‘I didn’t seduce you!’ Milos couldn’t prevent an oath. ‘So that’s why you refused to speak to me again.’
‘Among other things.’ Helen sounded weary now. ‘I felt sorry for your wife. She sounded really nice. I remember I made some excuse about us going out for dinner and you forgetting something. I told her you were just in the bathroom, but she didn’t want to disturb you.’
‘I can believe that!’ Milos was furious. ‘That woman had manipulation off to a fine art. She was lying, Helen. If she let you think I’d betrayed her, she was lying. You should have asked her whose bed she was sleeping in that night. I can guarantee it wouldn’t have been her own.’
‘And that excuses what you did?’
‘I never said that.’
‘No, but it did prove that you and my father were one of a kind.’
‘No!’ Milos swore again. ‘Sam knew nothing about it. He still doesn’t. He’d have killed me if he’d suspected what I’d done.’
‘Chalk one up for my father, then.’ Helen was derisive.
Milos sighed. ‘He trusted me and I betrayed him.’
‘And he betrayed my mother,’ she countered. ‘That makes you fairly even in my book.’
Milos lifted his shoulders helplessly. ‘It wasn’t quite the same.’
‘No. Sam got a divorce and married Maya.’
‘I meant, our—relationship; affair; whatever you want to call it—was too short.’
‘And whose fault was that?’
‘Well, it wasn’t mine.’ Milos ignored her attempt to deny his words and hastened on. ‘I tried to see you again, Helen. You know I did. But you hid behind that gorgon of a mother of yours, and I had to get back to Greece.’
‘How convenient!’
‘It wasn’t convenient at all,’ said Milos harshly. ‘I didn’t know Eleni had been filling your head with lies. And I had a job to do, people that depended on me for their livelihood. As far as I was concerned, you’d made it pretty obvious you wanted nothing more to do with me.’
‘Well, it’s too late now.’ Helen caught her tongue between her teeth and gave a little shiver—of what? Remorse? Regret? She moistened her lips. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t tell me the truth at the beginning. It would have saved—’
She broke off abruptly, almost as if she was afraid she’d said too much, and Milos frowned. ‘It would have saved—what?’ he prompted, feeling as if he was on the brink of learning something significant. He took an involuntary step towards her. ‘Helen—’
‘I think this is the coffee you ordered,’ she said quickly, once again taking his thoughts in an entirely different direction. He turned with some impatience to see the housekeeper stepping carefully onto the veranda with a tray.
‘Theos!’ His frustration was almost crippling and he had to force himself not to take his anger out on the old woman. ‘Just put it on the table,’ he ordered shortly, in his own language, and Andrea bowed her greying head in nervous submission.
‘Afto ineh ola, kirieh,’ she asked, giving Helen a hasty once over as she spoke.
Milos tamped down his irritation. ‘Ineh mia khara, efkharisto.’ That’s fine, thanks. His smile reassured her. ‘Tipoteh alo.’
The old woman returned his smile and, with another brief glance at his companion, she left them alone. As Milos had expected, Helen took the interruption as a way of evading continuing their discussion, and, contenting himself with the thought that she couldn’t avoid him for ever, Milos let her get away with it.
She was obviously waiting for him to suggest she take charge of the coffee, and when he didn’t she approached the table herself. It was apparently the lesser of two evils, and, seating herself on one of the wicker chairs, she picked up the pot.
‘Cream and sugar?’ she asked politely, making a mockery of the ceremony, and Milos wanted to haul her up out of the chair and force her to finish what she’d been going to say.
‘As it comes,’ he said stiffly, watching as she poured some of the thick, aromatic beverage into a thin porcelain cup. But he couldn’t help taking pleasure from the fact that her hand shook as she handed it to him.
He noticed that, although she poured herself some coffee, she didn’t drink it. Instead, she took one of the honey-soaked pastries from the plate the housekeeper had provided, breaking the flaky sweet between her fingers, attempting to bring the crumbling morsel to her mouth.
Milos had sworn to himself that she wasn’t going to distract him again, but his stomach lurched as her tongue swept out to rescue an errant crumb from her lower lip. There was something distinctly sensual in the way she was enjoying the pastry, and he set his cup back on the tray with a growing feeling of impotence.
As if sensing his frustrated regard, however, she finished the pastry and got to her feet again. Then, as if indifferent to his presence, she walked past him to the steps above the pool where she had been standing earlier.
‘Did you mean what you said?’ she asked, over her shoulder. ‘About me taking a dip in the pool?’
Milos stifled a groan, and then, his jaw clenching, he said, ‘If that’s what pleases you.’
‘It would please me if you would take me back to your parents’ villa. But as I’m here …’ She turned back to look at the pool again. ‘Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my swim-suit.’
‘And that’s a problem?’
He couldn’t resist the taunt, but she’d had it her own way for far too long.
‘Not for you, perhaps,’ she said tersely, and he was pleased to see he’d disconcerted her. ‘I’m not used to taking off my clothes in front of strange men.’
‘Nor am I,’ he remarked mildly and saw the way her lips compressed.
‘Nor in front of strange women,’ she retorted. ‘I have a little more self-respect these days.’
The barb in the tail of the sentence didn’t escape him, but he had no desire to cut their time together short. He nodded towards the row of wooden cabanas at the end of the pool deck. ‘I think you’ll find everything you need in there.’
Doubt momentarily crossed her sun-kissed features, but then she kicked off her high heels and started down the stone steps. She glanced back at him once, and he despised himself for the rush of emotion he felt when she half smiled at him. Theos, this wasn’t supposed to be a pleasure trip. Here he was, humouring her, when he knew she was deliberately evading his questions.
Yet as he watched her descend the steps their fractured past was not the first thing he thought of. Her skirt swung about her long legs and he knew he couldn’t wait to see her in one of the skimpy suits Rhea kept here for her own use. But sooner or later she was going to have to answer his questions, he assured himself. All he had to do was exercise a little patience, and there was no law that said he couldn’t enjoy the process.
She emerged from the largest cabana a few minutes later. He’d half expected her to have second thoughts when she saw the swimsuits, but she evidently thought a swim could buy her a little more time.
The suit she’d chosen was a dark blue and white outfit, its close-fitting top barely skimming her midriff, the bikini briefs cut high on her hip. Faint colour, which couldn’t be blamed on the sun, tinged her cheeks when she found him waiting for her, but she swiftly moved to the side of the pool and executed a perfect dive into the water.
Milos was impressed. It was soon obvious that she was a strong swimmer. Instead of surfacing after the dive, she swam an impressive distance underwater