And something that might even help persuade her to stay.
Why she was so vehement about leaving, he didn’t understand She loved it here, she loved all of it, even coming to terms with the fact the islands were part of a volcanic system that had been changing over thousands of years and would keep on changing.
But he was determined to make her change her mind and he was confident he could do it. Everyone had their price. A million dollars had got her here.
He didn’t care how much it took to keep her.
An hour later, Andreas excused himself to make a phone call and Cleo happily agreed to wait, a rack of blue-beaded key rings catching her attention. It was probably time she thought about buying a few souvenirs to take home. The last two weeks had gone in a flash. The next couple of weeks would probably fly past even quicker.
She dodged out of the way of a group of tourists taking up the width of the street. The streets of Fira were busy today, the day tourists growing in number by the minute, making the narrow lanes and streets even more crowded. If she’d known, she might have stayed at home.
Home.
Now there was a notion. Since when had the mansion she was temporarily occupying ever been her home?
A silver donkey key ring caught her eye, strung on blue cotton with blue beads that looked like eyes. She selected two. Her half-brothers would both love one. She found another, with spinning letter beads that spelt out SANTORINI with more of the eye beads and a beautiful blue stone at the base. Her mother, she decided instantly, slipping it from the rack.
Now she just needed something for her step father. She looked over the racks and decided that with the blue beads there was nothing ‘blokey’ enough, so her gaze widened, her eyes scanning the contents of the store for that perfect easy-to-pack memento.
And that was when she saw him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HE WAS checking out the postcards, his face and chest puffier than Cleo remembered, or maybe that was just because they were both pink from the sun, and his arm looped around the shoulders of a girl who looked as stringy as her hair.
He was here.
The key rings slipped from her fingers, clattering to the floor.
‘I’m sorry to leave you so long.’ She registered Andreas’ voice, clung onto the sound like a lifeline even as he bent down to pick up the items she’d dropped. ‘Cleo, what’s wrong? You look ill.’
‘That’s him,’ she croaked through a throat clamped as tight as every muscle and organ in her body. ‘That’s Kurt.’
Kurt chose that moment to widen his own search, scanning the shop for opportunities. He looked around, the skin between his eyes creasing into a frown when he saw Andreas scowling at him, a frown that became confused when he looked at the woman alongside the stranger, until the moment he recognised her and his expression became one of abject terror. He tugged, already half outside the shop himself, at the girl next to him who was busy trying on sunglasses. Kurt didn’t care, the need to escape clearly paramount, as he dragged his protesting girlfriend out with him, the unpurchased sunglasses still covering her eyes.
‘Stay here,’Andreas said, barking out orders to the proprietor in Greek in the same breath before he took off after Kurt. A moment later a woman brought Cleo a chair, insisting she sit down, clucking over her like a mother hen as she pressed a bottle of spring water into her hands. Cleo didn’t argue. She was still punch-drunk from seeing Kurt.
So he’d come to Santorini. All that talk of the Greek Islands hadn’t been for nothing. But who was the girl? Someone he’d picked up on the Internet who did make the grade? She didn’t want to feel hard done by, she had had a complete wardrobe and cosmetic makeover, but surely even before all that she’d been a cut above her?
God, was she that much of a loser that she couldn’t even hang onto a man like Kurt?
The woman returned to her side, pressing a small plastic Santorini shopping bag into her hands. The key rings of course, she thought as she felt the beads inside.Andreas must have passed them on to her. She reached for her purse but the woman waved her away. ‘No charge,’she said, smiling, bowling Cleo over with more of the warmth and hospitality she’d found everywhere on the island, so that her eyes threatened to spill over with it.
It seemed to take for ever but it was probably only fifteen minutes and Andreas was back. She stood to greet him. ‘How are you feeling now?’ he asked, collecting her inside his arm.
‘Better, thanks. What happened to Kurt?’
‘I’ll tell you once we’re alone.’ And she understood why. There was a crowd gathered around the store now, sensing the excitement, wanting to find out what was happening and be part of the action, a crowd that seemed suddenly fascinated in blue-beaded key rings and postcards and bookmarks featuring church domes and cats.
She turned to the beaming proprietor, who was busy exchanging Euros for trinkets, but not too busy to be able to do two things at once. ‘Efharisto poli,’ she said, in her slowly improving Greek, repeating it in English in case she’d made a complete hash of the words. ‘Thank you, so much,’ and the woman beamed and nodded and replied with a torrent of words Cleo was at a loss to understand. ‘What did she say?’ she asked as soon as they’d re-entered the busy street and he’d steered her towards the mansion.
Andreas didn’t look at her, his gaze fixed somewhere ahead, his jaw tight. ‘She said we would have beautiful children.’
‘Oh. How…quaint.’
Andreas didn’t answer. He was too busy wanting to believe it.
‘I believe this is yours.’ Staff had brought coffee and pastries to a table on the mansion terrace overlooking the caldera that Cleo knew should be listed as one of the wonders of the world, when Andreas handed her the envelope.
She eyed it suspiciously. ‘What is it?’
He pressed the envelope into her hands. ‘Take a look.’
She opened the flap and peered inside. A stack of notes sat plump and fat inside. She frowned. ‘What is this?’
‘I had a chat to your former friend.’
‘You mean Kurt? You’re kidding! You got Nanna’s money back. I don’t believe it!’
‘It seemed he was only too happy to refund you the money he’d borrowed from you in order to escape a charge of shop lifting, plus a bonus for the inconvenience he caused you along the way.’
‘Shoplifting?’
‘The sunglasses. His girlfriend didn’t have time to put them back on the rack. It ended up being a handy levering device. It seems he didn’t want to hang around on Santorini and explain it to the police when his cruise ship was sailing tonight.’
It really didn’t matter how or why, it didn’t matter that soon Cleo would have more than enough money to repay her many times over, the simple fact was it was her grandmother’s money she was getting back, the money she had entrusted to Kurt and haplessly thrown away in the same instant. And getting it back was as if she hadn’t lost it at all. ‘Thank you,’ she said, throwing her arms around his neck. ‘I love you so much.’
It wasn’t so much hearing her own words. It was feeling his hands still at her sides that alerted her. She slid down his body, appalled at the gaffe she’d just made. ‘That’s just a figure of speech in Australia. A kind of thank you. Because I really appreciate what you’ve done.’
‘I understand,’ he said, but still putting her away from him as he was suddenly craving distance. ‘I need to drop by the office, check everything is all right, given Petra is sick. Will you be okay?’
She nodded stoically, thinking that if Andreas had wanted her to stay longer before, he’d no doubt now want her gone tomorrow. ‘Of course. I’ll see you later.’
And then Andreas was gone and Cleo was left alone, in the sun and breeze and clear blue sky. There were clouds gathering in the distance, she noted absently, thinking that maybe they were in for a storm, while at the same time wishing that one day she would learn not to be so impetuous and admit things she didn’t really feel.
Because she hadn’t really loved Kurt. She could see that now. She was in love with the idea of being in love and being loved and she’d wanted it to work. So desperately that she’d thought that once they’d had sex, she should tell him that she loved him.
And she didn’t really love Andreas either. Not really. He was just kind and she was just grateful and it was crazy to think, that just because he had behaved better to her than Kurt, this gratefulness she felt for him was somehow love.
Liar.
An inner voice brought her to task. She didn’t want to stay because she knew what would happen. Not that she was at risk of falling in love with him, but because she would be at risk of loving him more.
Because she already loved him.
The wind whipped stronger around her, the cruise ships below straining at their chains. Kurt was down there, she realised, on board one of those ships and soon to sail once more out of her life.
But Kurt was nothing to her now. As Andreas had said, that first night they’d made love—had sex—Kurt had given her nothing.
It was Andreas who had given her everything. It was Andreas who had opened her heart.
It was Andreas she loved.
Andreas reread the fax with increasing frustration. There was a problem with the paperwork on the takeover of Darius’ hotel. The bank needed more signatures. His. Or the papers could not be processed and the transaction could not proceed and Darius would retain ownership by default.