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He was just about to call Elena to dinner when his mobile went off. The number was Greek and looked to be from a Kalathes staff member, which was unusual enough that he hit the answer button. ‘Kalathes,’ he said shortly.
‘Mr Kalathes?’ a man said. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news.’
Everything inside him tightened. ‘What bad news?’
‘Your father’s health declined quite markedly two days ago, and while the medical staff did everything they could for him, they were ultimately unsuccessful. I’m sorry to say that he died half an hour ago.’
CHAPTER FIVE
ELENA STOOD IN the large, airy salon in the Kalathes villa, the deep blue of the sea through the windows almost aching in its beauty. In fact, the whole island was achingly beautiful, as was the villa that sat on it, all whitewashed stone, with many terraces and cool courtyards shaded with vine-covered pergolas.
Kalifos was as far removed from the dusty mountainside town Elena had grown up in as it was possible to get, and she loved it completely. Aristeidis had loved it too.
She and Atticus had just finished scattering some of his ashes in the ocean—as per his request—while the rest had been interred in the Kalathes vault inside the tiny island’s church. It had been a beautiful funeral, but there had been no wake. There had been too much media interest and Atticus had been adamant that he wanted none of them anywhere near the island.
Elena hadn’t cared. She’d only wanted to be sure that Aristeidis had the send-off he’d both wanted and deserved, since his last wish—reconciling with his son—hadn’t been fulfilled. Atticus had attended the funeral so there was that at least.
The lawyer would be here any second to read the will—Atticus had insisted this be done as soon as possible—and already Elena felt exhausted.
She’d been feeling exhausted the whole of this past week, in fact. Ever since Atticus had come into the living area of his house in Jamaica, his face white, to tell her that Aristeidis had passed away.
Her adoptive father’s health hadn’t been good when she’d left Greece, but he’d insisted that she go to find Atticus. He’d be fine until she returned. She shouldn’t have listened to him. She’d been worried about leaving him, but he’d been so insistent on her finding Atticus that she hadn’t been able to refuse when he’d told her to go.
So she had. She’d gone in search of his son and while she’d been fighting with Atticus and then having sex, the only person who’d loved her in the entire world had died, and now she was alone. Again.
She hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye. Again.
At least, Atticus hadn’t wasted any time or argued about the need to return to Greece. They’d left Jamaica the next day, and upon arrival on Kalifos, he’d gone straight into organisation mode. He’d been in meetings most of the week with people from his father’s company, sorting through what needed to happen with the business, and then more meetings to deal with Aristeidis’s finances, and she’d barely seen him. Not that she’d wanted to see him.
She felt as if part of the foundation of her life had fallen away and now everything was unsteady and precarious, and he made everything feel even more so. He was a stranger to her, a fierce, demanding stranger, and now Aristeidis had gone, it was as if she were that eight-year-old girl once more. That girl Atticus had rescued, who’d lost everyone and everything, and who’d been cast on the mercy of someone she didn’t know.
Alone in the world yet again.
Her heart tightened and ached. It hadn’t helped that she’d had nothing to do since she’d returned, because Atticus had taken over all the organisation. That had galled her, since she’d been handling Kalathes Shipping for a couple of years now due to Aristeidis’s illness, but she didn’t feel she could protest. Atticus was his son after all. She didn’t like not having anything to do, however. It left her with too much time to think.
She’d demanded the right to arrange Aristeidis’s funeral at least, and Atticus had granted her that. But he hadn’t seemed to care that she’d been the one who’d been taking care of Aristeidis for years, who’d become, in essence, his assistant. In fact, Atticus hadn’t seemed to care about anything at all. He left the Kalifos villa early in the mornings, taking a helicopter into the Kalathes offices in Athens, and not coming home till late at night, long after she’d gone to bed.
She’d tried to talk to him the few times they’d been in the same room at the same time, but the beautifully carved lines of his face had been hard and set, and his expression forbidding.
A hard, uncompromising man who apparently felt no grief at the death of his father. No grief at not being able to reconcile with him the way Aristeidis had wanted. He didn’t seem to let grief touch him at all.
She did, though. She grieved, nursing the thread of anger that ran through her grief. Anger at Atticus. That he hadn’t given his father the opportunity to talk, to say goodbye. That he hadn’t been able to put a sick, old man ahead of his own issues.
Voices in the hall made her turn from her contemplation of the sea as Atticus and a shorter, older man, silver-haired and in a perfectly tailored suit, entered the salon.
Atticus wore a suit too, black for the funeral and tailored to emphasise his perfect physique. His wide shoulders and broad chest, his narrow waist, lean hips and powerful thighs. Even in a suit, though, there was no hiding the primal vitality of the man who wore it. He radiated it as the sun radiated heat.
Her mouth dried and she tried to ignore the sudden rush of desire that always seemed to occur whenever she was in his vicinity. Just as she tried not to remember that half an hour on the couch in Jamaica, when he’d been inside her, moving deep and hard, giving her the most exquisite pleasure she’d ever experienced.
You can try to forget it, but you’ll never succeed.
It was true. Those moments were burned in her brain for ever, hot and bright and overwhelming. She hadn’t known what to do when he’d suddenly pushed himself away from her and left the room, her mind still reeling from the effects of that orgasm. She’d never slept with a man before, and she’d felt...devastated in a way she couldn’t articulate. As if he’d taken her in those strong, scarred hands of his, broken her into pieces, and then put her back together again in a way that felt wholly new and wholly unfamiliar.
When he’d come back from wherever he’d been and told her it had been a mistake, making it obvious he hadn’t felt that same sense of devastation, the only thing that had mattered was that she protect herself. That she give no hint of her own vulnerability.
So she had. She’d told him it was fine, that it was just sex, no big deal.
He hadn’t argued. Clearly to him, that was all it had been too.
