What on earth was she thinking? Agitatedly Saskia wriggled in her seat, snatching her hands from beneath Andreas’s.
‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ she asked him slightly breathlessly as she tried to concentrate on the reality of why she was sitting here next to him. ‘I mean, if your grandfather already doesn’t approve of our engagement...’
It was so long before he replied that Saskia began to think that her question had annoyed him but when he did answer her she recognised that the anger she could see darkening his eyes wasn’t directed at her but at Athena.
‘Unfortunately Athena claims a blood closeness to my grandfather which he finds flattering. His elder brother, Athena’s grandfather, died some years ago and whilst there is no way at all that Athena would allow anyone, least of all my grandfather, to interfere in the way she runs her own financial empire, she flatters and encourages him to the point where his judgement is sometimes not all that it should be. My mother claims that the truth will out, so to speak, and that ultimately my grandfather will see through Athena’s machinations.’
‘But surely she must realise that you don’t want to marry her,’ Saskia suggested a little bit uncomfortably. It was so foreign to her own way of behaving to even consider trying to force anyone into a relationship with her that it was hard for her to understand why Athena should be driven to do so.
‘Oh, she realises it all right,’ Andreas agreed grimly. ‘But Athena has never been denied anything she wants, and right now...’
‘She wants you,’ Saskia concluded for him.
‘Yes,’ Andreas agreed heavily. ‘And, much as I would like to tell her that her desires are not reciprocated, I have to think of my grandfather.’
He stopped speaking as their plane started to lose height, a small smile curling his mouth as he saw Saskia’s expression when she looked out of the window down at their destination.
‘He can’t possibly be intending to put this plane down on that tiny piece of land,’ she gasped in disbelief.
‘Oh, yes, he can, It’s much safer than it looks,’ Andreas said reassuringly. ‘Look,’ he added, directing her attention away from the landing strip and to the breathtaking sprawl of his family villa and the grounds enclosing it.
‘Everything is so green,’ Saskia told him in bemusement, her eyes widening over the almost perfect oval shape of the small island, the rich green of its gardens and foliage perfectly shown off by the whiteness of its sandy beaches and the wonderful turquoise of the Aegean Sea that lapped them.
‘That’s because the island has its own plentiful supply of water,’ Andreas told her. ‘It’s far too small to be able to sustain either crops or livestock, which is why it was uninhabited—as you can see it is quite some distance from any of the other islands, the furthest out into the Aegean.’
‘It looks perfect,’ Saskia breathed. ‘Like a pearl drop.’
Andreas laughed, but there was an emotion in his eyes that made Saskia’s cheeks flush a little as he told her quietly, ‘That was how my grandmother used to describe it.’
Saskia gave a small gasp as the plane suddenly bumped down onto the runway, belatedly realising that Andreas had deliberately distracted her attention away from their imminent landing. He could be so entertaining when he wanted to be, so charming and so easy to be with. A little wistfully she wondered how much difference it would have made to his opinion of her had they met under different circumstances. Then she very firmly pulled her thoughts into order, warning herself that her situation was untenable enough already without making it worse by indulging in ridiculous fantasies and daydreams.
There was a bleak look in Andreas’s eyes as he guided Saskia towards the aircraft’s exit. There was such a vast contradiction in the way he was perceiving Saskia now and the way he had perceived her the first time he had seen her. For his own emotional peace of mind and security he found himself wishing that she had remained true to his first impression of her. That vulnerability she fought so determinedly and with such pride to conceal touched him in all the ways that a woman of Athena’s coldness could never possibly do. Saskia possessed a warmth, a humanity, a womanliness, that his maleness reacted and responded to in the most potentially dangerous way.