Aphrodite's Tears Read online

  Oriel’s gaze flitted away and caught sight of a small boat, moored next to the rocks to her left. Partially obscured by the craggy ridge that shaped the deserted cove, only the top of the sail was visible, billowing gently in the balmy breeze. She’d been too preoccupied by her brooding thoughts to notice its arrival.

  She felt an urge to push past this handsome stranger and run away to the safety of her hotel bedroom, but something about this man had held her there, transfixed. The intriguing power of his personality gripped her imagination. This stranger could have stepped straight out of Homer’s Odyssey.

  A silky platinum lock slipped from the scarf Oriel had tied around her head in a band to keep her heavy, tumbling mane in place, and the breeze blew it across her face. He reached out a bronzed hand with tapering long fingers and lightly pushed the strand away, before caressing the length of her hair almost reverently. There was a sultry burn now in the gaze that wandered from her hair to her mouth and then settled on Oriel’s wild doe eyes, which stared back at him. Her stomach curled with instinctive heat.

  She felt the impulse to escape, like a fawn fleeing into the brush. Instead, she stood there, pulse racing, her legs trembling as an unfamiliar and exquisite sensation flooded the lower part of her body. It was madness! Never before had this sense of danger – of seduction – hit her with such potency. Surely it was the island air that had gone to her head like an enchanted potion.

  The dark waves murmured on the sand, their gently rolling edges lit a luminous blue under the moonlight. Everything was cloaked in unreality and it was as if the two of them were caught in a dream. Oriel sensed that the mysterious stranger before her was also aware of the extraordinary atmosphere that engulfed them.

  His fingers were still touching her hair and she backed away. This man was so overwhelming, and she was disorientated. In a sudden, desperate panic, Oriel turned to run, hardly looking where she was going, her bare feet stumbling through the wet sand in the silver-washed half light. Before she had time to register it, her foot came into contact with something hard and she tripped and went sprawling forwards. In the same split second she was jerked sideways by a pair of muscular arms as the Greek god sprang forward and caught hold of her, their bodies colliding in mid-air.

  Oriel gave a choked cry. The stranger fell with her, holding her, his body going into a complicated twist just before they hit the sand so that she landed on top of him, the fall softened for her by his body. She lay winded for an instant; then, before she was over the shock, he took her by the shoulders and gently slid her from him sideways. She found herself on her back, staring up at the milky moonlit sky. His bulk arched over her, blotting out the moon with the dark circle of his head, and she looked wildly up at him as the weight of his muscled body pressed down, splaying her against the sand.

  ‘Don’t!’ she cried out, struggling in his arms. His skin was hot and smooth, and she fought the impulse to relax and let herself melt into him.

  The stranger’s eyes glittered and held hers beneath the perfect arc of black eyebrows. ‘You were headed for a nasty fall on that rock, you should look where you’re going.’ His was a face out of Greek tragedy itself. It was so close to hers that Oriel felt his warm breath on her cheek and her pulse quickened; with it came an acute awareness: the needs she had suppressed for years were suddenly rushing to the surface. An aching feeling was invading her lower limbs, a strange weakness. It was magnified a hundredfold when he leapt to his feet and a strong brown hand helped her up, his powerful frame looming over her. His silver eyes skimmed the taut curve of her breasts and she prayed her flimsy bikini top was displaying no signs of her arousal.

  He didn’t let go of her hand as his eyes bored into hers. ‘You’re trembling, beautiful Calypso.’

  Oriel blinked. He was terrifyingly attractive. She pulled her hand from his, now embarrassed at her clumsy attempt to flee. ‘It’s nothing. Thank you.’

  His sensuous lips stretched into a slow smile, uncovering a row of pure white teeth. ‘You must have been here centuries ago, waiting for me on your island.’ Even his speech was theatrical. She found herself returning his smile and entered into the spirit.

  ‘And who were you?’ she breathed, the question almost catching in her throat; she already knew the answer.

  ‘Odysseus, of course. Remember? I was shipwrecked and washed up on the shore of this island. You fell in love with me and held me prisoner, but you weaved your magic spell over me with your beautiful long hair, spun from moonbeams, your mesmerizing voice and enticing body, and your manipulative ways.’

  Oh, he was daring and arrogant – and irresistible, too. Despite herself, Oriel took up his allusion of the ancient Greek myth and ventured boldly down the same path, perilous though it was. ‘And even though I promised to make you immortal, you refused and wanted to return to Ithaca and your wife.’

  Now it was the stranger’s turn to look surprised. He regarded her with amusement. ‘We made love and I was lost for seven years.’

  ‘But it was me who saved you and built the boat that eventually took you home.’

  Finally he laughed, transforming the hardness of his features into an expression that was devastating, making Oriel’s heart leap. Even the sound of his laughter was huskily exotic. ‘Maybe you do not believe in the reincarnation of souls,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it.’

  The images he evoked made Oriel long for him to take her in his arms, to be clasped by those strong hands that had stroked her hair with such gentleness … To lose herself beneath that powerful body again.

  Surrounded by such beauty and serenaded by the sea, it was as though they were trapped in time. Maybe it was the lingering adrenaline of her anger at the contents of the letter and her heightened nervous system. Perhaps it was the nature of this deserted place that made everything seem like an alluring fantasy. Or maybe it was simply that this man was unlike any other Oriel had ever met. He was no Odysseus, she decided: that Greek hero had been a mere mortal. Indeed this man seemed the personification of Poseidon himself.

  His eyes glinted darkly and pinned her with their glimmering steel, setting her nerves tingling. Had he read her thoughts? Was he aware of the emotions he had stirred up as he plucked at needs deep within her that no one had yet aroused? Oriel’s throat was dry, her lips parched, and she passed the tip of her tongue over them.

  Oh Lord, there was no sense to this!

  Shocked at her disturbing reaction, she stepped forward to move past him. ‘I’m sorry … I need to go,’ she murmured, but his fingers caught hold of her wrist. She felt the strength of them, before his thumb brushed sensually against her skin, caressing it, melting her very insides.

  ‘Don’t break the spell,’ he said faintly, his voice low and hoarse. Close to this man, every sensible instinct told Oriel that she had been right to make a run for it, but as the shifting moonlight caught and held in his irises, she stared into them, profoundly aware of his dark masculine beauty and power. Sometimes it took only a single glance to say everything and, in that moment, she felt her old beliefs crumble inexorably around her. She lowered her eyes and a frisson of emotion ran through her body.

  ‘You feel the magic as I do, yes? Anything might be possible on a night such as this.’ His voice was slow and heavy, tinged with the unmistakable edge of male desire.

  A pulse beat fast in Oriel’s throat. She lifted her face and her huge green eyes gazed up at him, a delicious thrill coursing through her veins like brandy. She swayed slightly, her legs threatening to give way, and he pulled her against the hard wall of his chest. The bare heat of him seared her again. She could feel his heart beating and, as he tightened his embrace, the hardness of his need against her made her gasp imperceptibly. She could smell a mixture of soap and dried salt water on his skin, mingling with the manly scent of his body.

  A sweet insanity was stealing over her. Shocked, Oriel felt her whole being jerk abruptly in physical response to him, as though he had alrea
dy touched her in the most intimate way. The desire she felt for this unknown man brought in by the sea, the delight of his warm contact against her trembling flesh as his hands moved over her bare arms, was intoxicating. The unfamiliar sensations that were taking over every nerve in her body were so intense that she could think of nothing else but him and, in that moment, she wanted more than anything to give her virginity to the dark Greek god with silver eyes.

  Oriel shuddered wildly. She felt the fear of something primitive and unpredictable racing through her and yet, obeying that sixth sense without question, she thrust herself even closer to this divine figure, hungry and demanding.

  As if reading her mind, the Greek god’s steel-grey eyes darkened to almost charcoal, scanning her face until they settled on the sensitive curves of her lips. Without a word, he lowered his head a fraction but did not kiss her. Oriel’s breath caught sharply in her throat as she read the look in his piercing gaze that glittered with deep, adult fires.

  Stars burned in the dark sky, a great silvery drift of them that seemed to hold the pair in stunned wonderment while they stared at each other as though bemused by an enchanted spell. Oriel had lost all sense of what had gone before or what might happen in the future. She simply thought to herself: Damn the consequences!

  So that night, Poseidon, god of the sea, took his beautiful young virgin to that overwhelming, dazzling place where the world and everybody else in it ceased to exist. There were only the two of them and the blazing combustion they created between each other. When the heat built to that point of no return, she knew he felt her innocence. For a moment he paused over her, his diamond eyes now black with passion, questioning, waiting. In answer, Oriel drove her hands into his hair and pulled him towards her, urging him on. ‘Regret nothing,’ he’d whispered just before taking full possession of her with exquisite gentleness … then with a fire that consumed her, mind, body and soul.

  She would never regret it, Oriel knew, even though what happened had violated all the principles she had so far held dear.

  It had been a moonlit night of hedonism and passion. Spent and satiated, they slept in a small cave off the beach. When Oriel forced her heavy lids open the next morning, her Greek god had gone and she almost wondered whether the ecstasy she remembered just a few hours before had been real. As a new kind of desolation filled her, she fought back tears of bitter disappointment.

  He had left her just as Rob had done – by stealth.

  After that night, Oriel knew two things for certain: it was the last she would ever see of the stranger, and she would never let any other man abandon her again.

  CHAPTER 1

  Athens, May 1977

  Clad in a cool coral shirtwaist dress that showed off her exquisitely proportioned hourglass figure and long shapely legs, Oriel stood on a scorched sweep of airfield above the glittering Mediterranean. Colourful sailboats made bright etchings against the far-off horizon. The Greek sun beat down upon her platinum-blonde head and her fingers tightly gripped the handles of her overnight bag as her dark-fringed green eyes, hidden behind large sunglasses, looked around her.

  It had been less than a month since she had seen the advertisement in the newspaper and she had wasted no time in sending out her résumé to Stavros Petrakis, works manager of the subsea excavation project. She’d had no difficulty securing the role: a few exchanged faxes, including her references, and within a week an engagement letter and contract had arrived and all arrangements had been made. Clearly these people were organized and efficient, she had thought, which perhaps wasn’t surprising, given the imperious tone of the original advert. Yet Petrakis had sounded very pleasant in his correspondence, making Oriel suspect that the person responsible for outlining the job specification had been the name signed at the bottom of her contract, ‘D. Lekkas’ himself. Anyhow, boss or not, already she didn’t like the sound of him. Hopefully he would keep out of the way and let her get on with her job.

  The project was certainly exciting: an ancient wreck, possibly dating from Roman times, calcified and half buried in the sand, awaited a proper salvage operation. She had never worked on an argosy of such antiquity and was itching to find out more. Stavros Petrakis had sent her the basic works specification but assured her that once she was on site, she would be briefed further. He had given her all the particulars: Oriel would be met in Athens and taken on her employer’s private plane to Helios, a small island in the Ionian Sea, privately owned by the Lekkas family.

  Oriel scanned her surroundings. Light aircraft of various sizes stood in orderly rows on the tarmac, their iron carcasses glistening in the afternoon haze. It all felt so familiar: the way the air smelled of pine trees, brine and sienna-coloured earth, the shimmering blue of the sky. Even the sunlight seemed to have a particular quality of its own.

  I’m in Greece again, she thought. I’m really here at last.

  She was about to approach a man who was busy painting a logo on to one of the jet planes when she heard someone behind her call out her name.

  ‘Despinis Anderson?’

  Oriel turned abruptly. ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  A polite smile greeted her from the wiry-framed Greek man with slicked-back hair and sideburns who was now extending a brown hand towards her. He was older than Oriel, with slightly pockmarked skin; his dark eyebrows slanted sharply away from a wide nose like two circumflex accents, giving his face a fox-like appearance. Neatly dressed in a short-sleeved white safari shirt and dark trousers, he would have seemed rather nondescript were it not for the large, expensive gold watch that glinted on his wrist. ‘Kalós ílthate stin Elláda, welcome to Greece. I am Yorgos Christodoulou, estate manager for Kyrios Lekkas.’

  Oriel’s face broke into a smile as she held out her hand. ‘Chairō, pleased to meet you.’

  Jet-black eyes that were small and beady skimmed an appreciative look over the young woman’s slim figure and her delicate Englishrose complexion.

  ‘Did you have a pleasant journey?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. I must say, arriving in sunny Athens after the dreary weather in England is truly uplifting.’

  ‘Your luggage has already been picked up by our courier and will probably arrive at Helios tonight.’ As he said this, Yorgos Christodoulou took Oriel’s overnight bag from her.

  ‘Efharisto.’

  ‘Parakaló, my pleasure.’ He took up a brisk pace, leading Oriel along the airfield towards a cluster of small aircraft. ‘You have learnt a few words of Greek, I see. It is always wise when going to a foreign country to have some knowledge of the language.’

  ‘I’m fluent in Greek,’ Oriel told him, switching to his own language. Something in the way he spoke made her suddenly feel the need to justify herself. ‘I read Classics at university before my Masters in archaeology, so I’m familiar with both ancient and modern Greek.’

  He raised an eyebrow, answering her in Greek. ‘A clever young lady, I see. Very impressive. You speak our language well, Despinis Anderson, for a foreigner.’ He nodded ahead of them. ‘Kyrios Lekkas’s private plane is waiting to fly us to the island. It’s just a short walk from here. I imagine this isn’t your first visit to our country?’

  ‘No, I’ve visited various parts of Greece throughout my academic courses, including a few of the islands.’

  ‘You look very young for such extensive studies.’

  She smiled brightly, trying to ignore his condescension. ‘Appearances are often misleading.’

  He shot her a sideways glance. ‘I have nothing to do with the archaeological side of the island, that is Stavros Petrakis’s field, but if you don’t mind my saying so, as you are young and attractive, I think the Kyrios will find you unsuitable for the job so be prepared.’

  Oriel was used to this – the perception, in a largely patriarchal society, that she had a man’s job. There was nothing new in the estate manager’s attitude. Still, this didn’t prevent her being irritated by his comments. ‘I stated my age on my résumé, I gave Kyrios Petrakis al
l the information he needed, and I have excellent credentials and references,’ she retorted. ‘My age and appearance are surely immaterial.’

  Yorgos raised his eyebrows. ‘You certainly sound very confident, Despinis Anderson, and I wish you the best of luck.’

  She nodded but felt an amused sort of mockery in his words. It was evident that the male population of this part of the world was still untouched by the sexual revolution. To most Greek men, a woman’s place was in the kitchen, and to be outdone by a female threatened their egos. Undoubtedly, Yorgos Christodoulou’s condescending attitude might well be typical on this job, Oriel mused. But what if he was right and the island’s owner took one look at her and sent her packing? Anything was possible if Stavros Petrakis had hired her without the sanction of his boss. She sighed inwardly. Was this to be a complete waste of her time?

  The Lekkas Piper Saratoga prop plane was one of the smaller craft on the asphalt, yet its elegant steel frame stood out among all the other, more imposing planes. The tail and the top of its wings were adorned with a modern image of the sun, painted in glistening warm shades of orange, red and yellow, clearly designed to represent Helios, the sun god of Greek mythology, after which the island was named.

  Yorgos signalled to the pilot, who waved back from the cockpit, before clasping Oriel’s elbow firmly and helping her up the steps and into the cabin. The twin-engine piston aircraft seated four passengers in a cosy but sleek cabin. The decor was elegant, pure and understated in its luxury, with an ivory-coloured interior that contrasted beautifully with the lacquered walnut of the pull-down tables and window frames. Oriel sat down in one of the leather seats.

  ‘Are you comfortable?’ the estate manager asked once she had fastened her seatbelt. ‘Can I get you something to drink? A glass of ouzo, maybe?’