Vows of Revenge

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

K ASSIA SAT ON the bed in her little room in the pension she and others in the excavation team were staying at. She was staring at the back of the business card that had been handed to her by a chauffeur in a peaked cap that afternoon. A chauffeur of any kind—let alone in a peaked cap—was, to put it mildly, out of place on an island like this. But then the man who’d had the card delivered to her was totally out of place.

His handmade suit and shoes...his silk tie, gold watch—the whole caboodle!

But now at least she knew who he was.

Damos Kallinikos.

The name on the business card meant nothing to her, even though Dr Michaelis had told her he’d said he knew her father—hence inviting her, rather than him, the dig’s director, for dinner this evening. Or that was what both Kassia and her boss could only assume, for there was certainly no other reason for singling her out. She wasn’t the type of female who got asked to dine by drop-dead gorgeous men for her own sake—she knew that well enough.

As for the company Damos Kallinikos headed, according to the printed side of the business card, she’d never heard of that either. New money, by the sound of it. New money springing up in Greece after the financial crash in the first decade of the century, which had ruined countless lives and provided an opportunity for those canny and ruthless enough to take advantage to scoop up some bankrupt bargains.

It was what her father had done, she knew—boosting his already considerable wealth by snapping up businesses that had gone under in the crisis at rock-bottom prices. And he’d scooped up another round only a few years ago, when the global pandemic had hit, all but destroying Greece’s vital tourist industry during those lengthy lockdowns that had immobilised the world, sending yet more businesses struggling. From deserted hotels to abandoned, unsellable, untransportable inventory, he’d turned their loss into yet more profit for himself.

Was that what this Damos Kallinikos had done too? Even if he hadn’t, she could still hear his voice saying ‘tax deductible’ as if in justification for caring about his country’s treasured past. But she could hear Dr Michaelis’s hopeful voice as well.

‘Kassia, I do hope you will accept his dinner invitation and do your best to persuade him to sponsor us, so we can have a second season next year. Chatting to this man over dinner may well just swing it for us.’

She gave a sigh. Well, she would do her best—though she wasn’t comfortable about it. Oh, not about pitching for sponsorship, but for a quite different reason.

As she sat on her bed Damos Kallinikos was vivid in her mind’s eye—and so were his drop-dead good looks. Looks that had sent the colour flaring into her cheeks.

She made a face. What on earth did it matter that Damos Kallinikos looked the way he did? A man like that would not look twice at a woman like herself—someone totally lacking the kind of appeal that females like Maia, for example, possessed. Her mouth twisted. Hadn’t her father drummed that into her all her life?

The sneering echo of her father’s voice stung in her memory.

‘Look at you! You’re like a piece of string! A stick! Not even a decent face to take a man’s eye off your stringy body! Your mother might have cost me a fortune to be rid of her, but at least she had looks!’

She sighed inwardly, accepting the truth of her father’s criticism. Her mother was petite and shapely, with china-blue eyes set in a heart-shaped face and softly waving blonde hair. Kassia’s own lack of looks were a constant cause for complaint by her father.

‘No man will ever want you for yourself! It will only be for my money—for who I am, not you!’

That was his regular accusatory refrain.

She silenced the sneering voice. She was never going to let herself get sucked into her father’s scheming, and to that end she should be grateful that her plain looks ruled her out of it. Had she looked like Maia, her father would be touting her all over Athens and beyond. Marrying her off to whoever would be most valuable to him as a son-in-law, making use of her to his own advantage.

As it was, thankfully, he’d all but written Kassia off, telling her to busy herself with her digging in the dirt and to keep out of his way, except for on those few unexpected occasions when he summoned her back to Athens for some social event where he wanted a daughter—even one as unprepossessing as she was—at his side for some reason. She always obeyed such summons, for she knew her father had got himself made a patron of the provincial museum she worked for, and would make difficulties if she refused.

She stared down at the business card in her hand. This was another summons. In black scrawl on the back Damos Kallinikos had simply written:

The marina, eight o’clock.

She gave a sigh, wishing it were Maia who was being summoned—the girl had already expressed her envy at Kassia getting to spend the evening with the drop-dead fabulous Damos Kallinikos...

Impatiently she got to her feet, heading for the shower. Time to get on with getting ready for the evening ahead. Best not to think about it. Even more, best not to think about Damos Kallinikos—let alone his drop-dead fabulous looks. They were nothing to do with her, and she was the last person he’d ever be interested in in that way.

Yes, definitely best not think about him...

Damos glanced at his watch. It was just gone eight. He was standing on the foredeck of his yacht. Behind him a table had been laid for two. The yacht was moored at the far end of the marina to afford him more privacy. Privacy in which to start the process of seducing Kassia Andrakis.

How would she present herself this evening? Though she was no couture-clad socialite, as Yorgos Andrakis’s daughter she would obviously know how to dress the part for an evening on a private yacht. So would she have done her best to glam herself up, or not? He had a gut feeling it would be ‘not’. And a few minutes later, when he saw her appear in the marina, he knew he was right.

As she approached the foot of the quay he saw she’d changed out of her work clothes. But only, it seemed, to put on a fresh pair of wide-legged trousers—cotton and dark blue, cheap from a chain store—and a loose-fitting cotton top in a slightly paler blue. The worn, dust-covered trainers had been changed for flat canvas slip-ons. Her hair was brushed, and not straggly now, but still confined into an unflattering tight knot at the back of her head. Not a scrap of make-up adorned her face. She looked clean, neat and tidy—but that was about it.

He gave a mental shrug. He was not put out by her lack of effort to dress for dinner with him on his private yacht. After all, so far as she was concerned this evening was merely an extension of her work, nothing more. Yet even so...

Is there any other reason she makes so little effort with her appearance?

Damon’s gaze narrowed slightly. Few women didn’t care about their appearance in some respect. So why didn’t Kassia Andrakis? Perhaps, though, the clue was in her surname. Had she been a high-profile beauty Yorgos Andrakis would doubtless have made use of it—so maybe she just preferred to keep a low profile?

His mouth thinned. Low profile or not, dressing down or not, Yorgos Andrakis was nevertheless ruthlessly planning to make use of her for his own ends.

As are you, yourself...

He silenced the thought. Yes, seducing Kassia Andrakis was in his interests, but nothing would happen that she did not want. And he reminded himself again that he would make sure she enjoyed their affair. Yet a flicker of something he could not name hovered a moment. He dismissed it. She was coming up to the yacht’s mooring, looking up to where he stood by the prow.

‘The harbour master told me this was yours,’ she announced.

Damos smiled in a welcoming fashion. ‘Indeed, it is. Come on aboard.’

He indicated the gangplank, a little way down the length of the yacht, and she went to it, stepping up to the deck, glancing around as she did.

‘She’s a new acquisition,’ he said blandly.

‘Very nice,’ said Kassia Andrakis politely.

‘Thank you. Not to be compared with your father’s, of course.’

That got a reaction.

Her expression tightened. ‘His is a ridiculous monstrosity!’

‘A trophy yacht?’ Damos nodded. ‘But the helipad must certainly come in useful for speedy arrivals and departures, should the occasion arise. However, each to his own, and I prefer something a little more modest.’

Kassia’s expression stayed tight. ‘ Modest is relative,’ she remarked. ‘All yachts are trophy yachts.’

‘Rich men’s toys? I agree.’ He smiled, refusing to take offence. ‘Now, come and have a drink on this particular rich man’s new toy.’

He indicated the foredeck, where one of his crew was waiting to serve drinks. Kassia moved forward, looking about her. She seemed tense, and Damos wanted to put her at ease.

‘What may I offer you?’ he asked politely. ‘Champagne is often de rigueur on yachts—however modest! But perhaps you would prefer something else?’

‘An orange juice spritzer, if that is possible,’ came the answer.

‘Of course.’

Damos nodded at the crew member, who disappeared below deck, to reappear shortly with Kassia’s drink in a tall glass, and his own martini. His crew knew what he drank at this hour of the day, and he murmured his thanks as he took his glass, handing Kassia’s to her.

‘We’ll dine in fifteen minutes,’ he instructed, and the crew member nodded and disappeared again.

Damos came and stood beside Kassia—but not too close—as she sipped at her spritzer and looked back across the marina. It was busy, but not full. A couple of upmarket restaurants were positioned to take advantage of the moored yachts, and were doing a healthy trade. The lights from the marina and from the vessels moored, as well as the green and red harbour lights, all danced on the water, and the tinkling sound of furled sails and masts moving in the light breeze, and the deeper sound of hulls tapping against the stone moorings, added to the atmosphere.

‘There’s nothing like a harbour,’ Damos said, looking around, his tone relaxed, trying to encourage her to do likewise. ‘It’s a haven from the open sea, but also a portal to that sea—to the voyages beyond. A harbour is a place of promise and opportunity. Now and down all the long ages past—and ages yet to come.’

He saw her turn her head to look at him. He smiled down at her.

‘Too fanciful for a hard-nosed businessman who only sees archaeology as a tax-deductible instrument for greater profit?’

She didn’t answer, but he got the impression she was studying him. Covertly, yes, but she was making some kind of assessment. Not reaching a conclusion, though. Wariness radiated from her—as it had that afternoon.

He took a meditative sip of his martini, looking out to sea past the harbour wall with its ever-blinking green and red lights.

‘So, what kind of seafaring did they get up to in the Bronze Age?’ he asked.

After all, that was what this evening was supposed to be about—expanding his knowledge of her field, so as to decide whether to invest in the work.

‘It was extensive,’ she answered. ‘Right across the Mediterranean. Trade was widespread. As you probably know, the copper for bronze is plentiful in this region—Cyprus, of course, is named after the metal itself—but the tin needed to make bronze had to come from further afield.’

Damos could tell from her voice that she was somewhat stilted, and he focussed on drawing her out. Sticking to the subject she was most interested in—the one she believed he’d invited her here to discuss—he asked another question.

‘How did they navigate in those days?’ he posed.

‘It’s not my speciality,’ came the answer, ‘but if you’re genuinely interested I can point you towards those who have made it theirs.’

There was sufficient inflection in her voice for Damos to know that she personally doubted that.

‘In general, the Mycenaeans—and the Minoans and all the East Mediterranean peoples of the time—knew nothing of the compass, so they steered by the sun and the stars, and by the known distance from the shore plus speed and heading.’

‘Dead reckoning?’ put in Damos. ‘As ever, right up until the eighteenth century, determining latitude was not so much a problem compared with determining longitude. That took highly accurate time-keeping—not available to the ancients. What was boat-building like in those times?’

‘Boats were round-hulled, with square sail and oars which would one day develop into the famous biremes and triremes of the later Classical period—the battle of Salamis and so on. Sails, I believe, were considerably more limited than in later times.’

‘Yes, it needed the development of the lateen sail—triangular in shape, but more difficult to operate—to allow vessels to sail much closer to the wind,’ commented Damos.

She looked at him, clearly curious now. ‘You know a lot.’

Damos gave a slightly crooked smile. ‘I grew up in Piraeus and went off to sea as soon as I could. Working on merchant ships and crewing on the trophy yachts you so despise. It was the latter experience,’ he said pointedly, ‘that inspired me to be rich enough one day to buy my own yacht.’

‘And now you do,’ she said dryly, sipping at her spritzer.

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.

‘No?’ Kassia looked at him again. ‘Is this only chartered?’

‘No—as in, no, I don’t only own my yacht—or charter it. I own a fleet—both leisure and merchant marine.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That’s your money, is it?’

He smiled. ‘Some of it.’ He nodded along the line of the marina with its moored yachts. ‘At least two of those are mine—chartered. Of course, like your father, my business interests are diverse. Ah!’ He changed his voice, turning his head. ‘Dinner arrives,’ he said.

He held out one of the two chairs set at the table and Kassia sat down before he took his place as well. He exchanged some pleasantries with his crew members, who set down the dishes, placed a wine bottle in the chiller on the table, and discreetly retired.

‘Do you eat seafood?’ he enquired politely. ‘If not, there is a vegetarian alternative.’

‘No, that’s fine,’ came the answer.

She started to help herself from the central platter, piled high with prawns, calamari and shellfish, and Damos did likewise, adding leaves and salads to his plate, as did she. She didn’t pick at her food, he noticed. So many of the females he consorted with visibly calorie-counted. Kassia Andrakis didn’t look as though she did—or had any reason to. Despite her loose-fitting clothes, he could see she was definitely slender, not fulsome in her figure.

He eyed her through half-lidded eyes. She might be downplaying her appearance, but her slenderness was appealing, and now that he had more leisure to peruse her across the table, he could see that her face—still without make-up, but no longer flushed and dabbed with dusty soil—was fine-boned. Was that the English side of her? he wondered.

He found himself wanting to see if he’d just imagined that silvery sheen in her eyes when she’d enthused about her work. His half-lidded eyes moved their focus, and he also found that he wanted to know what she might look like with her hair loosed from its confining, studious knot.

What she might look like without any clothes at all...

His veiled gaze rested on her a moment longer. Had she obviously dressed herself up to the nines, glammed herself up for him, he might well have ventured, over a leisurely dinner and increasingly intimate conversation, to speculate that the night might end with her going down to his stateroom to spend the night with him.

A woman who was interested in him that way, and in whom he had made clear a similar interest from himself, would have given signs of it—indicated that she found his attentions of that nature welcome to her and invited more of them. Until a mutual understanding of their respective willingness to take things further had been arrived at.

Kassia Andrakis, dressed down and unadorned, was showing no sign at all that she expected dinner with him to be anything other than what it purported to be. True, she was no longer flustered and awkward, as she’d been at the dig, but nor was she showing any visible awareness of him as anything other than a potential sponsor. No sign at all that she found him attractive as a man.

Should he be put off by that? He dismissed it out of hand. However composed she was being now, her initial reaction to him at the dig had been sufficiently revealing to him—he had no need to doubt it. But right now he wasn’t even trying to get her to see him in that way. Coming on strong to her at this stage would be crass.

Worse, it might arouse her suspicions.

Because there was one thing he was discovering about Kassia Andrakis and he was clearly going to have to take it into account. She was no idiot. Oh, not just because she was a professional archaeologist, who obviously knew her stuff inside out, but because right from the start he had seen that she was perfectly prepared to assess, judge and downright challenge him on his apparent interest in her field and his declared intention of considering sponsoring it.

Disarming her wariness—and the assessing acuity she directed at him—was going to take some finessing.

His veiled gaze rested on her a moment.

He’d known from the start that Kassia Andrakis was nothing like the women he usually consorted with—and not just because the only reason for his own interest in her was her father’s business plan and his own plans to thwart Yorgos Andrakis by the method he’d selected. No, Kassia Andrakis was different from his usual type of female in herself , not just in the circumstances of who she was and why. And therefore she had his attention—more so, he was finding, than he’d originally assumed.

Seducing her, he was starting to realise, was not going to be a simple case of showering flattering compliments upon her. She was a woman unused to receiving them and he was a man whose sexual interests were usually blatantly targeted at glamorously beautiful females. No, a far more subtle approach was going to be needed to disarm her—charm her into his bed.

A disquieting glint showed in the depths of his veiled gaze.

It will be a challenge...

The glint in his eyes deepened. And challenges were something he always found satisfying to achieve.

After all, his whole life had been a challenge. He had challenged the poverty into which he’d been born, changing it through determination, ambition and a hell of a lot of dogged hard work into riches.

So, he mused consideringly, keeping his speculative gaze on her as she ate, maybe Kassia Andrakis was not his usual type of woman, and maybe she was dowdy and unglamorous, and maybe her calm composure was showing no sign at all of responding to his masculinity, but for all that there might be something more enjoyable about seducing her than simply getting the result he was set on.

His thoughts coalesced. It might even be enjoyable for itself...as a challenge he would relish.

He was looking forward to taking it on.

Quite definitely...

That glint was back in his eyes, and he felt a sense of enticing anticipation...

Kassia was just beginning to feel her edge of acute wariness dissipating. Maybe she was getting used to Damos Kallinikos. He was being polite and making conversation, continuing to tell her about his time crewing on rich men’s yachts.

‘In some respects it was tougher than working on merchant ships,’ he said dryly. ‘Because you were on call twenty-four-seven, and rich men can be very demanding employers.’

She nodded, making a face as she did. Her father was inconsiderate of anyone who worked for him, and he would never dream of thanking them or showing any appreciation of their work and efforts.

She let her eyes rest on Damos Kallinikos for a moment across the table. She’d already noticed that he said please and thank you to his crew members, and passed the time of day with them pleasantly. That was to his credit, surely?

Her eyes flicked away again. She was conscious that she was not looking at him very much, or for very long—and she knew exactly why. Even though he was not, of course, focussing any kind of masculine attention on her—that was par for the course with her and men—that did not stop him being ludicrously good-looking. Whatever it was that made a man attractive, Damos Kallinikos had it in spades—and then some.

And then some more—

She dragged her thoughts away. No point assessing him in that respect. No point thinking how lethally attractive he was to her sex, with the way his dark hair feathered across his brow and his long eyelashes dipped down over those wine-dark eyes, or how his mouth curved into a half-smile that was tinged with a caustic humour as he regaled her with a particularly capricious demand by a yacht owner.

Their main course was being presented to them—chicken fillets in a wine sauce with saffron rice—and she got stuck in. Absently she lifted the wine glass that Damos Kallinikos had filled, and took a mouthful.

‘What do you make of it?’ he asked her.

‘It’s very good,’ she said politely—because it was. ‘Not that I know much about wine,’ she went on. ‘What is it?’

‘A viognier varietal,’ came the answer. ‘One of my vineyards has been experimenting...developing a vine that grows well on the volcanic soil here in the Aegean. I’m glad you like it.’

Kassia glanced at him. ‘ One of your vineyards?’

‘Yes—wine is one of the sectors that I can invest in with pleasure as well as profit in mind. And I have a particular interest in developing domestic wines. Greek wine should be better known internationally.’

‘The blight of retsina?’ Kassia rejoined dryly.

‘Indeed—though retsina has its place. As do, of course, wines produced locally, entirely for local, low-cost consumption.’

Kassia gave a wry smile. Faint, but definitely a smile—her first of the evening, she realised with a little start.

‘On excavations we don’t run to more than the local table wines and beer of an evening.’

He looked at her, and she could see curiosity in his expression.

‘How do you manage the adaptation?’ he asked. ‘You are Yorgos Andrakis’s daughter—and yet you work digging up broken pots from the dirt.’

She paused a moment, then answered, choosing her words carefully.

‘I don’t spend much time in Athens—or in being Yorgos Andrakis’s daughter. Besides,’ she went on, ‘I’m not always on excavations. Out of season I’m based at a provincial museum. I spend time studying our findings, cataloguing them, writing them up, contributing to papers, going to conferences—that sort of thing.’

‘Not exactly a jet-set lifestyle,’ Damos Kallinikos said mordantly.

She shook her head. ‘Not my scene,’ she agreed. She looked across at him. ‘And, since I have no head for business, the only thing for me to do as Yorgos Andrakis’s daughter would be to go to parties and spend his money and be “ornamental”. But...’ she took a breath ‘...I am not “ornamental”, so I’d rather do something useful and dig for broken pots in the dirt and catalogue them.’

He was looking at her now, and there was something in the way he was looking across the lamplit table that she found unnerving. She didn’t know why. But it was unnerving, all the same. To stop it, she took a quick mouthful of her wine, and another mouthful of her tender and delicious chicken, and then quite deliberately moved the conversation on.

‘Speaking of digging up broken pots—what was it that you wanted to know about our excavation?’ she asked. ‘Fire away with the questions—after all, it’s what I’m here for.’

‘So you are...’ Damos Kallinikos murmured.

For just a moment that unnerving look was in his eye again—then it vanished. As if it had been cleared away decisively.

‘OK, well, let me pick up on something you mentioned to me this afternoon,’ he said. ‘You said something about the collapse of Bronze Age Civilisation. I didn’t know it had. Why did it—and when?’

Kassia felt herself relaxing—and engaging. This was familiar territory to her.

‘The “when” is pretty well attested by the archaeological evidence—around 1200 BC or thereabouts. The “why” is more controversial and contentious.’

She reached for her wine again—it really was a very good wine after the table wines she was used to on digs.

‘We can see that sites were being abandoned—the great palace complexes, like the most famous at Mycenae—and the population crashed. Linear B, the script of the Mycenaeans, all but disappears, and written Greek doesn’t reappear until the adoption of the alphabet from the Phoenicians, in about the tenth century or so BC. The powerful Hittite empire in modern-day Turkey disappears too, and trade plummets in this post-Bronze Age period—though there is evidence of huge demographic changes, either from new arrivals, or from those economically displaced. It’s the era of the still mysterious Sea Peoples, raiding and invading, and it’s also the most likely time for the legendary Trojan War—’

She drew breath and plunged on, warming to her theme, running through the various possible causes of the collapse—from old theories about newly arriving Dorians from the north to current theories about climate change and the development of iron technology changing the balance of power and warfare. She was in full train, explaining the differences in smelting copper and tin to bronze, and the higher temperatures needed for smelting iron, when she stopped dead.

Damos Kallinikos had finished eating and was sitting back, wine glass in one hand, his other hand resting on the table. His eyes were half lidded, and she had the sudden acute feeling that she was boring him stupid.

She swallowed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s fascinating to me, but—’

He held up his hand. ‘Don’t apologise. I asked the question and you answered. I’m spellbound.’

For a moment she had the hideous feeling that he was being sarcastic. But then he leant forward.

‘Your face comes alight when you talk with such passion,’ he said.

His eyes met hers. Held hers.

Kassia couldn’t move. Not a muscle.

Damos wanted to punch the air.

First contact.

First real him-to-her contact.

And all over the collapse of Bronze Age civilisation...

Well, so what? Whatever it took to bring her alive in the way it had just showed in her face was fine by him. Just fine.

Because, however it happens, I need to make personal contact with her—make the connection that can eventually lead to where I want it to go.

His eyes went on holding hers for a moment longer. As they did, he felt something go through him—something unexpected.

Was it the way her face had lit up and, yes, even in the soft light bathing them on the deck, the way that he’d caught that silvery glint in her eyes...?

It was doing something to him...

But it was time to back off—which was all part of the subtle approach that he knew was going to be necessary with her.

‘You know,’ he said, injecting just the right amount of humour and sincerity into his voice—both of which, he realised, he felt quite genuinely, ‘if you intended to make a sales pitch for getting me to sponsor the dig, you’ve just made it.’ He looked at her wryly. ‘Doesn’t it ever strike you that it is...unusual...to be so passionate about something that has not existed for over three thousand years?’

There was open curiosity in his voice. Kassia Andrakis was like no other woman he’d met, and the novelty of it was catching at him.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered slowly. ‘Maybe because it’s a...a continuum. Like I said this afternoon, those people back then—however long ago it seems to us—were just like us. Living their lives as best they could. Just as we do.’

His wry look turned into a wry smile. ‘That’s not a bad way to live—then or now. Living our lives the best we can.’ Damos heard his voice change. ‘It certainly fuelled my determination not to stay poor—and to enjoy all that comes my way.’

He held her gaze for another moment. He put nothing into it of flirtation, nor any intimation of it. He wanted only to keep this moment of contact going. It was something to build on.

Then he glanced towards the wine chiller. ‘Speaking of enjoying all that comes our way...this wine will go to waste if we don’t finish it.’

He casually refilled her glass, and then his own, replacing the depleted bottle back in its chiller. He’d exaggerated the predicament of the wine—any leftovers would, he knew, be consumed below deck by the crew. One of the perks of the job, and something he was perfectly happy with.

He wanted to keep the atmosphere light, and so, taking another mouthful of his own wine, he sat back again.

‘Does your work ever take you to Istanbul?’ he asked casually. ‘I’ll be heading off there tomorrow.’

Kassia shook her head. ‘I’ve visited Hissarlik—the site of Troy—in my time, but I have never made it to Istanbul.’

For a moment Damos considered inviting her to go with him, then set it aside. That would be premature. No, better just to use this evening as prep for planning his next encounter with her. Though where and how were yet to be decided on... One thing was definite, though. When he moved on in his seduction of her he did not want it to be in Greece, and certainly not in Athens. It needed to be kept private—very private. Until, with his goal in sight, it suited him for it to become very public knowledge...

Especially to Cosmo Palandrou.

There was a dark glint of anticipation in his eye. Because that would be the moment when he would have outmanoeuvred Yorgos Andrakis. Spiking his guns completely. Andrakis would have nothing to offer Cosmo—nothing that Cosmo would accept.

Damos’s face hardened. No, Cosmo Palandrou would never want Yorgos Andrakis’s daughter as his bride...

Not once he knows—and all of Athens knows!—that she’s been my mistress...

Because for all that Cosmo might swallow Kassia being a dowdy archaeologist, not a glamorous trophy socialite, providing she brought with her the promise of the Andrakis riches, he wouldn’t stomach marrying a blatant cast-off of another man—and Damos Kallinikos at that. That would stick in his craw...would be an affront to his ego and self-esteem...and Andrakis’s bid for his company would be dead in the water.

Leaving the way clear for me.

But he wasn’t there yet. First he had to get Kassia Andrakis into his bed.

He brought his thoughts back to where they needed to be to achieve that end. How to build on where he’d got with her so far and take it to the next base.

‘Do you travel much for your work?’ he asked now, in a conversational manner.

‘I go to conferences outside Greece sometimes. My mother lives in England, so a UK conference is a good opportunity to visit her.’

Damos paid attention—this was useful intel. He made a mental note to check out any likely UK-based conferences coming up on her subject that she might be likely to attend.

‘Your parents are divorced, I take it...?’ He trailed off, though he knew the answer perfectly well from his dossier on her.

‘Yes, she’s English and now remarried—unlike my father. Neither had any more children.’ She made a face, half humorous. ‘I don’t think my mother wanted to ruin her figure, and my father didn’t want to risk another hefty child maintenance divorce settlement!’

Damos knew that wry expression was back on his face.

‘All rich men fear being married for their money. I’ve certainly become a lot more popular with women since I made money,’ he heard himself saying, and wondered why he was saying it.

He frowned inwardly. Should he have said that? And why say anything about himself at all? This evening was about drawing Kassia out, exploring how best he could achieve his aims for her.

He saw she was looking at him now, but not unsympathetically.

‘That’s understandable,’ she commented. ‘Even I—if you can believe it!—get attention paid to me simply because of my father!’

Damos relaxed. This was better—she was revealing things about herself, not making him reveal things about himself.

‘Why “if you can believe it”?’ He infused just the right amount of uncomprehending curiosity into his voice.

He got a straight look and a straight answer. ‘Why else would they pay attention to me?’

She gave a short laugh, but it was without resentment. It was infused, he thought, with wry resignation if anything. And there was that air of indifference to her own appearance that he had picked up on from the start—as though it was just not important to her.

There was a glint in her light eyes as she went on. ‘Not everyone, Mr Kallinikos, is sufficiently fascinated by Bronze Age Civilisation as to want my company for dinner!’

This was approaching thin ice, he thought—time to move the conversation off it. But gracefully...and perhaps with some humour at his own expense to deflect the moment.

‘Or as keen to find a good tax haven for this year’s profits, don’t forget!’ he said lightly.

He got one of her wry half-smiles in return, and was satisfied.

He returned to a subject he wanted to draw her out on. Herself.

He found himself frowning inwardly for a moment. She had been so upfront about not expecting men to be interested in her. Was that a good sign or a bad sign as far as his prospective seduction was concerned? It definitely meant he had to tread carefully, or her suspicions would be aroused.

Yet that was not his only reaction to her dispassionate disclosure. Surely it was sad that she wrote herself off the way she so obviously did?

No woman should do that.

His own voice cut short the thought. ‘So, did you grow up in England?’

‘Mostly, yes. I went to boarding school, and then university. I’ve always spoken Greek, though, and that’s helped, of course, with my career.’

The crew were appearing, clearing away empty plates, replacing them with dessert.

‘What can I tempt you with?’ Damos invited.

He’d ordered a good range, from a sumptuous gateau St Honoré in towering choux pastry, to more frugal fruit and cheese.

Kassia made a face—she was definitely more relaxed with him, Damos could see, and he was highly satisfied with that. He was making good progress...

‘It has to be the gateau,’ she said. ‘How can I possibly resist? But then I’ll be virtuous and have some fruit afterwards.’

He laughed, cutting her a very generous portion of the towering dessert, spun with caramel and oozing cream, and then watching her start to tuck into it with relish and clear enjoyment.

It set a new thought running...

A woman who enjoy s the sensuous pleasure of a rich dessert can en joy other sensuous pleasures...

But that was a good way off yet. For now, it was just a question of continuing as he was doing—getting her to relax in his company, rounding off dinner with coffee, and then escorting her off the yacht to return her to her pension and her colleagues.

A good evening’s work and a good base to build on. And time for him to consider his next move. And when he had he would act on it decisively, effectively. The way he always did in life.

She will be in my bed, and my plan will have succeeded.

It was a satisfying prospect.

He let his half-lidded contemplation of her sensuous enjoyment of the luxurious dessert linger a moment longer than it needed to, as into his head came again the thought that seducing Kassia Andrakis, so totally unlike any female of his considerable experience, and so completely oblivious of what he intended for her, would provide a distinct and novel challenge to pursue and achieve.

Not only because it would open the way to the lucrative business acquisition he wanted to make.

But for my own enjoyment...

A glint came into his veiled gaze. A glint of anticipation...and promise.

Yes, a satisfying prospect ahead indeed.

All that was required now was to plan his next move.

Kassia lay in her bed in her room but could not sleep. The evening she’d just spent kept playing inside her head. It shouldn’t—but it did.

It shouldn’t for one obvious reason. She’d had dinner with Damos Kallinikos solely to encourage him to sponsor the excavation—nothing else.

And yet it was hard—impossible—to put it out of her mind and go to sleep. Even though there was obviously no point in dwelling on it.

Because what would be the point of remembering how it had been to sit out on that foredeck with Damos Kallinikos, feeling the low swell of the sheltered harbour water beneath the hull, with the stars high above, the warmth of the night air, the scent of the flower arrangement on the table and the glint of light on the glasses filled with chilled white wine? And what would be the point of remembering talking with him, hearing the timbre of his voice, responding to his questions, feeling that half-lidded glance on her, knowing that if she let her own eyes settle on him they would simply want to gaze and gaze...?

No point at all. No point, she told herself sternly, in doing anything but reminding herself that a man with looks like his—looks that had reduced her to flustered silence when she’d first set eyes on him that afternoon at the dig—was way out of her league—stratospherically out of her league. Oh, he’d been polite, and civil, and he’d conversed easily with her. But she had to face it squarely on. A man like him was not going to think anything more of her beyond the reason he’d invited her to his yacht.

She’d been wary about going in the first place, but as the evening had progressed she’d relaxed more. The fact that he was so totally out of her league had made it easier, in a strange way. The kind of women he would take a personal interest in would be as fabulous-looking as he was...ritzy and glitzy and gorgeous.

Not like me.

For a second, fleeting and painful, she felt a sudden longing in her. Oh, she knew she was nothing much to look at, and she accepted that undeniable truth about herself—had even said it straight to Damos Kallinikos’s face. And yet for a few searing moments protest rose in her.

Oh, to be possessed of the kind of full-on glamorous beauty that would make Damos Kallinikos look twice at her...

More than look at her...

She crushed the longing down. There was no point wishing for what was impossible. No point at all.

And no point replaying in her head the evening that had just passed.

Damos Kallinikos had briefly entered her life, and tomorrow he was sailing on to Istanbul.

And she would be going back to digging in a hot, dusty trench.

She’d done what Dr Michaelis had asked of her—made a successful pitch for sponsorship, as Damos Kallinikos himself had told her. All she could do was hope it was enough to make him follow through with it. As for the man himself—there was no reason for their paths to cross again.

None whatsoever.

So what he looked like, and what she looked like, and what she might long for or not long for, or even think about him, remembering the evening that had been and was now gone was, she told herself yet again, completely pointless.

With that final adjuration to herself, she turned on her side, closed her eyes, and determined to sleep.