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She shot him a furtive glance. “Don’t read anything into this,” she said warily.
He tilted his head, a gesture of encouragement.
“I went to see her perform last year.” The air between them crackled. “Your dad took me,” she rushed over that point, not looking at him, not seeing the way his features tightened. “She was so wonderful. I felt everything she felt. Her face is so expressive, so moving. Your father and I both wept like babies.”
Chapter8
JUST THE THOUGHT OF his father crying convinced Anastasios. He had to go and see the performance. Curiosity was a beast within him as, the next morning, he pulled on a shirt, planning to work, when he thought better of it, switching to a pair of boardshorts instead.
Your dad took me.
Two distinct emotions had been writhing inside of him since learning about Phoebe.
Anger, with his father, and with Phoebe, for conducting an affair despite Konstantinos’s marriage and their age difference. There had also been jealousy, from that first night, and now, jealousy was in the clear ascendency. Somehow, he’d come to accept that whatever had happened between Konstantinos and Phoebe had been his father’s decision to make, his father’s mistake to regret. But the idea of them together offended him as a man—as a man who desired a woman with all of his soul.
He didn’t want his father to have taken her to see theatre performances. He wanted her all for himself.
The thought instantly sobered him.
That wasn’t his style. It wasn’t his way. He liked his life, he liked being single. He wasn’t talking about a long-term commitment though, he hastened to reassure himself. How could he? No one could ever know about Phoebe. Her relationship with Konstantinos made any kind of future untenable. But here, floating at sea, adrift from the usual obligations and requirements of his life, perhaps it was akin to being in international waters, where no rules applied?
He stared at himself in the mirror, determination recognizable in his eyes as he accepted, finally, that desire for Phoebe wasn’t going away. Certain things were inevitable, and necessary. Only by accepting what was sparking between them could he put her behind him. If the last month had taught him anything, it was that.
As random thoughts and reckonings began to form one cohesive plan, he moved out of his room as noisily as he could, enjoying the thought of waking her, of her body in bed startling in recognition of his, passing.
But before she joined him for a coffee, he had work to do. He reached for his phone on the kitchen bench and started a lengthy text to his assistant.
Phoebe had never beena big believer in celebrating birthdays. Last year, with Kon, had been the first year she’d actually enjoyed the day. Nonetheless, she always marked off the date dutifully in the calendar of her mind, as if cataloguing the fact she’d made it another year.
There had been nights, as a child, when the terror had been so bad, her father’s violence so extreme, that she’d wondered if she would. Phoebe firmly ascribed to the belief that getting older was a privilege and she met each birthday with a grateful heart.
And despite the fact her companion—her kidnapper, she reminded herself—didn’t know it was a special day, that didn’t stop this from being a delightful place to spend her twenty fifth birthday.
When she stepped into the kitchen, it was to a half-naked Anastasios and a platter of danishes. Her heart leaped.Happy Birthday to me.
“Good morning,” he said, his custom greeting firing something inside of her. Today, when their eyes met, they held, and the electricity arcing between them was almost impossible to contain.
“Hi.” Her voice crackled. She swallowed to clear her throat. “It’s another beautiful day.”
He turned to look out of the window—an unnecessary gesture, as sunlight surrounded them. “In fact, it’s a perfect day for jet skiing.”
She blinked at him. “It is?”
“Sure. Most days are,” he added with a smile, that had the power and wattage of a thousand suns. “Care to join me?”
Her heart gave a funny little squeeze. Under ordinary circumstances, she might have fought the idea of that. Things between them were so complicated. But today was her birthday, and it seemed only fair to give her heart what it wanted most in the world.
“Of course.”
His eyes sparked with hers and her veins flooded with lava.
“I’ve never been jet skiing,” she said with a nervous smile. “What if I fall into the water?”
“You’ll just have to hold on tight.”
Easier said than done.An hour later, one of the jet skis had been floated by the staff, and Anastasios was sitting on top of it, chest covered in droplets of water, hair slicked back from his face. Her mouth went dry.
Suddenly, she was nervous. Not about jet skiing, but about sitting right behind him.
