Never to set eyes on her again until this moment.
Laurel shrank back instinctively, pulling Dan against her, shielding him as best she could from view, then both of them were being pressed forward into the lift. Faintness drummed in shock and panic as they soared upwards.
He didn’t see…he didn’t see…he didn’t see…
She prayed with all her strength that it was so. That Alexandros Xenakis—who had swept her away to paradise, in that blissful long-ago summertime, then thrown her from him—had not seen, standing at her side, the son she’d borne him…
Xander kept walking towards the doors leading out on to the street, but shock was ricocheting through him. It had been Laurel. Unmistakable. Late twenties now, just as he was now into his thirties. He felt something stab inside him, but he ignored it. So it was her, so what? Seven years ago he’d watched her, his expression grim, head across the quayside at Piraeus, never to see her again until this moment now. Never wanting to.
He pushed through to the street, throwing himself into a hovering taxi. But as he sat back, shutting his eyes, he saw her standing beside the lift, instantly recognisable across the years. But there was something else he saw now, imprinted on his retinas. Something his conscious mind hadn’t taken in. A small boy had been at her side holding her hand.
An emotion he could not recognise went through him. His own marriage had been childless, but the woman he’d thrown out of his life had not been…
He fought back against whatever emotion it was that he’d just felt.
So, she’s got a child, a son. Why shouldn’t she? It’s been seven years since she knew me, she’s bound to be involved with someone else by now. She could be married, damn it! Even divorced, like me. It’s nothing to me! Nothing!
The thoughts circled like black crows over a ploughed field. A barren field. There was nothing for crows to feed on here. So they could take themselves off—
Except that they refused to go. Kept diving down to that barren field. Stabbing with their sharp black beaks.
Stabbing for no reason.
I got rid of her seven years ago. I had to. So there’s nothing left to stab.
Nothing—
Yet they kept stabbing.
Laurel was trying to focus on her work, but failing. Preparing a briefing note on the causes of the First World War for her students was not enthralling her. Her thoughts were continually distracted. Outside, in the tiny garden, early spring sunshine was streaming. Bright, but nowhere near as bright as the sunshine she was remembering. The hot golden sunshine of that long-ago summer in Greece…
So hot she’d sought the shade of a café table with aparasol, glancing up as someone came by. Glanced up and caught her breath instantly…
Tall, dark and with looks to make her gulp silently as he’d stopped by her table set out on the edge of the stony beach just beyond the harbour. She was taking a coffee, reading her book on Greek history, about which she knew very little despite her newly awarded, shiny bright university degree in history, and he’d sat himself down at a nearby table, ordering a coffee from the instantly there waitress, his voice deep and delicious. She felt her heart rate quicken. She wanted to keep looking sideways at him, but that would have been too obvious, so she focussed instead on the page she was reading. Very, very aware of his presence nearby.
She was on her own today. The group of uni friends who’d all decamped to Greece the moment graduation was over had taken off on the ferry to a neighbouring island and were going to stay there overnight clubbing. That had no appeal to Laurel, so she’d stayed put, making a quiet day of it here on this far more peaceful if still touristy island. They were all staying in a couple of cheap apartments, vegging on the beach or by the pool, frequenting the bars and eating out at the plentiful choice of tavernas the holiday spot afforded.
“‘A Brief History of Greece.’ Forgive me, but ‘brief’ is an impossible word to use about Greek history! It stretches four thousand years and more!”
She looked up quickly, turning her head. He’d spoken to her, the incredible looking guy whose long legs were stretched out, his eyes—dark, long-lashed and definitely, definitely looking her over, liking what he was seeing—glinting humorously.
He’d spoken to her in English, which was not surprising, given that her book was in English. Her blond colouring was also pretty good evidence she was from northern Europe too.
“It’s just modern Greece,” she answered, pointing to the subtitle. “The fall of Byzantium to the present day.”
“That,” he said with mock seriousness, “is more allowable.”
His coffee arrived, the traditional small, dark and quite undrinkable brew that Laurel knew was a legacy of the long centuries of Ottoman occupation which had dominated Greece from the fall of Byzantium until freedom had finally been achieved in the nineteenth century.
“So, where have you reached?” he went on, stirring his coffee, his eyes still with that glint in them that Laurel knew, from the quickening of her pulse, had now nothing to do with the subject of her book, and everything to do with the fact that she was, quite obviously, being chatted up.
It wasn’t something she was unused to, and her usual response was to shut it down as gracefully or ruthlessly, as occasion warranted.
But this time around—
“The Battle of Navarino in 1827,” she said. “It’s one of the few things I actually knew about, because it comes into British history as well, given we sent ships out here, with the French and Russians, to aid the Greeks fighting for their independence. Overall though—” she made a moue “—I’m very ignorant about Greek history. The ancient stuff, classical Greece, we learnt something of at school, but nothing about modern Greece really. Hence the book.”
His mouth quirked. It was a well-shaped mouth, a beautiful mouth, and when it quirked like that with a smile, she could feel her stomach hollow…
