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‘Uncle Nikki, when will Auntie Annie come back?’
Ari’s plaintive question cut Nikos to the quick.
‘Not for a while,’ he answered. ‘But,’ he said, forcing his voice to lighten, ‘I’ve got nice news for you, Ari. Tina is going to come back to look after you. She’ll come across from Maxos every day in the launch. In the evenings Maria will put you to bed, and get you up in the morning, but all day you’ll have Tina.’
‘I want Auntie Annie too,’ said Ari dolefully.
‘Well, we can’t have her.’ Nikos’s voice was short.
No, neither Ari nor he could have Ann any more.
The familiar reaction kicked again, as it had done every time since he’d returned to Sospiris and faced up to the fact that Ann wasn’t there any more. The villa, despite the presence of Ari, his mother, her cousin and all the staff, felt deserted—echoingly empty.
He wanted Ann there. Badly. He wanted her in the villa, just being there. He wanted her and he could not have her—and the knowledge kicked in him like a stubborn mule.
Why? Why the hell had she not wanted to come back here? Why the hell had she not wanted to be with Ari? And why the hell had she not wanted to be with him? Emotion roiled in him, angry and resentful—and more than that, but he would not acknowledge it.
Why had she walked out on him? Why?
The question went round in his head, over and over again, as if there might be an answer. But there wasn’t one. How could there be?
We were good together! Hell, we were more than good, we were—
But his thoughts broke off, as if hitting a wall. A wall he didn’t want to think about. Instead his mind went back to brooding—resentful, unforgiving—at Ann Turner, who had come willingly, so willingly, to his bed, whose possession had filled him with a searing fulfilment the very memory of which kept him sleepless, and who had lain in his arms as if there was no other place she could ever be. Yet she had walked out on him. Just—gone.
As if what we had was nothing to her. Nothing.
His brow darkened.
Why? Why had she done it? His face hardened. She’d said she loved Ari, but she’d been prepared to abandon him in tears. What kind of love was that? None. Ari clearly meant nothing to her.
Nor do I.
He felt the knife thrust again in his side. He tried to yank it out. Why should he care? He didn’t care.
But even as he scored the words in his mind he knew them for the lie they were. He wanted Ann. He wanted her now, here—with him, with Ari, in his home, his life.
And he didn’t have her.
He went back to his resentful brooding, his face closed and dark.
Work was all he could do, so he did it.
After five days on Sospiris—knowing he was being like a bear with a sore head, and knowing that the fact that his mother had received his curtly uttered intelligence that Ann had returned to London with nothing more than a placid calm only, illogically, made his mood worsen—he decided to take himself off to Athens.
His mother was just as placid and calm about his removal as she had been about Ann’s desertion. And it aggravated him just as much. At the doorway of the salon he turned abruptly.
‘I asked Ann to come and live here, to make her home here,’ he said, out of the blue. He paused. ‘She said no.’
His mother’s eyebrows rose. ‘Did she?’
‘I thought she’d snap at it. Devoted to Ari as she is.’ His brow darkened. ‘As she claimed to be.’
‘Well, she has her own life to lead,’ Sophia Theakis replied tranquilly.
‘She could have led it here,’ her son retorted brusquely. ‘And I could have—’ He broke off.
‘Perhaps,’ his mother said gently, ‘you didn’t make your… request…sound sufficiently inviting?’
