‘You nearly crashed into me,’ she’d defended herself, her temper rising when he grabbed her arm none too gently and hauled her to her feet. ‘Road hog! Some birthday this is turning out to be,’ she had added grumpily. ‘I wish I’d stayed in England.’
For a moment his unusual olive-green eyes darkened. But then he threw back his head and laughed.
‘So you do speak? You’ve always seemed to be struck dumb whenever I’ve met you.’
‘I suppose you think I’m over-awed by you,’ she said, flushing. Not for the world would she allow him to know that since she was sixteen she’d had a massive crush on him.
He stared down at her, his eyes glinting with amusement in his handsome face. ‘And are you over-awed, Loulou?’
‘Of course not. I’m annoyed. My bike’s got a puncture, thanks to you. And I’m going to have a lovely bruise on my shoulder.’
‘You’re bleeding,’ he said, noticing where she had scraped her arm. ‘Come back to the house and I’ll clean that graze and fix your tyre.’
‘But the Villa Aphrodite is that way,’ she said in a puzzled voice when he turned in the opposite direction. ‘Where are you staying, anyway? I haven’t seen you around. I thought Kostas had banned you from the villa after your last row with him.’
‘It suits me never to set foot inside that tasteless monstrosity my father has built for his tart.’ The anger returned to Dimitri’s voice. ‘I’m staying at the old house my grandfather built many years ago. He named the house Iremia, which means tranquillity. But the island is no longer a tranquil place since your mother came here.’
Leaving his motorbike by the side of the track, he pushed Louise’s bicycle. She followed him in silence, daunted by the rigid set of his shoulders. But his temper had cooled by the time they arrived at the house, and he was a polite host, inviting her in and instructing his butler to serve them drinks on the terrace.
The house was nestled in a dip in the land, surrounded by pine trees and olive groves so that it was hidden from view. It was not surprising that Louise had never seen it before. Unlike the ultra-modern and to Louise’s mind unattractive Villa Aphrodite, Iremia was a beautiful old house built in a classical style, with coral-pink walls and cream-coloured wooden shutters at the windows. The gardens were well-established, and through the trees the cobalt-blue sea sparkled in the distance.
‘Hold still while I put some antiseptic on your arm,’ Dimitri instructed after he had led her out to the terrace and indicated that she should sit on one of the sun-loungers.
His touch was light, yet a tiny tremor ran through Louise at the feel of his hands on her skin. His dark head was bent close to hers, and she was fiercely aware of the tang of his aftershave mingled with another subtly masculine scent that caused her heart to race.
He glanced up and met her gaze. ‘I hardly recognised you,’ he said, his smile doing strange things to her insides. ‘The last time I saw you, you were the proverbial ugly duckling.’
‘Thanks,’ she muttered sarcastically, flushing as she remembered the thick braces she’d worn on her teeth for years. Thankfully she’d had them removed now, and her teeth were perfectly straight and white.
As a teenager she had been slow to develop, and had despaired about her boyish figure, but in the last year or so she had finally gained the womanly curves she had longed for. However, she still lacked self-confidence, and Dimitri’s comment hurt. She tried to jerk away from him, but instead of releasing her arm he trailed his fingers very lightly up to the base of her throat and found the pulse that was beating frantically there.
‘But now you have turned into a swan,’ he said softly. ‘Ise panemorfi—you are very beautiful,’ he translated, although he had no need. She spoke Greek fluently.
That had been the start of it, Louise thought, turning her head restlessly on the pillows. That moment when she had looked into Dimitri’s olive-green eyes and made the startling discovery that he desired her. That had been the beginning of a golden few days when they had become friends, while the awareness between them had grown ever more intense.
When Dimitri had learned that she was spending her birthday alone he had insisted on taking her to dinner on the neighbouring island of Andros, which was a short boat ride away from Eirenne. It had been a magical evening, and at the end of it, when he had escorted her back to the Villa Aphrodite, he had kissed her. It had only been a brief kiss, no more than a gossamer-light brush of his lips on hers, but fireworks had exploded inside her and she had stared at him dazedly, her heart thumping, longing for him to kiss her again.
He hadn’t, but had bade her goodnight rather abruptly, so that she had wondered if she had annoyed him in some way. Maybe he regretted kissing her because she was the daughter of his father’s mistress? she had thought miserably. But the next morning he had arrived as she was sitting disconsolately by the pool, facing another day on her own. He had invited her to go to the beach with him, and the day that had seemed so bleak suddenly became wonderful.
They had swum and sunbathed and talked about every subject under the sun—apart from her mother’s affair with his father. Dimitri never mentioned Tina.
Over the next few days Louise’s faint wariness had faded and she’d grown more relaxed with him, so that when he’d kissed her again—properly this time—she had responded with an eagerness that had made him groan and accuse her of being a sorceress who had surely cast a spell on him.
It had seemed entirely natural for him to take her back to the house in the pine forest and make love to her one long, lazy afternoon, with the sun slanting through the blinds and gilding their naked bodies. He had been so skilled and so gentle that losing her virginity had been a painless experience.
Dimitri had been unaware that it was her first time, and she had been too shy to tell him. She had responded to the stroke of his hands and the exquisite sensation of his mouth on her breasts, teasing her nipples until they were as hard as pebbles, with a passion that had matched his. It had been perfect, their bodies moving in total accord, until simultaneously they had reached the zenith of sensual pleasure.
She had spent the whole of that night with him, and each time he’d made love to her she had fallen deeper in love with him.
The following morning he had walked her back to the Villa Aphrodite.
‘Come and swim in the pool,’ she had invited. ‘No one is here.’ By ‘no one’ she had meant her mother.
Dimitri hesitated. ‘All right—but afterwards we’ll go back to Iremia. I hate this place. I assume Tina chose the décor,’ he said sardonically, glancing at the zebra-print sofas and the white marble pillars that were everywhere in the villa. ‘It just goes to prove that no amount of money can buy good taste.’
His dislike of her mother was evident in his voice, and Louise felt uncomfortable, but then he smiled at her and the awkward moment passed. They swam for a while, and then he carried her out of the pool and laid her on a sunbed. She had wound her arms around his neck to pull him down on top of her—when a shrill voice made them spring apart.
‘What do you think you ‘re bloody well doing? Take your hands off my daughter! ’
All these years later Louise could still hear Tina screaming at Dimitri as she tottered across the patio in her vertiginous heels, quivering with fury so that her platinum-blond beehive had seemed to wobble precariously on top of her head.
‘It’s bad enough that Kostas cut our trip short with some excuse about needing to be at a meeting in Athens. But to find you here, preying on Loulou, is the last straw. You have no right to be here. Your father banned you from the villa.’