The Passionate Greek (8 page)

As she drew close she saw the passenger
being helped ashore from the launch was female, young, blonde and
undeniably glamorous. Melanie felt an unwarranted surge of
jealousy. The newcomer did not look to be in a very good mood. She
stood shaking out the skirt of her white dress and rubbing at a
mark where she had brushed against a damp mooring rope.

‘Nicos, I am wet,’ she complained.

Nicos, intent on Electra, said shortly,
‘Well, it
is
the sea.’ Melanie hid a smile. Nicos hated what
he called “Princess Precious” behavior But, as if regretting his
rudeness, his arms full of his daughter, he inclined his head
towards Melanie and said, ‘Katerina, this is …’ The girl cut him
off. ‘The nanny,’ she said dismissively.

Melanie seethed silently and resolved to
keep Electra as far away from this woman as possible.

The party set off up the path to the villa,
Nicos still carrying Electra, while Katerina clamped herself firmly
to his side. Melanie, left to push the empty buggy, took her anger
out on the wheels crashing them savagely over the rocks. Apart from
his brief introduction to Katerina Nicos had barely acknowledged
her.

‘Well, if he doesn’t want me here I don’t
want him here, either, especially with his lady friend in tow,’ she
muttered to herself, wishing fervently that she and Electra still
had the island to themselves.

At the villa Nicos, still with his daughter
in his arms, went straight to the terrace at the front of the house
where, anticipating their arrival, cooling drinks had been set out
on a low table. Nicos placed Electra carefully on a swing seat and
pushed her gently to and fro. Melanie, left at the bottom of the
villa steps, folded the buggy and wondered just what she was
supposed to do now. The sound of Katerina’s tinkling laugh
stiffened her resolve. She was not going to leave her daughter
anywhere near that woman a second longer than she had to.

Marching up the steps and along the terrace
she scooped Electra off the swing seat and up into her arms,
announcing firmly, ‘It’s time for her lunch.’

‘No kiss for Daddy, then,’ said Nicos,
meeting her eyes with grim amusement. The inference infuriated
Melanie. She wanted to lash out at him. Before she could think of a
suitable stinging reply, Katerina butted in. ‘Yes, take her away.
Don’t babies have to sleep in the afternoon?’ She was rewarded with
a daggered look from Nicos, but examining her nails, she seemed not
to notice.

Melanie hurried from the terrace up to the
sanctuary of the nursery. Once there, busying herself with her
daughter’s needs and chatting to Maria, she began to calm down.
‘I’ll just go on doing what I’ve been doing since he went away,’
she told herself. ‘I’ll just pretend he’s not here.’ She gave
Electra her lunch and Leaving Maria singing the baby to sleep she
grabbed a towel and slipping a sarong over her bikini headed for
her favorite beach. Cutting through the cool, clear waters
invigorated her. Some way out Nicos had erected a bathing platform.
She headed for it, slicing easily through the waves and climbing
the ladder threw herself on to its comfortably padded surface.

She was drifting off to sleep when she felt
drops of water splashing on her prone body. She gasped and opened
startled eyes. Nicos, hanging with one hand on to the edge of the
bathing platform was flicking seawater at her with his other
hand.

Ignoring the ladder and hauling himself
aboard he threw himself down next to her and closed his eyes.
Melanie was acutely conscious of his nearness, the golden glisten
of his wet skin and the sheer animal aroma of him. Her dismayed
realisation of the affect he was having on her made her snap, ‘I
came out here for some peace and quiet.’

‘Mmm, me, too,’ was all he said,
contentedly.

Melanie sat up and looked at him. His eyes
remained closed and a small smile played across his features. ‘What
were you doing following me out here,’ she demanded. His response
was a lazy, ‘Didn’t. Didn’t know you were out here.’

‘Well, sorry to disturb
your
peace
and quiet. In that case I’ll leave.’ She scrambled to her feet and
was about to dive into the sea when his hand shot out and grabbed
her ankle.

‘No, you don’t. You’re not going
anywhere.’

She tried to twist out of his grasp but he
held her firmly. ‘Let me go,’ she protested.

‘I will if you sit down and behave.’

‘Behave?’ she gasped. ‘You’re’ the one
misbehaving.’

‘Sit down,’ he ordered her. ‘Now we’re both
out here we might as well talk.’

‘What about?’ she asked suspiciously,

‘Let me see,’ he said reflectively. ‘You
could start by explaining how you managed to bamboozle the staff at
my London office, not once but twice.’

‘I thought you weren’t interested in my
version of events. You certainly weren’t last time we met.’ The
minute the words were out Melanie regretted them. Whatever
possessed her to remind him of their last meeting? Shame shot
through her as she remembered the way she had lain beneath him on
the beach, urging him on, bringing him deeper and deeper into
herself unto they had exploded together into ecstasy. She didn’t
want to direct Nicos's thoughts in that direction. She hurried on,
tripping over her words.

‘Your staff are not to blame. And nor is
Gabby,’ she added quickly.

Gabby? You know Gabby.’ He sounded
surprised.

Melanie sighed. ‘I suppose I’d better tell
you the whole story.’

She launched into an account of how she had
assumed Stephanie’s identity, at first to gain an interview with
Nicos and then to pass herself off as the replacement nanny. He sat
up as she was speaking, alert now and listening intently. ‘Weren’t
you afraid that the real Stephanie would get in touch with the
agency and blow your cover?’

‘I did have a couple of bad moments,’ she
admitted. ‘Stephanie telephoned the agency from the States asking
about a tax form. Luckily it was me that answered the
telephone.’

‘And the second bad moment?’ he asked.

‘Your office in London,’ she said. ‘They
sent an airline ticket to Athens by courier to the agency in
Stephanie’s name. ‘Which of course you couldn’t use,’ he commented.
‘What did you think was going to happen when you arrived here? You
could hardly pass yourself off as Stephanie. The islanders know
you.’

‘I figured that once I was here at least I
would have some time with Electra. Anna might have sent me packing
but I just hoped she wouldn’t.’

A thoughtful look crossed his face. ‘Ah,
Anna,’ was all he said. ‘A law unto herself. And how does Gabby fit
into this scenario?

Melanie looked uncomfortable. ‘She thinks
I’m Stephanie. We kept in touch after we met at the interviews.
None of this is her fault.

‘Don’t worry. I didn’t think you were in it
together. I had my own doctor treat her broken arm. I have only had
good reports of her and as soon as she is fit again she will be
looking after Electra.’ Melanie’s face fell at the reminder that
the care of her daughter was temporary.

‘You will have no job to go back to,’ Nicos
was saying thoughtfully. ‘Did you consider that?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she replied, but she
hadn’t. It was as if her mind refused to function beyond her desire
to be with her daughter.

‘You could start up a catering company
again,’ he suggested and Melanie was reminded how interested he had
always been in her work.

Her thoughts went cart wheeling back to the
early heady days of their romance and that first evening when he
had come to her flat and told her he was going to become a regular
visitor.

He would park his sleek sports car outside
her flat, bound up the stairs and enfold her in his arms. Often he
gave no warning he was on his way other than a brief text. She
might be curled up on the sofa tired out after a frantically busy
day but Nicos only had to call and all traces of tiredness
vanished. He loved taking her to dinner in the latest must- be
–seen-in restaurants where the celebrity chef inevitably came over
to say hello.

To her embarrassment Nicos would proudly
introduce her as a fellow chef.

Nicos,’ she would protest laughingly. ‘I’m
not in their league’

On some evenings the familiar sports car
would be missing from the street outside her flat and Nicos’s
chauffeur driven Bentley would be there to take them out to
riverside country restaurants where they would dine in quiet oak
lined rooms. Talk between them flowed easily while underneath every
conversation a current of deep sexual attraction permeated their
words.

On one such evening he had leaned across the
table and taken her hand. ‘I want you to have my baby,’ he had
said, looking searchingly into her eyes. ‘We are destined to be
together. Tomorrow we will visit the house I have bought for us.
You will like it.’

Melanie shook her head ruefully at the
memories. So typical of Nicos to have gone out and bought the house
in the anticipation that she would both have his baby and would
also love the house in the English countryside that he had chosen
for them.

But she had done both things. She loved the
old Cotswold stone house from the moment she saw it, the many happy
hours they had spent haunting antique auction rooms and country
house sales furnishing it just as they wanted it.

Nicos was ecstatic when she became pregnant.
‘We will have the family I have always wanted,’ he told her
happily. Nicos never talked about his own family. When she had
casually asked he had fended her off, quickly turning the subject.
One day he will tell me, she thought. It’s not important. What
matters is now.

He wanted her to give up her catering
business and she did so readily. . Her ambition, once so important
to her, melted away with each pregnant month that passed

Nicos’s business interests took him away
often but wherever he was in the world he telephoned her without
fail every day. His sweet concern for her and their baby filled her
with happiness... As the months of her pregnancy went by, cocooned
in the comfort of his love for her, Melanie nurtured the growing
life within her and was blissfully content.

She came to recognise that what she had at
first seen as arrogance in Nicos often only hid surety of purpose.
She learned to trust his judgement. He was right about so many
things. But she couldn’t keep the dark thought from her mind. Yes,
he was right about most things, except for the one thing that
really mattered and in that he was so dreadfully and
catastrophically wrong.

His voice broke into her thoughts and she
started guiltily as if he could read her mind. ‘If you’re worried
about capital to start up your business again I could always help,’
he was saying. ‘After all, it was me who wanted you to give up the
company,’ he conceded. ‘I could never allow you to do that,’ she
said. ‘Anyway, there is no chance I could start up again. You
forget my business was based in the City of London. That’s a very
small square mile. Everyone knew what happened even if they didn’t
know the details.

‘Rumours spread and not always accurately.
They wouldn’t want someone like me at their private lunches,
listening in to their confidential conversations.’ She couldn’t
help a note of bitterness creeping into her voice.

‘And now you have added forgery to your
sins.’ But there was a smile in his voice.

He surprised Melanie with his mellow mood.
Would now be the time to talk to him? Would he at last be prepared
to listen to her? Could she make him understand? But he continued
with his train of thought. ‘You could have faced charges signing
Stephanie’s name on that contract,’ he mused. ‘But you did it
anyway.’

‘I would have done anything,’ she said
simply.

He looked closely at her and in the depths
of his dark eyes she could have sworn she saw admiration. ‘You were
very…’ he hesitated for a long moment, ‘resourceful,’ he finished.
‘I think I’m proud of you.’ He drew closer to her and moved the pad
of his thumb gently over her cheek. She felt his lips softy on
hers. . A searing regret coursed through her. He moved his lips
over hers, tender, like a long time lover.

A shout carrying over the water broke them
guiltily apart. A figure was waving from the beach. Unmistakably
Katerina, her blonde hair and bikini clad figure cutting an
undeniably attractive sight.

Melanie drew further away from him. ‘It’s
your girl friend,’ she couldn’t resist saying acidly.

‘She’s not my girl friend,’

‘You could have fooled me,’ was Melanie’s
response.

‘Jealous?’ said Nicos, looking pleased.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Melanie snapped.

She stood at the edge of the platform and
raising her hands above her head prepared to dive. This time Nicos
did nothing to stop her. She hit the water cleanly and struck out
for the shore heading as far away from where Katerina was waving as
she could judge without ending up on the rocks. Wading from the
shallow water on to the beach she found Katerina had walked along
the beach towards where she had come ashore and was staring at her
suspiciously.

‘Why aren’t you with your charge?’ the girl
demanded imperiously. Her English, though excellent, was faintly
accented. Melanie recalled that Nicos had said she was from an
eastern European country.

‘I don’t think that’s any concern of yours,’
Melanie said coolly, determined not to lose her temper.

‘I will talk to Mr Chalambrous about this.’
Katerina’s voice was venomous. ‘The nanny should not be so
familiar.

Melanie suppressed a smile thinking that if
she did Nicos would give her short shrift. But he had obviously not
told her that Melanie was Electra’s mother. Silently fuming but
outwardly unconcerned Melanie sauntered along the beach and
retrieving her sarong and beach towel from where she had left them
started up the steps to the villa.