‘For today—’ he shot back his cuff and glanced at the gold watch circling his wrist ‘—it is too late to make any kind of expedition. Besides—’ the smile quirked again ‘—I have only just flown in from Athens, and that pool looks far too inviting to resist.’ He frowned, as his gaze took in just how thronged with children it was. ‘Perhaps it will get quieter later.’
‘Yes, it empties out around six-ish,’ confirmed Janine. Her spirits were zipping around in her, whooshing like crazy. ‘The sea is a better bet right now. A path goes down to the beach just beyond the pool.’ She indicated with her hand.
He nodded. ‘The sea it shall be, then,’ he said. His eyes swept over her once more. ‘Perhaps you would care to join me there later when you have finished your sunbathing?’
Janine’s eyes flickered. ‘Thank you—yes.’
Her voice was still breathless, and she felt light-headed.
Nikos got to his feet. ‘I’ll see you down there,’ he told her, and bestowed one last smile on her for good measure before he walked away towards the hotel.
Janine gazed after him until he disappeared from view.
Slowly, she bent her head to drink her frappe through the twin straws in the glass.
Her pulse was racing.
Nikos plugged his laptop cable into the wall-jack in his room and dialled into his e-mail. As he waited for his latest messages to download, the image of Janine Fareham floated enticingly in his mind. He let himself indulge in recollecting her charms, plentiful as they were, and replayed the exchange he had had with her.
Satisfaction filled him. Things were going exactly to plan. She was responding to him very satisfactorily.
And you are responding to her—definitely responding…
But that was good, he reasoned immediately. It was good that he should feel such desire for a woman he needed to seduce. It would lend great verisimilitude to the undertaking.
And danger?
He rebuffed the notion immediately. What danger was there for him in this enterprise? None. He would seduce Janine Fareham, enjoy her—because she looked as if she were going to be very enjoyable indeed—and that would be that. She would not be returning to Stephanos.
Without conceit he knew that he had a lot more to offer than a man of Stephanos’s age! And even if she thought she could go back she would discover otherwise. Once Stephanos knew of her defection there would be no way that he would take her back after she had fallen into his, Nikos’s, bed!
No, his plan was entirely without danger—least of all to himself. Janine Fareham was a stunningly attractive female, and he would certainly enjoy taking her to bed—but then he always enjoyed taking beautiful women to bed.
And so many were so willing…
A caustic smile parted his lips. Demetria might volubly yearn for the day she saw him finally married, and berate him for his sexual lifestyle, but it was hardly a problem for him. The stream of women wanting him to desire them was endless, so even if he did tire of them—as he always did—it caused him no difficulty. He simply moved on to the next one.
There was always a next one.
And there would certainly be another one once he had finished with his brother-in-law’s mistress.
Irritated with himself for giving form to such pointless musing, he stabbed at the mouse button to open the first e-mail his PA had forwarded as worthy of his attention. In an instant his mind was preoccupied, diverted totally on to business matters.
By the time he had surfaced from his business affairs, the sun was setting. The room temperature was pleasantly cool, thanks to the background air-conditioning, but when he stepped out onto the wide balcony of his room the afternoon warmth enveloped him. Even without his jacket he was far too hot.
Returning indoors, he stripped off and donned a pair of swimming trunks, before reaching for a pair of crisply cut cotton shorts and a casual shirt. As he reached for a beach towel the image of Janine Fareham in her skimpy bikini wafted once more through his mind. She would be waiting for him by now, no doubt.
Time to go to work.
At the bottom of the flight of steps that cut into the rock between the gardens and the sea he paused, looking around him. To one side of the hotel beach and further out to sea the windsurfers were clearly in action, skimming and twisting over the surface of the water. Immediately in front of him were two rows of loungers and parasols, and a bar café was set back from the beach, to save guests having to go back up to the pool level.
Out to sea, the westering sun was turning the water to turquoise.
He could see no sign of the girl.
And then he spotted her.
She was out to sea, swimming offshore in a leisurely breast-stroke. Her hair, he could just tell at this distance, seemed to be knotted on her head, out of the water.
Casting around to see which lounger she had taken, he saw the beach bag she’d had up by the pool and walked across to toss his towel down on it. Then he undressed down to his trunks to wade into the water. It caressed him like silk, and, with a lithe movement, he dived forward, striking out to sea in a powerful, fast stroke.
He closed the distance between the shore and the girl in a few moments, and then went right on past her. He needed exercise after the inactivity of the day. Besides, the vigorous exercise would help to drain off that layer of submerged, persistent anger he had felt ever since Demetria had dropped her bombshell. It wouldn’t drain out completely, of course. Nothing could make it do that until the cause of his anger was removed. But he knew he had to keep his feelings under tight control—he must not, must not, let it show. Janine Fareham must get no inkling of it—not until it was far, far too late for her.
Just thinking of her, of the pain she was causing Demetria, the damage she was doing to Stephanos’s marriage, made the anger surge through him again. It flared through him, urging his muscles forward, pushing him past the pain barrier as he churned through the water at a punishing speed.
Only when he was several hundred metres out to sea did he finally slow, his burst of energy and aggression spent. He turned over onto his back, temporarily exhausted, floating on the swell of the sea for a while, letting his heart-rate slow and his muscles recover.
His anger seemed abstract now, far away. Demetria and her suffering seemed far away too. Another image formed in his mind. The image of a beautiful blonde with a sun-kissed body and softly rounded limbs.
The woman he was going to calculatedly and deliberately seduce—because she was his sister’s husband’s mistress.
For a few brief seconds another emotion surfaced. An alien one. Unwelcome.
Reluctance.
Reluctance at the task ahead of him.
And reluctance to question why he felt that way. What was wrong with what he was planning to do? The girl was threatening to destroy his sister’s marriage—he was simply trying to help Demetria, who had quite enough torment in her life coping with her infertility. She did not need her husband cheating on her with a younger woman!
And just because, he reminded himself tightly, the younger woman in question had turned out to be so incredibly desirable, that was no reason to flinch from what he had promised Demetria he would do. No reason to feel reluctant to pursue his carefully planned strategy of calculated seduction.
He put his reluctance aside. There was no reason why he should not do what he was setting out to do. The girl had got her claws into his brother-in-law—he was going to remove them. End of story.