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“No, he’d just sleep around behind their backs.”
She bit down on her lower lip. “You have issues with him, fair enough, but you have no right to transpose those on me. I did not lie to you. I did not cheat. I did nothing but be a friend to, and appreciate the friendship of, your father.”
“It’s a pointless conversation,” he said after a beat. “As we’ve already discussed, I don’t rely on words and promises when making a decision.”
“I’m not asking you to make a decision,” she said, through gritted teeth. “You’re the one who kissed me, who touched me. You’re the one who keeps bringing up my sex life as though you have some kind of vested interest, so I’m going to make this very easy for you. I’m not available. I don’t want you to kiss me, I don’t want you to touch me, and I sure as hell don’t want to sleep with you. Just stay out of my goddamned way,katanoitó?”
Chapter6
UNDERSTAND? UNDERSTAND? HE DIDN’T understand a single thing about what had happened, since the night he’d met her. He didn’t understand his behaviour, his desires, his anger, his hatred. He didn’t understand the way he was goading her, provoking her, he particularly didn’t understand the way he was insulting her.
There was a level of hypocrisy in his treatment he couldn’t fail to be aware of.
How many women had Anastasios slept with? And then bought beautiful jewelry for, or lavish clothes, as part of his dating ritual. Accepting such gifts didn’t make Phoebe a whore, so why the hell had he treated her like one?
He bashed his pillow for the millionth time, as the boat rocked gently back and forth, in a motion that usually lulled him to sleep. But sleep was impossible tonight. Their conversation was tormenting him, so too her nearness, so he dismissed the prospect of rest and stood instead, restless, as a caged lion might be. He prowled his room for several moments but the sense of unease didn’t lift. It wasn’t yet five in the morning, but he couldn’t stay locked up in here for several hours longer, despite the luxurious size of his bedroom. Grabbing a pair of shorts, he pulled them on his naked frame and quietly slipped out of his room, hesitating for only the briefest moment outside her door, then striding past, anger stoking to life anew in the pit of his belly.
His father had cheated on Maggie, but also, on them. He’d broken the bonds of their family. He’d been with Anna for a long time—decades—and kept it totally private, something all his own. He’d had another daughter, for God’s sake, and never once thought the family deserved an introduction to her. That she might want to meet her brothers, and vice versa. He’d made a mess, then refused to clean it up. Instead, he’d left that for Anastasios.
Phoebe, in the scheme of things, was an afterthought.
Their affair, if in fact there had been one, had been brief. Eighteen months, no children. The damage was not lasting. And given their age difference, it was difficult to think either had serious plans. She clearly knew about his family, his marriage, and even Anna, which unfortunately only underscored, for Anastasios, how transactional their situation must have been. What kind of woman would accept this from their lover?
Panic beaded sweat on his brow. He didn’t want to think of his father and Phoebe in that way. Was it possible Phoebe was telling the truth?
Of course it was possible, it just wasn’t likely, given the evidence.
He moved quickly up the stairs, onto the deck rail, walking the length of the boat and switching on a small light at the bow. The air smelled like salt and a little way in the distance, lights bobbed on the surface of the water—he could just make out the fishing trawlers, dragging in their nets after a night’s work.
He rested his arms on the edge of the railing, staring out, trying to blot Phoebe from his thoughts—as he’d been trying to do since that evening in London, almost a month earlier. What was it about her?
She was beautiful and graceful, smart and quick, but it was more than that. There was something indefinable that had caught at him from the first moment, and wouldn’t let go.
He had wondered, in the intervening weeks, if it was because she represented a connection to his father. No matter how much he hated the fact Konstantinos had engaged in affairs, there was no denying the fact that Phoebe knew a part of Kon that had been hidden from Anastasios. In his grief, he wanted to understand that part, to understand why his father had cheated. Why they hadn’t been enough. His hands gripped the railing tighter as the thought unfurled in his brain. Was that it? Was that the key to understanding the hold she had on him?
“Good morning, sir.”
He turned at the unwelcome introduction. One of the deckhands—hastily dressed, if her messy hair was anything to go by—stood just to the side.
He nodded his greeting.
“Would you like anything to drink? Eat?”
He was sure he was getting close to understanding himself, and with relief, recognized that his obsession had less to do with Phoebe than it did his father’s psychology.
“Coffee,” he dismissed curtly, renewed vigour in his frame. She was just a woman, and when the threat of this news story was in the past, he’d drop her at the nearest port and sail into the sunset, happily forgetting all about her for good.
Phoebe hadn’t expectedto sleep at all well, after their charged disagreement the evening before. She’d showered furiously, scrubbing her skin until it was pink all over then pulling on an oversized t-shirt and climbing into bed. She’d stared at the ceiling, replaying every barb, insult and jibe, the scathing cynicism that had twisted his handsome face into a mask of mockery.
But at some point, the repeating performance in her mind had faded and she’d flipped onto her side, hearing only the soft waves and the gentle hum of the boat’s unfamiliar sounds—some mechanics, and occasionally, footsteps, as the crew moved around. When she did fall asleep, it was with visions of vines scrambling up old houses in Cinque Terre, and she smiled softly in her dreams.
She hadn’t expected to fall asleep, nor to sleep easily, but when she woke, the sun was high in the sky and the day was already warm. She sat upright with a start, looking around almost guiltily.
As a child, her father had berated them for sleeping in. She had far too many memories of him storming into the small room she shared with Dale, slamming open the door until it hit the wall and the cheap, magazine covers hung in dollar store frames would jangle against the fibro walls. “Get up,” he’d roar, spittle at the sides of his mouth, and Phoebe had always known that if they weren’t quick, he’d have the paddle ready.
The training of childhood rarely receded as an adult, and she struggled to shake that morning alarm, even now.
Pushing her feet over the edge of the bed, heart racing, it took several gulps of clean sea air to calm her nerves and to remind herself that those memories were more than a decade old. He couldn’t hurt her anymore. He couldn’t touch her.
