Page 7 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
Intrigued or not, she expected him to irritate her. She hadn’t spent any time with men as far as she knew, but Ffion had always commented on the fact that she’d always seemed to particularly avoid the men in the village who had reputations for putting it about.
But he hadn’t been like any of them, lairy and red-faced with drink. He had taken walks with her. He had showed her his olive groves, which she had half expected to be euphemistic but had, in fact, been a grove of lovely olive trees. They had wandered together on this quiet island, far from the frenzy of a Santorini or Crete.
They had talked—or rather,hehad talked—and she had gotten the vague impression of a man who felt his mortality pressing in on him and wanted something different from his last few years. She’d felt enormously sympathetic to that, having just witnessed Ffion move through that same, last period of life.
And when Pavlos had asked her to marry him, quite unexpectedly, he delivered a long and rambling speech that had led her to believe that he considered her… Religious, perhaps? Innocent, certainly.
Things she wanted to argue about, but didn’t, since she couldn’t remember having ever been near god or man and didn’t particularly want to discuss that.
Will you accept me?Pavlos had asked, but not in the way of a man who was truly worried about her answer.
She had told him she needed to think about it. And she had, sitting in her narrow bed in that hotel in the village with nothing but sea outside her window. What she kept coming back to was that he didn’t seem to want much from her. He had promised her an art studio. He had promised her a lifetime of all the art supplies she could ever want. He’d reminded her that he ownedan art gallery or two, should she ever have work she wished to present.
And the thing about it was that Selwen had always been the practical one. Ffion had pretended to be practical, but at her heart, she was a dreamer. She was all about thewhat ifand the imagination.
Selwen had loved that about her friend—but she couldn’t spend the rest of her life dancing around on Greek islands. She couldn’t go back to Wales, and not only because Ffion had forbidden it. But because she’d sold the house, and now that she’d experienced the Greek sunshine, she wasn’t at all certain that she could tolerate the Welsh rain again.
And given that she was largely indifferent to all nonfictional men, she thought…why not?
Pavlos had always been kind to her. He did not speak of love, or passion, or anything that might have been alarming. Besides, he was quite old. And not in the greatest health, and no, she didn’t think that was mercenary. It couldn’t be, because he already had a will, and he’d told her that he would never change it. She would have to sign documents when they married, but since she didn’t have an emotional investment in him, what did she care?
She could indulge the true passion of her life, her art.
And when she thought that, something seemed to shift inside her, like she was finally finding her way home. Like she was finally on the right path. Surely that was the kind of thing she ought to pay attention to.
Really, Pavlos felt like a happy, sunny place to land.
The only thing she had asked of him was that she be allowed to stay private. She didn’t wish to go with him to all those grand balls where he was always photographed. She didn’t want any part of his fame.
She wanted this. A Greek island where there was dancing and there was sunshine and where Ffion would have enjoyed herself tremendously. She wanted her art, quiet walks on the beach, and lazy wanders through Pavlos’s estate, in and out of the olive groves.
A sweet little life to replace the sweet little life she’d lost.
Because sweet little lives were all she had. Her memory stopped where Ffion started, and Selwen had given up trying to push through that. She’d read loads of books on the topic and had come to the conclusion that whatever lurked behind that wall of her memory was something she didn’t want to know.
So she was dedicated to keeping her life as sweet as possible.
Though that was difficult to remember now, surrounded by all these people with avarice in their gazes, and worse still than all the fluttery ones and the glittery ones and the giggling ones…was him.
She had seen him the moment he came in. There in that operatic archway, festooned with bougainvillea as if it was outside.
It was like her entire attention had been suddenly slammed straight to him, like a rope snapping taut.
She didn’t know what it was about him. He…disturbed her.
He disturbed everyone, she’d seen in an instant. She saw the way people moved away from him. The way he cut a swath through this party, dressed all in black and with a certain menace on his face, like a memory.
Selwen felt something like dizzy, but then again, she’d allowed herself to drink a little too much of the bubbly stuff. This was supposed to be a celebration, after all.
Maybe she wasn’t all that dizzy, because she had no trouble tracking him as he prowled across the floor, the guests who crowded her and Pavlos falling away from him like he was some kind of wild predator.
It took her a long moment to realize she was breathless. It was the strangest thing.
It washim.
He was entirely too tall. He wore a dark, obviously bespoke suit that clung to his body in ways that should have been illegal. His shoulders were wide, and every part of his torso was hard as it narrowed down to his hips. There was not an ounce of extra flesh on his frame, but that was only half of it.
It was more the way he moved.
