‘This soap smells like you.’
She smiled and pushed her soaking-wet hair away from her face as he slid his hands down her body. ‘It’s my soap. It comes in the same three scents as the candles.’
‘At least you know a bit more about seduction now.’
As he kissed her neck she closed her eyes, but this time the anxiety twisting inside her prevented her from relaxing.
Reluctantly, she pulled away from him and grabbed a towel.
‘I have to go.’
It felt urgent now, to get this done so that she could start her new life. Excitement bubbled under the feeling of apprehension. She walked back into the bedroom and picked up the pretty linen dress she’d chosen from the clothes he’d provided. Her hesitation was driven by years of living with her father. He wasn’t here, and yet she could hear his voice telling her to change into something more suitable. Telling her that the dress was too short, too eye-catching, too—everything.
Then she remembered her father wasn’t going to see her wearing it.
From now on the only time she heard his voice would be in her head.
There would be no row because this was the last time she was going home and her father wouldn’t be there.
Stefan strolled back into the bedroom, a towel knotted around his lean hips.
Determined not to be distracted, Selene let her own towel drop to the floor and reached for the dress.
Behind her she heard the sharp intake of his breath. Assuming his response was because she was naked, she lifted her head and smiled at him. He was looking at her body.
‘Theé mou, did I do that? I hurt you?’ He was across the room in three strides, his hands gentle on her arms as he turned her and took a closer look at her back and then her arms. ‘You have bruises. Finger-marks.’
Selene twisted away from him and pulled the dress over her head quickly. ‘It’s fine. It’s nothing.’ It wasn’t nothing, of course, but it wasn’t anything she wanted him to know about. It was her past and she wanted it to stay in her past.
His face was suddenly pale. ‘I thought I’d been gentle.’
‘You were gentle. You were brilliant. Honestly, Stefan, it’s nothing—’ She stumbled over the words, feeling guilty that she had to let him think that but unable to give him an alternative explanation. ‘And now I really need to go.’
‘You should have told me I was hurting you. I would have stopped.’
‘You didn’t hurt me.’ No way could she tell him, or anyone, the truth—and she didn’t need to because she was fixing it. ‘I just bruise easily, OK? It’s nothing to do with you.’ Not looking at him, she scooped her damp hair into a ponytail.
Now that the moment had come, she just wanted it over with. She wanted to get it done. ‘I’ll take the ferry to Poulos and the nuns will take me back by boat.’
‘I’ll take you back to Antaxos.’
‘No! Someone might see you and call my father. I can’t risk him knowing I’ve left the island. I need a head start on him.’
‘Selene—’ His tone raw, Stefan dragged his hand through his hair and shot her a look she couldn’t interpret. ‘He probably already knows.’
In the process of sliding her feet into her shoes, she assumed she’d misheard him. ‘How can he possibly know? He’s with one of his women. He won’t be home for another six days.’
‘He knows because he will have seen the photographs.’
‘Photographs?’ Selene stared at him, her brain infuriatingly slow as she tried to make sense of what he was saying. ‘What photographs?’
‘The photographs of us together. You and me.’
‘Someone took photographs?’ Selene felt physically nauseated. The bag slipped from her hand. ‘How could they? This is your home. There were no journalists. Please tell me you’re joking.’
‘I’m not joking.’
‘No—’ She felt the colour drain from her face, felt her fingers grow cold and her body sway. She saw the sudden narrowing of his eyes as he saw the change in her.
‘I don’t see why it would bother you. Nothing else has bothered you. Drinking too much champagne, waking up in my bed, having sex—’
‘That’s different. My father doesn’t know about any of that.’ Or at least she hadn’t thought he did.
‘So this new life of yours only works if your father doesn’t know about it? The first step to independence is standing up for yourself. Just tell your father what you told me. That you want to start living your life. You’re not asking him for money. You’re just telling him how it is.’ There was a tightness around his mouth and a coldness in his eyes. ‘What can he do?’
Selene knew exactly what he could do. And she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to do it.
‘How do you even know there are photographs?’ Please let him be wrong. ‘Show them to me.’
Unsmiling, Stefan reached for his phone and accessed the internet. A few taps of his fingers later he was showing her photographs that snapped the leash on her panic.
‘Oh, no …’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘It’s you and I. Kissing. And it’s a close-up. He’s going to go wild. Who took that photo? Who?’
‘Carys, I suppose.’ The question didn’t appear to interest him much. ‘She writes a gossip column for a glossy magazine and for other places if the story is juicy enough.’
Selene processed that information. ‘But if you know she writes a gossip column then you must have known there was a risk she’d take a photograph—that she’d tell the world about me. You must have known—you …’ Her voice tailed off as her brain finally caught up. ‘Wait a minute. She said something about you being a Machiavellian genius and I had no idea what she meant, but you did know. You did it on purpose. You invited me to the party with the express purpose of upsetting my father.’
‘I invited you to the party because I needed a date and there you were, all vulnerable and sexy mixed in together—it seemed like the perfect solution.’
‘And because you knew it would really upset my father?’
His eyes were cool. ‘Yes, I knew it would upset your father. But presumably so did you. If he’d approved of what you were doing you wouldn’t have had to come to me in the first place.’
‘But I didn’t want him to find out yet. It was so important that he didn’t find out—why do you think I came to you in disguise?’ Realising how naïve she’d been to trust him, Selene took a step backwards, stumbling over his shoes discarded on the floor. ‘You warned me—everyone warned me about you—even Maria—and I didn’t listen.’ Because she hadn’t wanted to. Because she’d spun a fantasy in her head and she’d lived with that fantasy for five years and she wasn’t going to let anyone destroy it because it had been her lifeline. Her hope. Her dream. ‘I thought you were being kind and thoughtful but all the time you were just making sure I came with you so that you could score a point against a business rival.’
His expression was blank. ‘This is not about business. I separate the two.’
But she didn’t believe him. No longer believed in anyone but herself. ‘What sort of a man are you?’
‘A man who isn’t afraid to confront your father—which is why you came to me in the first place. I am exactly the person you knew I was when you walked into my office on that first day.’ He snapped the words. ‘It isn’t my fault if you turned me into some sort of god in your