A Shameful Consequence - By Carol Marinelli Page 0,38

day in several town halls on the mainland, poring through records, and then, to cap things off, the extremely generous offer he had put in on the stretch of land beside his house had again been refused by the developer.

‘I’ll start dinner,’ she offered.

‘I’ll get myself something later,’ Nico said, because Despina always left him a feast of meals, but she ignored him and as she brushed past him Nico caught her fragrance. He saw how far she had come in these last days, and he wanted her on the couch weary and half-asleep, as she had been in London, because this version of Constantine was a one he was struggling to ignore. He went to place his laptop on the table, but the space was taken up by the outline of a huge jigsaw.

‘Despina found it,’ Connie apologised, ‘though it doesn’t have a picture to work from. It’s handmade …’

He did not want to talk about jigsaws; he did not want to be standing here, wondering how Leo’s day had been; he did not want to want the scent of home. He did not want her laying two plates on the bench. He selected a bottle of wine and opened it to breathe as she brought over the meal—a simple meal, of crisp salad with local olives and flakes of feta cheese warmed a little by slices of lamb tossed in oregano. There was a pita bread she had grilled, and though he did not want this, somehow they moved from the bench to the table. He sat there, doing the impossible jigsaw with one hand, idly eating from a fork with the other and it felt, for Nico, far too good to last.

‘What time are the fireworks tonight?’ She looked up from the jigsaw and he saw how much more readily she smiled these days.

‘Fireworks?’ Nico frowned.

‘Well, it’s morning in Australia,’ she pointed out, because just as night fell here, Nico would head out to the garden with his phone. Just as Australia’s working morning struck, so, too, did Nico, placing angry calls to the developer, furious at the lack of response to his questions and offers, clearly not used to being ignored or not getting his way. ‘I want the jetty to be mine,’ Nico said. ‘It belongs to the next block of land. But I’ll just have to go on wanting. He’s knocked back my offer. I refuse to call again.’

‘Till next time.’ Connie grinned, and then it faded. ‘I’ve got a difficult phone call to make, too. Not tonight,’ she added, as they naturally moved from the table to the lounge. How much more comfortable she felt to sit beside him now. She looked out at the sea and thought for a quiet moment before speaking. ‘But I have been putting it off.’

‘To your parents?’ Nico asked, but Connie shook her head.

Until she had sorted things with Nico, she could not stand to talk with them. She was injured, too, on behalf of Leo, the grandson they had made no effort to contact. ‘I want to know how Stavros is.’

‘Why?’ Nico asked.

‘Because,’ Connie answered, ‘I worry about him—I want to know how things are going …’

‘After the way he treated you?’ Nico shook his head. ‘Why would you care for someone who hurt you?’

‘It wasn’t all his fault.’

‘His part in it was, though,’ Nico pointed out. ‘He chose not to tell you the truth, he chose to deceive you.’ He made a slicing gesture to his throat. ‘Gone!’

‘Just like that?’ Connie challenged, and she wasn’t defending Stavros, more she was defending herself. ‘Sometimes things are more complicated—’

‘Not really,’ Nico interrupted. ‘He lied to you, and in my book that means you don’t have to worry about him any more.’ He flicked his hand and said it again. ‘Gone.’

She didn’t like this conversation, didn’t like learning the rules of relationships according to Nico, painfully aware that very soon it might be she who was gone, dismissed with a flick of his hand, for not telling what she knew.

‘Anyway, let’s not talk about it now,’ Nico said, because tonight he could not accept just wanting. ‘Let’s just enjoy tonight.’ And it wasn’t what he said, more the way he said it that brought something back, that had her remember there was so much more to this man. He turned to face her on the sofa and smiled a smile she had seen before. With just one look he could melt her worries, with the merest lilt to