BILLIE

    

    She was sitting on her terrace when she saw them go by, the floor lamp burning behind her, a glass of red wine in her hand and the heavy paperback art book she’d lugged all the way from London lying open on her lap. She hoped they wouldn’t see her and was glad when they passed by.

    He was a nice man. It was too bad.

    She’d decided on Mykonos. From there you could get day trips to Delos and the ruins on Delos were supposed to be spectacular, tile floor mosaics in excellent shape and a colonnade of lions leading from the old port to the city-then, high atop the island’s summit, ruins of temples to Apollo and Artemis who, according to myth, were born there. She was looking at one of the mosaics now, from the House of Masks-Dionysos riding an enormous panther, taming her.

    She glanced down to the street.

    Quite a package, she thought.

    They were yards away by now but even at a distance there was something in the way Lelia walked beside him that suggested much- the hands clenched into fists, the precise calculated step, an attitude in the slim boyish body of something held tight and dear that was somehow animal and aggressive and…yes, predatory.

    She shuddered.

    She looked down at the snarling lioness.

    She presumed he would be taking her to bed tonight. She hoped he knew what he was doing.

    She sighed, finished the wine and closed the book.

    Tomorrow there would be Mykonos.