'What's that?' she asked, puzzled.
'You would call them by their Spanish name, I think—cicadas,' said Nikos behind her. He had come up to her and was, she realised, standing very close to her. It made her feel wary,. and something more, too, that made her heart beat faster. 'They are like grasshoppers, and live in bushes—they are the most characteristic sound of the Mediterranean at night.' He gave a frown. 'Surely you have heard them before?' he asked.
Whether or not she had been brought up in England, it was impossible to imagine that a girl from a background as wealthy as hers would not be well-travelled, especially in fashionable parts of the Mediterranean.
She shook her head, not really paying him much attention. Cicadas—so that was what they sounded like. She remembered how her mother, when Andrea was just a little girl, asking after the father she had never known, had sat on her bed and told her, her soft voice sad and happy at the same time, how she had walked along the sea's edge, so many years ago, hand in hand with the man she loved, heard the soft lapping of the Aegean, the murmurous sound of cicadas in the vegetation. Her heart squeezed—Oh Mum, why did he have to die like that?
'What are you thinking of?' Nikos asked in a low voice as his fingers drifted along the bare cusp of her shoulder.
That the touch of your fingers is like velvet electricity...
'Just someone I think about a lot,' she answered, trying to make her voice sound normal when every nerve in her body was focussed on the sensations of his skin touching hers.
Why is he touching me? He shouldn't! He's only just met me!
She wanted to move away, but she couldn't.
'A man?' There was the slightest edge in his voice, but she didn't hear it. She was only aware of the drift of his fingers on her bare shoulder.
'Yes,' she said dreamily.
His hand fell away.
'What is his name?' The question was a harsh demand. She turned, confused. Why was he angry? What on earth made him think he had any business being angry? Was it just because an unmarried Greek girl shouldn't think of men?
'Andreas,' she answered tightly. As she spoke she found herself noticing that anger, though it shouldn't, seemed to have sharpened his features into bold relief. He looked, though she shouldn't think it, even more gorgeous.
'Andreas? Andreas who?'
She lifted her chin. Whatever right this complete stranger seemed to think he had subjecting her to an inquisition, she answered him straight.
'Andreas Coustakis,' she bit out. 'My father.'
He was taken aback, she could see.
'Your father?' His voiced echoed hollowly. He nodded his head stiffly. 'My apologies.’ He paused. 'You knew him?'
She shook her head. Her throat felt tight. He must have walked on this very terrace, she suddenly thought. Known this house. Stormed from it the night he was killed...
'No. But my mother...tells me of him...'
Nikos heard the betraying husk in her voice. It struck a chord in him deeper than he had thought possible. He, too, had never known his father. Never even known who he was...
And his mother had never talked of him, except to say that he had been a sailor on shore leave. From a northern clime. Given his son's height, a Scandinavian, perhaps? She hadn't known. Hadn't cared.
Andrea's mother had cared. Cared enough to tell her daughter about the father she had never known.
A shaft of envy went through him.
'What does she tell you?' he heard himself asking.
Was it the soft Aegean night? Andrea wondered. The kind, concealing blanket of the dark that made her feel, suddenly, that she could tell this man anything—that he would understand?
'She tells me how much she loved him,' she answered, her eyes skimming out into the darkness of the gardens below, lit by the stars above. 'How he loved her, so dearly. How he called her his sweet dove—how he would lay the world at her feet...'
Her voice broke.
'And then he died.' The sob sounded deep in her throat. 'And the dream ended.'