'Andrea mou...' He did not know if he said the words aloud or not. But they echoed in him all the same.
His eyes were heavy. At his side, in the cradle of his arms, he felt her body slacken imperceptibly, saw her face slide into repose, her breath shallowing into sleep. He felt its call, his eyelids too heavy to hold apart, and as his own breathing flowed his muscles relaxed, like hers, into the sweet embrace of sleep as well.
CHAPTER NINE
There was sunlight in the room, bright and pouring, flooding in from the wide-set windows. Andrea stirred, surfacing un willingly from sleep. There was some reason she didn't warn to wake up, but she didn't want to think about what that might be.
But wake she must. Someone was shaking her shoulder. No roughly, but insistently.
'Andrea, mou, we are wasting a glorious day! Come, breakfast awaits.'
Nikos's voice was a mix of chiding and encouraging, his tone deliberately light. It would be the best way to play it, he] knew. For the moment at least. She didn't want to move, didn't want to acknowledge his existence, but she must—this was not something she could run away from or deny any longer. He would not hurry her, he would be as gentle as she needed, but her denial must end. He desired her and she desired him—and the trifle of her scarred legs must not get in the way of her acceptance of that inalienable truth.
He dropped a kiss on her exposed cheek.
'What do you say in English? Lazybones?' He stood up. 'There is a pot of tea for you here to wake you up—the chef poured all his genius into making you the perfect English "cuppa"—you must not offend him by rejecting it! He will sulk for days and we shall starve! So, drink your tea like a good girl, and come and join me on deck in fifteen minutes.' He stooped briefly, to brush her cheek very softly with his fingers. 'It will be all right, Andrea—trust me.'
Then he was gone.
She needed every one of those fifteen minutes he had allowed her. As she showered and dressed a single thought drummed through her brain—Don't think about it! Just don't think about it!
But the moment she emerged onto the sunlit deck, where a breakfast table was set up, and laid eyes on Nikos sitting there it was all for nothing. Memory, in total, absolute detail, came flooding back to her.
He could see it in her face, her eyes, and acted immediately. He got up and came across to her swiftly, taking her hands.
'Come—breakfast,' he said. 'What would you like to have?' He swept an arm to indicate a sideboard groaning with enough food to feed an army, with everything on it from fresh fruit to devilled kidneys.
Grateful, as he had intended, for the banality of choosing something to eat, she let him help her to lightly scrambled eggs, toast, and a plate of highly scented freshly cut pineapple. She felt surprisingly hungry.
If I don't think about it, it never happened... she told herself, sitting herself down at the table.
There were no crew in sight, and she was grateful for that too. Whether it was Nikos being tactful she didn't know, but she simply couldn't have borne to have that mute chorus in attendance.
Instead, she looked about her. The deck they were seated on faced the stern, and all Andrea could see all around was a glorious expanse of sparkling blue water. The sight lifted her spirits of its own accord. A tiny breeze whisked around her cheeks, fanning the tendrils of her hair. It was a bright, fresh, brand-new day.
From nowhere, absolutely nowhere, a sense of wellbeing filled her. It was illogical, impossible, but it was there. She felt her spirits lighten. Who could be otherwise on a morning like this?
She set to, demolishing her breakfast swiftly. She'd only picked at her food over that excruciating dinner last night, and now she was making up for it. There was something so incredibly comforting about scrambled eggs on toast...
Nikos said nothing, just busied himself leafing through a newspaper as he worked steadily through a surprisingly hearty breakfast. As they ate, with him paying her no more attention than from time to time checking if she would like more tea, more toast, more butter, little by little she found herself capable of lifting her eyes from her food, and instead of sliding them immediately to the sparkling horizon let them pass, in focus, over the man sitting opposite her.
Don't think about it! she reminded herself, and to her surprise the technique seemed to work.
Maybe it was because Nikos seemed so totally relaxed. He sat there, a man at peace with the world, eating his breakfast beneath an Aegean sky. Maybe too, Andrea realised, it was because for the first time she was seeing him in informal clothes. Instead of the habitual business suit or evening dress this morning he was wearing a beautifully cut but informally tailored short-sleeved, open-necked fawn-coloured shirt and tan-coloured chinos.
He still looked devastating, of course, but the air of command was absent—or, if not absent, definitely off-duty.
As he swallowed the last of his coffee, folded up his newspaper and glanced towards her some twenty minutes later she realised she was just sitting there, her own breakfast finished, content to feel the warm sun on her face, the air ruffling her hair occasionally, and watch the stem flag flap in the breeze.
It dawned on her that they were not moving.
'Where are we?' she asked, puzzled. 'Why have we stopped?'
'We are on the approach to Heraklion. If you wish, we can make landfall.'
'Heraklion?' queried Andrea. 'Isn't that on Crete?'
'Yes. The island is visible from the aft. Shall we go and look?'