Deadly Rivals

‘She’s wonderful,’ Olivia said after the short tour of the vessel. ‘I envy you. I’ve only got a dinghy.’

‘Have you ever sailed around here?’

She shook her head.

‘Would you like to?’

Her golden eyes glowed eagerly. ‘I’d love to!’

He smiled at her, charm in the curl of his mouth. ‘OK, give me a chance to check my radio, then we’ll get under sail. There’s enough wind today. Why don’t you go and buy some food? Just bread, some cheese, a little salad— tomatoes and onions, a lettuce—and some fruit for a dessert. We’ll fish on our way, catch our lunch and cook it in the frying-pan. How does that sound?’

‘Blissful,’ she breathed, and his dark eyes glimmered.

‘I can see you and I have the same tastes. Do you know Paki? Why don’t we head that way? Have you been there?’

She turned her head out to sea, remembering the little islet which wasn’t far from the coast of Corfu. ‘Once, some years ago, by motorboat from the harbour here. I have a vague memory of a very green place, very peaceful.’

‘When I was a boy we spent our holidays on Corfu— we had relatives here—and we always sailed over to Paki, every time we came. There are underwater caves therefascinating places. If we have time I’ll show you. I stayed on Paki for weeks a few years back, did nothing but catch lobsters and fish for mullet and snapper all day. When I wasn’t fishing, I sunbathed and slept.’

‘It sounds wonderful.’ It sounded like the perfect holiday—she could imagine how it must have been. Paki was a tiny island covered in olive trees and vines and the maquis, that tangle of grass, herbs and spiky shrubs which in the sun gave out such an astounding scent, a scent which travelled for miles and met you long before you reached the island and which was the very essence of the Mediterranean coasts.

He watched her sensitive, revealing face intently, then said in a gentle voice, ‘Off you go and do the shopping— have you got any money on you?’

She shook her head anxiously.

He laughed and produced some notes from a pocket in the leather jacket. ‘This should be enough. Don’t go too far, and don’t be long. I won’t take more than ten minutes to check out my radio. Oh, yes…wait a second…’ He dived out of sight and came back a moment later with a red string bag. ‘Take this, you’ll need it.’

Olivia set off along the busy harbour, watching gulls chasing their shadows across the blue sky, fishermen mending nets or loading lobster-pots on to their boats, behind her the rattle of mast wires, the flap of the wind through sails, the slap of the water against the harbour walls. She felt almost light-headed with happiness and excitement. She couldn’t wait to set out for Paki.

She had been here on Corfu for ten days and nothing had happened until today—she had relaxed in the sun, swum, eaten delicious Greek food, read one of the paperbacks she had brought with her. She had barely spoken to her father, or he to her; there had not, this year, been any other visitors. Olivia had enjoyed herself, but it had not been an exciting experience, merely a peaceful one.

Since she met Max on the beach this morning everything had changed. She felt as if she had been asleep for years, and suddenly woken up. She felt so alive. She could almost feel the blood rushing round her body, the air pumping in and out of her lungs…

She had never felt like this before; she was scared of making too much of it. Max was probably only being pleasant to the daughter of a man he was doing business with; or maybe he was just bored and wanted someone to help him pass the time. It couldn’t mean more than that. Not with a man like Max Agathios. And a girl like her.

She made a rueful face. They were miles apart. Why try to deny it? He was a lot older, for one thing, and, for another…well, she wasn’t naïve; he was far too attractive not to have had a lot of other women, beautiful women, much more exciting women.

In fact, it was surprising he wasn’t married.

She stopped in her tracks, standing still in the middle of the bustling street. What made her think he wasn’t?

She hadn’t thought about it before, but, now that she did, of course it was possible—no, probable—that he was married, a man of his age.

‘Beautiful peaches,’ a voice murmured coaxingly in English at her elbow and she started, realising only then that she had stopped right outside a greengrocer’s shop.

She pulled a polite smile on to her face, answered in Greek, and saw the man’s lined face break into surprised smiles.

A few minutes later she walked back to the boat with her net bag full of food and saw Max waiting for her on deck, the sun glittering on his raven-black hair, striking blue lights out of the thick strands of it. He had taken off his leather jacket, and the wind blew his Tshirt up and showed the tanned, flat planes of his stomach. Olivia felt her own stomach cramp in overwhelming attraction and her legs begin to tremble oddly.

She had to stop this happening! She mustn’t lose her head over him. What did she know about him, after all?

He leaned on the polished wood rail and grinned down at her as she came aboard. ‘Did you get everything?’

She held out the string bag, and his change. ‘Yes. That was the first time I’ve ever shopped for food here—it was fun. I even managed to make myself understood in my pathetic Greek some of the time.’

He looked surprised. ‘You do speak some Greek, then?’

‘Anna teaches me while I’m here, and I have a tape I listen to every night while I’m here. Just tourist phrases—please, thank you, where is the bank? That sort of thing.’

‘Well, good for you—very few visitors bother to learn Greek, but it makes a big difference to us to have people trying to speak our language instead of expecting us to speak English.’ He smiled, handing back the string bag. ‘Will you put all this away in the galley and come back up to help me? We’ll leave at once. We can’t be away too long or your father might get worried.’

The galley was tiny and very compact—a place for everything and everything in its place—the fittings all in golden pine. Olivia put away the domed Greek bread, the salad and fruit and cheese, then hurried back up on deck to help Max set sail.

Minutes later they were moving out of the harbour with a stiffish breeze filling the sails, the water creaming past the sides of the boat. Max watched Olivia moving around, nodding approval of her deft handling of the ropes as they met the stronger waters of the sea outside the harbour.

They took a couple of hours to sail to Paki, and anchored off the coast just around eleven-thirty. Max fished over the side, rapidly catching a small squid, which he threw back, then some sardines, which he kept, and a couple of red mullet.

They filleted the mullet, left the sardines whole, unfilleted, then fried them all together, and served them with salad, which Olivia had tossed together while Max was fishing. She had squeezed a fresh lemon over the contents of the wooden salad bowl and sliced the crusty Greek bread, which smelt so good that her stomach clenched in sudden hunger at the scent of it.

They ate their lunch on deck, the boat riding underneath them. The fish was better than anything Olivia had ever eaten—she had never realised how good sardines could taste. There was almost nothing left for the screaming gulls which had gathered around at the smell of cooking fish.

After their white Greek cheese they turned their attention to the peaches Olivia had bought—big, yellow-fleshed, spurting with juice. Max made coffee in his battered old coffee-pot—not the usual Greek coffee, tiny cups of muddy black liquid syrup with sugar, but French coffee, served black, without sugar.

Olivia drank hers, then leaned back against the cushions propping her up and closed her eyes in the shadow of a canvas canopy Max had run out to give them some protection from the fierce afternoon sun.

‘You aren’t going to sleep, are you?’ Max murmured, and she smiled lazily.

‘Sounds wonderful to me.’

He laughed softly, his fingertip tracing the outline of her profile, his fleeting touch cool on her sun-flushed cheek.

‘We shall have to sail back in an hour or so, or we’ll find your father has raised an alarm for us. If you take a siesta, we won’t have time to land on Paki.’

She yawned, hardly able to take in what he was saying. ‘What?’

‘I suppose we can always come back tomorrow,’ he murmured. ‘We could make an earlier start, get here by ten, land and eat ashore at one of the tavernas on Paki.’

Her lashes gold against her cheeks, Olivia dreamily said, ‘That would be fun.’

She drifted off into blissful sleep and woke up with a start at the cry of a gull to find herself lying with her head on Max’s shoulder, his arm around her.

As she shifted he looked down at her, their eyes very close; she saw the dark glaze of his pupils, tiny, almost imperceptible flecks of gold around them.

‘Time to go back, I’m afraid,’ he said, and she couldn’t hold back a sigh of reluctance.

‘I suppose we have to…’

‘I don’t want this afternoon to end either,’ Max said softly and her heart turned over.