Amelia furrowed her brow as though she were confused, lost, and he knew he should step backward to give her some space and—politely—say to her, thank you for coming but don’t tell me how to raise my own damned kid. Except he didn’t want her to go. Suddenly the idea of Maria’s practised flirtation sat like a noose around his neck and all he could think about was this woman’s fire and spirit, her borderline hostility that was in and of itself so unusual for Santos to encounter these days—or ever.
If she’d had such an obvious reaction to the brushing of their knees, how would she feel if he kissed her? He dropped his head a little, as if weighing up the consequences of that. She smelled like honey and raspberry blossom, reminding him of the hedge along the side of this country estate, all sun-warmed and sweet.
Her eyes widened and perhaps she anticipated his intention. She lifted a hand to the front of his shirt, her fingers splayed wide over his chest, her eyes locked to his. He braced, wondering if she was about to push him away. She didn’t. Her fingers buried themselves in the fabric, holding him right where he was, another breathy exhalation bursting against his jaw, then another, and another, her breathing as frantic as if she’d run a marathon. His body was hyper-charged and attuned to every single shift of hers—he felt her breath, smelled her sweet fragrance, and the tightening of her nipples into buds against his chest made him swallow a guttural groan all of his own.
This was getting out of hand.
He’d never been one for delayed gratification. What was he waiting for? A damned starter’s pistol? That had been fired the second he’d opened the door and seen her standing there.
‘I’m not interested in discussing my son with you, Amelia.’
Again he felt her swallowing motion. ‘Why not?’
He could barely think straight. His mind was filled with the idea of kissing her, of running his tongue over the outline of her lips before plunging it deep into her warm, wet mouth. Of tangling his fingers into the back of her hair, angling her head towards his so he had unfettered access to her mouth, throat, décolletage...
Why not? It was a fair question. One he didn’t want to answer.
Because all I can think of right now is you.
How ridiculous!
Her breath was warm, each little pant of air fanning against his throat. She smelled sweet.
‘I care about Cameron.’ Her voice was shaking as badly as her body. ‘I came here because I think that he’s a little boy who’s had the parameters of his world shattered beyond recognition, and if you take him away from school, from his friends and me, from England, you’ll make it almost impossible for him to recover.’
Her speech was fine but it barely penetrated the fog of his brain. Her eyes were pinned to his, and a silent but volatile arc of electricity buzzed from her to him.
‘We cannot stay here.’ He said the words for his own benefit as much as hers.
‘Not for ever.’ Her hand on his chest shifted, as though she didn’t realise she was still touching him. She dropped it to her side but stayed where she was, their bodies hemmed together by some powerful and invisible force. ‘Just until he’s over this terrible grief.’
His gut rolled at that, his belly filling with pain. Terrible grief. Yes, his son was grieving and, damn it, Santos was the last person on earth who knew how to help him. Hell, Santos had no idea how to be a father, let alone the kind of father who could assist his son in navigating this kind of emotional trauma.
‘I will do what I think best for my son.’ It was another pledge he made more for his own benefit than for hers. In the back of his mind, he wondered why he didn’t move away, why he didn’t step backward, but even as he knew he ought to his body was pressing forward, his head dropping lower, as though her lips were magnetic, drawing him closer.
‘Then you’ll stay in England?’ They were strong words but she swallowed quickly, as though her mouth was dry, her breath thick. Her lips were the palest pink, with the perfect Cupid’s bow shape. He wanted to crush his own to them, to feel their softness beneath his mouth.
Her breath was forced. He had no doubt she was thinking of kissing him, just as he was her. The air seemed to spark around them, humming with an electrical current.
‘And would you like me to stay, Miss Ashford?’
Her eyes flickered closed, long lashes fanning her cheeks for a moment, and a tiny noise escaped from her lips. Then she blinked quickly before lifting her eyes to his once more, something like panic in their depths. Her reactions were fascinating. She was like a little butterfly, flittering and moving, so fine and nimble, so difficult to pin down.
‘It’s not about what I want, nor what I think you should do.’
‘Liar.’ His laugh was deep and throaty, husky, as the sound brushed her hair, lifting it slightly.
It seemed to shake her, waking her from some kind of dream. Her face tightened and her features became unreadable. Her voice, when she spoke, was authoritative. Impatient, almost. ‘Fine, then. I would like you to put your son before yourself. There is no doubt in my mind that leaving England suits you very nicely. It will be much easier for you to continue your life with minimal inconvenience if you return to Greece. But Cameron’s interests are served by remaining right here.’ And then, to underscore her feelings, she sidestepped him, moving away a little, putting vital distance between them. Something he should have done moments earlier.
Only the flush of her cheeks betrayed that she was still feeling a rush of awareness—or that she’d ever felt anything for him whatsoever. In fact, in every other way she was suddenly ice-cold.
Fascinating.
He watched her from where he was, his eyes shuttered, taking her lead and suppressing the desire that had been rampant in his system a moment ago. He wasn’t sure what had come over him but it had been stupid and inappropriate. He had Maria waiting in the room next door. This woman was his son’s teacher! And absolutely not his type.
Beyond that, she’d come to his home to try to organise his life—something Santos had never particularly relished.
Her small sigh drew his gaze back to her face. ‘All I ask is that you think about what you would want if you were in his shoes—your whole world changing with a sadness beyond words carried inside your heart. Ask yourself what you would need and please do only that, Mr Anastakos.’
She used his surname like a shield, pressing it between them to remind him that they were two strangers, nothing more.
And she was right—he had no idea why he’d let the strength of his impulses override every piece of common sense he possessed, but he had, and it had been wrong.
‘I intend on doing the right thing by him.’ His admission was gravelly, his eyes reverberating with the intensity of that pledge.
‘I hope so.’ She stared at him for several moments and he stood perfectly still, wondering if she was going to move closer, if she was thinking about him, if she was wishing he’d given into his impulses and kissed her. But then she blinked and shook her head, forcing a tight smile to her lips.
‘Enjoy your date.’
He dipped his head in what appeared to be a nod but was actually a way to disguise his thoughts.
Santos might have been called ‘the billionaire playboy’ for years but he lived by a strict code of conduct, a black and white morality, and that always guided how he treated women. If his father had taught him anything—and indeed he’d learned many lessons from his father’s choices, most vitally how he didn’t want to act—it was that women deserved respect. He never slept with a woman who didn’t want exactly what he did and he never slept with one woman while another was waiting in a different room of the same damned house. Shame coloured his own feelings for a moment.
‘Then you’ve said what you came to say?’
‘And I hope you’ll listen to it.’ Her tone was ice-cold, but there was worry in it too, as though she hope
d he would heed her advice but severely doubted that he would.
He held her gaze for a long time, neither of them inclined to look away, but this time he found the power to break that connection.
‘Then goodnight, Miss Ashford.’
His dismissal was every bit as cold as her own words but he didn’t get any satisfaction from that. Her features showed hurt and he winced inwardly, watching as she reached the door. When her hand pressed to the handle, he spoke once more, his voice gravelly. ‘Thank you.’ The words were stilted. She angled her face just a little, enough for him to see the proud tilt of her chin. ‘For caring about Cameron, I mean.’
A cursory nod and she was gone, pulling the door behind her with a near-silent click. He stared at it for several seconds before sitting down heavily in the chair behind his desk.
Maria would keep a moment or two. Santos didn’t particularly want to see her when his cock was straining against his pants, desire for another woman making him almost desperate with needs. He sat down and tried to make sense of how a slight, prim schoolteacher had driven him to the edge of sanity with little more than the sharpness of her tongue.
* * *
Amelia stared at her ceiling, completely unable to sleep. Ever since she’d walked out of Renway Hall hours earlier, she’d been unsettled and filled with a gnawing sense of frustration that made almost everything impossible.
Her body felt different. Alive on a different cosmic plane, existing in a hyper-aware state so everything looked and felt brighter and sharper. She’d gone through the motions of a normal evening. A light dinner, fifteen minutes of meditation and then an hour on the Hayashi Analysis. Usually, that consumed her, the detailed analysis of star radius and formation stretching her brain in just the way she needed, followed by a quick back and forth messenger chat with Brent, usually about his work or hers, before dropping into bed exhausted and satisfied.
But not tonight.
Tonight Amelia had eaten only half her dinner, unable to fit anything else in a tummy that was already full of knots and butterflies. Each equation she’d performed on the Hayashi Analysis had taken twice the usual time, and she’d even found an error on one when she’d re-read her work. She’d cut short her conversation with Brent, pleading a headache.
But she didn’t have a headache. Amelia had a body ache, deep in the pit of her abdomen, extending through every cell of her being. She was shaking with a need she’d never before experienced. When she closed her eyes, she saw him. When she breathed in, she smelled him. She lay in her bed and remembered the touch of his finger against her lips, the feeling of his body brushing hers. Her fingertips were still trembling as she lifted them to her lips now, feeling the skin there.
He’d been going to kiss her; she was sure of it. She had no experience in such matters but only a fool would have been unable to read the signs. His head had been lowering, his eyes rich with emotion, desire, want, need; he’d looked at her as though he’d been dying of thirst and she the only water for miles.
Something rolled through her, the ache intensifying, her need growing, so that all she wanted was to push out of bed and return to his home, time travel be damned.
And what would he say if she turned up at his front doorstep, dressed like this?
She cast a rueful glance at her pyjamas—bearing the familiar space agency logo on the right breast, they were a size too big, and the dullest shade of grey possible. They were, she decided from her very limited contemplation on the subject, the least seductive things imaginable.
She flopped back against her pillows and continued to stare at the ceiling. She had no doubt he was supremely experienced with women. Had he sensed her inexperience? Had he realised she’d never been kissed, beyond a chaste peck on the cheek? Would he still have looked at her like that if he’d known she was a virgin?
Of course not.
The woman who’d been waiting for him had been the kind of woman he was used to—beautiful, and undoubtedly worldly and experienced. For whatever reason, perhaps he’d assumed Amelia was of that ilk.
But she wasn’t. She was worlds away from that. She needed to put Santos Anastakos out of her mind, once and for all. They were oil and water—they’d never mix.
CHAPTER THREE
THE IDEA HAD come to him in the early hours of Saturday morning. After a short and frustrating evening with Maria—he was far from the perfect companion given his preoccupation with a certain schoolteacher—he’d lain awake brooding over his predicament. He deeply resented anyone trying to run his life—he’d been doing a damned fine job of that since he was sixteen years old—but at the same time her opinion hadn’t been completely unwarranted. On the face of it, he could even admit she had a good point. But staying in England was out of the question—Santos needed to believe there was another way he could live his life and still help Cameron settle into the reality of life without his mother.
And, some time before sunrise, it had struck him: the perfect solution.
A less than ideal weekend with Cameron had cemented the plan in his mind. What had he expected—that he could turn up in Cameron’s life and be instantly accepted? That they would gel immediately? Santos wasn’t close to his own father—he had no real model for parental behaviour—and Cameron was a grieving, troubled boy who seemed determined to keep Santos at arm’s length.
He needed help and Amelia could provide that...all he had to do was convince her of the sense of his proposal.
Santos Anastakos had been born into a fortune but before his sixteenth birthday it had almost all gone—his father’s lifestyle, poor business acumen and belief that each marriage would be ‘everlasting’ had meant he’d failed to sign pre-nups, meaning the fortune had been divided and re-divided enough times to diminish it significantly.
Santos had restored it, piece by piece, investment by investment, so that by his twenty-fifth birthday Anastakos Inc had been the fastest growing brand in the world and his personal fortune was one of the largest. It took skill and determination, and several habits had always guided Santos. He read people and committed their traits to memory but, more importantly, he looked for their weaknesses, things he could exploit to his advantage.
Amelia had shown him her weakness and he had no doubts as to how to exploit it to get exactly what he wanted. The ends justified the means, though—they had to. He was sinking, with no idea what to say or how to behave with his own damned son. For a man who commanded any room he entered, the complete lack of power made him feel impotent. He hated it.
He’d never wanted children; he’d been very careful to avoid having children—or so he’d believed. Nonetheless, Cameron was in existence, a six-year-old boy who was the spitting image of Santos at around the same age. His eyes were unmistakable—it was like looking in a miniature mirror. The DNA test he’d flown to England prepared to organise had been rendered unnecessary from the first meeting. Cameron was his son.
All that was left to do was work out how to be a father. People talked about parenting instincts but Santos had none. He didn’t really like children—they were illogical and emotional, demanding. And yet there was something else, something he hadn’t expected: a kind of soul-deep connection. He looked at Cameron and felt a link to his past, as though a part of himself had been severed from his body and become independent. He also felt an overwhelming fear: fear of ruining Cameron’s life; of hurting him; of making him miserable; and, yes, of compounding the grief he was feeling now; fear that he wouldn’t be the father Cameron needed—that he wasn’t capable of being any kind of father.
He was terrified that his son would come to hate him.
He ruminated on this as he waited in his car, watching the entrance to the school. It was a nice enough school, he conceded, though far from what he might have chosen had he known he was a father. Cynthia had enrolled him in the local comprehensive—because anything else had been beyond her budget. The area was
good, though, the buildings quaint in that English style and the street he was parked in lined with leafy trees.
Something shifted in the periphery of his vision and he responded immediately, training his gaze on the movement: Amelia. He pressed his hand to the door handle, preparing to step out.
But, for just a moment, he watched her. It was another warm day and today she was wearing a dress. Pale grey with an intricate pattern—perhaps flowers—it wrapped around her chest and tied at the waist, drawing attention to her gentle curves, the roundness of her breasts and neatness of her waist, so the same torpedo of attraction was spiralling through him, unwelcome and completely unwanted.
He wasn’t here to notice her damned figure, no matter how tempting he found it. More important considerations were at stake. Cameron had barely spoken to Santos since coming to stay with him, but when he had it had all been about Miss Ashford.
‘Miss Ashford this...’
‘Miss Ashford that...’
‘Miss Ashford makes me feel happy...’
‘Miss Ashford understands me...’
‘Miss Ashford says...’
And on and on and on.
It had been a little irritating before but, now that he’d met Miss Ashford for himself, it was downright distracting. He didn’t need any help putting that woman front and centre of his mind. All weekend he’d found his thoughts straying to her, remembering the husky little breath she’d made up close, the way her lips had parted when he’d moved close, as though silently inviting him to kiss her. To the way her eyes had rolled back at the simple touch of his fingertip to her lips, almost as though she’d been on the brink of an orgasm from the light, meaningless flirtation.
And he’d wondered about what would have happened if he’d acted more swiftly, kissing her as soon as he’d wanted to rather than trying to fight his desire. She’d been doing the same exercise, he was certain of it, and she’d triumphed in a way he hadn’t. She’d put an end to the preamble—for surely it had been? Another minute and his mouth would have claimed hers, his lips dominating hers...and then?
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