Greek Affairs: In His Bed: Sleeping with a Stranger / Blackmailed into the Greek Tycoon's Bed / Bedded by the Greek Billionaire. Carol Marinelli

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СКАЧАТЬ I’m sorry if you feel he was using you to get to me—’

      ‘I didn’t say that.’ Though they both knew she had. ‘I don’t want to offend you, Helen. I’d just like to know how the two of you met. That’s not so difficult to understand, is it?’

      ‘No.’ Helen moistened her lips. ‘But your brother’s a—a very attractive man, Rhea. I imagine he meets lots of women in the course of his travels.’

      ‘I imagine he does.’ Rhea sighed. ‘But Milos is not a—what is that word?—a womaniser, okhi? I think I can count on one hand the number of women he has introduced to me.’

      Helen didn’t have an answer for that, so instead she decided to be honest. Well, as honest as it was necessary to be, anyway. ‘He—we—I met him—oh—’ she mustn’t be too definite ‘—perhaps a dozen years ago. In England.’

      Rhea’s eyes widened. ‘Psemata? Really?’

      ‘Yes, really.’ Helen tried to sound casual about it. ‘My—er—my father had asked him to look me up.’

      ‘Katalava. I see.’ Rhea absorbed this with interest. ‘I wonder why he didn’t tell me that?’

      ‘I don’t suppose he considered it important.’

      ‘But—you must have been very young at that time.’

      ‘Not so young,’ said Helen, hurriedly trying to calculate how old she’d have been twelve years ago. ‘I—er—I was about twenty.’

      ‘Ah.’ Rhea’s eyebrows lifted even further, and Helen realised that by exaggerating her age, she had inadvertently given Rhea a reason to think there might have been more than friendship between them.

      ‘Anyway,’ she said, hoping to divert her, ‘I suppose you’d still have been in primary school then.’

      ‘I guess.’ But Rhea wasn’t interested in her own past now. ‘Imagine,’ she said reflectively. ‘You and Milos have known one another since almost before Melissa was born. Were you married when you met? Of course, you must have been.’

      This was getting more and more complicated and Helen strove desperately for a lifeline. ‘You must love coming here,’ she said, gesturing at the view. ‘Who looks after the garden? Your mother?’

      ‘Hardly.’ Rhea giggled a little at that. ‘If you ever meet my mother you’ll understand how unlikely that scenario is. Athene is an ornament, not a worker. She considers giving my father five children was quite enough.’

      Helen managed a polite smile and she was relieved when Rhea went on in a different vein. ‘But, yes, I do love coming here. It’s so much more appealing than the college apartment I share with a girlfriend in Athens.’

      ‘Oh, but surely you could—’

      Helen broke off and Rhea finished the sentence for her. ‘Live at home?’ she queried. ‘Well, yes, I could. But I wanted to be independent. To prove I could—what do you say?—hack it, ne, with my fellow students? Unfortunately Papa was right. I would have been more comfortable living with them.’

      ‘So you come here when you can?’ Helen breathed a little more easily. ‘I don’t blame you. It’s very beautiful.’

      ‘You like it?’ Rhea stared at her and Helen could almost see the cogs of her brain turning.

      ‘Very much,’ she said.

      Rhea frowned. ‘Melissa must just have been a baby when you met Milos,’ she said, returning to her previous theme, and Helen suppressed a groan.

      ‘I—suppose she must have been,’ she said, hating the lie, but unable to do anything about it. She got determinedly to her feet. ‘I really think we ought to be going now.’

      Rhea squinted in the sunlight as she looked up at her. ‘I’ve embarrassed you.’

      ‘No.’ Helen spoke sharply. ‘Why—?’

      ‘Talking about Milos,’ broke in Rhea softly. ‘I get the feeling there was more to your relationship than just a casual encounter.’

      ‘You’re wrong.’ But Helen was breathing faster now and she knew the other girl had noticed.

      ‘I’m not suggesting you had an affair,’ Rhea continued lightly. ‘After all, you were married, as you say. But I know how attractive my brother is. And he was obviously quite—intrigued—by you.’

      ‘No.’

      It was all Helen could think of, but Rhea wasn’t to be put off. ‘There is some history there, I know it,’ she said. ‘And if you will not tell me, then I will just have to ask Milos. Then pirazi, it doesn’t matter. Shall we go and see if Melissa is awake?’

      Conversely, Helen was loath to leave the subject now. She dreaded to think what Milos would say if Rhea asked him how they’d met. And if he gave her different dates, she was bound to be suspicious. Oh, what a tangled web she’d woven for herself.

      But there was nothing she could do or say to change things now and she was grateful that Melissa’s chatter meant there were no awkward silences on the journey home. The younger girl had awoken from her nap full of energy and eager to arrange another meeting with Rhea.

      Helen wished there were some way she could discourage their association, but there wasn’t. Not without alienating her daughter, anyway. She just wished she didn’t have the feeling that Rhea might be using her friendship with Melissa to find out more about Melissa’s mother.

      It was a relief of sorts when Rhea dropped them at Aghios Petros and took her leave. Melissa insisted on going to see her off and Sam Campbell, who had offered the Greek girl a drink, which she had declined, now invited his daughter to join him as he checked on the grapes.

      She realised it had just been an excuse for them to be alone together when he said abruptly, ‘You didn’t enjoy it, did you? Melissa obviously did, but you didn’t.’

      Helen sighed. ‘Rhea and Melissa have more in common with each other,’ she replied, forcing a light tone. Then, once again taking the defensive, ‘Have you had a good day?’

      ‘Is it Milos?’ Her father was either astonishingly shrewd or Helen’s face was pathetically easy to read. ‘You’ve seen him today, haven’t you?’

      ‘How do you know that?’

      Her father shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’

      Helen bit her lip. ‘Well, only for a short while,’ she admitted, not altogether truthfully. ‘He left for Athens—’

      ‘Not until this afternoon, surely,’ remarked her father mildly. ‘I spoke to him a couple of hours ago from the helicopter.’ He paused. ‘He told me he’d taken you to Vassilios. Did you like it?’

      Did she like it? Helen knew an almost hysterical desire to laugh. ‘I—thought it was an impressive house,’ she said at last, wishing she could escape all these questions. She had thought that she’d be free of them once Rhea had left.

      ‘Did СКАЧАТЬ