Consequence Of The Greek's Revenge. Trish Morey
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couldn’t speak. She couldn’t believe anyone was talking to her this way, let alone a stranger.
‘No,’ he said into the silence between them, swirling his own coffee in his big hand. Long tapered fingers, she noticed, dusted with tiny dark hairs and finished with neatly trimmed nails. ‘We’ve never met,’ he said, without taking his dark eyes from hers. ‘There is no way I would have forgotten, if we had.’
His eyes and words combined so it felt like a velvet glove stroking its way down her spine, and it was so long since she’d felt anything close to a spark of attraction, an eternity it seemed, that she could almost forgive him for initiating a conversation no stranger had a right to.
And for all she knew there should be no reason to stay and talk, her coffee finished, for some reason she was tempted to linger, and experience these foreign feelings just that bit longer.
‘My name is Alexios,’ he offered, and she knew he was in no rush to go anywhere in a hurry either.
‘Athena,’ she said.
‘Ah. Goddess of wisdom and craft.’
She smiled. ‘Not to mention goddess of war.’
He conceded her point with a tilt of his head, his dark hair glossy under the sun’s light. ‘True enough, yet possessing a calm temperament and moving slowly to anger, and then only to fight for just causes.’
‘You know your ancient Greek mythology,’ she said, impressed.
He shrugged. ‘I am Greek,’ he said, confirming what she’d suspected, even though they’d been speaking in English. ‘It would be ignorant of me to be unaware of my heritage.’
‘And so, Alexios—’ She thought for a moment. ‘That would make you a defender of mankind, am I right?’
He smiled, and again she was taken aback by how good-looking he was when he smiled, his lips framed by his shadowed face, darker in the cleft of his jaw, while the unbuttoned neck of his shirt shifted softly in the breeze, drawing her eyes further south, the stark white linen contrasting with the slice of olive skin of his throat and chest.
‘The goddess of war and the defender of mankind,’ he said. ‘The world would be a safer place in our joint hands, don’t you think?’
And suddenly she realised she’d been staring at him and she looked hastily away, knowing he was flirting with her, and finding herself enjoying it, even if she wasn’t sure how to respond. She didn’t do flirting. It felt like for ever since she’d felt carefree enough and interested enough to make a first move, let alone a second. ‘I don’t know about that.’
A couple squeezed past then, an American and his wife, fresh from a cruise ship and full of excited chatter at the view, and she took advantage of the distraction to shift her chair and turn her attention out over the caldera again, feigning interest in the sideways sway of the cruise ships at anchor, and the steady movement of tenders to and fro. She was nothing more than a temporary diversion in her visitor’s day. He’d soon finish his coffee and move on.
‘I have a problem,’ he said, refusing to cooperate with her expectations. ‘Maybe the woman named for the goddess of wisdom could help me.’
She looked back at him, setting her eyes to narrow, suddenly suspicious. ‘I don’t see how.’
‘You see, soon the sun will set on the most romantic island in the world, and I am eating alone.’
‘And what does that have to do with me?’
‘You could help me, very much, if you would agree to dine with me.’
She sighed, taking one last look over the sparkling waters of the caldera, feeling disappointed now. Conversation with a stranger who made her skin tingle over a shared table was one thing, dinner was another. She’d heard stories about the men who preyed on lonely women promising them all kinds of romance, and attraction was just the kind of thing that would tempt a woman to let down her guard.
And after this morning’s stunning revelations, she had more reason than ever to be wary. He couldn’t know. Nobody outside that office could possibly know, but she’d been warned to be careful, given her inheritance, and that just meant being more careful than ever.
‘I’m sorry. I’m not looking for a gigolo. Maybe you should advertise your...’ she allowed her eyes to roam purposefully over the olive-skinned vee of his chest ‘...problem, somewhere else.’
He leaned back in his chair and laughed, his shirt pulled taut over a sculpted chest so she could see the dark circles and the hard nubs of his nipples, and she could almost smell the testosterone rolling off him in waves. ‘Nobody has ever called me a gigolo before.’
She forced her eyes back to his. He was attractive. Sexy. What of it? ‘No? You don’t make a habit of picking up sad-and-lonely-looking women in bars here on Santorini?’
‘Only the very beautiful ones.’
It was her turn to laugh. She couldn’t help it. It was a ridiculous conversation and the man was outrageous, but at the same time he was like a breath of fresh air in her out-of-kilter world. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed.
He was smiling now himself. ‘You see? You should laugh more. You are even more beautiful when you laugh.’
She could say the same about him. His smile lines complemented without weakening the hard angles of his jaw, the harsh line of his mouth had softened, his lips turned up. Warmer.
And his eyes—his eyes looked at her as if he knew her. It was disconcerting. She blinked that thought away. Nobody knew who she was. Nobody knew she was here. She’d left the lawyer’s offices and headed straight to her apartment to pack a carry bag, booking a flight in the taxi on the way to the airport.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘What’s it to be? Dinner with me or a night alone and morose and a lifetime spent regretting it?’
‘You’re very sure of yourself.’
‘I’m very sure of the fact I want to have dinner with you. I want to get to know you better.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I have a feeling I’m going to like what I discover. Very much.’
She shook her head. It was ridiculous to feel half tempted. She didn’t do blind dates. She didn’t let herself get picked up in cafés. She didn’t let herself get picked up, period. And that little voice in her head asking her why not just this one time could just get back in its box and shut up, especially given the lawyers’ warnings.
Except the voice in her head was conspiring with Alexios’s pleading dark chocolate eyes to resist arrest. Why shouldn’t she have dinner with this man? it argued. What was wrong with feeling attracted to him and actually acting on it? Nobody knew who she was, and even if people had seen photos of her in the press, she was no household name. People might think she looked familiar, but she hadn’t been interesting or scandalous enough to become common paparazzi fodder—not for a long time.
After the undisciplined years of her late teens, she’d made sure of that. She’d been cautious. Responsible. Determined to keep out of the public eye as much as possible. Which meant not taking unnecessary risks, however good-looking those risks might be.
‘No,’ she said finally, common sense winning over recklessness, not letting him argue further when he raised one hand as if to protest. ‘I’m afraid not. Thanks for the conversation. It’s been...’
‘Tempting?’
‘Interesting.’ Although she knew his word was far closer to the truth.
Someone brushed quickly behind her before moving away—a waiter gathering cups and plates, she presumed—so she had to wait a few moments until she could push her chair back. ‘It’s been lovely chatting. Have a pleasant evening.’ And then she reached beside her to where she’d