‘Would madam like the sandals…?’
‘Yes, yes—ring it up.’ Iolanthe waved a hand and turned back to Althea. ‘Well?’
‘What do you think I did?’
‘Althea…!’ Iolanthe pouted. ‘You never tell me what you get up to. I have to hear it from some man—or, worse, the newspapers.’
‘The tabloids will print anything,’ Althea dismissed in a bored voice. ‘Now, let’s get a coffee.’
They sat outside, the sun hot despite the brisk breeze of early spring. A steady stream of shoppers moved by in a blur of colour and chatter, the trill of a dozen different mobile phones punctuating Iolanthe’s insistent pestering for details.
Althea took a sip of coffee and realised how tired she was. Tired of pretence, tired of everything, and she’d been tired for so long.
She sighed, smiled, and returned her attention to Iolanthe’s chatter. Her lifestyle had suited her for the last several years. It would continue to do so.
She didn’t really have any choice.
‘Hello, big brother.’
Demos closed the door of his loft apartment in Piraeus harbour and turned around slowly. Brianna sat sprawled on his sofa, grinning up at him as she lazily swung her feet.
Demos watched her, and a chill of apprehension crawled through him. He shook it off with determined force and moved to greet her. ‘Hello, Brianna. This is…a surprise.’ He didn’t think she’d ever been to his apartment before, and he wondered how she’d got in.
‘I got the key from the woman downstairs,’ Brianna said, in answer to his silent question. She smiled impishly. ‘She thought I was one of your women, but when I explained I was your sister…’
‘Of course.’ He forced himself to smile as he kissed her cheek, his gaze sweeping over her outfit—what there was of it. ‘Your skirt is too short.’
Brianna pouted, and Demos tried to smile again. His sister was looking at him with too much hope and fear in those wide, wistful eyes. Turning away, he went into the kitchen. Brianna scrambled up from the sofa to follow him.
‘You’re one to talk,’ she said, hands on her hips, and a smile tugged at Demos’s mouth despite his intention to remain stern and aloof with his littlest sister. He could never stay so for long; he’d given her bottles as a baby, had taught her to walk, had promised…
No. He wouldn’t think about that. He turned back to her, arching one eyebrow as he smiled playfully. ‘Am I? I don’t wear skirts.’
She giggled, a practised girlish trill that grated on his nerves, his memories. ‘Demos! I meant that the women you’re seen with do.’
An image of Althea in that scrap of a silver dress flashed through his mind. The defiant sparkle of those sea-coloured eyes, the sensual promise of her smile. He wondered yet again why she intrigued him so much. Why he couldn’t stop thinking about her. ‘What do you know about the women I’m seen with?’ he asked, and Brianna shrugged.
‘I see the papers.’
‘Mama lets you read those?’
‘Demos, I’m twenty-one! She can’t stop me!’
Demos frowned, once more taking in his sister’s painted face and tarty clothes. She was trying to look sophisticated, he supposed, and missing by a mile. ‘When are you going to settle down and marry a nice boy? Someone from the neighbourhood? That Antonios, the chemist’s son—he’s always been sweet on you.’
Brianna made a sound of disgust, her eyes sparking. ‘Antonios! He’s an oaf.’
‘A nice oaf,’ Demos countered mildly, although he observed her clenched fists and sparkling eyes with another chill. ‘He has a steady job—’
‘I want more than that!’ Brianna stood with her hands on her hips, her chin and chest thrust out aggressively. She looked so defiant, so determined, that Demos paused, the chill intensifying once more to a deep remembered dread. He recognised the glitter in Brianna’s eyes, the trembling of her lips.
For the last eight years he’d kept his distance—for her sake as well as his own. Because he’d believed it was the right thing to do. Brianna needed him too much, looked up to him too much. She always had—ever since he’d held her as a baby in his arms and she’d reached up and lovingly grabbed his chin. Sometimes it felt as if she’d never let go. She’d wanted him to be father, friend, saviour.
And he never could be.
Now, observing her desperate, defiant stance, Demos realised how those eight years had lulled him into a sense of security. Peace. Both began to crumble.
‘Brianna,’ he asked gently, ‘why are you here?’
He saw a flicker of uncertainty chase across her features and his dread deepened, pooled icily in his stomach. His only contact with Brianna had been his intermittent visits to where she lived with his mother and stepfather, Stavros. Only twenty minutes away, yet it was another part of the city entirely—another world. Working class, respectable, conservative. So unlike this spacious, airy apartment, positioned above Piraeus’s nightclubs and shipping offices, both businesses vying for space and trade in Athens’s ancient and busiest port.
Yet now she was here, visiting him. Needing him. Looking at him as if he could fix all her problems when he couldn’t.
He knew he couldn’t.
‘I wanted to see you. I never see you any more…’ she began, with a toss of her head, but he heard the tremble of need in her voice and something inside him crumbled and broke. Again.
He turned and took her by the shoulders. Her cheeks were still as round and soft as a child’s. She was, he reflected, despite the make-up and clothes, nothing more than the frightened little girl he’d comforted during storms, played endless games of cards with on rainy afternoons. The little girl who had gazed trustingly up into his face and asked, ‘You’ll never leave me, will you?’
And, damn it, he had said he wouldn’t.
‘Brianna,’ he asked gently, ‘what’s wrong?’
‘I want to come and live with you!’ she said in a rush. Tears brightened her eyes and she blinked them back. ‘Mama and Stavros are tired of me. They want me to marry, like you said. But, Demos…! I don’t want to.’ Her eyes widened, and a tear splashed onto his thumb.
He gazed down at her for a moment, at the need and fear so open and endless in her childish face, before he released her and moved out of the kitchen, back into the main space of the apartment. Through the sliding glass doors that led out onto the wide balcony he could see the aquamarine glint of Piraeus’s main harbour. He had been out on that water less than an hour ago, his eyes and mind on an endless horizon. Now, with a resolute sigh, he turned back to face his sister. ‘Why don’t you want to marry?’
‘Why don’t you?’ she tossed back, and he shook his head.
It was a question his mother asked him every time he went to her house. She’d ply him with her spinach pies and meltingly sweet baklava and then demand to know when he was bringing home his bride.
Demos just ignored her; there was no point in explaining that he didn’t want a wife, a family. He’d had the responsibility of one since he was twelve. He didn’t need any more.
He didn’t need this.
‘Marriage would be good for you,’ Demos said, his voice turning brusque.
Brianna let out a choked cry. ‘You hypocrite! You’re allowed to live alone, go to wild parties, have affairs and lovers—’
‘Brianna…’ Demos warned in a low