LITMIR.BIZ

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up on a hill, the sparkling iridescence of the sea a stunning backdrop as two passenger ferries crossed each other in the distance, leaving a foaming backwash in their wake.

      Lysander appeared thoughtful for a moment, his captivating eyes shielded from her gaze by dark sunglasses. Even so, Ianthe felt the keen scrutiny of his unsettling glance with the same stunning acknowledgement as though he was asking the most intimate questions of her that a man could ask a woman…

      ‘The woman in the photograph became my subject quite by chance,’ he replied with a shrug, breaking some bread and leaving it on his plate.

      Her glance was drawn immediately to his lean, bronzed hands with their almost pearlescent square-cut nails. He definitely had ‘artistic’ hands, but they didn’t look work-shy either.

      ‘I’d been travelling around some of the smaller islands, taking my camera with me, and after walking all day in one particular place, and getting lost, I stopped at a small house to ask the way. It was Iphigenia’s house—the woman in the picture. She fed me that day with what little food she had, and in the course of our meal together she told me her life story. When we had finished eating she was curious about my camera and asked if I would like to take her picture. I said of course, and the result you see in the gallery.’

      Iphigenia had moved Lysander deeply that day, with her kindness and her humility. Their encounter had happened just three scant months after Marianna had died. Leaving his business affairs to trusted colleagues, he had taken off travelling, needing to be alone for a while, needing to make sense of a world that he could not pretend to understand any more. Iphigenia had lost her entire family to illness, one after the other—her husband, her son, then lastly her daughter. Yet she wasn’t bitter, and she was utterly convinced that they would all be reunited again when she died.

      Lysander had almost made his own entreaty to God that that might become true for her, though he nurtured no such similar hope of being reunited with the baby son he’d lost. That would be a miracle he found too hard to believe in…especially when he knew he probably didn’t deserve it. He had never been able to shake a nagging feeling that maybe, because he hadn’t truly been able to find forgiveness in his heart for Marianna’s adultery, he was somehow being punished.

      When he’d finally returned home and developed the picture he’d known he’d captured something very special indeed. He could have sold Iphigenia’s picture a hundred times over with the interest it had generated, but Lysander had instead given it to his friend Ari Tsoukalas to hang in his gallery.

      ‘So you are a photographer by profession?’

      ‘Amongst other things, yes.’

      There was not the slightest need or inclination on Lysander’s part to tell this charming young woman that he earned his main income from the shipping industry, and that that income ran into millions of dollars a year. Far better that she believed him to be a simple photographer. That would allow them both to be free to enjoy their unexpected lunch together, without all the baggage that his family’s name and wealth entailed.

      ‘And do you exhibit your photographs anywhere else?’ Ianthe enquired politely. For a moment Lysander’s attention was caught by the way she chewed on the juicy black olive and carefully extracted the stove by making her mouth into an unconsciously sexy ‘O’ shape, to capture it with her forefinger and thumb. Such an ordinary, commonplace action should not provide the highly provocative entertainment it did, but Lysander couldn’t deny that his groin had tightened hotly at the sight. He considered the pretty English tourist with a renewed fascination that wouldn’t be assuaged.

      ‘Not yet, but I’m currently working on putting a small exhibition together in Athens with a friend.’

      He was telling the truth—apart from the fact that the exhibition was being held in one of the city’s most prestigious venues, and the friend who was helping him put it together was one of the world’s most celebrated photographers. It wasn’t anything to do with any kind of social nepotism, though: Lysander’s photographs had caught the other man’s professional eye when some of them had been published in a fashion magazine.

      ‘Well, I wish you well with it. If your other photographs are anything like the one I saw today then I’m sure you’re well on the way to making your fortune.’

      She smiled, showing perfectly neat straight white teeth. Lysander didn’t doubt that she dutifully brushed them and flossed three times a day. Already he’d sensed that she was a contained little thing, the kind of person who paid rigorous attention to the small things in life…yet he’d also intuited that underneath she had a fire in her belly to match his own. A person who could be spontaneously moved and inspired, as he’d seen her that morning, would not lack for passion.

      As the hot sun beat down upon their heads, Lysander fell into a compellingly erotic little daydream about how he’d like to spend the rest of the afternoon igniting that passion he was so certain she possessed into full unfettered flame, and the realisation of what he was contemplating did not induce the remotest sense of guilt.

      He wasn’t looking for a soul mate. Emotionally, he was spent: there was nothing left in that department to give any woman. These days Lysander had only one use for attractive females who persisted in trying to command his attention. Ianthe might not have deliberately come on to him like the others usually did, especially when they found out who he was, but she had confessed to him that she was unattached. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that a woman like her would be nursing some secret hope of some kind of romantic liaison whilst on vacation.

      Well, he couldn’t offer her romance. But the idea of a liaison—now, that was appealing.

      ‘Thank you. But I have done all the talking, it seems, and I still know nothing about you. What brings you to our little island?’

      She didn’t answer him straight away. It was a relatively simple question, but she seemed to be having extraordinary difficulty finding a reply.

      ‘I came because I badly needed a break…a change of scenery.’

      ‘And you travelled here alone?’

      ‘I didn’t want to travel with anyone because I needed time on my own, to think.’

      ‘That sounds very serious. So you have important decisions to make about your life, perhaps? Or am I being a little too personal?’

      He was being too personal, but when he removed his stylish sunglasses and fixed her with that arresting indigo stare of his Ianthe did not have the nerve or the inclination to rebuff his questions. In any case, ‘too personal’ or not, it might be easier to share some of what was on her mind with a stranger—someone she would never see again once she left the island.

      Ianthe decided to take at least a small step and reveal something of what she felt—just not too much.

      ‘I suppose I do have some important decisions to make. Some things…some very hard things happened that have kind of forced those decisions on me. But the truth is, in some ways it’s as though what happened—how it affected me—was fated. Up until recently I was ignorant of personal tragedy or pain. I think I needed to learn that lesson, however painful, and change my way of life.’

      She went quiet for a very long moment. Lysander could see the near agony that she could not quite conceal in her very expressive dark eyes and was curious at what had caused it.

      Then she took a breath and smiled, deliberately lightening the mood. ‘Of course it’s far easier to contemplate than actually do, don’t you think? Making changes, I mean.’

      ‘If the desire is there…’ He shrugged. ‘I think you have clearly been changed already by what has happened to you, Ianthe. You are a brave woman to embrace it so philosophically. Many people recognise they need to change something, but rarely do anything about it—even when pushed. It is too easy to pretend nothing has happened, or stay in our comfort zones, no?’

      He was so easy to talk to. His deep, rich, accented tones seemed to lull her into a strange feeling of safety she hadn’t experienced with

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