ground swayed as she stood up. Alexandros’s arms came out automatically, swinging her into his chest to regain balance. Her wish to leave dissolved in a flash of heat. His chest was against her hands, strong and broad and warm, his heart beating steadily. His scent surrounded her. She looked up into those dark, fathomless depths and was lost, no more capable of moving than hiding the blatant desire in her expressive eyes. She was in a bubble of sensation so acute that she’d lost all sense of reality, space and time.
She lifted a tentative hand and with one trembling finger traced the outline of Alexandros’s mouth, the hard sensual contours. She could feel his breath against her palm.
‘Kallie…what are you doing?’
Her eyes jumped up to his and for the first time in her life she felt bold, filled with some unknown, unexplored feminine power. Not knowing how she had the nerve, she just said simply, ‘This…’
And she reached up, closed her eyes and pressed soft, warm lips against his.
For a long moment he didn’t do anything. Kallie felt something move through her, an aching wanting. It stunned her with its intensity. And then hope sprang in her breast. He wasn’t pushing her away. Would he kiss her back? She wanted him to, so much. Her lips moved tentatively against his…and then abruptly her world erupted and tilted. Alexandros stood and pushed her away from him with two harsh hands so quickly that Kallie was dizzy and would have staggered back except for his unwitting support. His jacket fell to the ground behind her.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
He let go and somehow Kallie managed to keep standing. She could feel a tide of red heat climb her chest, her body throbbing painfully with all the newly discovered sensations clamouring for release.
The way Alexandros was looking at her, with such disdain, disbelief and horror, made her turn to jelly.
Her voice was hesitant. ‘I…I was kissing you.’
He was scathing. ‘I know that, Kallie, I’m not stupid.’
Mortification twisted her insides. ‘I’m sorry…I don’t know what…’ She shook her head and stumbled away a little.
He caught her back with his hands on her shoulders. ‘No, Kallie, what the hell was that? Why would you try and kiss me?’
‘Because…’ She looked at him, backlit by the falling dusk. So handsome. And it made something burn in her belly, dissolving her embarrassment. She had to tell him. Now. ‘I did it because…’ she swallowed painfully ‘…I love you, Alexandros.’
He straightened, his whole body taut, bristling. ‘You what?’
‘I…love you.’
Nothing moved. Kallie saw Alexandros looking at her and the blatant shock on his face changed to confusion and then something else…disgust.
He took his hands off her shoulders suddenly as though he’d been burnt.
‘Look, I don’t know what you’re up to, Kallie, but I don’t appreciate it. I’m announcing my engagement tonight and if someone had seen…Hell. Just go, Kallie.’
His words dropped into her brain but didn’t register. Engagement? Married? To whom?
Kallie felt a mad desire to burst into hysterical laughter and then just as suddenly felt very silly. And very small and very young. Like a child caught playing dress-up, her face smeared with make-up. Acutely conscious all of a sudden of her not exactly svelte figure and her dress, which she’d borrowed from Eleni, hoping to be more grown up, and which was a little too tight.
Her lips felt stiff and numb. Her body cold.
‘I’m sorry, Alexandros, just forget this…all of it. Forget it happened, forget me.’ She whirled away and ran, down the steps, into the garden, away from the patio, away from everything. She heard him call after her once but she didn’t stop, and he didn’t follow.
The tears came as she ran and when she finally stopped she hunched down and cried and cried until she could hardly see. She cried for being so naïve, so silly and for listening to Eleni. She must have been emboldened by some lunar magic or madness, the wine…As if someone like Alexandros Kouros would ever notice someone like her, would ever even want to kiss someone like her. She cringed when she thought of how she’d thrown herself at him. He’d as good as had to pry her hands off him. She wiped her cheeks. One thing was for sure, she was never going to touch alcohol again if it had led her to do something so stupid and ill-judged.
Miserable, Kallie went back up towards the house, unable to avoid going around it to return home. And as she passed the open patio doors, she couldn’t help but look inside. The room was hushed, the designer-clad, jewel-bedecked crowd with glasses high in the air as they toasted the newly announced union of Alexandros and the stunning woman at his side. His fiancée. Pia Kyriapolous, the famous model. They looked so beautiful together Kallie’s eyes watered again.
She felt a tap on her shoulder and whirled around, very aware of her tearstained cheeks. Eleni. Looking at her with sympathy written all over her face.
‘Oh, Kallie, I’m so sorry…’
Something in the way she said it made Kallie very still. Her stomach churned as she suddenly remembered her cousin’s words. By the time you see him again he’ll be married with three kids. ‘Please, tell me you didn’t know about this, Eleni.’
Eleni looked defiant. ‘I did you a favour, Kallie. If you’d known, would you have gone near him?’
Of course not!
She lashed herself again at her phenomenal naïvety and knew it was in that moment that something in her died, or grew up.
She pulled away, physically and mentally, curled up somewhere inside herself. Something in Eleni’s face made her want to protect herself. It was something she’d never seen before. Or noticed. She contrived to toss her head, exactly how she’d seen her cousin do it a thousand times, usually when Alexandros was around, and shrugged. ‘It’s no big deal, Eleni. I can hardly compete with Pia, now, can I?’ She even managed a small laugh from somewhere. ‘But, like you said, at least I tried…ne?’
And for the first time in her young life, she summoned all the adult poise she could, and swept away, leaving the party, her cousin and Alexandros behind.
When Kallie woke up the next morning, the tight ache in her chest didn’t seem to have dissipated one bit and she had the horrible sensation of thinking it could have all been a bad dream, but of course it hadn’t. Her only consolation was that she knew Alexandros would probably be in Athens, and that she was due to go back to England the next day. She prayed Alexandros would stay in Athens till she was gone. And that no one would ever know what had happened. Except them. And Eleni. Who at least, Kallie thought with a shudder of relief, hadn’t witnessed her humiliating efforts.
However, she came downstairs to noise and confusion and commotion, Her parents and Alexandros in the middle of it all. Her father was shouting at him, thrusting a newspaper in his face.
‘How could you? We trusted you. She’s seventeen, for God’s sake. Little more than a child. Isn’t it enough that you’re getting married to one of the most beautiful women in Athens? You had to mess around with Kallie.’
They didn’t see her come down the stairs behind Alexandros. His voice came low and blistering. ‘Pia’s family have surprisingly little regard for their daughter marrying someone splashed across the middle pages of the biggest tabloid in the country. They also have surprisingly little regard for her marrying someone who, and I quote, “never wanted to follow his father into business.” Thanks to your daughter, my engagement is off as of today.’
Her mother, who hadn’t seen her either, stepped forward at that moment and slapped Alexandros across the face. Kallie saw his head jerk back. In the shock of silence afterwards, her mother’s voice was shaking with emotion as she said, ‘Surely you know she’s always had a crush on you? You were like a