Greek Affairs: To Take a Bride: The Markonos Bride / The Greek Tycoon's Reluctant Bride / Greek Doctor, Cinderella Bride

‘Kostas has just delivered my clothes here,’ he remarked with no idea as to where her thoughts had gone off to. ‘I am in need of a shower. Do you want to use the bathroom before I take it over?'

‘Can’t you use another room?’ Louisa handed the glass back, refusing to look at him in case his expression told her things she did not want to know.

‘This is my bedroom,’ he countered smoothly. ‘And that is my bed.'

‘I’ll get out of it, then …’ she was about to throw back the covers when she remembered she was wearing nothing other than the tiniest pair of white cotton panties. Sheer frustration ripped a sigh from her as she sank back again.

‘Maybe I should rephrase that,’ her tormentor murmured softly. ‘This is our bedroom, and that is our bed.'

Something lazy about his tone had her lifting her eyes to look at him, only to wish that she hadn’t when she saw the mocking humour lighting his velvet dark eyes because it showed he knew exactly what she had been thinking about.

But worse, she saw he’d unbuttoned his shirt while she hadn’t been looking, and now the pale blue cloth hung open to reveal a long strip of bronzed torso with its impressive muscular structure and arrowhead of virile dark hair.

Dragging in a tense, stifled breath, he said, ‘I want you—'

‘I know you do …’ Deliberately waylaying what she had been about to say, he swooped low and captured her mouth so fast all she managed was a protesting gasp.

He smothered the sound with warm, gentle kisses laid like promises along her soft lips, one set of long fingers threading into her silk hair so he could hold her still. He badly needed to shave and the rasping brush of stubble against her skin made her quiver and, like the fool she always was around him, she lifted her arms up to encircle his neck and started kissing him back.

His low grunt of satisfaction should have annoyed her but it didn’t. When he sat down on the bed so he could draw her up against him the sheet slithered down to her waist, exposing her breasts to the full impact of his warm naked chest. Heat sizzled across her cooling skin like a second dose of sunburn, making her move in a restless wriggle that sent the wanton tips rasping against the prickly hairs on his chest. He responded by spreading his hands across her naked back and arching her closer so her head tilted backwards and on a hungry growl he deserted her mouth to trail a string of hot kisses down her throat and over both creamy slopes until he finally claimed a tight, eager nipple and took it deep into his mouth.

It wasn’t fair was the last sensible thought she had as she melted into a puddle of exotic sensation. She wanted him but she didn’t want to. She wanted to push him away but what she did was score her nails down his back beneath his shirt in encouragement. He shuddered and came back to plunder her mouth with hot and earthy driving passion.

Then, as if he were some evil torturer, he just let go of her and shot like a bullet to his feet, leaving her to fall back against the pillows, gasping for breath and quivering with shock.

‘Why?’ she breathed, so shaken up by his desertion she could barely make the single word work.

‘We still have issues to deal with.’ As if he needed to do something physical he dragged his shirt off and tossed it aside. Seeing the red score marks from her nails marking his muscular contours flooded Louisa with guilty heat. ‘Falling on each other like a pair of uncontrolled teenagers only confuses things.'

Snaking upright, Louisa reached for the sheet and dragged it up to her neck with shaking fingers, almost suffocating in self-loathing that she hadn’t thought to do it before.

‘Maybe the uncontrolled stuff is all we ever had going for us,’ she retaliated bitterly. ‘It was always like that for us, wasn’t it? You would go away for weeks on end then either come back here to the island or have me transported to Athens so we could fall on each other for a day or two before you’d be off somewhere else.'

‘It was not like that.’ His bronzed shoulders moved in a tight, masculine flex as he turned away again.

‘It was exactly like that,’ Louisa insisted, hating herself for always being so easy for him! ‘And I was so stupidly naïve I thought it had to mean that you must really love me to want me so much, but really it was just the great sex you enjoyed and you probably continued that elsewhere with someone else!’

He slammed into the bathroom and Louisa knew it was because he could not deny it, especially when she had seen him for herself! Now she wanted to cry. She wanted to squirm in shame at her lack of control—again—even knowing he was such a low-down, faithless rat!

CHAPTER NINE

SHE was not going to cry, Louisa told herself fiercely as she got off the bed with a quivering stretch of angry limbs. Discovering that she was not very steady on her feet did not help the way she was feeling.

The antihistamines must still be in her system, she assumed as she made her way over to her bags. Squatting by the big canvas holdall, she rummaged inside for something to wear, came out with a little top with thin straps that should not rub her sunburn, found a short cotton skirt, fished out fresh underwear and her soap bag then took herself off to the other furnished bedroom to take a shower.

As she stepped out of the bedroom she spied another holdall standing against the lobby wall. It was a big black expensive-looking leather thing that had Andreas stamped all over it. The urge to give it a good kick almost got the better of her as she stalked past it on her way to the other bedroom.

Then she suddenly stopped to look at the front door as another thought struck her: why wasn’t she stamping and screaming to be taken back to the hotel? The honest answer to that question promised to be so demoralising that she decided not to let it form in her head.

With the grim knowledge that hiding from herself was the fools way to deal with all of this, she stepped beneath the shower and let the stinging spray hitting her tight hot skin punish her for being so weak and gullible.

Standing beneath the shower spray, Andreas waited for the stinging cold water to freeze the nagging ache from his loins. He must have been mad to call a halt to what they had been doing. Perhaps the sexual fog had been a safer place to sink into than trying to deal with issues he’d discovered he did not want to deal with at all. Which said what to him?

That maybe she was right and the sex was all they had left going for them. That it was all they’d ever had?

No. Slamming a hand against the shower dial, he switched the spray from cold to hot and began to wash. He refused to believe that. It would be like admitting that their families had been right about them all along.

OK, then fight your own corner, he told himself. You are supposed to be the man who can talk a whole boardroom of doubters round to your way of thinking, so do it now. Clear your head and deal with the issues that really matter.

Not the sex, though the sex was still the gut-twisting ache it had always been when he was anywhere near her.

Not their interfering families, though they were still going to pay for what they’d done no matter how things turned out between them here.

And then there was that other issue out there still waiting to be dealt with.

Max Landreau.

Snatching up the shampoo bottle he squeezed some onto the palm of his hand.

Did she think he would not recognise the name of the tall, dark, handsome media tycoon? Landreau had a long reputation with women. He collected them as other men would collect stamps! Was she naïve enough to believe he wouldn’t bother to check their relationship out?

Give him twenty-four hours and he would have some answers, but right now, standing here rubbing shampoo into his hair, thoughts of any man being intimate with his wife was threatening to eat him alive.

By the time Louisa stepped back into the hall, the black leather bag had disappeared and the door was firmly shut. Fingering the ends of her wet hair, she hovered for a moment. She wanted to get her hair-dryer, but if Andreas was still there she had no wish to walk in on yet another round of arguments.

In the end she took herself down the steps and into the kitchen. No matter how much liquid Andreas had been pouring into her throughout the afternoon she was still thirsty—and hungry too. Putting the kettle to boil so she could make herself some fresh coffee, she raided the fridge and came out with enough food to make herself a sandwich. By the time she’d done that the coffee was ready, pouring herself a cupful, she even began to relax a little as she took the cup and her sandwich over to the table and was about to sit down when her attention was drawn to the plate-glass window standing invitingly open to the soft golden blush of the late afternoon.

It was just too irresistible. Taking her prepared snack with her she walked outside so she could take a proper look at the view. The house was situated in its own small cove, with the sinking sun now hanging above a glass-smooth ocean. Picking her way carefully over what was still mostly a building site, she made her way to the edge of the shingle beach then paused to glance around.

She did not recognise the spot, though she couldn’t understand why she didn’t when, on her first trip to the island, Andreas had made it his business to take her to every secluded beach there was, even those that could only be reached by the sea. Glancing back at the house, she saw that it nestled gently into a thicket of tall pine trees. It was much bigger when viewed from this position, she realised, its modern frontage a series of plate-glass windows set at different angles to gain the most from the ocean view. One of which must belong to the bedroom she’d been sleeping in, though she’d barely noticed it had a window, she’d been feeling so ill.

Turning around again, she spotted a low, flat projection of rock sticking out of the ground and went to sit down on it to sip at her coffee and eat her sandwich.

The cicadas were busy, the air filled with the scent of olives and pine and the sea. Tucked into a corner of the beach beneath a tree was the bright red jet-ski Jamie had mentioned and—

‘So what do you think?’

The sound of his deep voice from behind her stiffened her shoulders out of their nicely relaxed droop. ‘Am I supposed to have an opinion?'

He had not built this for them after all—which then fed her the question, who had he built it for? Not liking where that thought was taking her, she took a sip of her drink.

‘If you are genuinely not interested,’ he drawled easily, ‘then by all means continue to be a grouch.'

Then he caught her thoroughly unawares when he came to sit down on the rock behind her, spreading his long legs either side of hers. Warm, tanned, hair-roughened thighs appeared in her vision. For a wildly staggered heartbeat she thought he’d come out here wearing nothing until she caught sight of the edges of a pair of cargo shorts and the short sleeves of a pale blue T-shirt moulding his muscled upper arms as he reached round her to place an ice bucket by her feet, containing an opened bottle of champagne.

The clean, tangy scent of him blocked out the scent of olive and pine and she pulled in a deep breath and arched her spine in an effort to place a distance between the two of them.

‘If the house was one of our new cruise ships we would be breaking the champagne bottle on her hull,’ he said lightly. ‘Since it is a house and not a ship, I thought we would drink the champagne instead.'