Moon Of Aphrodite

At last she stole a glance at him under her lashes, and was disconcerted to see that he was leaning back in his chair, watching her, very much at his ease.

‘Relax, Miss Brandon,’ he said drily. ‘You look as if you would splinter into a thousand pieces at the slightest touch.’ He saw her swallow and smiled rather grimly. ‘Don’t be alarmed, I do not propose to test the truth of my observations.’

‘I should hope not.’ Helen found her voice. ‘I wouldn’t think Mr Korialis would be too pleased to know that one of his henchmen had been—mauling a member of his family.’

His face was sardonic. ‘But as you do not propose to accompany me to Greece, there would be little chance of your grandfather ever finding out. Perhaps I should make love to you, if it means you will contact him, even if it is only to protest at my behaviour.’

He got up from the chesterfield and walked towards her. Helen felt herself shrinking back against the cushions.

She said huskily, ‘Don’t you dare to touch me. Don’t you come near me!’

He halted about a foot from her chair. Staring up at him dazedly, she thought that he seemed to tower over her.

He said softly, ‘You’re a stubborn little fool, Eleni. What am I asking for, after all? A few weeks of your life, no more. A few weeks to give some happiness to a sick old man, holding on to his life in the hope of seeing you.’

‘A sick autocrat,’ she said bitterly, ‘who has never had his slightest wish disregarded before. That was clear from the tone of his letter.’

‘If it were so,’ he said, ‘then you would never have been born. As for the letter, it is true that Michaelis finds it difficult to ask. Is there no pity for him—no warmth under that English ice?’

‘You have absolutely no right to talk to me like that.’ She wished desperately that he would move away. ‘And my name is Helen, not Eleni.’

‘To your grandfather, you have always been Eleni,’ he said quite gently, and to her horror she felt sudden tears pricking at the back of her eyelids.

‘Damn you!’ she whispered, then his dark face blurred, and she buried her face in her hands. When she had regained sufficient control over herself to become aware of her surroundings again, she found that he had moved away to the fireplace and was standing with one arm resting on the mantelshelf, staring down at the floor. An immaculate linen handkerchief was lying on the arm of her chair, and after a brief hesitation she used it with a muffled word of thanks.

He said, ‘I won’t wait for your father’s return.’ He reached into an inside pocket and produced a small leather-covered notebook and a gold pencil and wrote something, before tearing off the page and putting it on the mantelpiece. ‘My hotel and room number, Eleni,’ he said. ‘I shall be returning to Greece at the end of the week. If you wish to come with me, you have only to contact me.’ He paused. ‘Or leave a message, if you would prefer.’

‘I would prefer,’ she said tightly. ‘Very much I’d prefer it.’

He gave her an unsmiling look. ‘I’m sorry we had to meet under these circumstances.’

‘I’m sorry we had to meet at all,’ she said wearily. ‘But I suppose my grandfather will be grateful to you. How will you describe your victory to him, I wonder? As a knock-out in the first round? Perhaps he’ll give you a bonus.’

He looked faintly amused. ‘I would hardly describe this as a victory, more in the nature of a preliminary skirmish,’ he said coolly. ‘As for my bonus—–’ he smiled—‘I think I’ll collect that now.’

Two long strides brought him back to her, his hand reaching down to close like a vice on her wrist, jerking her upwards. Taken off her guard, she found herself on her feet somehow, overbalancing against him, and for the second time she experienced the strength of his arms as they held her, drawing her closer still.

She protested on a little gasp, ‘No!’ and then his mouth closed on hers with merciless thoroughness.

When it was over, she stood staring at him, her eyes enormous in her tear-stained face, one hand pressed convulsively against the bruised softness of her lips, too shocked to utter a word of protest.

Damon Leandros gave her a last cool look and turned to go, and as he reached the door, Helen found her voice at last.

‘You swine!’ She was trembling violently. ‘I’ll make you sorry you did that!’

He turned and looked back at her. ‘You are too late, Eleni. I am already sorry,’ he said, and went out.

CHAPTER TWO (#ua706dab5-b335-597c-9c13-a6c27867eb6b)

HELEN unfastened the shutters of her hotel room and stepped out on to the balcony, in the full force of the Athenian sun. The muted roar of the city came up from the square below as she stared around her in fascination. She had been told to rest for a few hours to prepare for the continuation of the journey to Phoros, but she could not simply lie down on her bed and forget that all Athens was spread out at her feet.

Besides, she wasn’t in the least tired. It had probably been the least troublesome journey she had ever undertaken, she thought. She had expected to travel on the normal scheduled flight, so the private jet had been a shock, but a pleasant one.

‘This surely doesn’t belong to my grandfather?’ she had asked Damon Leandros, having to forgo her fierce private intention to speak only when spoken to by him, and then only in monosyllables.

‘No. It belongs to a friend of his,’ he said laconically, but he didn’t volunteer any further information on the subject, and she was determined not to ask.

The formalities at the airport were soon concluded, and a chauffeur-driven car was waiting to take them into the city. Helen had assumed she would be staying at her grandfather’s villa, the one her mother had described, and she was a little surprised to be taken straight to a hotel instead, albeit a luxury one. But it soon became clear that this was one of the hotels owned by her grandfather, a fact emphasised by the flattering welcome afforded her by the smiling manager, and the flowers and fruit which awaited her in her suite. A discreet fuss was being made, and Helen would not have been human if she had not enjoyed it.

It made up, she told herself, for having to spend the journey in Damon Leandros’ company. She had not seen him from the evening he had dined at the flat until the time the car had come to collect her to take her to the airport.

Even when she had finally nerved herself to phone his hotel and announce that she was prepared to return to Greece with him after all, he had not been there, and she had had to leave a message with some unknown female with a husky seductive voice. Typical, Helen had thought scornfully, as she replaced her receiver. The degrading way in which he had treated her had shown that Damon Leandros was the sort of man who would constantly need to be proving his virility by having some unfortunate woman in tow. She had nothing but contempt for him. It had annoyed her too to see the amount of deference with which he had been treated at the airport in Athens and back in England, while the hotel manager’s greeting when they arrived had been almost servile. He was not just an ordinary employee, she decided, he must be quite big in her grandfather’s organisation. Well, the bigger they were, the harder they fell, she thought with satisfaction, and she could not believe that Michael Korialis would be too pleased to learn that even a trusted employee had been pawing his granddaughter.

Even though the last thing she wanted to do was spend any more time with him, nevertheless it had annoyed her when he had casually remarked that she would need a rest before the resumption of their journey, and that her lunch would be brought up to her suite.

On their way to the lifts, she had passed the open doors of the dining room where a mouthwatering cold buffet was being set out, and she would have much preferred to have come down to the dining room and chosen a meal for herself with the rest of the guests.

Not that anyone could have complained about the selection which had been brought to her, she admitted. There had been a variety of delicious salads, cold meats, stuffed tomatoes and peppers, and a half bottle of white wine, just dry enough to suit her palate.

She had sampled everything eagerly, but if she was honest, she was too excited and too nervous to eat, and sitting on her own in a hotel room, however luxurious, was not improving the condition. She needed something to take her mind off the journey ahead of her, and the stern old man waiting for her at the end of it.

She still did not really understand why she was here. She hadn’t wanted to come, and now she was here she was beginning to realise just how alien her new environment was. People said that these days foreign capitals were growing so much alike that anyone dropped into one blindfold would be hard put to it to decide where he was. They would never be able to say that with Athens, she thought. Even on the journey in from the airport, she had realised it had an atmosphere all of its own, and the glimpse she had caught of the mighty Acropolis had been breathtaking.

She glanced at her watch, which she had remembered to alter to local time. She had several hours to kick her heels in before they set off again. Surely she had time to do a little sightseeing.

She slipped on a pair of low-heeled sandals and reached for her bag. She had brought some travellers’ cheques in London and changed a few pounds into drachmas. It wasn’t a great deal, but it would be enough to pay her bus fare up to the Acropolis, and maybe buy her a coffee and a pastry at one of the pavement cafes she had noticed on her way to the hotel.

She slipped on a pair of sunglasses as she went down in the lift. Not that she really believed that anyone would try to stop her if they saw her leaving, she told herself, but Damon Leandros had been very positive about her resting in the heat of the day, and perhaps the hotel staff might feel that his orders should be reinforced.

The foyer was full of people as she stepped out of the lift and she walked past the reception area without being observed by anyone, and through the enormous swing doors into the sunlight.

After the air-conditioning of the hotel, the heat outside struck her like a blow. She stopped at one of the news-stands and bought a guide book in English, and walked along slowly reading it. She didn’t feel conspicuous in the slightest. Every second person she saw seemed to be a tourist, and no one seemed to be in a hurry. Using the map in her book, she managed to find her way to Omonia Square, and there she hesitated, finally plucking up courage to ask a passer-by where she could catch a bus for the Acropolis. He gave her a wide smile, then launched into a flood of Greek, interspersed with a few words of very broken English, before seizing her guide book from her hand and writing down the numbers of several buses across the top of the page. She was about to thank him and turn away when another man standing nearby decided to take a hand. Waving a peremptory finger, he seized the stub of pencil the other had been using and began to write a list of alternative numbers, beaming at Helen occasionally while his conversation with the first man became more and more heated.

Helen, aware of the curious glances of some of the passers-by, was becoming embarrassed by the raised voices and violent gestures. She tried to interrupt, but the two Greeks were by now far more interested in their argument than anything else, and after standing there rather helplessly for a moment, she decided to try and find the way to the nearest bus stand by herself.

Next time she wanted to know anything, she vowed silently, she would ask a policeman!

The heat was becoming oppressive now, and she was beginning to wish she had taken Damon Leandros’ advice and stayed in her suite with the shutters closed. Perhaps if it had been offered as advice, and less as an order, she might have felt more inclined to accept it, she told herself in self-justification. It was galling to be issued with instructions as if she was a child who could not be trusted to think for herself.

There seemed to be a great many buses about, but none of them seemed to bear any of the numbers she had been given, she realised ruefully as she stared around her. Nor were there any policemen in the vicinity.

At last, in desperation, she entered the nearest shop, a chemist’s, and this time she was luckier. The chemist, a dark young man with a beard, spoke almost perfect English, but he looked at her dubiously when she explained where she wished to go.

‘In the heat of the day, thespinis? Is it wise?’

‘I only have a few hours in Athens,’ she explained.

He shrugged, looking at her slender arms revealed by the sleeveless navy dress she was wearing. ‘You have a very fair skin. It needs protection in our sun.’ He reached to one of the shelves behind him and produced a tube of sun cream. ‘This will help a little, but you must take care or you will burn, and that is not pleasant.’