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He turned back to Edward, who was watching him with growing curiosity, and smiled blandly.
‘How about some more coffee?’ he asked, and Edward’s own smile widened as he poured.
Althea had taken the bus from her father’s house in Kifissia to an upscale boutique on Tsakalof Street in Kolonaki. Her father gave her very little pocket money, and she was careful with what she had.
Now she sat on a leather-cushioned bench as Iolanthe tried on pair after pair of high-heeled sandals. ‘Everyone has these now,’ she said, twisting her ankles to catch a better view of the sandals’ gaudy beading. ‘Don’t you want some, Althea?’
Althea shrugged and eyed the pointed heels. ‘They look like a deathtrap for the dance floor.’
‘And you are a good dancer.’ Iolanthe met Althea’s eyes in the mirror and winked. ‘I saw you and Angelos last night.’
Althea remembered Angelos’s hands pulling on her hips, pulling her towards him, and suppressed a grimace. She stretched her arms along the railing behind her and shrugged. ‘You and everyone else at the club.’
‘He was telling everyone you ditched that man you left with to be with him. Is that true?’
Damn him, Althea thought, but she shrugged again. ‘Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.’
‘Who did you leave with? He looked…’ Iolanthe paused, her eyes flicking over her own appearance, the smooth, girlish curve of her cheek and shoulder, the sequined top and fringed skirt she wore. ‘Old,’ she finally said, and Althea laughed.
‘Oh, he’s old. At least thirty.’
‘Older than us,’ Iolanthe protested, andAlthea shrugged again.
Compared to Iolanthe, nineteen years old and determined to have fun, she felt old. Sometimes she felt ancient.
‘Anyway, you left him?’
‘After a while,’ Althea replied. ‘Now, are you going to buy those sandals or not? I’m hungry, and there’s a cafе right across the street.’
‘So you did go back with Angelos!’ Iolanthe kicked them off and a sales assistant came forward to replace them in the box.
‘Would madam like the sandals…?’
‘Yes, yes—ring it up.’ Iolanthe waved a hand and turned back to Althea. ‘Well?’
‘What do you think I did?’
‘Althea…!’ Iolanthe pouted. ‘You never tell me what you get up to. I have to hear it from some man—or, worse, the newspapers.’
‘The tabloids will print anything,’ Althea dismissed in a bored voice. ‘Now, let’s get a coffee.’
They sat outside, the sun hot despite the brisk breeze of early spring. A steady stream of shoppers moved by in a blur of colour and chatter, the trill of a dozen different mobile phones punctuating Iolanthe’s insistent pestering for details.
Althea took a sip of coffee and realised how tired she was. Tired of pretence, tired of everything, and she’d been tired for so long.
She sighed, smiled, and returned her attention to Iolanthe’s chatter. Her lifestyle had suited her for the last several years. It would continue to do so.
She didn’t really have any choice.
‘Hello, big brother.’
Demos closed the door of his loft apartment in Piraeus harbour and turned around slowly. Brianna sat sprawled on his sofa, grinning up at him as she lazily swung her feet.
Demos watched her, and a chill of apprehension crawled through him. He shook it off with determined force and moved to greet her. ‘Hello, Brianna. This is…a surprise.’ He didn’t think she’d ever been to his apartment before, and he wondered how she’d got in.
‘I got the key from the woman downstairs,’ Brianna said, in answer to his silent question. She smiled impishly. ‘She thought I was one of your women, but when I explained I was your sister…’
‘Of course.’ He forced himself to smile as he kissed her cheek, his gaze sweeping over her outfit—what there was of it. ‘Your skirt is too short.’
Brianna pouted, and Demos tried to smile again. His sister was looking at him with too much hope and fear in those wide, wistful eyes. Turning away, he went into the kitchen. Brianna scrambled up from the sofa to follow him.
‘You’re one to talk,’ she said, hands on her hips, and a smile tugged at Demos’s mouth despite his intention to remain stern and aloof with his littlest sister. He could never stay so for long; he’d given her bottles as a baby, had taught her to walk, had promised…
No. He wouldn’t think about that. He turned back to her, arching one eyebrow as he smiled playfully. ‘Am I? I don’t wear skirts.’
She giggled, a practised girlish trill that grated on his nerves, his memories. ‘Demos! I meant that the women you’re seen with do.’
An image of Althea in that scrap of a silver dress flashed through his mind. The defiant sparkle of those sea-coloured eyes, the sensual promise of her smile. He wondered yet again why she intrigued him so much. Why he couldn’t stop thinking about her. ‘What do you know about the women I’m seen with?’ he asked, and Brianna shrugged.
‘I see the papers.’
‘Mama lets you read those?’
‘Demos, I’m twenty-one! She can’t stop me!’
Demos frowned, once more taking in his sister’s painted face and tarty clothes. She was trying to look sophisticated, he supposed, and missing by a mile. ‘When are you going to settle down and marry a nice boy? Someone from the neighbourhood? That Antonios, the chemist’s son—he’s always been sweet on you.’
Brianna made a sound of disgust, her eyes sparking. ‘Antonios! He’s an oaf.’
‘A nice oaf,’ Demos countered mildly, although he observed her clenched fists and sparkling eyes with another chill. ‘He has a steady job—’
‘I want more than that!’ Brianna stood with her hands on her hips, her chin and chest thrust out aggressively. She looked so defiant, so determined, that Demos paused, the chill intensifying once more to a deep remembered dread. He recognised the glitter in Brianna’s eyes, the trembling of her lips.
For the last eight years he’d kept his distance—for her sake as well as his own. Because he’d believed it was the right thing to do. Brianna needed him too much, looked up to him too much. She always had—ever since he’d held her as a baby in his arms and she’d reached up and lovingly grabbed his chin. Sometimes it felt as if she’d never let go. She’d wanted him to be father, friend, saviour.
And he never could be.
Now, observing her desperate, defiant stance, Demos realised how those eight years had lulled him into a sense of security. Peace. Both began to crumble.
‘Brianna,’ he asked gently, ‘why are you here?’
He saw a flicker of uncertainty chase across her features and his dread deepened, pooled icily in his stomach. His only contact with Brianna had been his intermittent visits to where she lived with his mother and stepfather, Stavros. Only twenty minutes away, yet it was another part of the city entirely—another world. Working class, respectable, conservative. So unlike this spacious, airy apartment, positioned above Piraeus’s nightclubs and shipping offices, both businesses vying for space and trade in Athens’s ancient and busiest port.
Yet now she was here, visiting him. Needing him. Looking at him as if he could fix all her problems when he couldn’t.
He knew he couldn’t.
‘I wanted to see you. I never see you any more…’ she began, with a toss of her head, but he heard the tremble of need in her voice and something inside him crumbled and broke. Again.
He turned and took her by the shoulders. Her cheeks were still as round and soft as a child’s. She was, he reflected, despite the make-up and clothes, nothing more than the frightened little girl he’d comforted during storms, played endless games of cards with on rainy afternoons. The little girl who had gazed trustingly up into his face and asked, ‘You’ll never leave me, will you?’
And, damn it, he had said he wouldn’t.
‘Brianna,’ he asked gently, ‘what’s wrong?’
‘I want to come and live with you!’ she said in a rush. Tears brightened her eyes and she blinked them back. ‘Mama and Stavros are tired of me. They want me to marry, like you said. But, Demos…! I don’t want to.’ Her eyes widened, and a tear splashed onto his thumb.
He gazed down at her for a moment, at the need and fear so open and endless in her childish face, before he released her and moved out of the kitchen, back into the main space of the apartment. Through the sliding glass doors that led out onto the wide balcony he could see the aquamarine glint of Piraeus’s main harbour. He had been out on that water less than an hour ago, his eyes and mind on an endless horizon. Now, with a resolute sigh, he turned back to face his sister. ‘Why don’t you want to marry?’
‘Why don’t you?’ she tossed back, and he shook his head.
It was a question his mother asked him every time he went to her house. She’d ply him with her spinach pies and meltingly sweet baklava and then demand to know when he was bringing home his bride.
Demos just ignored her; there was no point in explaining that he didn’t want a wife, a family. He’d had the responsibility of one since he was twelve. He didn’t need any more.
He didn’t need this.
‘Marriage would be good for you,’ Demos said, his voice turning brusque.
Brianna let out a choked cry. ‘You hypocrite! You’re allowed to live alone, go to wild parties, have affairs and lovers—’
‘Brianna…’ Demos warned in a low voice. But she was too furious to take heed, or perhaps even to hear.
‘You get to do everything you want, to enjoy life,’ she cried, ‘and yet you want me to settle down like Mama did, like Rosalia and Agathe did, whether I’d be happy or not! You don’t care about any of us now that you’re rich, do you?’ She stood there trembling, her fists clenched at her sides, tears streaking down her cheeks.
‘I care about all of you,’ Demos retorted. ‘I always have.’ He felt a tide of fury rise up in him, threatening to drown him in memories and regrets, and he forced it back down. ‘More than you could ever know, Brianna.’
‘Some way you have of showing it! You haven’t been to see Mama in weeks. We still live in a house half the size of this apartment—’
‘Brianna—silence! You are talking about things you know nothing about.’ Demos slashed a hand through the air. ‘Nothing,’ he repeated in a steely voice.
Brianna shut her mouth and stared at him with wide frightened eyes. Demos regarded her for a moment, so angry and afraid, so young, and then with a muffled curse sank onto the sofa and raked a hand through his hair.
‘What do you mean, Mama and Stavros want you to marry? They can’t force you, surely?’
‘No…’ Brianna admitted in a small voice. ‘But they’re always hinting at it.’
‘Hints don’t mean anything. Mama’s been hinting to me for years.’ Admittedly her hints had the force of a sledgehammer, Demos thought, managing a wry smile. He was gratified to see Brianna give a tremulous little smile back.
‘Yes, but they won’t let me go out! I’m only twenty-one, Demos. I want to have fun…like you do.’
Demos jerked his head up and met Brianna’s pleading gaze. Like you do. The three words had the force of an accusation. A judgement. Even though Brianna did not intend them to be.
He didn’t want Brianna to have fun. Not like he did. Never like he did.
He was a hypocrite.
He wanted her to be safe, cared for. Protected. He just couldn’t be the one to do it. Not for Brianna’s sake. Not for his.
‘Like I do?’ he repeated slowly. He’d never considered himself to be wild. He was careful in his entertainment, choosy with his partners, but still he revelled in his freedom, revelled with a determination borne of too many years of self-denial.
Freedom, he acknowledged now with tired truthfulness, that was paling the longer he experienced it. He wanted more out of life. More for Brianna, more for himself.
He had just never expected it to be marriage. Marriage… unending, stifling responsibility…someone always needing him, never satisfied, never enough.
Althea didn’t need him at all. The thought made him smile.
‘Demos…?’ Brianna said in a halting voice, and his gaze snapped back to her as he nodded in grim acceptance.
‘You can stay the night. I’ll take you out to dinner.’ He forced a smile. ‘We’ll have fun. But tomorrow I’m taking you back home, where you belong.’
‘It’s not fair—’
Demos held up one hand in warning. ‘Don’t,’ he said in a hard voice, ‘tell me what is and is not fair.’ He softened his tone to add, ‘It’s best for you, Brianna. Trust me. I know this.’
That evening he took Brianna out to a reasonably trendy taverna—enough to impress, but hopefully not to entice. After she was in bed he called his mother.
‘Demos!’ Nerissa Leikos’s voice sounded strained with anxiety over the telephone. ‘I was so worried… Thank God she is safe with you.’
‘Yes…but, Mother, she is unhappy. I am…’ Demos chose his words carefully ‘…concerned.’
The silence on the other end of the line told him enough. There was cause for concern, for fear. ‘Is she in danger?’ he asked quietly. ‘Does she need care?’
‘She needs to be married,’ Nerissa said flatly. ‘She is the kind of girl who gets into trouble on her own, Demos. She sees you—’
‘What about me?’ Demos asked sharply.
Nerissa sighed. ‘Demos, it is different for a man. You may do as you like, go out as you like. But Brianna—she is young and easily influenced. And you know her history, how easily she can become…distraught. If she were protected in a stable relationship… If she saw you in a stable relationship…’ Nerissa trailed off delicately.
Demos knew what his mother was implying. Her hints had never been subtle. She wanted him married…for Brianna’s sake as well as his own. And for the first time he considered it, the image of Althea and her teasing smile flashing through his mind with seductive promise.
Perhaps in one fell swoop he could influence Brianna—show her something more positive than the playboy antics she’d been watching from afar.
Perhaps his marriage would be good for Brianna, good for Althea. Good for him. Perhaps it was time.
He sighed. ‘Thank you for telling me. I’ll bring Brianna back tomorrow.’
‘It will be good to see you here, Demos.’
Demos shrugged off the guilt that threatened to settle on him like a shroud. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been at his mother’s house. There were reasons he didn’t go back home. Home… His mother’s house had never been his home. Nerissa had married Stavros when Demos was twenty-four, just when he’d started making money, trading the provision of a millionaire for that of a working-class butcher.
Demos’s mouth twisted in sardonic acknowledgement of his own snobbery. Stavros provided decently for his wife and family, yet Demos could have given them so much more.
‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Itwill.’ But his words sounded hollow to his own ears, and as he severed the connection he was left staring into the darkness, lost in the shadows and memories of his past.
CHAPTER THREE
‘FOUND you.’
