Lotus Blossom (27 page)

Lotus heard the touch of pathos in his voice. “And you can trust me, Dash. You can.”

He exhaled a breath and nodded, tossing some bills at the attendants, who thanked him in a spatter of Greek.

“I understood
parakalo,
and
efharisto,
please and thank you, but after that I’m lost,” Lotus told him.

Dash settled back against the cushions of the rather battered Rolls-Royce, which he had told her belonged to the Paranis family. “Remember to say
kalimera
for daytime greeting and
kalispera
for evening. Say
adio
when you depart. The rest I’ll teach you as we go along. It’s a beautiful, convoluted language that’s as ageless and interesting as it’s people.”

“It’s very exciting being here, yet somehow I still can’t believe it. It’s been a dream of mine to visit this country since I used to devour Greek mythology as a child.”

Dash watched her, his heart hammering at the thought of being at the tiny Paranis island, alone with her for two weeks. He smothered his irritation and his fear at her evasiveness. “Tonight we’ll be dining early, then I’m taking you to a taverna that has all the Greek dancing. . . He grinned when he saw the eager sheen to her eyes. It made his heart thud to give her joy! “But First we’ll climb to the Acropolis.”

Lotus slid closer on the backseat of the car and put her head on his chest. “I’m so happy with you.”

“Darling,” Dash groaned, his arms folding her closer.

“We are here,
kyrie."
The driver had gotten out of the car and now he held open the back door. His mustache quivered with good humor as he watched them. “Is good to be in Greece and be happy,” he told them in halting English.

They went into the house on the hillside, the white limestone almost blinding in the sunlight.

“This home belonged to Athos’s grandmother and she left it to him.”

“I like it very much,” Lotus told him as she followed him up the steep staircase to the second floor.

Later when they began to dress for their excursion to the Acropolis, Lotus felt two arms slide around her waist.

“My good intentions went out the window, Mrs. Colby, when I saw you parade around in that peachy-colored underwear.”

She turned in his arms, laughing. “I was not parading, but I must admit I was hoping you would notice me and get some ideas.”

He groaned into her hair when she laughed. “I always have ideas about you, Lotus. You could be draped in horse blankets and you could turn me on.” He smiled down at her, feeling his heart turn over at the warmth of her eyes. “You look content as a kitten.”

“I trust you, Dash.” She took his hand and led him over to the bed so that they could sit side by side. Then she turned to face him. “May I tell you a story that you mostly know already?”

“I like you to tell me anything about yourself.” Dash leaned over her, wanting to tell her not to speak about the past, but to talk about their present and their future. He held his tongue, wanting her to stay as relaxed as she was at that moment.

“When I decided to take leave from my job and go out to Las Vegas, no one in the family knew anything about my plans, as you know. I was scared, not just about uncle’s condition and about the danger in what I would be doing—”

“It was damned foolish. You could have met people who would have hurt you.”

Lotus lifted her hand to his cheek. “You have the power to hurt me.”

“I never will.” His skin and bones were heating to scalding level because she had her hands in his hair and was threading her fingers through it.

“Oh, I think we’ll hurt each other a great deal . . . even when we’ve been married eighty years.” Lotus chuckled, edging closer to him so that their bodies were touching.

He laughed, scooping his hand around her backside and bringing her onto his lap. “Eighty years,” he said huskily. “What a lovely prospect!”

Lotus put her hand on his to stop him caressing her. “You’re not listening to me.”

“I’m not?” He felt out of breath. “Sorry, darling. Keep talking.”

Lotus clutched her husband around his waist, resting her face under his chin. “It was awful to see our family slowly disintegrating. Each one seemed to become more ghostlike even day. Before the scandal broke, my cousin, Lee, was like sparkling water all the time. Even when we were kids, you could always hear her laugh before you saw her.” Lotus spoke with her fingers curling in his flesh.

“Baby!” Dash soothed her. “Don't talk about it if you don’t wish, if it makes you unhappy."

She sighed and looked up at him. "I want to tell you everything about me. . . .” She stared at him. “Some of which I’m saving until we reach the island.”

Dash’s antenna quivered. He felt danger flags flying and his stomach tightened. He had to force himself not to insist she tell him now. “Choose your pace, angel,” he whispered to her.

Lotus talked for almost twenty minutes, held close in her husband’s arms, drawing him the picture of the clan Sinclair and their closeness to each other. . . And so, you see, it wasn’t just as though Uncle had been accused and framed, it was as though all of us had been accused.” She swallowed. “I had the awful feeling that if we didn’t do something . . . that ... all the Sinclairs would die one by one, beginning with Uncle.”

“Darling.” Dash felt a wrenching pain when her body clenched. “I understand.”

Lotus lifted dewy green eyes to him. “I know that.”

“God, you own me.” Dash’s body trembled in answer to her smile.

“Dash, I have to tell you.” Lotus took a deep breath.

“What?” Years of hard dealing in business steeled the fear that tremored through him.

“I don’t have any strong clear memories of my own parents,, except that there was laughter and a great deal of love. With my Sinclair parents, I found that love again. I was always happy as a child and as I grew older. I suppose it sounds as though I lived in a fantasy and maybe I did, but I tell you
I
never expected, not in ten lifetimes, to Find a love like ours.”

“Neither did I,” he whispered.

“I love you. I have never loved anyone the way I love you, and 1 never will, and I want to stay with you for eighty years.” Lotus smiled up at him, feeling both sadness at giving herself over completely and the ineffable joy that it was to Dash.

“Only eighty years?” Dash croaked, burying his face in her hair, feeling as though the pounding in his blood stream would break through his skin at any moment. “I want more.” He lifted his head and looked at her.

“More?” Her voice was barely audible as she stared up at him, seeing the moistness in his electric eyes. “Can there be more than all there is?” “How philosophical you’re getting, wife!” Dash lifted her and swung around so that they were lying side by side on the bed facing each other. “Do you suppose it’s the Greek influence?”

“The Acropolis?” Lotus ventured weakly, her eyes fluttering closed as Dash began to kiss her toes. “We were going to see it,” she reminded him.

“There’s time, love. I just have good priorities.” Dash turned her over on her stomach, letting his tongue trace the Fine veins behind her knee. The merest trace of salt on her skin set his pulse in double time. His mouth traveled up her body in slow gentle forays that had him trembling when he felt her body spasm in response. When he heard her breathy moans, low growls were torn from his own throat. “Lotus! I love you.”

“Thank you,” she responded as he lifted her around to face him. “I must . . . tell you ... I like this ...”

“Do you, my baby?” Dash’s words were slurred as he slid up her body. He lifted himself above her, noting with great satisfaction her rapid breathing, the feverish glitter to her as she clutched at him. Nothing on earth gave him more satisfaction than to give her joy, and sensual delight as well. It made his heart thunder to watch her rise to fever pitch, his own libido racing hers.

When he took her, it was with a gentle violence that lassoed them to each other, that took them away, emotion to emotion, love lashed to love.

Dash sighed, gathering her closer into his arms as his breathing settled into normal rhythm once more. “You are beautiful, Lotus.”

“You too.” She yawned, then chuckled. “Just a short nap,” she mumbled, then closed her eyes.

When she woke she heard the water running and knew that Dash must be getting ready for their trip to the Acropolis. She heard him whistling and assumed he was shaving. She laid out the clothes she would wear, then pushed open the door of the bathroom. She looked right into his eyes, that were squinting into the mirror. “Hi.” “Hi. Come in, Mrs. Colby.” Dash watched her in frank enjoyment. “Your body is perfect.”

“Time to get ready for the Acropolis.” She laughed at him and hitched herself next to him, doing her own washing up, feeling very comfortable with him.

“Did I ever tell you I love you?” he murmured, wiping the rest of her face, grinning at her when she nodded.

“The Acropolis,” she repeated.

‘I think I’ve heard that before,” he crooned, rinsing her hair and body.

“Soap in my eye,” Lotus sputtered. “Stop laughing.”

“I’d never laugh about that.” Dash chuckled, making her fume.

“Monster!” She gulped as he swathed her in warm towels. “Put a towel around you. You’ll catch cold. “I’m never cold around you.”

They dressed in a slow fashion, despite Lotus’s urgings to hurry.

“If you keep looking at me like that, we’ll never leave this room,” Lotus argued.

“Ummm?”
Dash watched as she lifted her arms and let the white eyelet sundress slip down the front of her. “Honey, I think you’ve gained a little weight . . . here.” He pressed his hand on her middle, a slight crease in his brows before he smiled at her.

“Have to get my shoes.” Lotus broke free of him and raced across the room, for the low-heeled white slides she was going to wear with her dress. He was just too smart! He already noticed the change in her body and was putting the information into that computer brain of his. She would just have to hope that he wouldn’t add everything together and come up with the answer before she had a chance to talk with him on the island.

She reached for a flimsy silk scarf that Dash insisted she would need, then they left the room, her hand held tight by him.

Athens! The most colorful composite of ancient and new in the world. They traveled to the marketplace first, because Lotus had to see firsthand what so many of her friends had described to her. The cacophony of traffic and voices, speaking, singing and bartering, assaulted the ears, yet was not unpleasant. There were times that Dash had to shout to get her attention and there were times when she had to read his lips to know what he was saying, but still it delighted her.

Lotus smiled at the people and they smiled back. She said
kalimera
over and over again, laughing out loud when persons returned the greeting.

“I think I may have to buy you a house in Greece. You like it, don’t you?” Dash loved watching her in the market, but he finally had to edge her away and up the hill. “We have to get to the Acropolis.”

“Where?” she quizzed him wide-eyed, still looking all around, not wanting to miss anything.

“Follow me.” He chuckled as she looked over her shoulder, then began waving to people along the way. He flagged down a battered cab and gave their destination.

“All right,
kyrie,
I will do it,” the driver said in a broken Brooklyn accent. “I know America. I drive a cab in New York three years.”

The car shot around corners, and up alleys so narrow that if anyone stepped out a door as they were passing, there would have been an accident.

“My goodness, I think he received his taxi driver training in Manhattan.” Lotus closed her eyes for the third time as they weaved around a push cart, the vendor shaking his fist at them.

When they reached the area, filled with tourists on that warm day, Lotus knew that they had arrived at their destination. What surprised her was the number of steps they had to travel to get to their destination. In her eagerness to reach the ancient Greek edifice she tripped, and Dash had to catch her.

“Take it easy, darling. We’re getting there.” He frowned down at her. “You could have fallen.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I do worry about you.”

“I know.” She loosened her hand from his grasp and slipped it around his waist.

In companionable silence they covered the ground that took them to the Acropolis.

Lotus was in awe. She spoke to Dash in whispers

as they moved slowly through the structure, the wind an eerie voice in the stillness.

When they were through, and retracing their footsteps, there was silence between them at first. “You liked that.”

“Oh, yes, husband, I liked that.” Lotus looked up at him. “Thank you.”

“Thank you. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at it with such intensity before, so I thank you.”

They ambled down to the streets. Then Dash waved at the taxi driver to follow them.

Finally Dash was able to get her into the car and he gave the driver directions in Greek.

“The taverna?”

“Of course.”

Lotus nodded and looked around her, craning her neck, stretching, looking out her window and out Dash’s.

“You’ll have a sore neck.”

“I don’t want to miss anything.”

He laughed.

When they reached the taverna, Lotus was disappointed. “It’s so small.”

“Yes. But this is not one of the tourist traps, either. This is the taverna where Athos told me he and his father learned the ancient dances.”

“Oh. Should we go inside?”

“Not yet.” Dash ordered ouzo for himself and retsina, the local wine, for Lotus. “Ouzo over here does not taste like the ouzo you get in New York.” He held up his glass and let the rather viscous liquid slide around it. “It is here in Greece that ouzo is at it’s best.”

Lotus made a face over her retsina, but she wouldn’t let Dash get her anything else. “Are you sure this is the local wine?”

“Does it taste like turpentine?” Dash asked.

Lotus narrowed her gaze on him. “Is this a trick? This isn’t even wine, is it?”