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CHAPTER FIVE
‘LET’STAKECOFFEE out on the deck.’
Pushing back his chair, Achileas got to his feet and strode away from the terrace to where a group of cream linen sofas sat at elegant right angles. Behind them the Aegean was dark and shiny like spilt ink, except where the feathery evening sunlight danced across the surface like falling stars.
Effie watched him drop down onto the furthest sofa. It had been a long, disconcerting, and exhausting day, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to be out here alone with this baffling, mercurial man who made her say and feel stupid things.
Not that she could decline his invitation because he hadn’t actually invited her. Although no doubt his autocratic suggestion passed for an invitation among men of his power and wealth.
After he’d absented himself from lunch, she had half wondered if he would bother dining with her, but when she’d stepped outside into the warm evening air at exactly eight o’clock, he’d been standing at the edge of the terrace, his gaze fixed on something in the distance. Even when he had joined her at the table his gaze had returned often to the endless sea.
He was either distracted or bored or both. And, despite the meal being a masterclass of flavour combinations, he’d barely eaten. Just pushed the food around the plate as if that bored him too.
‘Thank you, that was delicious,’ she said now, as Demy the housekeeper appeared and began to quietly clear the table. ‘Could you thank Yiannis for me?’
Achileas’s staff had been lined up outside the house when they’d arrived, but she had been too tired to take in his terse rollcall of names and she had asked Demy to introduce her. There were some things she was willing to fake, but for this arrangement to work she needed to be true to herself—and that meant treating people with respect.
Even if it made things bumpy between her and Achileas.
A current of unease snaked across her skin. So far each time she had been herself things had got more than ‘bumpy’ between them.
She thought back to his abrupt exit earlier.
Bumpy and baffling.
And probably that wasn’t going to change any time soon, given that they had nothing in common aside from an upcoming marriage of convenience. They were just two strangers who had met a little over a week ago, living under the same roof.
Effie glanced over to where Achileas was sitting, her breathing suddenly unsteady.
Except he wasn’t a complete stranger to her. In fact, the more she spent time with him, the more he reminded her of her father.
Bill had moods too.
Sometimes he’d been great company. As a child she could remember watching him at a wedding. People were gathered around him and bursts of laughter had erupted as he’d told a joke or a funny story, and she had been proud of him, her handsome, charming dad.
Other days he was sullen and monosyllabic. He threw things at the wall when the bets he’d made at the bookies that day had gone sideways. And sometimes he’d just get up from eating or watching TV and disappear without a word or a backward glance. Often, he would be gone for days.
In those moments she had wanted to cry. Wanted a different father. One who didn’t stay up all night playing poker in the back room of some pub. One who knew when to stop. But Bill hadn’t wanted to stop. He hadn’t been able to. Gambling had been his life. Everything else—everyone else—had bored him.
Including her.
So why should Achilleas find her any less boring? She had seen the calibre of woman he usually dated and discarded. Even if she had been his type why would he be interested in her? He barely knew her.
And yet earlier today, when they had talked about the process of making a perfume, she had felt as if they had known one another not for days but for the whole of her life.
In those few moments he had seemed to change before her eyes. For the first time since they’d met the tension and the impatience that were as much a part of him as the stubble shadowing the curve of his jaw had seemed to lift. In those few moments she had glimpsed a different man.
A less guarded man.
A man not moving purposefully forward but happy to wait, to listen, to watch, to share.
A man with a smile that could make the sun melt. A smile that was almost as devastating as his kiss.
She blanked her mind. Or that was what she thought she was doing. But, heart thumping, she replayed that moment when he’d put the vial of oakmoss on the table and left without a word.
Oakmoss, or mousse de chêne as it was also known, belonged to the chypre family. It was actually a lichen which grew on oaks throughout Europe and North Africa. It had a unique scent. Both earthy and woody, with hints of musk, it was really not like anything else in the perfumer’s ‘palette’.
The one snag was that it had been blacklisted as a potential irritant, so its use had been restricted, forcing perfumers to play around with other ingredients like patchouli, or synthetic imitations of oakmoss.
