Page 17 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
In the early days, Selwen had been on guard for any stray hint that someone might know something about her that she didn’t. She’d been on guard, even in Ffion’s tiny, picturesque village. She had been ready for people to come leaping out of the shops, or to stop her on the streets. But it had never happened.
She’d begun to think it never would.
And as tempting as it was to simply tell Thanasis that he was mad, that he didn’t know her, that she couldn’t be theSaskiahe kept mentioning, she had to face a few unpleasant facts that she’d been avoiding as she lay about in that bedroom. Out here with all the wild Greek sunshine dancing between them and his dark gaze on her like he was still lost somewhere in that kiss, there was no hiding from it.
She could, in fact, be his Saskia, whoever that was. She could be anyone.
Selwen didn’tknow,was the thing.
Another problem was that while she found Thanasis overwhelming in every regard, what she didn’t think—much as she’d like to—was that he was particularly mad. No matter what Pavlos’s other children had tried to insinuate about him. What they always came back to was that Thanasis was the only one among them who was, in almost every regard, entirely his own man.
Not to mention, apparently, a spectacularly successful businessman in his own right. Even Pavlos had said so on the rare occasions he mentioned Thanasis, preferring—always—to focus on what was directly before him.
What Thanasis was or wasn’t was one thing. She could research the man if she liked. But what Selwen couldn’t deny was the fact that, however odd it was to her, he was the only man in the last five years that she’d ever had any kind of real reaction to.
Whatever that might mean, she certainly couldn’t investigate it without talking to the man himself. Or without finding out what it was he thought he knew about her.
“Why don’t you tell me about this Saskia of yours,” she said, when it seemed that he was prepared to sit there and gaze at her forever. “You said you thought she was dead. Why?”
The sunlight was just as bright. The calls of the sea birds, wheeling about in the distance, was as plaintive and lovely as before. But there on the porch, with climbing vines winding their way around the posts that held up the roof and the flowers bright and happy, it was as if a storm cloud rolled in.
Selwen had to repress the urge to shiver.
Thanasis settled back in his chair and regarded her with that fathomless black gaze of his. She felt a different sort of shivercreep over her as she remembered all the little scraps of things she’d heard Pavlos and his various children say about Thanasis. They didn’t like him, that was clear. Or perhaps they wished that he liked them—it was hard to say. She had gotten the impression that he was some sort of demon, out there ruining lives but doing it in such a way that he fooled everyone into imagining him a great power.
The implication had always been that he was not. That it was all smoke and mirrors.
But she could see, now, that the truth was he was all of that and more. He wasn’t anything like his siblings. She had met them all during this little whirlwind she was swept up in. They frolicked in and out of the villa, vying for Pavlos’s attention, positive or negative. They didn’t care much for Selwen, but then, they also didn’t care much for each other. They all had different mothers, they all had inflated senses of their own importance, and they were more than happy to cause trouble. They did so, often.
And meanwhile, despite all their carrying on about Thanasis, it was obvious at a glance—it had been obvious from across the hall last night—that he was nothing like them. That he did not gossip and flutter, nor flaunt himself about, nor cause whatever trouble he could.
It was obvious now, as he looked at her as if he could see deep inside her. As if his gaze was doing the same work his fingers had, finding their way deep within her, tearing her apart, making her cry out to the sky above—
She had to lift her fingers to her own mouth to make certain that her lips were shut tight. That her mouth wasn’t wide open.
And she couldn’t shake the impression that he knew exactly what she was doing. While she was doing it.
“I metthis Saskia of mine,as you put it, in an art museum in London,” he said, and once again she had the sense that hewas being very, very careful. That he had chosen his words with precision.
“Do you spend a lot of your free time swanning about art installations?” she asked, a bit tartly, because she couldn’t imagine it. This dark, broodingly powerful presence, prowling into whitewashed rooms empty of anything but a few canvases? It would be like welcoming a storm cloud into the middle of a priceless art collection. It would be unthinkable.
“I had a business meeting in the area.” And there was a certain gleam in that dark gaze of his that suggested he knew exactly what she was thinking. “I would not, as it happens, consider myself a great patron of the arts, but then, I also am not given toswanninganywhere. And I’m not certain that blobs of paint on a canvas convinced me otherwise. But you were there.”
“Shewas there,” Selwen corrected him, because that seemed of paramount importance. She had to make some distinction between who she was and whoever this Saskia was to him. Even if it turned out they were the same person, they weren’t. They couldn’t be, because she couldn’t remember him, or Saskia, or anything about an art museum in London.
She felt her own nails prick her palms, because she needed to hold on toher. Selwen. Ffion’s niece. A proper Welsh girl who cared for her aunt and kept herself to herself.
Nothing on earth could get her to surrender that girl, especially to a man like this.Nothing.
“There was something about her,” Thanasis said then, with only the faintest inflection onher.So faint that, really, Selwen shouldn’t have felt it all over her, like the heat of his body. “It wasn’t simply that she was pretty. Though she was. She was staring up at a huge canvas and she looked almost reverent, and I asked her what on earth she saw in it.” His lips curved, then, and there was something almost wry about it. And Selwen had the strangest notion that if she tried, she could almost reachout and touch the memory—but she didn’t want to reach out. She clenched her fists tighter. “So she told me her thoughts and when I expressed my skepticism, she laughed, and I will tell you this.”
He didn’t lean forward. He didn’t really seem to move at all, and yet suddenly it was as if he took over the whole of the Greek sky painted so bright and blue behind him. As if there was nothing left in the sky above or the sea all around but him and the way he was looking at her.
God help her, the way he was looking at her. He waited for her gaze to lock to his. “The world stopped. And when it started again, I was lost.”
Selwen’s heart was pounding so hard it made her worry it might break free. “I don’t know what that means.”
She didn’t know if he could hear that she was scared. Or anxious. Or whatever it was, this carbonated thing inside her that kept bubbling and bubbling, but if he noticed, he didn’t show it. “It means I asked her to let me take her out to dinner. She refused. But the next day, she met me for coffee and a walk through Borough Market. It was teeming with people. Perfectly safe.”
