His tone was bitter. Oh, Nikos, she thought. You, too? Wounds might heal, but scars remained.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, but then made a belated attempt to pull herself together. ‘But…it’s nothing to do with me. Nothing from the island’s anything to do with me. My aunt was the last family I had, and she’s dead.’

‘The whole island’s your family. You rule.’ It was said explosively, with passion, and Athena flinched and couldn’t think how to reply.

The crêpes arrived, light and hot, oozing a wonderful lemon liqueur and doused with clotted cream. This was everything she most denied herself in food. Nikos picked up a fork and started in-then paused.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I didn’t really want these.’

‘You’re ill?’

‘No.’

‘Then eat,’ he said. ‘You’re stupidly thin.’

‘I am not!’

‘Are, too,’ he said, and grinned and suddenly there it was again-the bossiness, the arguments, the fun. Childhood with Nikos had been wonderful. Magic.

‘Can’t make me,’ she responded before she could help herself, a response she’d made over and over as a kid.

His dark eyes gleamed with challenge. ‘Want to bet?’

‘No!’

‘Eat your crêpes, Thene.’

She smiled, despite herself, picked up a fork and ate.

How long since she’d indulged in something this full of calories? They tasted fantastic.

‘You’re not a model,’ Nikos said, halfway through his crêpes and finally pausing for breath. ‘Why starve?’

‘It’s expected,’ she said. ‘You can never be too rich or too thin.’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard that, too,’ he growled. ‘So, they’ll fire you if you gain a pound or six?’

‘That party we were at tonight…If I’d turned up as a size fourteen, you think I’d get a foot in the door?’

‘You’re invited to write about it. Not be it.’

‘I’m part of the scene. They like their scene perfect.’

‘And this is a career you like?’

‘It beats pulling craypots.’