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‘I don’t think you came here to discuss nursery rhymes.’
‘Of course not. I am here because I have just found out that I am to return to Anapliró at the weekend for my mother’s fiftieth...’
‘Fiftieth!’ Mary said. ‘Gosh, she must have had you—’ Costa’s deliberate eyebrow raise served to halt her. He did not need the all too familiar judgment as to how old his mother must have been when she’d had him.
‘Yolanda has suddenly decided she wants a party, and naturally wants me there.’ He noticed her frown as he referred to his mother by her first name. ‘I’ve been giving it some thought and I have decided it would be easier all round if I bring someone...’
Costa was being so direct that there was no room in Mary’s mind for any flight of fantasy that he was asking her on a date.
‘There is an ex of sorts,’ Costa went on. ‘And my return will raise expectations—not just from my mother, but from the islanders too. They all want to get involved in my life and I just want them off my back. My bringing you to the party would achieve that. At the very least it would shut them down for a while.’
‘Don’t you have a lover you could take?’
‘Not one who wouldn’t read too much into it—whereas you and I have no romantic history, so there are no illusions to shatter.’
Mary chose not to correct him, or to reveal that she’d actually been spinning romantic illusions about him since they’d parted on Saturday night.
Not now.
For there was nothing romantic about what he proposed.
He hadn’t even prettied things up by arriving with flowers. Instead, he had no issue in getting straight to the unsavoury point.
‘You would be well compensated.’
‘I thought you never paid for company?’
‘I don’t,’ he agreed. ‘But on this occasion there is definite appeal. Yolanda is a white witch—she would spot a fake date a mile off.’
‘Iwouldbe a fake date, though.’
‘Of course, but you are...different,’ he said.
It was exactly what people tended to whisper behind her back—or at times said outright to her face. Except he did not say it unkindly...so much so that she wondered if it was the smooth silk of his voice that made it sound almost like a compliment.
‘Different?’ She checked the word again, just in case he might want to amend it.
‘Refreshingly so,’ he admitted, and swung a little in the chair.
Costa was trying to fathom what it was about Mary that muddled his brain. Her beauty was a given, but if that were the sole criteria there were many beautiful women he could take.
There was something about her that intrigued him. Like a magazine quiz he might take in an idle moment, only to find the answers torn out when he turned to find them at the back.
‘Okay, I need to bring more than a date,’ Costa said. ‘It needs to look as if we’re serious—and, thanks to the photo now circulating in the media, you’re already the talk of Anapliró.’
He held out his phone and she took it and stared silently at the image of them on the screen.
‘Your face is obscured, so don’t worry.’
Right now, Mary wasn’t worried about being recognised. She was entirely consumed by how the image had captured the moment, and the look in Costa’s eyes as he stared down at her.
It must be a trick of the light, she told herself, or the angle of the camera, but they looked so intimate...as if they were lovers indeed.
‘It’s not possible.’ Her voice was a little croaky as she handed him back his phone. ‘I’d be fired if I took time off at short notice. We can’t all drop everything in our lives to hop onto a private jet.’
‘Sorry to disappoint,’ Costa said, ‘but I don’t believe in private jets. You’d be flying commercial.’ His voice softened. ‘If your boss would fire you merely for having a life, might I suggest that you need this more than ever.’
His words gave her pause.
