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After a long day in the sun, exploring the island’s beaches and eating a basic picnic, drinking sparkling wine in the shade on an empty beach, making love until their bodies seemed boneless and sated, Ari couldn’t stop thinking about Lucy’s words and expression from that morning. She’d seemed sincere. He’d believed her to be sincere when she’d professed to liking the place.
He held her hand in his now, as they wandered through the ancient winding streets of his mother’s birthplace. He repressed the urge to ask her if she’d really meant what she’d said—if she really loved this humble little place as much as she seemed to—because he hated how important it felt to him that she did.
A little later Ari sat back in his chair in the small taverna he’d brought her to, and Lucy’s belly flipped over at his expression. He was looking at her so intensely she had to ask, ‘What…? Have I got something on my face?’
He shook his head and smiled, and her heart turned over. She had once thought he was incapable of smiling, but the younger-seeming, softer side of this man was altogether far too enticing.
‘Just a lot of freckles. Who would have known you’d freckle so easily?’
Lucy grimaced. ‘I have celtic ancestry.’
He smiled wider, lounging back, cradling a half-empty wine glass. ‘They’re cute.’
Lucy scowled at the word. ‘Unfortunately we can’t all go a deeper shade of bronze in the sun.’
She tried to stop her eyes roving over his powerful form but couldn’t resist. His T-shirt strained over broad shoulders and clung to that lean torso; low-slung jeans were so low slung that she could see a sliver of taut dark flesh just above the button, the dark shading of hair making her heart trip.
‘Stop devouring me with your eyes, or I’ll carry you back to bed over my shoulder, Lucy Proctor.’
She looked up again and blushed. He leant forward and captured her hand.
‘It’s amazing that you can blush when you’re so incredibly sensual…when you wear such decadent underwear…’
Lucy groaned.
‘…and have a body to put the Venus de Milo to shame…’
‘I don’t…Stop.’ Lucy glanced around, mortified, in case someone had heard him. He laughed out loud.
‘Yes, you do—and it’s entirely appropriate that we’re here, because this is the island that supplied the Parian marble for the sculpture.’ He kept her hand and asked then, ‘Tell me, Lucy, why is it that you have these two different sides? And why did you fight not to fall into my bed? Was it all a game?’
His voice had hardened, his hand had tightened, and Lucy looked at him and felt nervous. It suddenly seemed very important to be honest with him.
Even more so when he added, ‘And how is it that you speak at least two other languages fluently and can hold your own in the snobby dining rooms of Athens?’
Lucy was silent for a long time. She looked out of the window that they were seated beside and saw the dark ocean, and fishing boats twinkling under a moonlit sky. And then she said haltingly, ‘My mother was one of the most celebrated burlesque performers in the world…’
And before she knew it she was telling him everything, and he was listening, as rapt as she’d ever seen him. She told him about living in Paris, and before that Rio de Janeiro, New York…London. The ever-changing schools, the nomadic nature of their lives.
Lucy wrinkled her nose. ‘Her real name was Mabel Proctor, but she changed it to Maxine Malbec.’
Ari frowned. His thumb stopped making little circles of sensation in her palm.
‘The Maxine Malbec?’
Lucy nodded, feeling slightly sick. Was he going to judge her now or, worse, judge her mother? She started to pull her hand back, but he gripped it again.
He was shaking his head. ‘Lucy, that’s an amazing story…The picture I saw in your flat—I thought there was something familiar about her.’
She smiled wryly. ‘That’s what I was afraid of. And it’s not a story—it was my life.’ She shrugged, feeling self-conscious. ‘Having a mother who was so overtly…sexual made me wary, I think, of that side of me.’ Her mouth tightened. ‘It’s also why I have an aversion to expensive jewellery…trinkets…Seeing my mother fobbed off by so many rich men over the years…My father was one of those men, married with his own family. He had no desire for a love-child.’ Lucy’s voice trailed away. She was shocked she’d revealed so much so quickly.
She didn’t elaborate on how precarious her life had been until she’d grown older and taken control of herself and her mother. She also didn’t elaborate on the fear she still had of becoming dependent on a man, on how her father’s rejection had fostered a deep feeling of insecurity she was only just beginning to let go of.
Ari winced inwardly when he recalled her reaction to his asking her to buy something for Augustine Archer, and then dragging her around that jewellery shop. He remembered the innately sexy way Lucy had stripped for him that first night. ‘You’ve obviously inherited her natural sensuality—that’s all. She sounds like she was an amazing woman, and it must have been hard, raising a daughter on her own.’
Lucy was struck somewhere very vulnerable by his easy understanding. She nodded and smiled weakly, feeling emotion rise. ‘She was…is an amazing woman.’
Ari frowned. ‘She’s still alive?’
