From Dirt To Diamonds Part 11

She felt tired-tired in all her muscles-and yet a sense of well-being held her. She didn't know why. It should be impossible. But it was so, all the same. For quite some time she stood there, arms resting on the wooden balcony, just looking out and feeling the improbable peace of the evening.

Everything seemed very far away. Very distant.

She tried to conjure Giles's face to mind, but it would not come. Only a handful of days ago she had thought her future lay with him, that she had achieved her heart's desire. But it had been ripped from her. Ripped to pieces.

Once before her life had been ripped to pieces. But she had remade it-better.

And I will do so again. As often as it takes.

She stared out over the darkening valley at the mountain peaks, high and pristine, untouchable. She didn't see the tall figure emerge at the far end of the balcony, his head turned towards her, standing as still as she, watching her.

Nor the questioning frown between his eyes as he did so.

Thea knew that dinner that night would not be easy, and when she went down, summoned by Trudi, the young maid, her tension levels were high again. She had dressed for comfort, wearing a pair of leggings and a long, soft sweater in teal-blue lambswool. She'd tied her hair up, and wore no make-up. Yet even dressed so casually she still felt Angelos's eyes on her as she walked into the lounge. He too was dressed casually, wearing another cashmere sweater-navy-with loose khaki chinos. He'd ruched back the sleeves of the sweater, and Thea moved her gaze away from his strong, tanned forearms. But looking at his face was no better. No better at all. His hair was damp, feathering at his nape and brow, and he was freshly shaved. She dragged her eyes away, looking instead at the wood fire crackling in the stone hearth. The whole room was ridiculously cosy, softly lit from old-fas.h.i.+oned lamps, with a huge rug in front of the hearth and sofas you could sink into.

Angelos was drinking a lager, and Franz, the older of the two manservants, dutifully asked what the fraulein might like to drink. Thea asked for fruit juice, and received a gla.s.s as tall as Angelos's, with similar pale gold contents, but the liquid was slightly fizzing apple juice.

'Apfelsaft,' Angelos enlightened. 'Sussmost, as the Swiss call it. It's non-alcoholic.'

She sipped it cautiously and found it very refres.h.i.+ng.

'How are your feet?'

'OK,' she said cautiously.

He nodded. 'Tomorrow we'll rest. You don't want to overdo it when you're inexperienced at mountain walking.'

She said nothing. What should she say? That she didn't want to be here in the first place? That she wanted to go home, to try and pick up what was left of her life now? Instead, she just followed Angelos through into the dining room-another comfortable room, with a large pine table, another open fire, and heavy dark green curtains on metal rings. There were thick candles on the table, already lit, although wall lamps gave the room light as well. She took the chair Franz held for her at the foot of the table, sitting down in the wide-based armed chair, padded with cus.h.i.+ons. The whole effect was, she thought as she looked around, like a luxurious Alpine farmhouse. But it was warm and welcoming and homely. It was an odd description for a place owned by a man like Angelos Petrakos.

As Franz and the younger manservant, Johann, started to serve dinner, Thea realised, as she had at lunch, that she was hungry. The food was hearty and delicious. A rough pate, followed by breaded escalopes with fried potatoes and a root salad. It was probably about a million calories, but right now she didn't care. She tucked in.

Angelos watched her. 'It's the mountain air,' he observed. 'It gives an appet.i.te. And the exercise, of course.'

She looked up.

'You're eating properly.' He explained his comment. 'I was beginning to wonder if you could.'

'You get used to chronic malnutrition as a model,' she responded dryly.

'You really don't like the profession, do you?' he returned, his voice even drier. Then his tone changed. 'Was that one of Giles Brooke's attractions-he'd be taking you away from modelling? Apart, of course, from his t.i.tle and his money,' he finished jibingly.

She was very still for a moment. Then she spoke. 'No.'

'Do you claim you were "in love" with him?' The jibe was still there.

'No. But I cared for him, and I would have made him the best wife I could.'

'Even though your marriage would have been based on a lie?'

She swallowed, looking away. She would not seek to placate him by saying she had accepted she had been wrong to deceive Giles. Why should she care what Angelos Petrakos thought of her? He was nothing to her-nothing! Except the man she hated ...

From across the table Angelos's gaze rested on her. This evening she had made no effort to dress as she had in London and Geneva. Yet the casual attire did nothing to play down her beauty. The leggings highlighted the length of her legs, the long soft top skimmed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and slender hips, the undressed hair, cinched at her nape, flowed down her back like a pale waterfall. Her face needed no make-up, no deepening of the eyes or reddening of the mouth. Her beauty was her own, whatever name she gave herself. Once again he felt the emotion he would not name flow through him.

She was so still ... unmoving. She sat there making no reply, as if he had not spoken. Another emotion p.r.i.c.ked within him-a familiar one. She was closing him out as if he had no effect on her. It angered him, as it had before. His fingers tightened on his knife and fork as he cut into his meat. He did not want her closing him out. He did not want her sitting there so still, as if he had no effect on her.

He knew better. She had stood there, motionless, while he had touched her, caressed her-kissed her. And he had known with every instinct, every certainty, that though she had come to him with nothing more than a venal motive she had, for all that, dissolved at his touch ...

For a timeless moment it was vivid in his mind, that indelible memory. She had stood in front of him and he had explored the fineness of her skin, the contours of her face, tasted the softness of her mouth, silenced from its provocative insolence at last.

Memory-vivid, real-fused over his vision as his eyes rested on her now. He felt that unnamed emotion flow within him again. Compelling, ineluctable.

He picked up his gla.s.s, breaking the flow of that unnamed emotion. As he drank, he saw her start to eat again.

'So,' he began, setting down his gla.s.s, deliberately putting aside the thoughts that swirled inside his head, 'did you enjoy the walk this afternoon?'

Thea took a forkful of food. 'Yes.' She would be honest-why shouldn't she be if he wanted, for whatever inexplicable reason, to make polite conversation with her? But why he was doing so, why she was here at all, was beyond her comprehension. And certainly beyond her caring. She had no choice but to be here.

'You looked as though you did,' he said slowly. In his mind's eye he saw her again, sitting in the shelter of the rocks, gazing out over the vista, watching the eagles soaring. Quiet. Contemplative. Still.

As if she were at home there.

He put the thought aside, moved on from it.

'Next time we'll try a longer walk. But tomorrow you'd better take it easy. We'll drive down to the village and take the cable car up to the restaurant at the top of the ski slopes. It stays open for the summer season. There's a glacier nearby that makes summer skiing possible.

She looked up. 'I've never seen a glacier.'

There was a note of interest in her voice. Spontaneous, unguarded.

'They're an extraordinary phenomenon of nature,' said Angelos. 'Rivers of ice moving so slowly, but so powerfully. Though in geological time they are rus.h.i.+ng rapids compared with the growth and erosion of the mountains. Yet the Alps themselves are striplings-one of the youngest mountain ranges in the world.'

Thea listened, realising that Angelos seemed to have a real interest in what he was telling her. He went on, explaining about tectonic plates, volcanic activity and mountain-building, and at a pause found herself saying, 'You know a great deal about it.'

His expression changed. 'I once wanted to be a geologist,' he said.

She stared. A geologist? Angelos Petrakos? Who could do anything he wanted?

'So why didn't you?'

'It wasn't possible,' he said flatly. 'Someone had to run the company my father had spent his life creating. It was my inheritance, and it was also my responsibility. I employ a lot of people whose livelihoods are in my hands. I can't jaunt off to do what I want. Only sometimes-like now-I come here, to the mountains. On my own.'

He frowned, as if he'd just realised what he'd said. Because he wasn't here on his own.

He didn't bring women here. It was a place he kept solely for his own use. The place he came when he could let go-briefly-the multiple complex threads of Petrakos International to be here on his own, among the mountains.

And no woman that he knew would want to be here. Those he chose for his liaisons would never have been content to spend their time in this deserted place-spend their days walking the ridges and peaks and cols all day. Nor could he envisage a single one of them discussing tectonic plates with him.

His frown deepened.

'Why have you an interest in geology?' he asked abruptly.

'Because I don't know anything about it,' she answered. 'There's still so much I don't know-about so many things.'

He was looking at her, with that unreadable expression in his eyes that she often saw there.

'"To be ignorant and uneducated is one thing,"' she said. '"To want to remain so is another."'

A glint showed in his eye. 'A n.o.ble expression,' he commented.

'It's what you said to me,' she answered, 'when I said I didn't know anything about Monte Carlo except that it was full of rich people.' She took a breath. 'I resented it at the time, but afterwards I remembered it.' She took a sip of her appelsaft. 'It was true-resent it as I did. Only fools stay ignorant by choice. So I chose to learn, instead.'

'You've learnt a great deal,' he said. 'You've changed almost beyond recognition. I don't just mean your appearance, your accent. Its much more than that.'

She looked away. 'You never knew me,' she replied.

'I knew enough.' His voice was harsh suddenly.

Involuntarily her eyes went back to him. Clashed with his. Then, abruptly, his eyes were veiled, and when he spoke again his voice was milder.

'And I still do.'

His voice was like silk across her skin.

Inside her ribs she could feel her heart give a sudden pulse. Danger pressed around her ...

She felt it still, even after the meal had finished and they went into the lounge to have coffee served to them by Franz. As the manservant poured it out Angelos crossed to the well-stocked bookshelves behind the sofa in front of the hearth, and returned with a hefty atlas which he placed on the pine coffee table.

'You wanted to understand tectonic plates, and the formation of the Alps and other mountain ranges?' he said, settling himself down beside her and opening up the atlas.

Against her will, Thea found her interest outweighing her resistance to having Angelos Petrakos talk to her. Only as he used the ill.u.s.trations and diagrams in the atlas to explain the complicated process she was disturbed by his physical proximity as he turned the pages. He was too close to her-far too close to her ...

She felt her tension mount. Their bodies were almost within touching distance. As if he could feel it, he stopped talking, turning his head to hers. For an endless moment he looked at her.

Too close-too close! Far, far too close!

Her eyes flared in panic.

He straightened up, snapping the atlas shut. Without speaking he got to his feet and went across to an alcove. In a few moments music was flooding out into the room. It was Bach, or Vivaldi, or something like that, she vaguely recognised. Bright and fast and corruscatingly brilliant. She was glad of it, and sat back into a corner of the sofa, drawing up her shoeless feet on to the seat, picking up her coffee cup, making a show of listening to the music.

She wondered whether Angelos was going to start talking again, but he stayed silent, one long leg casually crooked across the other, occupying the rest of the sofa, seeming content to do as she was doing-drinking coffee and listening to the music. In the hearth, the pine logs crackled and spat, making the room warm, the atmosphere somnolent. The music slowed, and after a while Thea felt her eyelids grow heavy.

'You're falling asleep,' she heard Angelos say, and blinked. 'It's the fresh air and exertion. Go to bed, Kat.'

Slowly, sleepily, she uncoiled herself and set down the coffee cup, getting to her feet. For a moment she didn't quite know what to say. His expression was unreadable. Then she simply said, 'Goodnight,' and went to bed.

That night she slept even better, though her dreams were vivid of high, windy places and brilliant sun, and she dreamt she was still walking. When she awoke Trudi was hovering. Breakfast, so it seemed, was waiting for her, and the morning was advanced.

It was another bizarre day. After breakfast Angelos drove them down to the village and up to the cable car station. Soon they were suspended high above the now green ski slopes, traveling up to the restaurant poised beside the piste. They lunched out in the open on the decked surround, and once again Angelos proved an informative companion. Once again, Thea simply went along with it. What else could she do? All she could do was accept the situation-accept that it served his purpose for her to be here. Accept too, that-bizarre as it seemed-Angelos was treating her, as he had the previous day, without any sign of his habitual anger.

He took her to see the glacier after lunch-a short walk across the col-and pointed out its features, the sun dazzling on its ravined, icy surface. They talked of how the glaciers were shrinking in the Alps, and everywhere, and of global warming, and he told her how he had started a new division of Petrakos International to develop green technologies. Again she found her mind stimulated, her interest engaged, curiosity aroused. It helped, she knew, that in the bright sunlight dazzling off the glacier his dark gla.s.ses veiled his eyes from her, veiled hers from him. It seemed-safer.

The sun was already starting to dip behind the peaks opposite as they descended in the cable car again, and by the time they reached the village it was dusky and shadowed in the deep valley. But the little village was attractive, with summer window boxes and traditional wooden-framed shops and houses. She did some toiletries shopping, and then Angelos paused outside a konditterei.

'Tempted, Kat?' he murmured.

Thea gazed at the trays of exquisite chocolates. Then she shook her head. It was madness to think of eating such horrendously calorific sweetmeats. It took her a moment to realise Angelos had gone into the shop. He exited a few minutes later with a huge box, done up with an even huger bow. He presented the box to her with a flourish.

'For you,' he said.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, Thea felt her throat tighten. 'Th-thank you,' she heard herself say, taking the box.

Dear G.o.d, what was the world coming to? Angelos Petrakos buying her chocolates ...

As if he did not hate her ...

Immediately she repudiated the thought. Impossible-impossible to believe he did not hate her! Yet as the day turned into an evening spent as the one before, quietly over dinner and then in the lounge listening to music, that same strange rapprochement seemed to hold.

In the days that followed they settled down into what gradually became a familiar routine-heading off on one long Alpine walk after another, trekking in the dazzling suns.h.i.+ne across the close-cropped turf, along the steep, precipitous ridges. She could not but start to accept that, for a reason she could not fathom, it really did seem that Angelos had, inexplicably, dropped his long-held hostility towards her. He made no more jibes or challenges to her. Instead, as the days pa.s.sed, he seemed to be treating her as if she were truly a guest-someone he'd chosen to spend time with. Someone whose life he had never destroyed.

It was the strangest realisation. And, whilst that was strange, she found her own response even stranger, even more inexplicable. Little by little, day by day, she started, in return, to find satisfaction in the long, strenuous walks that ranged far and wide over the slopes and ridges, to find stimulation in their talking over dinner, the time she spent with him. And with every pa.s.sing day she realised, with confused disbelief, that in spite of everything that had pa.s.sed between them she was beginning to feel, of all things, quite extraordinarily and totally against all expectations, a kind of rapport with him ... finding herself content both to trek in peaceful silence and to converse animatedly, incisively, on any and every subject.

Yet even as her guard against him lowered, so her physical awareness of him-which had always disturbed and dismayed her-grew. Fervently she tried to suppress it, tried to ignore it, but it was there running like a silent, powerful river deep inside her. She could not rid herself of it, could not make herself insensible to it. It was there all the time, growing. She knew her eyes were always going to him-they were now, as they crossed a col towards the next peak, on the taut planes of his face, the strong features, the wind-ruffled sable hair, the lean, powerful body. He was imprinting himself more and more on her consciousness.

It was troubling and disturbing. And very, very potent, bringing with it, slowly and inexorably, the most troubling realisation of all.

She stopped dead in her tracks. Her mind sheered away, like an eagle urgently beating its wings to gain uplift against the plunging wind.

No-that could not be-could not! It was impossible-impossible ...

Stumbling, she forced herself to move again, missing her footing for a moment, so that she had to exert all her balance to recover. To recover more than her footing ...

Her eyes went to the man ahead of her, striding onwards.

And she felt her lungs hollow as if all the air around her had been sucked away, leaving nothing in its place but a truth she had to face. A truth that drained the blood from her face.

She didn't want to leave. Didn't want to go. Didn't want to go back to a world, a life, that seemed more and more unreal-more and more far away. Wanted only to go on being here, in this high, remote place.

With Angelos.

CHAPTER EIGHT.