Maggie Cox – The Mediterranean Millionaire's Mistress (страница 3)

‘Well, you must be very proud of your work. I think it’s wonderful,’ she told him unreservedly.

His interest undeniably provoked, Lysander studied the woman in front of him with more curiosity than he cared to admit. She was not stunningly beautiful, as Marianna had been, but she was very, very pretty, with big dark eyes and a lush pink mouth. As he’d approached the woman in front of his photographic portrait—coincidentally his personal favourite of all the studies he had taken—after admiring the long dark hair that reached halfway down her back and gleamed with the sheen of a black pearl, Lysander had of course noticed that she had a very arresting figure too.

Her white linen trousers emphasised a perfectly edible peach-shaped bottom, gently flaring hips, and a waist that might easily be spanned by a man’s hands. When he’d finally seen her from the front he’d observed with frankly male pleasure that she was nicely endowed where it mattered. In her pink sleeveless silk top, she had a sultry, womanly shape that any red-blooded male would more than appreciate. He liked her voice too. There was something quite engaging about her flat English vowels that intrigued him.

All of a sudden, Lysander knew that he did not want her to go and leave him alone. For once he was tired of his own morose company, and needed a pretty diversion like this enchanting young woman in front of him.

‘I thank you for your compliment.’ He smiled.

The young Greek woman supervising the entrance to the gallery just then inserted a new CD into the player on the desk in front of her. As hypnotically beautiful harp strings and a Celtic voice started to fill the air, Ianthe’s attention was momentarily stolen from her surprised companion.

‘Oh, what is this? It’s lovely!’ she enthused, her dark eyes shining. And Lysander’s resolve to not let her run away from him became virtually a mission. The pretty English tourist was clearly someone who appreciated the beautiful things in life, and it would be pleasant to while away a couple of hours in her company.

‘We will ask my friend Leonie to tell us what it is on the way out,’ he replied confidently. ‘I would like to take you to lunch. Would you do me the honour of joining me?’

‘I don’t think I—’

‘You are here with your husband or boyfriend, perhaps?’

‘Neither.’ Ianthe felt hot colour flood into her cheeks. ‘I’m unattached…at present.’

Why, oh, why had she told him such a thing? Now maybe he’d think she was expecting something more than just a lunch date!

But he seemed pleased with her answer all the same.

‘Well, my name is Lysander, and if you check with Leonie in a moment or two she will confirm to you that I am indeed the photographer who took this portrait, and well known to both her and her husband Ari. There. I have told you my name, and now you must tell me yours.’

‘Lysander?’ Ianthe frowned, thinking. ‘Wasn’t he something to do with the Spartans?’

Her comment was so surprising that Lysander laughed out loud with pleasure. At the front desk, Leonie glanced over in surprise, and smiled at the sight of Lysander Rosakis apparently enjoying the company of an attractive woman again.

‘He was a Spartan general. Not very popular with the Athenians, since he defeated them to end the Peloponnesian War. How did you know that?’

‘I’m just interested in history.’

She went very pink as she said this, and Lysander studied her even more closely. ‘It is a fascinating subject, I agree, but I am still waiting to hear your name,’ he reminded her.

Did she want to have lunch with this handsome stranger? He intrigued her for sure, but how did she know that she could trust him? Ianthe fretted. She was alone on this island, with no one to even know or care if something happened to her…

Oh, don’t be so ridiculous! Her own voice came back at her in irritation. Nothing’s going to happen to you other than that you might just have a good time. For goodness’ sake, Ianthe, live a little! That last was Polly’s voice. How many times had her wonderful and often exasperated friend urged her to do just that? Especially when Ianthe had been prevaricating over some invite or social event, making pointless heavy weather of something that should be pleasurable. Sometimes her parents’ endless pleas for caution became a ponderous chain, shackling her.

She made up her mind. Remembering what she’d promised herself, about taking every opportunity that came her way now that she was miles away from the known and the familiar, she found herself giving the terrifyingly attractive man beside her a determinedly agreeable smile.

‘My name is Ianthe.’

He hadn’t furnished her with his surname so she took her lead from him. After lunch she would probably never see him again, so it hardly mattered. Somehow it would be fun to stay anonymous…to be a different Ianthe, not bound by her usual self-imposed restrictions and conformity.

‘But you have a Greek name!’ His eyes narrowing as he continued to study her, Lysander did not conceal his surprise.

‘Yes.’ She shrugged almost guiltily, unable to explain that she was on a bit of a personal quest—that she might truly be able to claim some Greek blood, except she didn’t know how or even if she would ever find out the truth about her own ancestry.

‘Come.’ He moved beside her and lightly touched her hand—not missing the look of startled pleasure in her unbelievably sultry dark eyes. ‘Let us go to lunch together and we will talk some more.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘SO, HOW do you go about choosing subjects for your pictures?’ Ianthe asked him before biting into an olive she’d selected from her colourful bowl of traditional Greek salad. They were sitting outside at a taverna up on a hill, the sparkling iridescence of the sea a stunning backdrop as two passenger ferries crossed each other in the distance, leaving a foaming backwash in their wake.

Lysander appeared thoughtful for a moment, his captivating eyes shielded from her gaze by dark sunglasses. Even so, Ianthe felt the keen scrutiny of his unsettling glance with the same stunning acknowledgement as though he was asking the most intimate questions of her that a man could ask a woman…

‘The woman in the photograph became my subject quite by chance,’ he replied with a shrug, breaking some bread and leaving it on his plate.

Her glance was drawn immediately to his lean, bronzed hands with their almost pearlescent square-cut nails. He definitely had ‘artistic’ hands, but they didn’t look work-shy either.

‘I’d been travelling around some of the smaller islands, taking my camera with me, and after walking all day in one particular place, and getting lost, I stopped at a small house to ask the way. It was Iphigenia’s house—the woman in the picture. She fed me that day with what little food she had, and in the course of our meal together she told me her life story. When we had finished eating she was curious about my camera and asked if I would like to take her picture. I said of course, and the result you see in the gallery.’

Iphigenia had moved Lysander deeply that day, with her kindness and her humility. Their encounter had happened just three scant months after Marianna had died. Leaving his business affairs to trusted colleagues, he had taken off travelling, needing to be alone for a while, needing to make sense of a world that he could not pretend to understand any more. Iphigenia had lost her entire family to illness, one after the other—her husband, her son, then lastly her daughter. Yet she wasn’t bitter, and she was utterly convinced that they would all be reunited again when she died.

Lysander had almost made his own entreaty to God that that might become true for her, though he nurtured no such similar hope of being reunited with the baby son he’d lost. That would be a miracle he found too hard to believe in…especially when he knew he probably didn’t deserve it. He had never been able to shake a nagging feeling that maybe, because he hadn’t truly been able to find forgiveness in his heart for Marianna’s adultery, he was somehow being punished.

When he’d finally returned home and developed the picture he’d known he’d captured something very special indeed. He could have sold Iphigenia’s picture a hundred times over with the interest it had generated, but Lysander had instead given it to his friend Ari Tsoukalas to hang in his gallery.

‘So you are a photographer by profession?’

‘Amongst other things, yes.’

There was not the slightest need or inclination on Lysander’s part to tell this charming young woman that he earned his main income from the shipping industry, and that that income ran into millions of dollars a year. Far better that she believed him to be a simple photographer. That would allow them both to be free to enjoy their unexpected lunch together, without all the baggage that his family’s name and wealth entailed.

‘And do you exhibit your photographs anywhere else?’ Ianthe enquired politely. For a moment Lysander’s attention was caught by the way she chewed on the juicy black olive and carefully extracted the stove by making her mouth into an unconsciously sexy ‘O’ shape, to capture it with her forefinger and thumb. Such an ordinary, commonplace action should not provide the highly provocative entertainment it did, but Lysander couldn’t deny that his groin had tightened hotly at the sight. He considered the pretty English tourist with a renewed fascination that wouldn’t be assuaged.