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CHAPTER EIGHT
ROULA’SPHONEBLEEPED. And then it gave another bleep, and it took her a moment to work out quite where she was.
In bed.
The cover was heavy, the pillow soft, and she lay on her stomach and flicked off the alarm, then lay there.
Shehadcontemplated male beauty before.
Once.
That photo of Galen in uniform she had seen long ago. In fact it had been years old by the time she’d even seen it.
‘Is this Galen?’ she had asked, and smiled, looking at the picture as she dropped off Kupia Florakis’s shopping. Studious, happy, hopeful for her exams and not really interested in boys, she’d been feeling a shy curiosity over her body she had deliberately ignored.
Or she had tried to.
Yet that photo had somehow embedded itself and hooked in her mind...
One morning, weeks, perhaps months after she’d dropped off that shopping, Roula had awoken to a loud knock on her bedroom door, hauling her back from a place she did not know. A place in her dreams of torrid, rough kisses and heated skin and no trace of her usual shyness as Galen boldly explored her.
‘Roula!’
Her mother had told her she’d be late for school even as she’d lain there, breathless, aware of a heavy heat between her legs and wishing the morning had not invaded just yet, for she wanted to get back to that place she’d glimpsed.
‘I’m up...’ Roula had croaked, and although perhaps guilt should have propelled her from the bed she’d lain there a while longer, trying to get back to the place she’d been, with a Galen she did not know, who in his curiosity over her body had not been shy.
Nor had she been. For when she’d dreamed it had been her kissing him, prising open his mouth as his hands roughly squeezed her breasts. And that morning Roula had tentatively done the same. Trying to blot out the sounds of a waking house and slip back to that place she’d almost found. Her curiosity had become less shy as she’d explored her body, thinking of his closed eyes and that mouth that rarely smiled tussling with hers.
‘Galen...’
She had said his name as if summoning him, trying to get back to that place they had been, her hand creeping down, and she had felt for a moment that if she dared turn the key she might enter beyond...
‘Roula!’
Her mother’s second knock had hauled her back to reality. Soon to be a new reality. For it had been that very afternoon she’d returned from school and been informed that her husband had been chosen.
For a fleeting second her heart had soared.
Galen was coming home!
‘Your husband will be Dimitrios Drakos.’
Roula had forgotten what she’d glimpsed that morning. Her experience of sex had been so far removed from that distant half-dream that she’d flicked the memory off, like an unwelcome show on the television.
And now here she was, frigid in a warm bed in Athens.
All desire leeched from her.
Yet she’d had that kiss...
And she started working for Galen today.
There was no guilt, no regret, and certainly she was not worried to face him, for she knew their kiss was no doubt nothing but a distant memory to Galen. A brief pleasure to him, like a glass of wine he had drunk—tasted and then forgotten.
She chose a brown dress with yellow squiggles and a matching fabric belt, as well as her brown shoes, but could not be bothered to pin up her hair, so just tied it back.
Then she checked her bag.
