Modern Romance May 2020 Books 5-8

She stumbled a little and he took her elbow to steady her. She glanced up at him, her cheeks a little pink. ‘Thank you.’

Her hair was down around her shoulders in soft natural waves that he knew she usually preferred to be straightened.

‘It’s nothing.’ He gritted his jaw at his body’s reaction to the feel of her arm under his hand, her slender body brushing against his ever so slightly. She wasn’t wearing the scent she usually did. He’d watched her take it out of the bag earlier and she’d tested it on her wrist, immediately scrunching up her nose. She’d looked at him. ‘This is my perfume?’

He’d nodded. Privately he’d always had the same reaction when he’d smelled it. To recoil. It was too overpowering. Sickly sweet. She’d put it back without spraying any.

But now all he could smell was her. Soap and something uniquely and mysteriously feminine. Her scent reminded him uncomfortably again of meeting her for the first time when he’d been blown away by her fresh-faced beauty. Her impact on him had been like a punch to his solar plexus, driving the breath out of his lungs.

And to this day he couldn’t figure it out. He’d seen plenty of women who were more beautiful than Sasha. Slept with them too. But something about her, from the moment he’d laid eyes on her, had got to him. Captivating him. As much as he hated to admit it.

She’d seduced him with her wide-eyed act of innocence, and had then trapped him with the oldest trick in the book. The burn of that transgression and the burn of his momentary weakness for her was like permanent bile in his gut.

His desire for her had dissipated as quickly as it had blown up, and he’d welcomed it, in light of her betrayal, but now it was back, as if to mock him for ever believing he’d had it under his control.

She was playing him all over again but this time he wouldn’t stand for it.

Sasha winced as Apollo’s fingers tightened almost painfully on her arm. She tried to pull away and he looked at her. ‘I’m okay now, you can let go.’

Instantly his expression blanked and he took his hand away, saying smoothly, ‘My car is here, just outside the door.’

Sasha saw a sleek silver SUV waiting for them, with a driver holding the open back door. It reinforced her sense of being in an alternate dimension where nothing made much sense.

She stepped out of the hospital and gulped in fresh air, hoping that might make her feel more grounded. The Greek sun was warm but the early summer air wasn’t too humid yet.

Sasha climbed into the car. Her shoes were pinching painfully after only walking a few feet. She couldn’t believe that she wore this kind of shoe on a regular basis.

Or... She slid a look at Apollo, as he got into the back of the car on the other side, maybe Apollo liked them and she wore them to please him?

That thought sent another shiver through her. The thought of pleasing him. Except, if the frosty vibes were anything to go by, he wasn’t pleased and she had no idea why.

The car pulled away from the hospital and Apollo exchanged a few words in Greek with the driver, who then put up the privacy partition. Sasha was so aware of him it was as if an outer layer of skin had been removed.

A hand rested on one thigh. Square, masculine. Long fingers. Blunt nails. His suit looked as if it had been made specifically to hug his muscles and emphasise his powerful physique. He looked at her and she didn’t have time to pretend she wasn’t ogling him.

‘Okay?’

She nodded. It was a civil question but the tension was palpable. Instead of asking a question she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to, she asked, ‘Where are we going now?’

‘The villa. It’s not far from here.’

‘Have I lived there long?’

‘For the past three months, since we married.’

‘Where did we marry?’ It suddenly struck Sasha at that moment that, if not for the fact that this man had turned up to claim her after the accident, when apparently she’d been found wandering by the road in a disorientated state a day and night after being reported missing, he could be anyone.

He looked at her for such a long and assessing moment that she could feel heat creeping back into her cheeks but then he plucked a small sleek phone out of his pocket and tapped the screen and handed it to her. ‘We married in Athens in a civil ceremony.’

She looked at the screen of the phone. On it was a link to an official press release announcing their marriage with an accompanying picture. Sasha enlarged it. It was her. But it didn’t feel like her. She wore a knee-length floaty silk sleeveless dress, cut on the bias and slashed almost to the navel. Eye-wateringly high heels. Her hair was teased into big curls and she seemed to be wearing a lot of make-up. Gold jewellery. An enormous-looking diamond ring. She felt a rush of exposure and embarrassment when she looked at the picture. And then she looked down at her bare fingers. ‘Did I have rings?’

‘Yes. The doctors said you must have lost them in the accident.’

She looked at Apollo. ‘I hope they weren’t too valuable.’

He gave her a funny look. ‘Don’t worry, they were insured.’

Sasha looked back at the picture on the phone. She was clutching Apollo’s arm and beaming; however, her new husband looked anything but happy in the picture. The memory she had of him smiling had to be a figment of her imagination. A conjured-up image.

She skimmed the press release.

Apollo Vasilis, Greek construction tycoon, weds his English girlfriend Sasha Miller in a private civil ceremony.

The bare minimum of information. Sasha handed the phone back, feeling even more disorientated. A million questions buzzed in her head but she could feel a headache starting and the doctor had told her not to overdo things.

She looked out the window and saw glimpses of huge houses set in verdant grounds behind tall wrought-iron gates or massive walls. Clearly this was a wealthy area.

Before long the car turned in towards a massive pair of wrought-iron gates. They opened mechanically and a man in little security hut outside waved them in after a few words with the driver.

Sasha stared out the window in awe as lush grounds opened up around them. The driveway led up to a massive courtyard and a two-storey villa-style house with steps leading up to the front door where a woman in a uniform was waiting.

Apollo got out when the car had stopped at the bottom of the steps and before Sasha could figure out where the handle was, the door was being opened and she saw his large hand extending towards her.

She had no choice but to put her hand in his and her skin prickled with a kind of foreboding, as if her body knew it would react in a certain way and she had no idea what to expect.

Yes, you do.

Her hand touched his and an electric jolt went right through her. Reflexively her fingers curled around his. Face flaming at her reaction, she let him help her from the car and as soon as she could, she snatched her hand back.

Her reaction to him on top of the fog in her brain was too much. She resolved not to touch him again if she could help it and then that little voice reminded her that they were married.

She stopped at the bottom of the steps at the thought that they must be sharing a room. A bed. Her heart seemed to triple its rate. Apollo was almost at the top of the steps. He turned around and she saw a look of something almost like impatience cross his face.

‘Sasha?’

She thought furiously as she climbed the steps, taking care in the impractical shoes. Maybe she could suggest they sleep separately until her memory returned? Surely he wouldn’t expect her to share his bed when she felt as if she hardly knew him? No matter what her body might be telling her.

At the top of the steps was the older woman in the uniform. She was a stranger to Sasha. And she didn’t look welcoming. Dark hair pulled back and a matronly bosom. She seemed to be eyeing Sasha warily, as if waiting for her to do something unexpected.

Sasha stepped forward and held out a hand. ‘Hello.’ The woman flinched minutely and then she glanced at Apollo and seemed to get some kind of sign because she looked back at Sasha and took her hand, saying in heavily accented Greek, ‘Welcome home, Kyria Vasilis.’

Sasha felt a light touch on her back that distracted her from the woman’s odd reaction. ‘You don’t remember Rhea?’

She shook her head, ‘I’m so sorry, but no.’

The women let her hand go, eyes widening. Apollo said, ‘I’ll show my wife around the villa. We’ll eat something light in a couple of hours, Rhea. On the smaller terrace.’

The woman nodded and disappeared into the villa. Sasha looked into the massive circular reception area. She felt absolutely sure, at that moment, that she’d never seen these marble floors or set foot in this place before.

Which was wrong. She’d been living here. She obviously couldn’t trust her own instincts.

She stepped over the threshold warily, and followed Apollo as he led her into the first of a dizzying array of rooms leading off the circular hall. There was a formal reception room, informal reception room. Formal dining room, informal dining room.

The rooms were all furnished with sumptuous but elegant furniture. Muted colours in varying but complementary shades in each room. It was modern but felt classic. Huge canvases adorned the walls and antiques nestled among more modern artefacts.

Each room had huge French doors that led out to a terrace that ran the length of the house, overlooking the impressive garden. Even more impressive was the view of Athens in the distance.

Sasha walked out of the formal dining room onto the terrace. They were far above the teeming ancient city, the air heavy with the scent of the flowers that climbed the wall of the terrace in colourful profusion. She tried desperately to conjure up a memory of having looked at this view from here before, but her mind stayed blank. Apollo came and stood beside her on the terrace and her skin prickled. Sasha asked, ‘Is this an old house?’

‘No, I built it on this site.’

Sasha looked at him. ‘You built it?’

His jaw tightened. ‘Not me personally. My construction company.’

Sasha turned to face him. ‘So...you own a construction company?’

He looked at her and nodded. ‘Vasilis Construction.’

Sasha frowned. ‘Is it a family business—do you have family?’

An expression flashed across his face so fast she couldn’t decipher it but it had looked for a second like pain. ‘My family are dead. A long time ago. My father was in construction but he worked for someone else so, no, it’s not a family business.’

‘I’m sorry to hear your family are gone.’ Both their families were dead. ‘What happened?’

For a long moment she thought he wouldn’t answer and then he said, ‘A series of unfortunate events.’

He stepped back. ‘Let me show you the rest of the villa.’

Sasha pushed aside her curiosity about ‘a series of unfortunate events’ and followed the broad shoulders of her husband as he led her back into the hall and up a majestic flight of stairs. Villa seemed like an ineffectual word for what was, clearly, a luxurious mansion.

She wondered what it must have been like to come here with her new husband for the first time. A small voice pointed out that she was getting to relive that experience right now. Except, she wondered, had he been any warmer the first time round?

The villa retained that modern but classic feel throughout. Little touches of period features to give it a sense of timelessness.

In the basement there was a state-of-the-art gym and media room, which could convert into a home cinema. On the same level there was a lap pool and steam and sauna room. Not to mention the extra rooms for massage and treatments that opened out onto a lower-level garden with a couple of sun loungers and a hammock hung between two trees.

Apollo waved a hand towards the gardens, ‘There’s also an outdoor pool and changing area.’

He showed her his study on the first floor. A very masculine room with walls lined with shelves and books. Across the hall he opened another door and said, ‘This is your office.’

She couldn’t contain her surprise. ‘I had an office?’

He put out a hand and she went in, not sure why she suddenly felt reluctant. The room was pretty but overdone. A plush white carpet and a white desk were the simplest things in the room. There was an expensive-looking computer on the desk.

The walls were covered with flowery chintzy wallpaper and there were framed prints of the covers of glossy magazines on the wall. Lots of shelves that were mainly empty. A handful of books.

A pink velvet chair and matching footstool. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched.

‘What did I use this for?’

Apollo was leaning against the doorframe, arms folded across his chest, a look of almost disdain on his face. ‘You said you wanted to set up a PR business.’

Sasha looked at him. ‘Is that what I did? PR?’

He shrugged. ‘When we met you were serving drinks at a reception. I don’t think your knowledge of PR extended beyond the service end of the industry.’

There was a tone to his voice that Sasha chose to try and figure out later. She followed him up to the second level where the bedrooms were situated. He led her past several guest rooms to the end of the corridor, opening a door. ‘This is your room.’

She went in and stopped, turning around. ‘My room?’

‘Your room.’

Apollo filled the doorway easily. Sasha’s mouth felt dry. She was aware of her feet hurting from the high sandals. And a dull ache at the front of her head.

‘We weren’t sharing a room?’

Slowly he shook his head. ‘No.’

Sasha desperately wanted to know why and he looked as if he expected her to ask that question but for reasons she couldn’t understand she didn’t want to know. Just yet.

Because this would also, surely, explain his cool and aloof manner. Why the housekeeper had looked at her so warily.

She had a very tenuous grip on reality as it was, and she didn’t know if she was prepared to hear more revelations about herself.

So she said nothing and walked into the room. It was luxurious, as she’d come to expect in a very short space of time. Carpet so plush her heels sank right into it. Instinctively, she slipped off the sandals, relishing the relief and the sensation of the soft covering underfoot.

She was aware of the massive bed dressed in cool and pristine-looking linens to her left-hand side but ignored it, not liking the way she was so aware of it.

She carried the sandals in her hand over to where French doors opened out onto a balcony that was big enough to hold a sun lounger and table and chairs. From here she could see that the villa had another wing, one storey high, with a smaller terrace covered over with trellis. The outdoor pool was just beyond this area, surrounded by bougainvillea. There were loungers and a changing area.

The grounds sloped away from here, down the hill, leaving the vista open to Athens and the sea beyond.

The full extent of this sheer luxury sank in. It was overwhelming.

She turned back into the room, blinded for a moment by the sun. When her eyes adjusted again she realised that Apollo was a lot closer than she’d expected.

Immediately her pulse quickened and her skin seemed to get tight and hot all over. The bed loomed large behind him. He looked at her with a strange expression, as if fixated, for a moment. She noticed that he had undone his tie and it hung loose now. His top button was open, revealing the strong column of his throat.

He blinked, and the moment was gone. He stepped back and went to a door in the wall, opening it. ‘This is your walk-in closet and the bathroom.’

Sasha followed him, feeling light-headed and a little jittery. But those disturbing sensations and the way he’d just looked at her fled her mind when the space revealed itself and she looked upon more clothes than she could have ever possibly seen in her life. And shoes. And jewellery, in a special glass cabinet.

The clothes—dresses, skirts, trousers, shirts, jeans, leisure-wear—were stacked, hanging and folded in a room the size of a small boutique. There was every colour of the rainbow.

Without even realising she’d moved, Sasha found herself reaching out and touching a glittering lamé dress in dark blue. It slid between her fingers. It looked hardly capable of staying on a body.

She dropped it and looked around, half-horrified as much as fascinated. ‘These are all...mine?’

Apollo was still trying to get his body back under control. For a moment when Sasha had turned from the balcony back into the bedroom, she’d been backlit by the sun, turning her hair into a blazing strawberry-blonde halo around her head.

Her flimsy silk top had clung lovingly to her breasts, the lace of her bra just visible under the delicate material. And he’d had an almost uncontrollable urge to stride forward and take her by the arms and demand to know what she was playing at with this wide-eyed act of innocence. She’d played that card before.

But that urge had fled, to be replaced by a far more dangerous one when she’d looked at him as if he was a wolf about to gobble her up. Instead, all he’d wanted to do was crush that temptingly lush mouth under his and punish her for reawakening this desire, which had lain mercifully dormant for the past three months, in spite of her best efforts to seduce him.

But not any more. It was awake and ravenous. And she was playing him with this little game. After all, feigning amnesia would be child’s play to a woman who had feigned a lot worse.

He’d had enough of the charade. His anger burned bright and hot and he told himself it was that, and not desire that he was feeling.

He said in a low voice that barely contained his anger, ‘You know damn well these are all your clothes because you spent many vacuous hours shopping for them with my credit card. You might have fooled the doctors and nurses at the hospital but there’s no one here but you and me now, so who are you trying to fool with this act, Sasha? What the hell are you up to?’

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHAT THE HELL are you up to?’

Sasha looked at Apollo and it took a few seconds for his words to sink in, they were so unexpected. But then there was almost a strange sense of relief to have the tension bubble over into words so that she could find out why he’d been acting so coolly with her.

She felt his anger but it didn’t scare her. It perplexed her.

‘What are you talking about?’

He waved a hand, bristling all over. ‘This...farce. Pretending to have lost your memory.’

Sasha felt confused. ‘But I’m not. Don’t you think I want to know who I am, or what’s going on?’

She shook her head. ‘Why would I do such a thing?’ But just then a pain lanced through the building dull ache in her head. She winced and put a hand to her forehead, feeling light-headed all of a sudden.

Apollo’s voice was sharp. ‘What is it?’

Sasha was about to shake her head again but she stopped for fear of making it worse. ‘It’s just a headache, the doctor said that they might be frequent for a few days. If I do too much.’

The recent outburst hung between them, the atmosphere charged, but after a few moments Apollo stepped back and said tightly, ‘You should rest for a bit. I can have Rhea bring some food up in a couple of hours.’

Sasha remembered the way the woman had flinched earlier. ‘No, I’ll come down. I’m sure I’ll be feeling better.’

Apollo walked out of the closet space, leaving Sasha with the throbbing pain in her head and feeling utterly bewildered. He thought she was lying?

She heard a noise in the main bedroom and went back out to see a young girl she hadn’t met placing her hospital bag on the bed. The girl looked at her but didn’t smile. She backed away, staring at Sasha as if she might jump at her, and said in halting English, ‘Your bag, Kyria Vasilis.’

She left and Sasha stared after her for a long moment. After Apollo’s outburst just now, it was patently evident that their marriage was not a harmonious one, and that people didn’t seem to like her very much.

Her head throbbed even more, and Sasha went over to the bag that had just been delivered and pulled out the box of painkillers she’d been prescribed. She saw a tray on a table with water and glasses, and took two of the tablets.

She explored further, into the bathroom, which was almost as big as the bedroom. A massive bath and walk-in shower. Two sinks. Cream tiles and gold fittings that looked classy, not tacky.

She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and sucked in a breath. She was deathly pale. No wonder Apollo had asked if she was okay. She looked a wreck. Shadows under her eyes. The scratch on her cheek. The yellowing of the bruise on her forehead where she’d bumped her head.

She felt disconnected from herself, which she supposed was only to be expected. But she felt as though didn’t belong here, in this hushed rarefied place. Where people looked at her as if she’d done something to them. Where her husband accused her of lying.

Why would he think she’d do such a thing?

She pushed that to one side for the moment, it was too much to absorb and think about.

‘Sasha...’ She said the word out loud. It still didn’t feel right. ‘Hello, my name is Sasha Vasilis.’ Nothing but a faint echo.

She didn’t need to have bruises and scrapes to know that she was very far out of this man’s league. But a memory flashed into her head at that moment of feeling effervescent. Of him, smiling at her indulgently.

She’d been so happy.

If anything, that memory only made her feel more disorientated. She spied the bath behind her and suddenly wanted to wash away this confusing chain of events. If such a thing was possible.

She ran the bath and stripped off, stepping into the luxuriously scented silky water a few minutes later. It soothed her bruised and injured body, but it couldn’t soothe the turmoil in her belly or clear the pervasive fog in her head.

Apollo stood looking at the woman on the bed. She was in a towelling robe that dwarfed her body, her hair spread around her like a rose-gold halo. One arm was on her chest, the other flung above her head.

One slim pale leg was visible through the gap in the robe and Apollo could see the smattering of freckles across her knee. And it made his blood run hot.

Damn her.

Damn her to hell and back.

He’d met her four months ago and he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since then. First of all because he’d been unable to get her out of his head and then because she had shown him who she really was. A manipulative, conniving, mercenary—

She moved on the bed and made a small sound.

Those pale eyelids flickered open and he was looking down into two bright pools of blue. So blue that the first time he’d seen her huge eyes he’d been instantly reminded of the skies of his childhood, before things had grown much darker.

She blinked and Apollo came out of his trance, suddenly feeling exposed. He took a step back. ‘I knocked on the door but there was no answer.’

Sasha sat up. He caught a scent of something like crushed roses. And clean skin. He gritted his jaw before saying, ‘Dinner is ready. I can have the food delivered to your room.’