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The realization frightened her, and she gave herself up, instead, to a sharp response.
“You should have considered a lot of things, Damian, but you didn’t, and here we are.”
His hand fell away from her. “Yes,” he said, “and here we are.”
* * *
When Laurel had come to Greece before, it had been to do a cover for Femme. They’d shot it on a tiny island that had stunned her with its natural beauty.
Actos was not such a place.
If the island was beautiful, she was hard-pressed to see it. A rusted Ford station wagon was waiting for them at the dock, its mustachioed driver as ancient and gnarled as an olive tree. He and Damian greeted each other quietly, though she noticed that when they clasped hands, the men looked deep into each other’s eyes and smiled.
The old man turned to her and took off his cap. He smiled, bowed and said something to Damian.
“Spiro says he is happy to meet you.”
“Tell Spiro I am glad to meet him, too.”
“He says you are more lovely than Aphrodite, and that I am a very fortunate man to have won you.”
“Tell him Aphrodite’s an overworked image but that I thank him anyway for being such a charming liar, and that you are not fortunate, you are a scheming tyrant who blackmailed me into marriage.”
Damian laughed. “That would not upset Spiro. He still remembers the old days, when every man was a king who could as easily take a woman as ask for her.”
The old man leaned toward Damian and said something. Both men chuckled.
Laurel looked from one to the other. “What did he say now?”
“He said that your eyes are cool.”
“It is more than my eyes that are cool, Damian. And I fail to see why that should make the two of you smile.”
“Because,” he said, his smile tilting, “Spiro tells me there is a saying in the village of his birth. A woman who is cold in the day fills the night with heat.”
A flush rose in her cheeks. “It’s amazing, how wrong an old saying can be.”
“Is it, my sweet wife?”
“Absolutely, my unwanted husband.”
Spiro muttered again and Laurel rolled her eyes.
“I feel like the straight man in a comedy act,” she snapped. “Now what?”
Damian moved closer to her. “He thinks there is more than coolness in your eyes,” he said softly. “He says you do not look like a happy woman.”
“A clever man, this Spiro.”
“It is, he says, my responsibility to make you happy.”
“Did you tell him you could have done that by leaving me alone?”
Damian’s slow smile was a warning, but it came too late. His fingers threaded in her hair and he bent his head and kissed her.
“Kissing me to impress the old man is pathetic,” Laurel said, when he drew back. She spoke calmly and told herself that the erratic beat of her pulse was the result of weariness, and the sun.
Damian kissed her again, as gently as he had when she’d said ‘No’ at their wedding.”
“I kiss you because I want to kiss you,” he said, very softly, and then he turned away and helped Spiro load their luggage into the old station wagon, while Laurel fought to still her racing heart.
* * *
A narrow dirt road wound its way up the cliffs, through groves of dark cypresses and between outcroppings of gray rock. They passed small houses that grew further and further apart as they climbed. After a while, there were no houses at all, only an occasional shepherd’s hut. The heat was unrelenting, and a chorus of cicadas filled the air with sound.
The road grew even more narrow. Just when it seemed as if it would end among the clouds, a house came into view. It was made of white stone with a blue tile roof, and it stood on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea.
The house, and the setting, were starkly simple and wildly beautiful, and Laurel knew instantly that this was Damian’s home.
A heavy silence, made more pronounced by the shrill of the cicadas and the distant pound of the surf, filled the car as Damian shut off the engine. Behind them, the car door creaked as Spiro got out. He spoke to Damian, who shook his head. The old man muttered in annoyance, doffed his cap to Laurel and set off briskly toward the house.
“What was that all about?”
Damian sighed. “He will be eighty-five soon, or perhaps even older. He’s rather mysterious about his age.” He got out of the car, came around to Laurel’s door and opened it. “Still, he pretends he is a young man. He wanted to take our luggage to the house. I told him not to be such an old fool.”
Laurel ignored Damian’s outstretched hand and stepped onto the gravel driveway.
“So you told him to send someone else to get our things?”
Damian looked at her. “There is no one else at the house, except for Eleni.”
“Eleni?”
“My housekeeper.” He reached into the back of the wagon, picked up their suitcases and tossed them onto the grass, his muscles shifting and bunching under the thin cotton T-shirt. “Besides, why would I need anyone to do such a simple job as this?”
Her thoughts flashed back to Kirk, and the staff of ten who’d run his home. She’d never seen him carry anything heavier than his attaché case, and sometimes not even that.
“Well?” Damian’s voice was rough. “What do you think? Can you survive a week alone with me, in this place?”
A week? Alone, here, with Damian? She didn’t dare tell him what she really thought, that if he had set out to separate her from everything safe and familiar, he had succeeded.
“Well,” she said coolly, “it’s not Southampton. But I suppose there’s hot water, and electricity, at least.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Damian’s jaw tighten. Good, she thought with bitter satisfaction. What had he expected? Tears? Pleas? A fervent demand he take her somewhere civilized? If that was what he’d hoped for, he’d made an error. She wasn’t going to beg, or grovel.
“I know it would please you if I said no.” His smile was curt as he stepped past her, hoisted their suitcases and set off for the house. “But we have all the amenities you wish for, my dear wife. I know it spoils things for you, but I am not quite the savage you imagine.”
The house was almost glacial, after the heat of the sunbaked hillside. White marble floors stretched to meet white painted walls. Ceiling fans whirred lazily overhead.
Damian dumped the suitcases on the floor and put his hands on his hips.
“Eleni,” he roared.
A door slammed in the distance and a slender, middle-aged woman with eyes as dark as her hair came hurrying toward them. She was smiling broadly, but her smile vanished when she saw Damian’s stern face. He said a few words to her, in Greek, and then he looked at Laurel.
“Eleni speaks no English, so don’t waste your time trying to win her to your cause. She will show you to your room and tend to your needs.”
The housekeeper, and not Damian. It was another small victory, Laurel thought, as he strode past her.
Eleni led the way up the stairs to a large, handsome bedroom with an adjoining bath.
Laurel nodded.
“Thank you,” she said, “efcharistó.”
It was the only word of Greek she remembered from her prior trip. Eleni smiled her appreciation and Laurel smiled back at her, but when the door had shut and she was, at last, alone, her smile faded.
She had set out to irritate Damian and somehow, she’d ended up wounding him. It was more of a victory than she’d ever have hoped.
Why, then, did it feel so hollow?
* * *
