'Leave me be, Gabriela,' she said. 'I must feel useful or I may as well take to my bed and wait for God to come and get me.'
'Wait for God indeed,' Gabriela mocked as she went to sit down and the older woman crossed the room to set down the tray. 'What you need, Thea, is to be taken out of yourself. When was the last time you left this brown dot of an island?'
'This brown dot is Pascalis land,' the old lady responded.
'And you might not have liked it here, but I love it.'
'Which did not answer my question.'
'I do not recall when I last left it.'
'Then it is high time that you did. Since Alexander refuses to let me make-over his wife, I think I will take you to Milan, Thea, and we will give you a complete make-over then find you a passionate man who will stop you talking about waiting for God.'
To Nell's surprise the old lady let out an amused chuckle. 'He will be too old to fulfil my hidden passions.'
'Not these days, carisima,' Xander's mother came back. 'Today the old men have the Viagra to maintain their flagging passions and will be very useful indeed to you. No, don't sit down right over there, Helen. Come and sit here beside me.'
'Wicked creature.' Sophia spoke over Gabriela's command while Nell meekly did as she had been told. 'If my nephew were still alive he would lock you in your room for speaking so disrespectfully to me.'
'Ah, four years and I still miss Demitri,' Gabriela sighed wistfully.
'I was twenty-three when the war took my Gregoris and made me a widow but I still miss him every single day.'
It was news to Nell that Thea Sophia had been married! 'You miss his passions, Sophia?' Gabriela prodded teasingly.
'Of course!' the old lady declared. 'He was a big, strong, handsome man-as with all the Pascalis men. My bed felt cold for years.'
'I understand the feeling,' Gabriela sighed. 'Maybe we should go to Milan to find ourselves a new man each. A cold bed is no pleasure, Thea. You would have liked my husband, cara.' She turned to include Nell in the conversation. 'Alexander is just like him-hewn from rock on the outside and deliciously protective by nature, but so jealously possessive of me that he rarely let me out of his sight. Yet what did he do but go and die in two short seconds while I was out of the room!'
'What is this-a wake?' Xander strode in on the conversation, wearing pale chinos and a fresh white shirt.
'Your father was my one abiding love,' his mother said sadly.
'Maybe he was, but you...'
The rest of the 'but' was completed in some cutting Italian that literally froze the discussion and turned Gabriela pale.
Thea Sophia recovered first, bursting into a flurry of chatter as she handed out the small cups of strong black Greek coffee and Nell puzzled over what Xander could he have said this time to destroy his mother as effectively as that.
She cast him a hateful look, which he returned with a grimace that seemed to say he was already regretting whatever he'd said. But no apology was offered and after giving him as long as it took him to lower himself into the chair he had been occupying earlier, Nell flicked him another hard look then turned to Gabriela.
'A trip to Milan sounds very exciting,' she said. 'I've never been there and I've had a yen to have my hair cut-short and spiky,' she added for good measure while Gabriela's eyes began to glow. She knew what Nell was doing and it was working. Xander shifted in his chair. 'Perhaps I could come with you,' she suggested. 'It would be fun to spend lots of money on new clothes and things, try out a new image-'
'Try for a full recovery before you make any plans,' Xander grimly put in.
'I am recovered,' Nell insisted. He was eyeing her narrowly, warming sparks glinting at her now instead of his mother. 'I've had two whole weeks under Thea Sophia's tender care to aid my recovery.'
'You were the good patient,' Sophia put in, bending to pat Nell's cheek fondly as she handed her a cup of coffee. 'You should have seen the extent of her bruising, Gabriela,' she declared in dismay. 'No wonder Alexander could not bear to look at them. Where were his protective instincts when this poor girl drove her flimsy car into a tree? She was bruised from here to here.' A gnarled hand drew a slashing left-to-right diagonal line in the air across Nell's chest then added the other line across her stomach.
Nell saw Xander's brows shift into a sharp frown as he watched the vivid demonstration take place.
'Car seat-belt burns, Helen called them,' his aunt continued in disgust. 'I call them criminal. Who would want to ever wear a seat belt again if they had suffered such damage?'
'Think of the damage without the belt, Thea,' her great-nephew pointed out. 'Nell lost her appendix, cracked her ribs and got off lightly into the bargain, if you want the truth.'
'While you were on the other side of the world getting your name in the newspapers and-'
'That is enough, Sophia...'
It was Gabriela's quiet command that brought a halt to it, her dark eyes flickering from Nell's suddenly pale face to her son's cold, closed one. The old lady resorted to mumbled Greek as she bustled back to her coffee tray, leaving a tense silence in her wake.
It screeched in Nell's head like chalk across a blackboard, a white chalk that had scraped itself across her cheeks. She wanted to jump up and run out of the room but she didn't think her trembling limbs would make it. So she stared down at the brimming cup of strong black coffee she balanced on its saucer and tried to swallow the lump of humiliation that was blocking her throat. She'd known that her useless marriage was public property so why should she feel so upset that Thea Sophia was so willing to remark on it?
Xander shifted in his chair and she flinched a look at him from beneath her eyelashes. His eyes were fixed on her, narrowed and intense. The lump in her throat changed into a burn as tears decided to take its place. In desperation she turned to Gabriela. 'How-how long do you plan on staying?' she asked in a polite voice that came out too husky.
Her mother-in-law was looking at her in dark sympathy, which hurt almost as much as Thea's thoughtless words had done. As Gabriela opened her mouth to answer, Xander got there before her.
'She will not be staying.' It was blunt to the point of rude. Nell ignored him. 'It w-would be nice if you could stay a few days,' she invited. 'W-we could get to know each other better-'
'My mother does not do getting-to-know-you, agape mou,' Xander's hateful voice intruded yet again. 'She lives a much too rarefied life, hmm, Madre?'
Gabriela's lips snapped together then opened again. Like Nell, she was grimly ignoring her sarcastic son. 'I am afraid I cannot stay,' she murmured apologetically. 'I came because I need to discuss some business with my son.'
'Just business?' he mocked.
Nell couldn't take any more, ridding herself of the coffee cup, she jumped to her feet. 'What is it with you?' she flashed at the sarcastic devil. 'Trying to have a polite conversation with you around is like living inside a tabloid newspaper-full of sarcasm and innuendo!'
'That just about covers it,' Xander agreed.
'Oh, why don't you just shut up?' she cried, making Thea Sophia jerk to attention, and Gabriela's eyes opened wide. 'You know what your problem is, Xander? You are still that resentful little boy who swam alone in the sea. You forgot to grow up!'
'I forgot to grow up?' Xander climbed to his feet. 'Where the hell have you been for the last year?'
'Right where you put me until I decided I'd had enough of it,' Nell answered fiercely. Cheeks hot now, green eyes alight with rage.
'So you decided it would be fun to drive you car into a tree?' Fun? He thought she had done it for fun? 'Well, we all know what you were doing because you featured in the newspapers so prominently,' she tossed back. 'Would you like me to tell them what I was doing while I was having fun crashing my car’.
'Watch it, Nell.'
Now he was deadly serious. You could cut the tension with a knife. Nell's chin shot up. Xander towered over her by several intimidating inches but she faced up to his threatening stance.
Shall I tell them? her angry eyes challenged him while their audience sat riveted and the desire to unlock her aching throat and shatter his impossible pride to smithereens set the blood pounding in her head. His face did not move, not even by an eyelash, hard, handsome and utterly unyielding like a perfectly sculptured mask. The cold eyes, the flat lips, the flaring nostrils-he was warning her not to do it-daring her to do it.
The pounding changed to a violent tingling. Taking Xander on was becoming a drug that sang like a craving she just had to feed. Her lips parted, quivering, and that stone-like expression still did not alter even though he knew it was coming, he knew!
Then another voice dropped cool, calm, curiously into the thrumming tension, 'Helen, darling, did you know you are bleeding from the base of your foot...?'
CHAPTER SIX
NELL broke vital eye contact with Xander to glance dazedly down at her foot, where, sure enough, blood was oozing onto the base of her strappy mule. The sharp stone on the hillside, she remembered, and was about to explain when Xander struck seizing the opportunity to scoop her up off the ground! '
'Get off me, you great brute!' she shot out in surprised anger.
'Shut up!' he hissed as he carried her from the room.
'I have never seen such fire,' Thea Sophia gasped into the stunned space they left in the tension behind them. 'The child has been as quiet and as sweet as a mountain stream all the time she has been here.'
'She's certainly found her voice now,' Gabriela drily responded.
'She's found more than her voice,' Xander bit down at her as the salon door swung shut behind them and he strode across the foyer, heading straight for the stairs. 'She's found a compelling desire for a death wish!'