A vain hope, perhaps, but at least it was a beginning and Melissa seemed to have enjoyed herself.
‘He took me down to the mill,’ she said, tugging on the rings that circled her ear with a careless finger. ‘It was good. He let me taste some of the wine they’d made last year.’
‘Really?’ Helen restrained herself from saying that drinking wine at her age and at this hour of the morning wasn’t very sensible. ‘So what was it like?’
‘The wine? Okay, I guess.’ Melissa didn’t sound impressed. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be an alcoholic.’
Helen breathed a little easier. ‘That’s a relief.’
‘Why?’ Melissa looked at her from beneath lowered lids. ‘Are you afraid I’m gonna take after Richard?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’ Melissa looked as if she wanted to say something more and then thought better of it. ‘Anyway, Sam treats me like my opinion matters. I like that.’
I bet, thought Helen, but all she said was, ‘Did he tell you to call him Sam?’
‘No.’ Now Melissa pouted a bit. ‘But I can’t call him Granddad, can I?’
Helen acknowledged that might be a stretch. ‘I guess not. So—did you meet Alex?’
‘Oh, sure.’ Melissa was annoyingly casual. ‘But to begin with, I had some breakfast. He was going to take me on a tour of the house,’ she added, ‘but Maya kept complaining we were getting in her way, so we got in the Jeep and went down to the mill.’
‘I see.’
‘That’s when I met Alex.’ Melissa’s lips quirked. ‘He’s cool.’
Cool? Helen couldn’t help herself. She was curious. ‘You liked him?’
‘What’s not to like? At least he was friendly.’
‘He speaks English?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So—how old is he?’
Melissa was deliberately obtuse. ‘Older than me.’
‘Melissa!’
‘Oh, okay.’ Melissa rumpled her hair. ‘He’s not your brother, if that’s what’s worrying you. He’s twenty-six. Maya was like you. She was only seventeen when Alex was born.’
It was a couple of days later when Milos decided to check up on Sam’s house guests.
It wasn’t anything to do with him, he knew, but something drew him back to the vineyard. It was easy to tell himself that, as he’d collected them from the ferry, he felt some responsibility for their well being. But the truth was, Helen and her unlikely daughter intrigued him. He wanted to know more about them. He wanted to know more about her.
Sam was having a late breakfast when he arrived. Milos guessed his friend had already been down to the winery to check on developments there, and now he was enjoying a lazy repast, seated at the table that had been laid in the shade of a clump of lemon trees.
‘Milos,’ he exclaimed, when the younger man emerged from the shadows of the villa. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. Will you join me?’
‘For coffee, only,’ said Milos, shaking the other man’s hand and urging him to resume his seat. ‘I was—passing, and I thought I might enquire how your daughter and granddaughter are enjoying their holiday.’
‘Oh …’ Sam pulled a wry face. ‘Well, I think Helen is glad of the break. She’s had a pretty tough time since her husband was killed. Richard—well, Richard seems to have been a bit of a waster, if you ask me. Why else would Helen have had to give up her own home and move back in with her mother unless money was tight?’
Milos wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this. Talking about the man who had lived with Helen all those years aroused mixed emotions inside him. It wasn’t that he was jealous, he assured himself. How could you be jealous of a dead man? But the fact remained, he didn’t like the sound of Richard either. Was he the reason Melissa was so obviously out of control?
Maya emerged from the house at that moment and both men rose automatically to their feet. A swarthy, attractive woman in her early forties, she was of medium height, but rather generously proportioned. She tended to wear long flowing skirts that disguised her figure, yet the blouse she’d chosen revealed a liberal amount of cleavage. She was a distant cousin of Milos’s mother, and she never let him forget that they were related.
‘I thought I heard voices,’ she exclaimed, coming towards them and reaching up to bestow a wet kiss on Milos’s cheek. She spoke in her own language, which she much preferred to English. ‘I didn’t know you were here, Milos,’ she went on reprovingly. ‘Sam, haven’t you offered our guest some refreshment?’
‘I have, and he only wants coffee,’ replied Sam, sinking back into his own chair. ‘Perhaps you’d ask Sofia to fetch some, Maya? This pot is definitely getting cold.’
Maya’s lips tightened. ‘Just call and she’ll come, Samuel,’ she retorted impatiently. ‘She has little enough to do, goodness knows.’ She turned to Milos again. ‘It’s so good to see you.’ She tapped his arm in a playful gesture. ‘You don’t visit half often enough.’
Milos managed a polite disclaimer, but he was beginning to think he’d made a mistake in coming here. He doubted Maya would approve of his reasons for doing so. She’d made her feelings very plain the morning Helen and her daughter had arrived. And Helen herself was unlikely to be glad to see him. He remembered the tension that had been there between them on that drive up from the harbour.
‘He’s come to see Helen,’ Sam put in then, settling the matter. ‘Where is she, Maya? I haven’t seen her this morning.’
‘That’s because she doesn’t get up as early as we do,’ declared Maya crisply. She turned a smiling face to Milos again. ‘Will you stay for lunch?’
‘Oh, I don’t—’ Milos was beginning when Helen herself appeared from around the side of the villa, and Sam rose eagerly to his feet.
‘Well, here she is,’ he exclaimed, reverting at once to English. He went to meet his daughter with evident pleasure. ‘We thought you weren’t up yet.’
‘Did you?’
Helen had a smile for her father, but then her eyes moved beyond him to where Milos and Maya were standing together. Her lips tightened, as if she’d attributed that misapprehension jointly to both of them, and Milos felt his own instinctive rejection of her assumption.
Struggling to remember why he was here, he managed a polite, ‘Kalimera,’ separating himself from his cousin almost involuntarily. ‘How are you?’
Helen took a visible breath. ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she said, the slim hand she used to check the upswept pony-tail at the back of her head revealing a nervousness she was trying hard not to show.
But Milos noticed. Noticed, too, that in a sleeveless top and navy shorts she looked younger, less on edge. The sun had already touched her skin with a rosy glow, and, although he suspected the hectic colour in her cheeks owed more to her mood than the climate, it suited her.
‘Kala,’ he said now. ‘Good.’
‘Milos wondered how you were settling in.’
Once again Sam chose to move the conversation on, and Milos saw the way she responded to this news. It was hardly flattering.
‘Really?’