‘I didn’t…’ She paled. ‘You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said, have you, Alexander?’
He got up and walked to the window. He’d been sitting down long enough. Ellie Mendoras was out of her depth trying to stand against him. Someone should have warned her that it wasn’t his way to swat mosquitoes when he could afford to drain a swamp and have a road built through it.
‘I think you care more about the celebrities you can attract to Lefkis than the people who actually live here,’ she accused him.
He’d heard enough and rounded on her, eyes blazing. ‘You’re not qualified to make judgements like that. What do you know about how I feel? I beg your pardon, Kiria Theodopulos,’ he was forced to add as his words split the silence. Fortunately, the old lady kept her face carefully averted.
‘I feel sorry for you, Alexander—’
‘Oh, do you?’ He glared back at Ellie. Didn’t she ever give up? ‘Well, you can spare me your pity.’
He spun on his heel, turning his back on her, and then stood motionless, staring out of the window. Her continued defiance made his spine tingle. He was acutely aware of her as a woman. He wanted to take this passion somewhere else. Fast. Have her up against a wall to ease his tension. ‘This meeting’s over,’ he said coldly. Lucky for him that reason took over.
He was on the point of delivering an ultimatum when his glance clashed with the raisin-black stare of Kiria Theodopulos. OK, for her sake and for her sake alone he would offer one more olive branch. ‘Didn’t my agent explain that together with a peppercorn rent for your new mooring you will be well compensated?’
Whatever he had been expecting in response, it wasn’t this. Balling her hands into fists, Ellie came towards him.
‘One stroke of your pen—that’s all it takes for you to change someone’s life, isn’t it? Well, let me tell you something, Alexander; you won’t get away with this—’
‘It’s a perfectly reasonable offer.’ He looked at Kiria Theodopulos for support, only to find that the old lady seemed to have gone conveniently deaf. ‘You’re taking up a berth—’
‘That could be better used by one of your gas-guzzling, planet-wrecking monstrosities?’ Throwing her head back in disgust, Ellie uttered a heartfelt sound of contempt.
As the sunlight caught her auburn hair it blazed like fire. He could picture it spread out on a pillow in all its gleaming abundance…He quickly blanked the thought. ‘I have to think about the economy of this island and the prosperity that an annual influx of wealthy visitors and their boats can bring—’
‘Boats?’ She cut him off. ‘These things aren’t boats.’ She gestured around in a manner worthy of any Greek. ‘They take no skill to sail with their computerised systems, their radar and autopilot! You’re a Greek, Alexander! How could you support these…?’
‘Monstrosities?’ he supplied evenly. ‘Yachts this size are increasingly a fact of life, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’
She bit down on her lip. Her eyes filled with tears. For the first time in his life he wanted to back off rather than press on to victory.
He quickly got over it. Allowing her a moment to compose herself, he offered her a fresh, neatly pressed handkerchief. ‘Pull yourself together,’ he said brusquely.
Sniffing loudly and indelicately, she refused it. Tilting her head with pride, she informed him, ‘My father used that berth all his life. The people who live around the harbour knew and loved him, and now they know me…’
And would love her, he realised with a blow to his solar plexus. ‘Time moves on, Ellie, and we must move with it…’
‘Time?’ Her brow was wrinkled as she considered this. ‘So the heritage of this island means nothing to you? You bought Lefkis and now it’s yours to do with as you like?’
‘That’s right,’ he said, relieved that she was starting to see sense.
‘Then I dread the consequences,’ she told him gravely.
‘I think you’d better explain yourself,’ he threatened.
‘If Lefkis is the latest toy in your toy box, what happens when you tire of the island, Alexander? Will you just toss it out of the playpen?’
‘I’m not going to dignify that comment with a reply.’
Her response was to jut out her chin in a way that, had she been a man, would have invited him to take a swing at it. But the issues at stake were too serious to allow this meeting to deteriorate into a game of tit for tat.
‘This would never have happened in my father’s time,’ she said, shaking her head as if he was in the wrong.
It was time for a few home truths. ‘In your father’s time there was no clinic on the island. There was no hospital, no secondary school and people died from influenza before a doctor could arrive by sea from another island. In your father’s time Lefkis was a poverty-stricken pile of rocks where people scratched a living the best way they could—’
‘But they stayed,’ she argued passionately. ‘And why do you think that was, Alexander?’
Before he could tell her they had nowhere else to go, she gave him her version of events.
‘They stayed on because Lefkis was their home, their community, their family. They stayed on because they love the island as I do. Are the fiestas a recent custom? No. They’ve been held on Lefkis for hundreds of years. Do the tourists crowd in to witness some stage show contrived to strip them of their money before they leave? Are these people actors, or shallow charlatans?’ As she pointed to Kiria Theodopulos, her mouth worked with emotion. ‘Is that what you believe, Alexander?’ Her eyes blazed into his. ‘Because if you do, you’ll never be worthy to call yourself a son of Lefkis, even if you do own the island—’
‘Have you finished?’ he said coldly. ‘Good; then let me explain something. My success is founded on the solid rock of self-belief. That and sound judgement. This island is going to change. I will bring power-boat racing. I will clear the deep-water harbour in order to accommodate the bigger vessels. And I will not risk the future prosperity of Lefkis in order to humour you and a few local hotheads!’ Or to placate Kiria Theodopulos, whom he noticed now had reached up to clasp Ellie’s hand.
The silence in the room climbed to a new level as they stared at each other. He had let loose more emotion in these last few minutes than he had in years. And emotion had always been his enemy.
CHAPTER THREE
HE RANG a bell discreetly with his foot. It brought the steward hurrying back. ‘You may take the tea tray away now,’ he told him. ‘We’re finished here.’
‘I’m not finished,’ Ellie asserted, glancing at the steward’s retreating back.
‘I am,’ he told her coldly. Striding past her, he opened the door. ‘Accept what you have been told, or you’ll hear from my agent again. I’d like to keep this friendly, but…’
She got the message. He didn’t need to say anything more. Realisation dawned swiftly behind her eyes. This wasn’t just a question of a berth for her fishing boat, or a power-boat race or anything else that might concern her—it had come down to a decision as to whether or not she would be allowed to remain living on the island.
Instead of crumbling into misery she stared at him with an expression of undiluted fury in her eyes. Then, stalking stiff-legged across the room, she came to join him at the door.
He stood back to allow her to pass. As he did so he caught