‘I do,’ Cleo agreed, sure Petra hadn’t meant that to sound as it had.
‘So how are you enjoying Santorini, then?’ she asked, changing tack. ‘This is your first time here?’
Cleo relaxed again, certain she’d been reading too much into the other woman’s tone. Santorini was another topic she could easily and honestly enthuse about. ‘It’s so beautiful! You’re so lucky living here, being surrounded by all this—’ her arm swept around in an arc ‘—every day. The sights and atmosphere even the history is amazing.’
‘I’m so glad you’re enjoying it. We’re very proud of our island home. We want visitors to be happy here.’
‘I’m very happy. The sunsets are amazing.’
‘Honeymooners come here just to experience Santorini’s sunset. It’s supposed to be very romantic. What do you think?’
Cleo suddenly felt too tied in knots to answer. It was romantic, or it would be, if you were here with the right person. But Andreas wasn’t the right person, was he? They’d just been forced together by circumstances and soon she would leave. Although the way he’d looked at her the other night on the terrace…‘I guess it could be, if you were here with the right person.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m making you uncomfortable.’
‘It’s okay. It’s not like I’m here for the romance exactly.’
The other woman’s eyebrows arched approvingly. ‘No? Well, I guess in your place that’s the best way to think about it. Andreas has quite a reputation for moving on. And now I must get back to work. Thank you so much for talking with me. I feel like we’re going to be good friends while you’re here.’
‘Are you feeling any better?’ she asked as Petra retied the tiny skirt around her hips.
‘Oh, I’m feeling much better, thank you.’
Cleo watched her slip on her gold sandals and wander away, wondering why it should be that she was suddenly feeling so much worse.
‘It’s just a lump, Andreas. There’s no need to go on about it.’ Sofia Xenides stiffened her spine and sat her slim body higher on the chaise longue, her ankles crossed demurely beneath her, her coffee balanced on her knees. Andreas knew the posture, recognised it as his mother closing the subject down again.
To hell with that.
‘You should have told me.’
‘You were busy. In London apparently. And then with who knows what?’
He bristled. ‘You could have called me on my cell phone.’
‘And told you what? That I had a lump? And what could you have done besides worry?’
‘I would have made you see a doctor.’
‘Which is exactly what I did do. And tomorrow I will get the results of the biopsy and we will know. There was no point worrying you unnecessarily before, but I am glad you will be with me tomorrow. And now we have more important things to discuss. When were you planning on telling me what exactly you were doing in London?’
Andreas sighed. ‘You know, then?’
‘Petra tells me you found Darius. Is that true?’
‘I found him. He’d gambled the last of the money away, all he had left was a seedy hotel filled with mould and rising damp. He was ripe for a low-interest loan in order to fund his gambling habit.’
‘So you found him, and you exacted the revenge you have been looking for all these years. I imagine you ruined him in the process.’
‘It is no more than he did to us!’
‘Andreas,’ she sighed, ‘it is so long ago. Perhaps now you can put the past behind you?’
‘How can you say that? I will never put the past behind me. Don’t you remember what he did to us, what it was like back then? He destroyed Father and he walked away and left us with nothing. Nothing!’
She shut her eyes, as if the mention of her late husband was still painful, but a breath later she was still firm. ‘And it has driven you all these years, my son. Now that you have achieved the goal you have aimed for all your life, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?’
Andreas stared blankly out of the window and shrugged, the question unnerving him. Hadn’t he been feeling an unfamiliar lack of motivation lately, avoiding the office because suddenly it was all too uninspiring? Below the terrace lay the rolling expanse of Athens city, apartment blocks jostling with antiquities in the sprawling city. No, he was just temporarily distracted with Cleo, that was all. Soon she would be gone and he would refocus on his work again. ‘I will go on with my business,’ he said, resolutely. ‘Already the Xenides name is synonymous with the most prestigious accommodation on offer across all of Europe. I will make it even bigger, even better.’
She gave another sigh, except this one sounded less indulgent more impatient. ‘Maybe there is another goal you might pursue now.’
‘What do you mean?’ ‘Perhaps it is time you thought about family.’
‘I have never neglected you!’ Even though he felt a stab of guilt that he’d never returned her call as he’d intended.
‘Did I say you had? But the time for looking backwards is past. It is time to look to the future, and to a family of your own.’
He sighed. If this was about getting married again…And then something he’d never seen coming hit him like a brick. ‘You want grandchildren.’
‘I am a Greek mother.’ She shrugged. ‘Of course, I want grandchildren. Maybe now you have satisfied this lifelong quest for vengeance, you might find the time to provide me with some, while I can still appreciate them.’
‘Mother—’
She held up one hand to silence him. ‘I am not being melodramatic It is not just that I have had this scare and I must face the prospect of the results not going the way I would prefer, but you are not getting any younger, Andreas, and neither am I. I do not want to be too old or too sick to appreciate my grandchildren when they eventually come.’
‘Stop talking this way! I’m not about to let you die.’
‘I have no intention of dying! At least not before you bestow upon me the grandchildren I crave. I am not blind.You have quite a reputation with the women, I believe. After all this experience, do you not know what kind of woman would suit you for a wife?’
It was ridiculous to feel like blushing at something his mother said, and he wouldn’t, but still her veiled reference to his many lovers made him so uncomfortable he couldn’t bring himself to answer. Besides, could he in all honesty answer? The women he had through his bed had one resounding attribute, but it hardly made them wife material.
‘Petra said you have a woman staying with you.’
He almost growled. Petra had always been like family, they’d practically grown up together, but there were times he resented the closeness and the fact Petra knew his mother so well. This was one of those times.
‘It’s none of Petra’s business. Or yours, for that matter.’
‘Tsh, tsh. Who else can ask if I can’t? Petra said she’s an Australian woman. Quite pretty, in her own way.’
She was more than pretty, he wanted to argue, until another thought blew all thoughts of argument out of the water.
And she could be pregnant.
They’d had unprotected sex. Twice. Right now she could be carrying his seed.
A baby. His mother could have the grandchild she yearned for. And as for him? He would have Cleo.
Strange, how that thought didn’t send his blood into a tailspin.
But marriage? Was that what he wanted? He took a deep breath. But his mother would expect it, and, besides, there was no way he could not marry the mother of his child. Especially not now.
Granted, they’d shared but a few short days, less than two weeks, but those days had been good. The nights even better. Surely there could be worse outcomes?
‘Petra said—’
He snapped away from possibilities and turned back to the present. ‘Petra talks too much!’
‘Andreas, she only wants the best for you, just as I do. In fact, I once wondered if—’
It was like a bad soap opera. Or a train wreck where you couldn’t look away. He had to keep going till the bitter end. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, you and Petra have lived together for a long time now.’
‘We share a building, not a bed!’ And the mood his mother was in, he wasn’t about to confess that they had. Once.
‘And,’ she continued, without missing a beat, ‘you have so much in common.’
‘She works for me. Of course, we have a lot in common.’
‘Anyway,’ Sofia said with a resigned shrug of her shoulders before she turned her attention to pick at an invisible speck of nothingness alongside her on the sofa, ‘sometimes we don’t realise what’s right there in front of us, right under our noses. Not until it’s gone.’
His teeth ground together. ‘I’m not marrying Petra.’
She smiled up at him, blinking innocently as if his outburst had come from nowhere. ‘Whoever said you would? I just wondered, that’s all. And there’s nothing wrong with a mother wondering, is there, Andreas? Much better to consider the options than to let the grass grow beneath your feet.’
The grass was feeling comfortable enough where he was standing right now. Or it had been, until his mother had laced its green depths with barbs that tore at the soles of his feet and pricked at his conscience.