CHARLOTTE LAMB - Deadly Rivals

At least the weather was good though; she could swim and sunbathe, and her father’s small apartment was comfortable, indeed elegant.

One night Gerald suggested that they visit the Casino at Monte Carlo, the old Palais Casino on the main square, with its baroque décor, ornate, gilded, elegant. Olivia felt no excitement around the tables. She didn’t want to play cards herself, or gamble on roulette; she soon grew bored with watching her father play baccarat, and instead began to wander around, looking at the salles privées, the silken brocade upholstery of chairs, the long swagged curtains, the paintings on the walls. She drank a glass of chilled white wine, a cup of coffee, nibbled nuts and crisps, watched over the bare white shoulders of a woman in black who was losing heavily at roulette, wondering how she could bear to throw her money away without a change of expression, and kept looking at her watch, hoping her father would show signs of getting bored.

Suddenly she realised that her father was no longer at the baccarat table.

He was standing near the main door of the big salon, talking to some people Olivia had never seen before— two men and a woman.

The older man was broad-set, wearing what she recognised as expensively tailored evening dress, his rather bull-like head set on heavy shoulders, his hair black, with a flash of silver at the temples. Olivia was not attracted by the ruthless force she read in his face and body, but she had read somewhere that power was an aphrodisiac, and she could believe it; some women might find him exciting.

Looking from him to the other, younger, man, Olivia saw such a strong likeness that it was obvious they were related; possibly brothers? No, the age gap was too great. They must be father and son.

The woman with them looked the right age to be the wife of the older man, yet she was so lovely Olivia found it hard to believe that she was the mother of a son in his twenties.

A slender, graceful woman with hair like black silk and eyes like jet, she wore a white dress that was elegant and yet sensual, clinging to her body from her shoulders to her ankles, covering everything and yet hinting at what lay underneath so that every man who passed her turned to stare as if wondering exactly what she was hiding.

Olivia watched her smiling sleepily, sensually, at Gerald Faulton, saw the way her father looked back, not even trying to hide the fact that he coveted the wife of another man, and was startled. She hadn’t seen her father look that way at any woman before. It was not in his rather chilly nature, not in his controlled temperament.

But there was no doubt about it. Her father had an almost tranced look on his face, a flush on his high cheekbones, a brightness in his eyes.

Quickly, Olivia looked at the man she had decided must be this woman’s husband. How did he feel about the way her father was watching his wife?

Or was she his wife?

Oh, yes, she thought, seeing a glitter in the man’s heavy-lidded eyes, a streak of angry red staining his cheeks. That was a possessive, angry look, the instinctive reaction of a man watching his wife with someone else, and then something odd happened—he deliberately lowered his rather heavy lids, veiling that expression, as if he didn’t want Gerald to see it.

Olivia was struck by that. Why was he afraid to let her father see his angry reaction?

Who was he? Someone who worked for her father? Someone who wanted to do business with her father?

It was very odd; she felt a distinct sense of familiarity whenever she looked at him. Had they met before, after all? She didn’t remember it. And yet there was something…

While she was struggling to pin down whatever memory was trying to surface, her father turned to stare in her direction, and all the others looked round too.

Gerald Faulton made a peremptory gesture, beckoning her.

Olivia sighed, but obeyed, walking across the hushed, crowded room towards them, edgily aware of being watched all the way.

She was wearing her only really good evening dress, a classic backless slipper satin, tawny-coloured, with a deep V-neck, which left her shoulders and arms bare, the long skirts clinging from her waist to her thighs and then flowing easily down to her feet. The colour gave depth and brightness to her blonde hair, matched the golden colour of her eyes.

Her father had bought it for her, after deciding that nothing Olivia had brought with her was good enough for a party they had been to the night after she arrived.

The lifestyle on Corfu had been very different—far more casual and relaxed, a real beach holiday in the sun with a party style to match. Here, Gerald Faulton moved in circles who loved any excuse for dressing up: putting on jewellery, clouds of perfume, expensive designer dresses, the women competing to look the most stunning, the men apparently wanting the best-looking woman on their arm each night.

Gerald had gone with Olivia to choose the dress. It was ready-made, but designed by a top French couturier, and luckily fitted her as if it had been made for her, but Olivia wasn’t quite comfortable in it—it was so formal, and yet left so much of her bare.

‘Ah, there you are, Olivia. I want you meet some friends of mine…You’ve heard me mention Constantine Agathios, haven’t you?’

She stiffened, her hand already held out, her eyes on the man’s heavy, olive-skinned face.

It was a shock, and yet it wasn’t. No wonder he had looked familiar! No wonder she had been increasingly sure she had seen him somewhere before.

He and Max might only be half-brothers, but they shared a family resemblance which was very marked, in spite of the age gap between them. She should have guessed at once. She was sure she would have guessed, sooner or later, if she hadn’t been told.

He took her hand and Olivia shivered involuntarily as those large, tanned fingers swallowed hers up. She almost wondered if he would let her hand go again; did he ever let anything go? Meeting those heavy-lidded eyes was even more unnerving. This was a difficult, complicated man, she thought, staring back at him.

There was something belligerent, choleric, in that face; he had a temper, from the look of him. Not an easy man to deal with, or maybe even like? A bull on the point of charging, she thought—that was the impression he left on her, and yet there was something else, a craftiness about the half-hidden eyes, the line of the selfish mouth. She remembered the angry glitter of his eyes when her father stared covetously at his wife, the way Constantine Agathios had swiftly veiled that look, hiding it away. This man was full of rage, but he was cunning enough to hide it, which made him disturbing.

‘I am delighted to meet you, Olivia—may I call you Olivia? You are very like your father. I feel I know you already, and you must be the same age as my son here, Christos,’ Constantine said, and smiled suddenly, full of charm which Olivia didn’t quite trust, although she blinked in surprise as it focused on her. That was something else he had in common with Max—Max had that charm, too, only in him it was genuine, full of warmth. She was sure that Constantine’s charm was skin-deep.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, flickering a look at the younger man. So she had been right—it was his son!

‘What a beautiful dress—that colour is perfect with your wonderful English complexion and hair,’ said the woman beside Constantine, in a deeply accented voice.

‘My wife, Helena,’ Constantine introduced her, letting go of Olivia’s hand at last so that she could shake hands with his wife, who smiled in that languid, sleepy way at Olivia, as she had at Gerald.

‘I always envy English women. They don’t have the problem of coping with too much sun, ruining their skins, giving them wrinkles and lines before they’re middle-aged. In my country, the sun is a woman’s enemy.’