The Balfour Legacy. Кэрол Мортимер
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observed the change in her as she talked. Her voice had taken on a warm and earthy vibrancy Nikos had not heard before. The young waiter fell in love with her as Nikos watched. She had no idea of the power she was wielding, had not even noticed the waiter’s darkened eyes and the raised colour in his face. When her slender hands joined in the conversation the waiter was hooked, his eyes fixed on the creamy cleavage on show behind the expressive fingers.
And Nikos felt a sudden blistering urge to punch the young fool! Perhaps he moved, he wasn’t sure, but something made the waiter glance his way. The next second he was rushing out an apology and moving away at lightning speed.
‘He comes from San Marcello,’ Mia enlightened him as if his Italian was not good enough to follow their conversation, and with no clue at all what had made the waiter take flight as if someone had set fire to his heels.
Nikos knew. He could still feel the trails of it lingering behind his veiling eyelids. ‘A neighbour, then,’ he murmured.
‘Sí, by a hilltop or two.’ Settling back into her seat she shook the silky fall of her hair back from her face, then picked up her menu.
When he continued to sit there doing and saying nothing she glanced up at him and frowned, then followed it up with a sigh. ‘OK, what have I done to annoy you this time?’ she demanded. ‘Have I broken some very important rule of dining that is likely to earn me a plate of cold food?’
‘Brunel would call it breaking the rules anyway,’ he responded impassively.
‘Brunel…? What has he got to do with…’
Enlightenment dawned. Mia flicked a look across the restaurant to where the friendly waiter now stood to attention, striving to keep his eyes away from this corner of the room.
‘You are accusing me of flirting,’ she said in a hushed breath of stunned disbelief.
Nikos picked up his menu and opened it. ‘You tied him in knots. For a few interesting seconds I thought he was going to pull out a chair and join us.’
‘We were just talking about Italy!’ Mia impressed upon him in self-defence.
‘I got this really bad feeling that I was about to be sidelined. Not good for my ego at all.’ Nikos smiled. ‘Lesson one in the use of social skills, cara, concentrate solely on the man you are dining with.’
Not quite sure if she was supposed to laugh at the ridiculous image Nikos had constructed of the waiter muscling in on him, he diverted her with, ‘What would you like to eat?’
Mia dutifully buried her attention on the menu. A different waiter arrived to take their order. Nikos delivered it in the clipped cool tone that did not encourage the waiter to linger.
‘Talk to me,’ he said abruptly once they were alone again.
Lifting up her face she asked, ‘What about?’
‘Anything—the wine.’ He indicated to her glass.
Dutifully picking up her wine glass Mia sipped. ‘Nice,’ she said.
‘Is that it?’
‘Is this another lesson in social dining?’ she dared.
‘No.’ He almost let a smile catch hold of his mouth. ‘It is simply a request for you to extend your answer. You are Italian. I cannot believe you don’t have a better opinion about wine than just nice.’
Be interesting, in other words. Well, OK, she could try to do that, Mia decided, relaxing back into her seat. ‘Tia Giulia and I make our own wine from our own grapes,’ she announced. ‘It’s just a hobby really, but our wine tastes easily as good as this very expensive wine…’ she said with a wave of her glass. ‘We pick and tread the grapes in the traditional manner with our skirts held up like so—’ she gestured, unaware how entirely she had captured her audience ‘—and we laugh a lot—it is supposed to be good for the taste. If it is a good year, our neighbours will come to exchange other produce for bottles of our wine. Tia has some really wonderful old oak barrels in the cellar…’
Their first course arrived and Mia kept talking through it, taking a small forkful of sea bass laced with a delicious sauce she had never tasted before.
‘Your life in Tuscany was very different from the one you’re living now,’ Nikos observed when she paused for a breath.
Mia nodded, eyes shadowing as she sat forward to pick up her glass. ‘Do you miss Greece when you are away from it?’
‘Not particularly,’ he said. ‘I fly in and out of Athens too often to miss it.’
‘Family, then,’ she probed.
‘None.’ The way he carefully veiled his eyes made Mia frown because she was almost certain she’d just hit a raw nerve. ‘Tell me why you left it so long to contact Oscar.’ As neatly as that he turned the conversation away from him and back on to her.
‘Because I only discovered I had a father this year—on my twenty-first birthday to be exact…’
She went on to explain about discovering Oscar, in between savouring forkfuls of food. She didn’t notice that Nikos barely touched the food on his plate, or that he rarely removed his dark eyes from her face. She was not aware that he kept filling up her wine glass or that her tongue was loosening the more that she drank. By the time their dessert arrived she was feeling so mellow she even reached across the table to spoon up a sample of his untouched dessert and teased him with her laughing eyes as she placed the stolen morsel in her mouth.
‘I have a sweet tooth.’
‘Among other things,’ he murmured oddly.
About to ask him what he meant by that—
‘Do you want coffee?’ he got in before her.
‘And spoil the taste of the wine? Grazie, no,’ she refused.
‘Then if you’ve finished do you mind if we leave now?’
‘Oh…’ Mia tensed, her slender spine arching up on the sudden realisation that she’d talked his socks off all the way through the meal! It was no wonder he was wearing that blank expression on his face. ‘I had lost track of how long we have been here…’
‘And the restaurant has emptied,’ Nikos pointed out dryly. ‘We’re the last ones here…’
Flickering a surprised glance around the empty tables she noticed the restaurant staff standing around, trying hard not to look impatient for them to leave. ‘Why didn’t you say something sooner?’ she whispered from the depths of a sinking embarrassment.
‘You were enjoying your meal. There was no need to rush.’ With the merest glance in the waiter’s direction he brought him rushing to his side. ‘My companion’s jacket,’ he instructed, handing over a credit card. ‘You have time to finish your wine,’ he indicated smoothly to Mia, as if she would dare to take another sip!
‘No.’ She stood. ‘I think I’ve had enough.’ A flush of hot colour was burning her cheeks.
She wanted to die where she stood—deflate like a balloon and disappear altogether. She almost snatched her jacket from the waiter when he arrived with it, so eager to remove herself from here now that she could barely stop herself from doing it at a run.
The waiter was handing Nikos his credit card. Mia fumbled in her urgency to drag her jacket on and missed slotting her arm in the sleeve.
‘Allow me…’
She froze as Nikos took the garment from her and politely held it open, ready for her to slip it on. Her hair became trapped inside the black satin and she used the need to release it as an excuse to keep her head lowered so no one could see how hot her face had gone.
Outside the cool night air hit her like an icy slap in the face and she shivered. Nikos placed a hand against her lower back to walk her towards his waiting