Page 5 of Dimistrios's Bought Mistress
But that was what he was, wasn’t it? This Lycos Dimistrios, a pirate who seized the property of others. Who helped himself to it.
Lycos snapped open the lid of his suitcase, which he’d lifted onto the bed. It was an old-fashioned bed with a metal frame and a thick mattress that was covered with a quilt. The furniture was equally old-fashioned. A sturdy wooden dressing table, a large wooden wardrobe and a pair of straw-seated upright chairs. Knotted rugs lay either side of the wide bed and the rest of the floor was bare wooden boards that had been polished smooth over the years. Flowered curtains hung either side of the window. He opened the window to let in fresh air and the curtains rustled in the warm breeze. He sifted through his clothes and selected a polo shirt and casual chinos. He slipped on the chinos, dropping the thin towel he’d found in the bathroom—as old-fashioned as the bedroom, though sufficiently functional for his needs—from around his hips. As he pulled the polo shirt down over his torso he wandered to the window. The morning was heating up. He wondered if the place had a pool. A swim might be welcome later.
He frowned. Later? Was there going to be a later? Wasn’t he simply going to eat, get shown round the place—however unwillingly—and then set off for Paris again? The interruption to his journey being as brief as that?
He stood, thoughts revolving, looking out of the window. It overlooked the rear of the house, out over the garden. Or should that be gardens, plural? They seemed extensive, sloping down through a couple of terraced levels to a hedge, beyond which seemed to be a field of lavender. He caught a whiff of the fragrance, borne towards him on the light breeze. To either side of the gardens were trees—citrus from the look of them and mulberry—creating a sheltered seclusion. Bougainvillea tumbled over low walls separating the terraced levels. Oleanders and olive trees lined the far edge of the next level. And immediately below his window, a wide stone-paved terrace was dotted with a multitude of terracotta pots bearing vividly hued geraniums. Another scent caught at him, besides that of lavender on the breeze. Coffee. He glanced sideways, taking in an ironwork table, shaded by a faded striped awning pulled out from the wall of the house above a pair of French windows. Breakfast was being set out for him.
He turned away, hungry suddenly. The two croissants he’d demolished en route from the village seemed a long time ago, and completely inadequate.
He wanted to eat. He wanted to see his new possession. And most of all, he realised with a mixture of self-mockery, purely masculine anticipation and something he could not identify so dismissed accordingly, he wanted to see the woman who said she still owned what he had, as it happened, acquired for himself.
Acquired on the turn of a card.
Like everything else he owned.
And now he owned this place too.
Arielle slid open the barn doors. The hens, followed by the ducks, surged out hungrily. She fetched their feed from the feedstore, added it to a bowl and took it to their pecking ground on the rough area beside the barns beyond the gateway. Averting her eyes from the monstrous car pulled up on the drive, she felt emotion stab.
Tight-mouthed, she went back into the kitchen, snatching up the baguette and bag of croissants from the bench as she passed it. She was in no mood to lift a finger over breakfast for the man who was taking her home from her, but alienating him might not be wise. He might order her to leave immediately, without time to make her preparations. Without time to pack up her belongings, arrange for the poultry to go to her neighbours and send her piano to the locallycée.
So she put the coffee on, sliced up the baguette and set it out with the croissants, put out some butter and apricotjam, heated the milk, set crockery and cutlery on a large tray, and then carried it all through to the parlour and then out to the terrace.
She stopped dead. He was already by the ironwork table, this Lycos Dimistrios whoever he was. She neither knew nor cared. But it was impossible not to let her gaze go to him and not just because of the threat he presented. No, it was quite a different reason.
Dressed in his tuxedo, with his open-necked dress shirt, loosened black tie and the darkly shadowed jawline, he’d looked a mix of elegant and decidedly rough. It had done things to her she’d had no business experiencing, let alone acknowledging. Now, though, his image was quite different. His jaw was smooth. His hair, still damp from his shower, feathered across his brow and his torso was sleekly contained within a dark blue polo shirt that moulded a clearly muscled chest and shoulders. Aleather-strapped watch snaked around one wrist, echoing the leather belt on his pale chinos snaking around his lean hips. He looked expensively, casually devastating and she felt an entirely inappropriate hollow start up in her as she reacted with an entirely irrelevant female response.
One thing, though, had not changed—the piercing gaze aimed at her from his unreadable dark eyes.
Though her tee shirt was baggy and her cut offs revealed nothing of her legs but her calves, she felt suddenly underdressed.
For a moment he said nothing and nor did she. Then, abruptly, Arielle deposited the tray on the table and proceeded to unload it. As she did, he pulled out an iron chair and sat himself down.
‘That coffee smells good, but is there no juice?’ he asked, reaching for the basket with the baguette and croissants and helping himself.
Without a word, Arielle went back inside. In the kitchen she lifted four oranges from their bowl on the dresser, juiced them manually, poured the results into a glass and carried it back out. Silently, she put the glass down in front of him.
He glanced at her, busy with buttering his bread, then reached for the jar of apricot jam.
‘Merci,’he said absently as he examined the jam jar. ‘This looks home-made.’
Arielle sat down. ‘A neighbour makes it. She grows a lot of apricots. I swap it for marmalade, as I grow a lot of oranges. As you can tell from the fresh juice.’
He lifted the glass and drank from it. ‘That’s good,’ he said and nodded.
‘I’m so glad it meets your approval,’ Arielle said sweetly.
His glance pierced her. ‘Considering they are my orange trees that is just as well,’ he said.
She made no attempt to answer. After breakfast would come a conversation she could not avoid. She felt as if claws of emotions had gripped her stomach—fear and dread.
She reached for a croissant, poured herself a coffee with hot milk, then dipped the croissant in it.
‘I take mine black,’ Lycos Dimistrios said, demolishing another slice of baguette and jam.
‘Help yourself,’ she invited, with the same acidic sweetness.
One dark eyebrow lifted. ‘Just to the coffee?’ he rejoined tauntingly.
