Anton’s staff was heading towards him with what she recognised as passports in their hands. Anton followed, with a laptop bag swinging from one broad shoulder. He still had his phone clamped to his ear, his other hand making expressive gestures of irritation as he walked.
Behind Zoe, the hard edge of Toby’s seat gave the base of her spine a gentle nudge. She started walking down the shallow flight of steps but there was a strange sensation beginning to swirl inside her legs. She didn’t recognise it for what it was until she had taken two strides across the tarmac then she pulled to a trembling stop.
She was in Greece.
Looking down the length of her legs to her shoes, she thought, I’m standing on the land of my father’s birth for the first time in my life.
Of all the reasons she had been fighting against coming here, this one had never once entered her head, this strange, prickly, stirring sensation which began at her toes and was slowly spreading up her body until it encompassed all of her in the heart-clutching revelation that this moment was the most profound one she’d ever had.
Closing her eyes, she just soaked in the feeling, the strangest impression that she had come home at last. It didn’t make sense. She was as British as afternoon tea, as scented roses in the summer, as Big Ben striking the hour with such very British reliability. She was a ‘grey cloud and cool climate’ girl, a pale blonde with delicate, light skin. She was her mother’s daughter, yet she was standing here feeling the Greek genes she’d never acknowledged tug themselves free from wherever they’d been hiding and scramble like hungry animals to the surface of her skin.
Tilting her head back, she kept her eyes closed and just took it all in—the sultry heat, the exotic scents, the shimmering gold of the late-afternoon sunlight stroking the back of her eyelids—and she felt strangely at peace.
Was this the reason why her father had never come back here? Because he’d known that he would have to experience the same things she was feeling—this almost spiritual sense of coming home? Home was special. Home was built into the very roots of everyone’s psyche. It called to you, drew you to it when you saw it on television—she’d witnessed her father’s stillness and seen the shadows cloud his eyes whenever a programme mentioned Greece.
‘Zoe …’ It was that voice again, the low, dark, modulated voice saying her name like her father had, only this time she recognised the difference.
Lowering her chin, she opened her eyes and found Anton standing in front of her, more handsome, his skin more golden beneath his own sun. His eyes were not polished jet any more but deep, dark warm brown as if they too had been altered by the light. His expression was watchful, and both of his arms were raised in a curve either side of her, but not touching, as if he was waiting to catch her if she fainted away.
‘I’m all right,’ she whispered.
‘You don’t look it,’ he responded.
‘It—it’s a bit of a shock to be standing here after all these years,’ she admitted. ‘I did not expect to—feel anything.’
Anton was beginning to realise that Leander Kanellis’s beautiful daughter felt everything deeply, passionately and with no compromises or restraint. Curiosity as to how all of that passion would translate itself in his arms in his bed fired up his senses, but also had him dropping his arms in an abrupt act of withdrawal.
Forbidden, he told himself. Zoe Kanellis had put herself in forbidden territory the moment she’d accused him of being after her grandfather’s money.
His movement brought her into focus with her surroundings for the first time. Everyone else seemed to have disappeared—the dusty sedan, the black people-carrier. Only the two expensive saloons were left standing there.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I’m holding you up.’
‘Not at all,’ he responded very politely. ‘I have dealt with the necessary formalities. Your brother has not been hauled off to jail.’
‘Make a joke of it if it amuses you.’ Zoe frowned at him. ‘But I was worried.’
‘Worry over, then,’ he came back smoothly.
‘Where is Toby?’ she asked then, scanning the two remaining cars for signs of occupation.
‘Safe with Kostas in the second car, out of the heat from the sun.’ Digging into his jacket pocket, he brought out a maroon leather-bound passport and offered it to her. ‘Yours,’ he told her. ‘Kostas recovered it from your box of papers. I hope it was OK for him to do that.’
Too late if it wasn’t, thought Zoe, taking the passport from him with a mumbled, ‘Thanks.’
‘Then, if you have finished communing with the land of your ancestors, we should leave.’
Drifting out a dry grimace because he almost used the same words she’d been thinking of earlier, Zoe nodded. He turned on his heel and started striding towards the two cars, all brisk, elegant grace and arrogant loftiness that made Zoe pull a wry face as she tagged on behind. She was aware that she’d annoyed him somewhere in the last five minutes though she couldn’t work out which bit of their conversation had been the cause.
With a shrug she glanced curiously around her as she walked. They seemed to have landed at yet another private airport which was nothing more than a landing strip with a white-painted concrete observation-tower set high on a plateau of land. She could see the sea glinting in the distance, and the slopes of the pine-coated hills.
‘Where are we in Greece, exactly?’ she asked curiously.
‘This is Thalia.’
She quickened her pace to catch up with him. ‘Thalia was the daughter of Zeus,’ she said, trying to remember her Greek myths.
‘Or the nymph Thalia, deity of rejuvenation?’ he suggested. ‘No one knows for sure which one the island was named for.’
‘This is an island?’ The slow rumblings of cold suspicion pulled her to a sudden stop.
Having reached the car, he turned to look at her, his expression growing impatient when he saw her standing still a couple of metres away. ‘Can we do the Greek-history lesson another time? It is growing late and I need to be back here in time to take off again before dusk.’
It was like being hit with too much information. Zoe turned a full circle, casting her gaze out across the forest tops. They were surrounded by sea, glinting water everywhere she looked. The island could be no bigger than a few miles wide either way.
‘Island,’ she whispered, staring at him as if he’d grown horns out of his head. ‘You’ve done it again, haven’t you? You’ve promised me one thing then done something else!’
Looking at her standing there pinned to the shimmering tarmac in her slender black clothes—which more and more were making him aware that there was a nicely shaped women hidden within—Anton let out a sigh. ‘Having a normal conversation with you is like treading on broken glass! What,’ he incised, ‘Are you getting so fired up about now?’
‘This!’ Zoe cried, flinging her arms out. ‘You are intending to just dump Toby and me here with Theo Kanellis before you fly off into the sunset!’
‘Are you out of your head?’ Anton fired angrily back at her. ‘This is not Theo’s island it is my island! Don’t you even know the name of your own father’s birthplace?’
The way she blinked those infuriatingly beautiful eyes at him made it clear that she did not. The lowering sun was turning her hair into a halo of spun-golden threads. Oh damn it, he thought, growling the curse inside his own head. And he knew why he was cursing—hell did he know.
‘You grandfather’s island is called Argiris—Argiris!’ He repeated it furiously, flinging out one of his arms. ‘It lies about fifty kilometres off in that