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‘Carrie.’
She stopped talking and reluctantly met his gaze, eyes shining with what looked suspiciously like unshed tears, her chin wobbling.
She’d been a virgin.
Until twelve hours ago she had reached the age of twenty-six untouched.
He could not shake that thought from his mind.
‘Let me open that for you,’ he said gently, nodding at the honey jar clasped so tightly in her hand.
She pushed it across the table to him, her shoulders slumping.
He twisted the lid off and pushed it back to her, resisting the urge to force her to take it from his hand.
She had been a virgin.
She had never made love before.
She had never faced a man the morning after before.
The vulnerability he had seen in her when he’d given her the flowers was even more starkly apparent now and it tugged at his heart to see it and with it came a compression in his chest, an overwhelming punch of emotion he couldn’t begin to comprehend but which set alarm bells ringing inside him, a warning that he was steering into dangerous territory and it was time to back away.
‘There is no wrong or right room here because the villa is mine,’ he said in as even a tone as he could manage.
She darted a little glance of gratitude at him before dipping a teaspoon into the honey jar. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I signed the paperwork for it yesterday. That’s where I went after I dropped you here, to meet with the previous owner.’
‘You bought it? But why?’
He shrugged. ‘I was looking for a villa to rent for the week. I didn’t see anything I liked so I looked at villas for sale and this was available.’
‘You bought a villa on a whim? Without even looking at it?’ She spread the honey on her roll.
‘I saw the pictures. I know the island pretty well—I’ve had an eye on buying something here for a while. I knew it was in a good location with plenty of privacy. Why not?’
‘You already have a holiday home.’
‘This will not be a holiday home for me, not like my property in the Seychelles. I can work from here. Agon is a prosperous, independent country with a growing economy. It has many residents looking to invest their cash. It is close enough to fly or speedboat to Athens. It has staff familiar with the house and I get to speak my native tongue for a change. It ticks all the boxes and best of all it has year-round sunshine.’
‘Why do you run your business from London?’ she asked. ‘You clearly hate the city.’
‘I don’t hate it. In the summertime it is beautiful but the rest of the year it is so grey and dreary. I grew up with the sun on my back. But to answer your question, London was never my first choice to run my business from. When I was younger I wanted to live in America. That’s why I went to university there. I had many ideas in my head about what America was like and assumed it had year-round sunshine like my home in Gaios.’ He grinned, remembering his youthful naivety and lack of geography skills.
Her lips twitched with humour as she took a bite of her honey-slathered roll.
The tension in her frame was loosening.
‘The winters in Massachusetts came as quite a shock, I can tell you,’ he continued. ‘When I graduated from MIT I was offered a job with an investment firm in Manhattan who were offering an obscene amount of money for a graduate. As you know, that’s when my parents were on their knees, financially speaking, so I took the job, worked hard and built many contacts so I could strike out on my own, and tried not to freeze to death in the dire winters. When I started Samaras Fund Management, my intention had been to build the American side up then set up European headquarters in Athens. London and the other European capitals would have been subsidiaries. I’d reached the point where I was earning serious money, my parents were in reasonable health and settled in their new home…’
‘Did you buy it for them?’ she interrupted, eyes alive with curiosity.
‘As soon as I could afford it. They didn’t want to stay in Gaios any more, which I could not blame them for after the way they had been treated by the people there, so I brought them a house on Paros. We all thought the worst of what life could throw at us was over and then my sister and brother-in-law died.’
Carrie sucked a breath in.
Andreas said it so matter-of-factly that if she hadn’t seen the flash of pain in his eyes she could believe his sister’s death had meant nothing to him.
‘It was carbon monoxide poisoning, wasn’t it?’ she asked softly.
He nodded, his jaw clenching. ‘They were on holiday celebrating their wedding anniversary. The apartment they were staying in had a faulty boiler.’
She remembered reading the inquest report and wanting to cry for Natalia, their orphaned daughter, a girl Carrie had welcomed into her home and loved fiercely. Violet hadn’t been the only one hurt when Natalia stopped staying at their home. Carrie had missed her too, missed the sunshine the girl had brought to their home.
