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The cypresses were casting long shadows over the hillside. Soon, it would be night.
Damian stood on the brick terrace and gazed at the sea. He knew he ought to feel exhausted. It had been a long day. An endless day, following hard on the heels of an endless week—a week that had begun with him thinking he’d never see Laurel again and ending w
ith his taking her as his wife.
His wife.
His jaw knotted, and he lifted the glass of chilled ouzo to his lips and drank. The anise-flavored liquid slipped easily down his throat, one of the few pleasurable experiences in the entire damned day.
It still didn’t seem possible. A little while ago, his life had been set on a fixed course with his business empire as its center. Now, in the blink of an eye, he had a wife, and a child on the way—a wife who treated him, and everything that was his, with such frigid distaste that it made his blood pressure rumble like the volcanos that were at the heart of these islands.
So she didn’t like this house. Hell, why should she? He knew what it was, an isolated aerie on the edge of nowhere, and that he’d been less than forthright about its amenities, which began, and just about ended, with little more than electricity and hot water. She was a woman accustomed to luxury, and to the city. Her idea of paradise wasn’t likely to include a house on top of a rocky hill overlooking the Aegean, where she was about to spend seven of the longest days of her life trapped with the fool who’d forced her into marriage.
Damian frowned and tossed back the rest of the ouzo.
What the hell had he been thinking, bringing her here? God knew this wasn’t the setting for a honeymoon—not that this was going to be one. Spiro, that sly old fox, had slapped him on the back and said that it was about time he’d married. Damian had told him to mind his own business.
This wasn’t a marriage, it was an arrangement...and maybe that was the best way to think about it. Marriage, under the best of circumstances, was never about love, not once you scratched the surface. It was about lust, or loneliness, or procreation. Well, in that sense, he and Laurel were ahead of the game. There was no pretense in their relationship, no pretending that anything but necessity had brought them to this point in the road.
Damian refilled his glass and took a sip. Viewed ressonably, he really had no cause to complain. Not about having a child, at least. The more he’d thought about it the past week, the more pleased he’d been at the prospect of fatherhood. He’d enjoyed raising Nicholas, but the boy had come into his life almost full-grown. There’d be a special pleasure in holding an infant in his arms, knowing that it carried his name and his genes, that it would be his to mold and nurture.
His mouth twisted in a wry smile. And, despite all the advances of modern science, you still needed a woman to have a baby. A wife if you wanted to do it right, and as wives went, Laurel would be eminently suitable.
She was beautiful, bright and sophisticated. She’d spent her life rubbing elbows with the rich and famous; to some degree, she was one of them herself. She’d be at ease as the hostess of the parties and dinners his work demanded, and he had no doubt that she’d be a good mother to their child.
As for the rest...as for the rest, he thought, the heat pooling in his loins, what would happen between them in bed would keep them both satisfied. She would not deny him forever. She wouldn’t want to. Despite her protestations, Laurel wanted him. She was a passionate woman with a taste for sex, but she was his now. If she ever thought to slake her thirst with another man, he’d—he’d...
The glass splintered in his hand. Damian hissed with pain as the shards fell to the terrace floor.
“Dammit to hell!”
Blood welled in his palm. He cursed again, dug in his pocket for a handkerchief—and just then, a small, cool hand closed around his.
“Let me see that,” Laurel said.
He looked up, angry at himself for losing control, angry at her for catching him, and the breath caught in his throat.
How beautiful his wife was!
She was wearing something long, white and filmy; he thought of what Spiro had said, that she looked like Aphrodite, but the old man was wrong for surely the goddess had never been this lovely.
Laurel must have showered and washed her hair. It hung loose in a wild cloud of dark auburn curls that tumbled over her shoulders as she bent over his cut hand.
“It isn’t as bad as it probably feels,” she said, dabbing at the wound with his handkerchief.
He felt a fist close around his heart. Yes, it was, he thought suddenly, it was every bit as bad, and maybe worse.
“Come inside and let me wash it.”
He didn’t want to move. The moment was too perfect. Laurel’s body, brushing his. Her hair, tickling his palm. Her breath, warm on his fingers...
“Damian?” She looked up at him. “The cut should be—it should be...”
Why was he looking at her that way? His eyes were as dark as the night that waited on the rim of the sea. There was a tension in his face, in the set of his shoulders...
His wide shoulders, encased in a dark cotton shirt. She could see the golden column of his throat at the open neck of the shirt; the pulse beating in the hollow just below his Adam’s apple; the shadow of dark, silky hair she knew covered his hard-muscled chest.
A chasm seemed to open before her, one that terrified her with its uncharted depth.
“This cut should be washed,” she said briskly, “and disinfected.”
“It is not necessary.” His voice was low and throaty; it made her pulse quicken. “Laurel...”
“Really, Damian. You shouldn’t ignore it.”
“I agree. A thing like this must not be ignored.”
Her eyes met his and a soft sound escaped her throat. “Damian,” she whispered, “please...”
“What?” he said thickly. He lifted his uncut hand and pushed her hair back from her face. “What do you want of me, kati mou? Tell me, and I will do it.”
Kiss me, she thought, and touch me, and let me admit the truth to myself, that I don’t hate you, don’t despise you, that I—that I...
She let go of his hand and stepped back.
“I want you to let me clean this cut, and bandage it,” she said briskly. “You’ve seen to it that we’re a million miles from everything. If you developed an infection, I wouldn’t even know how to get help.”
Damian’s mouth twisted.
“You are right.” He wound the handkerchief around his hand and smiled politely. “You would be stranded, not just with an unwanted husband but with a disabled one. How selfish of me, Laurel. Please, serve yourself some lemonade. Eleni prepared it especially for you. I will tend to this cut, and then we shall have our dinner. You will excuse me?”
Laurel nodded. “Of course,” she said, just as politely, and she turned and stared out over the sea, watching as a million stars fired the black velvet sky, and blinking back tears that had risen, inexplicably, in her eyes.
* * *
She woke early the next morning.
The same insect chorus was singing, accompanied now by the soaring alto of a songbird. It wasn’t the same as awakening to an alarm clock, she thought with a smile, or to the honking of horns and the sound of Mr. Lieberman’s footsteps overhead.
Dressed in a yellow sundress, she wandered through the house to the kitchen. Eleni greeted her with a smile, a cup of strong black coffee and a questioning lift of the eyebrows that seemed to be the equivalent of, “What would you like for breakfast?”
A bit of sign language, some miscommunication that resulted in shared laughter, and Laurel sat down at the marble-topped counter to a bowl of fresh yogurt and sliced strawberries. She ate hungrily—the doors leading out to the terrace were open, and the air, fragrant with the mingled scents of flowers and of the sea, had piqued her appetite. She poured herself a second cup of coffee and sipped it outdoors, on the terrace, and then she wandered down the steps and onto the grass.
It was strange, how a night’s sleep and the clear light of morning changed things. Yesterday, the house had seemed disturbingly austere but now she could see that it blended perfectly with its surroundings. The location didn’t seem as forbidding, either. There was something to be said for being on the very top of a mountain, with the world laid out before you.
Impulsively she kicked off her sandals and l
ooped the straps over her fingers. Then she set off toward the rear of the house, where she could hear someone—Spiro, perhaps-beating something with what sounded like a hammer.
But it wasn’t the old man. It was Damian, wearing denim cutoffs, leather work gloves, beat-up sneakers and absolutely nothing else. He was wielding what she assumed was a sledgehammer, swinging it over and over against a huge gray boulder.
His swings were rhythmic; his attention was completely focused on the boulder. She knew he had no idea she was there and a part of her whispered that it was wrong to stand in the shadow of a cypress and watch him this way... but nothing in the world could have made her turn away or take her eyes off her husband.
How magnificent he was! The sun blazed down on his naked shoulders; she could almost see his skin toasting to a darker gold as he worked. His body glistened under a fine layer of sweat that delineated its muscled power. He grunted softly each time he swung the hammer and she found herself catching her breath at each swing, holding it until he brought the hammer down to smash against the rock.
Her thoughts flashed two years back, to Kirk, and to the hours he’d spent working out in the elaborate gym in the basement of his Long Island home. Two hours a day, seven days a week, and he’d still not looked as beautifully male as Damian did right now.
She thought of how strong Damian’s arms had felt around her the night they’d made love, of how his muscles had rippled under her hands...
“Laurel.”
She blinked. Damian had turned around. He smiled, put down the hammer and wiped his face and throat with a towel that had been lying in the grass.
“Sorry,” he said, tossing the towel aside and coming toward her. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t. I’ve always been an early riser.”
He stripped off his gloves and tucked them into a rear pocket.
“I am, too. It’s an old habit. If you want to get any work done in the summer here, you have to start before the sun is too high in the sky or you end up broiled to a crisp. Did you sleep well?”
