he was late or curt she said nothing but simply looked disappointed in him, which somehow made him more punctual and more polite. He woke in the night, his body aching for her, and reached for her to find she wasn’t there.

He had never had a problem with anger. He had never regretted breaking up with a woman. After all there was always another dozen queuing to fill the space in his bed. Every woman was replaceable; this was a mantra he had believed in from an early age. But even though he plunged straight back into socialising, he discovered that his tastes had changed. He liked a woman to appreciate the value of a comfortable silence, one who ate without caring about calories, one who went out without fussing about her appearance, one who listened and responded with intelligence when he talked. And the less easy he found his search for a substitute the angrier and more frustrated he became.

The following Friday he was about to cancel his trip to Chantry again when it dawned on him that there was a solution to what ailed him.

He called his estate manager and freely admitted that he would like the tenant in The Lodge to relocate. He suggested that a substantial cash inducement be offered to bring about that desirable result. He travelled down to Chantry that afternoon.

He would not have looked in the direction of The Lodge at all, had he not noticed that Ben Halliwell’s BMW was parked there. He frowned, still galled by the idea that this agent provocateur had contrived to escape unscathed from the trouble he had caused. Atreus opened the door of Chantry with a glum expression to discover the Georgian house horrendously quiet. There were no dogs to greet him with lolling pink tongues, shrill barks and frantic wagging tails…. Setting his even white teeth together, and reminding himself that he had never liked animals indoors, Atreus sat down to dine on the very best his French chef could offer. But the selection didn’t include any ginger fudge shortcake.

That same afternoon, Lindy was grateful for the diversion of the evening wedding party she was to attend with Ben, although she was fairly sure that she wouldn’t be eating anything at the supper. The stomach upset she had first suffered a couple of weeks earlier had since come back to haunt her on several occasions. Evidently she had caught a virus, and her body was finding it hard to shake it off. As such illnesses always ran their course, she saw no point in consulting her doctor. She’d put fresh linen on her own bed for Ben, having decided that it would be cruel to put someone as tall as him on a sofa for the night. She had had her hair done and had bought a misty-blue dress for the occasion. Ben was good company and she would enjoy herself.

Lindy was determined to cast off the awful sense of abandonment she had suffered in recent weeks. It was as if she and Atreus had never been together at all. No man had ever been more easily got rid of; he had not even tried to change her mind, which suggested that she had never been the slightest bit important to him. In time she would stop missing him, thinking about him all the time, crying herself to sleep. Some day, she told herself fiercely, she would be capable of saying, Atreus…who? and meaning it.

Ben could not conceal his satisfaction at having been right about Atreus when Lindy told him that the affair was over. Assuring her that time healed everything, and that she was far better off without her Greek lover, Ben promptly forgot the matter again while he got on with the important matter of socialising with the well-connected guests present at the wedding supper. Lindy longed for the solace of her female friends, Elinor and Alissa, believing that only another woman would understand what she was going through. She planned to phone them and tell them what was happening very soon.

Resolute in his goal of getting through the weekend in much the same way as he had always done, Atreus went out riding the following morning. From a distance of a hundred yards as he rode back across the park he saw Ben Halliwell’s car, still parked in the exact same position as it had been the evening before. Halliwell had spent the night. With Lindy.