Pagan Adversary

‘No,’ he said. ‘Yannina sleeps there. Your room is there.’ He nodded at a door on the opposite side of the room.

Harriet was taken aback. ‘But if Nicky wakes up….’ she began.

‘Then Yannina will no doubt call you,’ he said impatiently. ‘Why make difficulties where there are none? Everything has been prepared for you in there.’

Harriet suppressed a sigh. ‘Very well. Goodnight, Mr Marcos.’

He gave her a sardonic look. ‘As we shall be sharing a bathroom, perhaps you had better call me Alex.’ He laughed at her startled expression. ‘Don’t look so stricken,’ he mocked. ‘There is a bolt on the inside of the door which you may use. Do you make all this fuss at your house where every day you share a bathroom with half a dozen other people or more?’

That, Harriet thought, was a different matter entirely, and he knew it.

She said calmly, ‘My only concern, Mr Marcos, is that I seem to be putting you to a great deal of inconvenience.’

‘I am becoming accustomed to that.’ As Harriet rose to her feet, he got up too. ‘And I told you to call me Alex.’

‘I see no need for that,’ Harriet said quietly. ‘After all, we—we are strangers—or comparatively so,’ she added as she began to laugh again.

‘Strangers?’ he queried. ‘You have a short memory, little one. Adversaries, perhaps, but hardly strangers.’ For a moment the dark eyes rested almost speculatively on her mouth, and Harriet felt herself quiver inwardly.

‘Yes, well,’ she said idiotically, ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’

He grinned and moved forward, and Harriet made herself stand her ground. She was thankful she had done so, and not jumped away like a fool, because he was only reaching for more champagne, and not for her at all.

She gave him a meaningless smile and walked across to the door he had indicated, aware that he was watching her every step of the way. It was a relief to close the door between them.

It was a large room, luxuriously and efficiently furnished in shades of beige and chocolate, but anonymous just the same in the way that so many hotels rooms are. The bathroom wasn’t much smaller, with a shower cubicle and a sunken bath hidden behind smoked glass doors, and basins sunk in a vanitory unit which ran the length of one wall, with mirrors above lit like a film star’s dressing room. There was an abundance of towels, and in one of the cupboards of the unit, Harriet found tissues, shampoos, heated rollers and a hair-dryer.

She caught a glimpse of herself in one of the mirrors as she straightened, and bit her lip. She wasn’t just slim, she was thin, and her face looked pale and strained. Her navy shirtwaister was clean and reasonably becoming, but it wouldn’t knock anyone’s eye out either.