The Greek Tycoon's Achilles Heel

CHAPTER THREE

THE party went on into the evening. Lights came on throughout the false Parthenon, music wafted up into the sky, assignations were made, profitable deals were settled. Petra accompanied Estelle into the house to help her change into her travelling clothes.

The honeymoon was to be spent on board the Silver Lady, Homer’s yacht, refurbished for the occasion and currently moored in the port of Piraeus, about five miles away. Two cars bearing luggage and personal servants had already gone on ahead. There remained only the limousine to convey the bride and groom.

‘Are you all right?’ Estelle asked, glancing at her daughter’s face.

‘Of course,’ Petra said brightly.

‘You look as if you were brooding about something.’

In fact she’d been brooding about the stranger’s words.

‘When he’s decided that he can fit you in with his other commitments he’ll return and take his pleasure at his own time and his own convenience.’

That was not going to happen, she resolved. If he returned tonight he would find her missing.

‘Do you mind if I come to the port to see you off?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Darling, that would be lovely. But I thought you’d be planning a wild night out.’

‘Not me. I don’t have your energy.’

In the car on the way to the port they drank champagne. Once on board, Homer showed her around the stately edifice with vast pride, finishing in the great bedroom with the bed big enough for six, covered with gold satin embroidered cushions.

‘Now we must find a husband for you,’ he declared expansively.

‘No, thank you,’ Petra hurried to say. ‘My one experience of marriage didn’t leave me with any desire to try again.’

Before he could reply, her cellphone rang and she answered.

‘I’m afraid my manners left something to be desired,’ said a man’s voice. ‘Perhaps I can make amends by taking you to dinner?’

For a moment she floundered. She had her speech of rejection ready prepared but no words would come.

‘I’m not sure-’

‘My car’s just outside the house.’

‘But I’m not there. I’m in Piraeus.’

‘It won’t take you long to return. I’ll be waiting.’

He hung up.

‘Cheek!’ she exploded. ‘He just takes it for granted I’ll do what he wants.’ Seeing them frowning, she added, ‘Lysandros Demetriou. He wants to take me to dinner, and I wasn’t given much chance to say no.’

‘That sounds like him,’ Homer said approvingly. ‘When he wants something he doesn’t waste time.’

‘But it’s no way to treat a lady,’ Estelle said indignantly.

He grinned and kissed her. ‘You didn’t seem to mind.’

As they were escorting her off the yacht Petra suddenly had a thought.

‘How did he know my cellphone number? I didn’t give it to him.’

‘He probably paid someone in my household to find out,’ Homer said as though it was a matter of course. ‘Goodbye, my dear.’

She hurried down the gangplank and into the car. On the journey back to Athens she tried to sort out her thoughts. She was angry, but mostly with herself. So many good resolutions ground to dust because of a certain tone in his voice.

On impulse she took out her phone and dialled the number of Karpos, an Athens contact, an ex-journalist whom she knew to be reliable. When he heard what she wanted he drew a sharp breath.

‘Everyone’s afraid of him,’ he said, speaking quickly. ‘In fact they’re so afraid that they won’t even admit their fear, in case he gets to hear and complains that they’ve made him look bad.’

‘That’s paranoid.’

‘Sure, but it’s the effect he has. Nobody is allowed to see inside his head or his heart-if he has one. Opinion is divided about that.’

‘But wasn’t there someone, a long time ago-? From the other family?’

‘Right. Her name was Brigitta, but I didn’t tell you that. She died in circumstances nobody has ever been able to discover. The press were warned off by threats, which is why you’ll never see it mentioned now.’

‘You mean threats of legal action?’

‘There are all kinds of threats,’ Karpos said mysteriously. ‘One man started asking questions. The next thing he knew, all his debts were called in. He was on the verge of ruin, but it was explained to him that if he “behaved himself” in future, matters could be put right. Of course he gave the promise, turned over all his notes, and everything was miraculously settled.’

‘Did anything bad happen to him afterwards?’

‘No, he left journalism and went into business. He’s very successful, but if you say the name Demetriou, he leaves the room quickly. Anything you know, you have to pretend not to know, like the little apartment he has in Athens, or Priam House in Corfu.’

‘Priam House?’ she said, startled. ‘I’ve heard of that. People have been trying to explore the cellar for years-there’s something there, but nobody’s allowed in. Do you mean it’s his?’

‘So they say. But don’t let on that you know about it. In fact, don’t tell him you’ve spoken to me, please.’

She promised and hung up. Sitting there, silent and thoughtful, she knew she was getting into deep water. But deep water had never scared her.

She also knew that there was another aspect to this, something that couldn’t be denied.

After fifteen years, she and Lysandros Demetriou had unfinished business.

He’d said he would be waiting for her and, sure enough, he was there by the gate to Homer’s estate. As her car slowed he pulled open the door, took her hand and drew her out.

‘I won’t be long,’ she said. ‘I just have to go inside and-’

‘No. You’re fine as you are. Let’s go.’

‘I was going to change my dress-’

‘You don’t need to. You’re beautiful. You know that, so why are we arguing?’

There was something about this blunt speech that affected her more than a smooth compliment would ever have done. He had no party manners. He said exactly what he thought, and he thought she was beautiful. She felt a smile grow inside her until it possessed her completely.

‘You know what?’ she said. ‘You’re right. Why are we arguing?’ She indicated for her chauffeur to go on without her and got into Lysandros’s car.

She wondered where he would take her, possibly a sophisticated restaurant, but he surprised her by driving out into the countryside for a few miles and stopping at a small restaurant, where he led her to an outside table. Here they were close to the coast and in the distance she could just make out the sea, shimmering beneath the moon.

‘This is lovely,’ she said. ‘It’s so peaceful after all the crowds today.’

‘That’s how I feel too,’ he said. ‘Normally I only come here alone.’

The food was simple, traditional Greek cooking, just as she liked it. While he concentrated on the order Petra had the chance to consider him, trying to reconcile his reputation as a ruthless tyrant with the suffering boy she’d met years ago.

That boy had been vulnerable and still able to show it, to the extent of telling a total stranger that a betrayal of trust had broken his heart. Now he was a man who inspired fear, who would deny having a heart, who would probably jeer at the idea of trust.

What had really happened all those years ago? And could it ever be put right for him?

She thought again of dancing with him, the other women with their envious, lustful glances as they relived hours spent in bed with that tall, strong body, yielding ecstatically to skills they’d found in no other man.

‘Are you all right?’ Lysandros asked suddenly.

‘Yes-why do you ask?’

‘You drew a sharp breath, as though you were in pain.’

‘No, I’m not in pain,’ she hurried to say.

Unless, she thought, you included the pain of wanting something you’d be wiser not to want. She pretended to search her bag. When she glanced up she found him regarding her with a look of wonder.

‘Fifteen years,’ he said. ‘So much has happened and we’ve changed, and yet in another way we’re still the same people. I would have known you anywhere.’

She smiled. ‘But you didn’t recognise me.’

‘Only on the surface. Inside, there was a part of me that knew you. I never thought we’d meet again, and yet somehow I was always certain that we would.’

She nodded. ‘Me too. If we’d waited another fifteen years-or fifty-I’d still have been sure that we would one day talk again before we died.’

The last words seemed to reach right inside him. To talk again before they died. That was it. He knew that normally his own thoughts would have struck him as fanciful. He was a strong man, practical, impatient of anything that he couldn’t pin down. Yet what he said was true. She’d been an unseen presence in his life ever since that night.

He wondered how he could tell her this. She’d inspired him with the will to talk freely, but that wasn’t enough. He didn’t know how.

The food arrived, feta and tomato slices, simple and delicious.

‘Mmm,’ she said blissfully.

He ate little, spending most of his time watching her.

‘Why were you up there?’ he asked at last. ‘Why not downstairs, enjoying the wedding?’

‘I guess I’m a natural cynic.’ She smiled. ‘My grandfather used to say that I approached life with an attitude of, Oh, yeah? And it’s true. I think it was already there that night in Las Vegas, and it’s got worse since. Given the madhouse I’ve always lived in, it could hardly be any other way.’

‘How do you feel about the madhouse?’

‘I enjoy it, as long as I’m not asked to get too deeply involved in it or take it seriously.’

‘You’ve never wanted to be a film actress yourself?’

‘Good grief, no! One raving lunatic in the family is enough.’

‘Does your mother know you talk like that?’

‘Of course. She actually said it first, and we’re agreed. She’s a sweetie and I adore her, but she lives on the Planet Zog.’

‘How old is she really?’

‘As old as she needs to be at any one moment. She was seventeen when she had me. My father didn’t want any responsibility, so he just dumped her, and she struggled alone for a while. Believe me, anyone who just sees her as a film star should see the back streets of London where we lived in those years.

‘Then my father’s parents got in touch to say that he’d just died in a road accident. They hadn’t even known we existed until he admitted it on his deathbed. They were Greek, with strong ideas about family, and I was all the family they had left. Luckily, they were nice people and we all got on well. They looked after me while Estelle built her career. My grandfather was a scholar who’d originally come to England to run a course in Greek at university. At first I didn’t even go to school because he reckoned he could teach me better, and he was right.’

‘So you grew up as the one with common sense?’

‘Well, one of us had to have some,’ she chuckled.

‘How did you manage with all those stepfathers?’

‘They were OK. Mostly they were lovelorn and a bit dopey, so I had a hard job keeping a straight face.’

‘What about the one in Las Vegas?’

‘Let’s see, he was the-no, that was the other one-or was he? Oh, never mind. They’re all the same, anyway. I think he was an aspiring actor who thought Estelle could help his ambitions. When she finally saw through him she tossed him out. She was in love with someone else by then.’

‘You’re very cool about it all. Doesn’t all this “eternal love” affect you?’

‘Eternal love?’ She seemed to consider this. ‘Would that be eternal love as in he tried to take every penny she had, or as in he haunted the set, throwing a fit whenever she had a love scene, or as in-?’

‘All right, I get the picture. Evidently the male sex doesn’t impress you.’

‘However did you guess?’

‘But what about your own experience? There must have been one or two brave enough to defy the rockets you fire at them?’

Her lips twitched. ‘Of course. I don’t look at them unless they’re brave enough to do that.’

‘That’s the first of your requirements, is it? Courage?’

‘Among other things. But even that’s overrated. The man I married was a professional sportsman, a skier who could do the most death-defying stuff. The trouble was, it was all he could do, so in the end he was boring too.’

‘You’re married?’ he asked slowly.

‘Not any more,’ she said in a tone of such devout thankfulness that he was forced to smile.

‘What happened? Was it very soon after our meeting?’

‘No, I went to college and studied hard. It was the same college where my grandfather had been a professor, and it was wonderful because people couldn’t care less that I was a film star’s daughter, but they were impressed that I was his granddaughter. I had to do him credit. I studied to improve my knowledge of the Greek language, learned the history, passed exams. We were going to come here and explore together, but then he and my grandmother both died. It’s not the same without him. I so much wanted to make him proud of me.’

She hesitated, while a shadow crossed her face, making him lean forward.

‘What is it?’ he asked gently.

‘Oh-nothing.’

‘Tell me,’ he persisted, still gentle.

‘I was just remembering how much I loved them and they loved me. They needed me, because I was all that was left to them after their son died. They liked Estelle, but she wasn’t part of them as I was.’

‘Wasn’t your mother jealous of your closeness to them?’

Petra shook her head. ‘She’s a loving mother, in her way, but I’ve never been vital to her as I was to them.’

‘How sad,’ he said slowly.

‘Not really. As long as you have someone who needs you, you can cope with the others who don’t.’

At that moment all the others who hadn’t needed her seemed to be there in the shadows, starting with Estelle, always surrounded by people whose job it was to minister to her-hairdressers, make-up artists, lawyers, psychologists, professional comfort-givers, lovers, husbands. Whatever she wanted, there was always someone paid to provide it.

She was sweet-tempered and had showered her daughter with a genuine, if slightly theatrical affection, but when a heavy cold had forced Petra to miss one of her weddings- Fourth? Fifth?-she’d shrugged, said, “Never mind” and merely saved her an extra large piece of cake.

Petra had soon understood. She was loved, but she wasn’t essential. She’d tried to take it lightly, saying that it didn’t matter, because she’d found that this was one way to cope. Eventually it had become the way she coped with the whole of life.

But it had mattered. There, always at the back of her mind, had been the little sadness, part of her on the lookout for someone to whom she was vitally necessary. Her. Not the money and glamour with which her mother’s life surrounded her, but her.

And perhaps that was why a young man’s agony and desperation had pierced her heart on a roof in Las Vegas fifteen years ago.

‘But your grandparents died,’ Lysandros said. ‘Who do you have now?’

She pulled herself together. ‘Are you kidding? My life is crowded with people. It’s like living with a flock of geese.’

‘Including your mother’s husbands?’

‘Well, she didn’t bother to marry them all. She said there wasn’t enough time.’

‘Boyfriends?’ he asked carefully.

‘Some. But half of them were simply trying to get close to my mother, which didn’t do my self-confidence any good. I learnt to keep my feelings to myself until I’d sized them up.’ She gave a soft chuckle. ‘I got a reputation for being frigid.’

They were mad, he thought. No woman who was frigid had that warmth and resonance in her voice, or that glow on her skin.

‘And then I met Derek,’ she recalled. ‘Estelle was making a film with a winter sports background and he was one of the advisors. He was so handsome, I fell for him hook, line and sinker. I thought it had happened at last. We were happy enough for a couple of years, but then-’ she shrugged ‘-I guess he got bored with me.’

‘He got bored with you?’ he asked with an involuntary emphasis.

She chuckled as though her husband’s betrayal was the funniest thing that had ever happened to her. He was becoming familiar with that defensive note in her laughter. It touched an echo in himself.

‘I don’t think I was ever the attraction,’ she said. ‘He needed money and he thought Estelle Radnor’s daughter would have plenty. Anyway, he started sleeping around, I lost my temper and I think it scared him a little.’

‘You? A temper?’

‘Most people think I don’t have one because I only lose it once in a blue moon. Now and then I really let fly. I try not to because what’s the point? But it’s there, and it can make me say things I wish I hadn’t. Anyway, that was five years ago. It’s all over. Why are you smiling?’

When had anyone last asked him that? When had anyone had cause to? How often did he smile?

‘I didn’t know I was smiling,’ he said hastily.

‘You looked like you’d seen some private joke. Come on. Share.’

Private joke! If his board of directors, his bank manager, his underlings heard that they’d think she was delusional.

But the smile was there, growing larger, happier, being drawn forth by her teasing demand.

‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘What did I say that was so funny?’

‘It’s not-it’s just the way you said “It’s all over”, as though you’d airbrushed the entire male sex out of your life.’

‘Or out of the universe,’ she agreed. ‘Best thing for them.’

‘For them, or for you?’

‘Definitely for me. Men no longer exist. Now my world is this country, my work, my investigations.’

‘But the ancient Greeks had members of the male sex,’ he pointed out. ‘Unfortunate, but true.’

‘Yes, but I can afford to be tolerant about them. They helped start my career. I wrote a book about Greek heroes just before I left university, and actually got it published. Later I was asked to revise it into a less academic version, for schools, and the royalties have been nice. So I feel fairly charitable about the legendary Greek men.’

‘Especially since they’re safely dead?’

‘You’re getting the idea.’

‘Let’s eat,’ he said hastily.

The waiter produced chicken and onion pie, washed down with sparkling wine, and for a while there was no more talking. Watching her eat, relishing every mouthful, he wondered about her assertion that men no longer existed for her. With any other woman he would have said it was a front, a pretence to fool the world while she carried on a life of sensual indulgence. But this woman was different. She inhabited her own universe, one he’d never encountered before.

‘So that’s how you came to know so much that night in Las Vegas,’ he said at last. ‘You gave me a shock, lecturing me about Achilles.’

She gave a rueful laugh. ‘Lecturing. That just about says it all. I’m afraid I do, and people get fed up. I can’t blame them. I remember I made you very cross.’

‘I wasn’t thrilled to be told I was sulking,’ he admitted, ‘but I was only twenty-three. And besides-’

‘And besides, you were very unhappy, weren’t you?’ she asked. ‘Because of her.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t remember.’

Her gentle eyes said that she didn’t believe him.

‘She made you trust her, but then you found you couldn’t trust her,’ she encouraged. ‘You don’t forget something like that.’

‘Would you like some more wine?’ he asked politely.

So he wasn’t ready to tell her the things she yearned to know, about the catastrophe that had smashed his life. She let it go, knowing that hurrying him would be fatal.

‘So your grandfather taught you Greek,’ he said, clearly determined to change the subject.

‘Inside me, I feel as much Greek as English. He made sure of that.’

‘That’s how you knew about Achilles? I thought you’d been learning about him at school.’

‘Much more than that. I read about him in Homer’s Iliad, how he was a hero of the Trojan war. I thought that story was so romantic. There was Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, and all those men fighting over her. She’s married to Menelaus but she falls in love with Paris, who takes her to Troy. But Menelaus won’t give up and the Greek troops besiege Troy for ten years, trying to get her back.

‘And there were all those handsome Greek heroes, especially Achilles,’ she went on, giving him a cheeky smile. ‘What made your mother admire Achilles rather than any of the others?’

‘She came from Corfu where, as you probably know, his influence is very strong. Her own mother used to take her to the Achilleion Palace, although that was chiefly because she was fascinated by Sisi.’

Petra nodded. ‘Sisi’ had been Elizabeth of Bavaria, a romantic heroine of the nineteenth century, and reputedly the loveliest woman of her day. Her beauty had caused Franz Joseph, the young Emperor of Austria, to fall madly in love with her and sweep her into marriage when she was only sixteen.

But the marriage had faltered. For years she’d roamed the world, isolated, wandering from place to place, until she’d bought a palace on the island of Corfu.

The greatest tragedy of her life was the death of her son Rudolph, at Mayerling, in an apparent suicide pact with his mistress. A year later Sisi had begun to transform the Palace into a tribute to Achilles, but soon she too was dead, at the hands of an assassin. The Palace had subsequently been sold and turned into a museum, dedicated to honouring Achilles.

‘The bravest and the most handsome of them all, yet hiding a secret weakness,’ Petra mused.

She was referring to the legend of Achilles’ mother, who’d sought to protect her baby son by dipping him in the River Styx, that ran between earth and the underworld. Where the waters of the Styx touched they were held to make a man immortal. But she’d held him by the heel, leaving him mortal in the one place where the waters had not touched him. Down the centuries that story resonated so that the term ‘Achilles heel’ still meant the place where a strong person was unexpectedly vulnerable.

Of all the statues in the Achilleon, the most notable was the one showing him on the ground, vainly trying to pull the arrow from his heel as his life ebbed away.

‘In the end it was the thing that killed him,’ Lysandros said. ‘His weakness wasn’t so well-hidden after all. His assassin knew exactly where to aim an arrow, and to cover the tip with poison so that it would be fatal.’

‘Nobody is as safe as they believe they are,’ she mused.

‘My father’s motto was-never let anyone know what you’re thinking. That’s the real weakness.’

‘But that’s not true,’ she said. ‘Sometimes you’re stronger because other people understand you.’

His voice hardened. ‘I disagree. The wise man trusts nobody with his thoughts.’

‘Not even me?’ she asked softly.

She could tell the question disconcerted him, but his defences were too firmly riveted in place to come down easily.

‘If there was one person I could trust-I think it would be you, because of the past. But I am what I am.’ He gave a self-mocking smile. ‘I don’t think even you can change me.’

She regarded him gently before venturing to touch his hand.

‘Beware people you think you can trust?’ she whispered.

‘Did I say that?’ he asked quickly.

‘Something like it. In Las Vegas, you came to the edge of saying a lot more.’

‘I was in a bad way that night. I don’t know what I said.’

A silence came down over him. He stared into his glass, and she guessed that he was shocked at himself for having relented so far. Now he would retreat again behind walls of caution and suspicion.

Was there any way to get through to this man’s damaged heart? she wondered. And, if she tried, might she not do him more harm than good?