by Lynne Graham
That blunt comment silenced Katie, because she was embarrassed by the fact that he’d noticed that all she owned was jeans and casual tops.
‘I’ll see that you’re taken out shopping tomorrow. The children require clothing as well.’
When Alexandros entered the nursery, Toby and Connor displayed instant interest at his appearance. Indeed, Toby hauled himself up to stand on wobbling legs using the cot bars, his little face lighting up with a huge smile as he raised his arms to be lifted. When, without the support of the cot rail, he then fell over on his bottom the affront to his expectations was too great, and he burst into angry tears of frustration.
Katie was disconcerted when Alexandros strode straight over and scooped Toby up into his arms, voicing what sounded like a sympathetic phrase of Greek. In the space of a minute Toby went from tears to delighted chortles. Equally confused by his own behaviour, Alexandros gazed down at his son, marvelling that some hitherto unknown instinct should have prompted him to immediately offer comfort to the distressed child.
In search of an equal share of the attention, Connor loosed a plaintive yell. Katie lifted him, but Connor was much more interested in Alexandros. The twins were used to women, and a man was an infinitely greater source of fascination. Her face tightened and she stifled an ignoble spark of hurt when Connor stretched out eager hands in his father’s direction.
‘They’re very friendly babies.’ Alexandros, gloriously unaware of the compliment he was being paid, was amused. ‘But I’ll have to sit down to handle the two of them.’
When Alexandros sank down with lithe grace on to the carpet, Katie set Connor down beside him. The little boy hauled himself upright on a hard male thigh and chuckled with satisfaction. Katie watched in wonderment while the twins swarmed over their father with increasing confidence and pleasure. They tried to use his tie as a climbing rope. They clutched at his hair, explored his face with highly familiar fingers, and were overjoyed when he responded with more excitingly physical and challenging moves than their mother ever did.
For the first time since the twins’ birth Katie was ignored by her children. As Toby and Connor crawled round, staging frantic sneak attacks on Alexandros, and the minutes ticked past while the audible sounds of their enjoyment rang round the room, Katie felt that she might as well have been the invisible woman. It had never occurred to her that Alexandros would or even could unbend from his reserve and his dignity to such an extent.
Cyrus came to remind Alexandros that he would soon have to leave for the airport. His craggy features betrayed his surprise at finding his sophisticated employer engaging in a baby wrestling match, and his beaming approval of the scene was equally obvious.
‘Your suit is going to look like you slept in it,’ Katie told Alexandros waspishly.
He raked long brown fingers through his tousled black hair and shot her a sudden charismatic grin, his amusement unhidden. ‘I don’t think I’ve had this much fun since I left my own nursery…all boys together, rough and tumble.’
Striving to remain impervious to that lethally attractive smile, Katie folded her arms. ‘Toby and Connor can be quite difficult to handle.’
Alexandros vaulted easily upright and shrugged, dismissing her negative comment. ‘They like me. That’s a good beginning.’
‘Yes.’ Feeling small and mean and jealous, she tried to inject more enthusiasm into her voice.
The twins cried bitterly when the games stopped and their father departed. Settling them again took time.
That afternoon, Katie was invited to sit in on the nanny interviews. Invited to give her opinion afterwards, she gave her vote to a French girl called Maribel, who was the youngest applicant and whom Katie had found the least intimidating.
The next day, Cyrus and another security man accompanied Katie to Harrods. Assisted by a personal shopper, she bought new clothes for her sons. Not having to worry about the price tags was a wonderfully liberating experience. Then she tried on a variety of outfits for herself, and chose the accessories that went with them. By the time she reached the stage of selecting underwear and nightwear, she felt like an overexcited child let loose in a toy shop.
When the chauffeur went to stow the bags and boxes in the vast boot of the limo, she asked if they could be placed in the back seat with her. She spent the entire drive home carefully examining every purchase and soaking up every last possible thrill from the experience. It was only fair that Alexandros should contribute to the cost of keeping the twins clothed, but she was determined that this would be the only time when she allowed him to include her in that responsibility. In the future she planned to be working and earning and fully self-sufficient.
Walking back into the house, Katie glimpsed her reflection in a mirror and fingered her undisciplined mop of curls in dismay. ‘I should’ve got my hair done…I forgot about it.’
‘I’ll organise it,’ Cyrus told her.
That evening she visited a beauty salon, where her hair was styled and her nails were manicured. She chose some cosmetics as well, and at midnight she was still experimenting with the eye make-up. In bed, she lay as still as a corpse, her mane of ringlets carefully spread in separate lengths across the pillow, her hands, with fuchsia-pink-tinted perfect nails, spread like starfish on top of the duvet. There was nothing wrong with taking pride in her appearance, she told herself, in conflict with the puritanical inner voice that suggested that she was being foolish. Just because Alexandros had been married to a woman with the face and body of a goddess did not mean that she herself had to give up entirely. In any case, she and Alexandros would meet as friends in Italy. It would be a new chapter in their relationship, a more mature and civilised phase, she reminded herself drowsily, wondering why being sensible should make her feel so unbearably sad…
As the car wended a slow path, first through an enchantingly pretty medieval village and then down a steep hill into a valley with a meandering river that glinted in the sunlight like a silver ribbon, Katie was delighted with her first impressions of Italy. It was hot and sunny, and the Umbrian countryside was glorious.
Beside her, Toby and Connor were mercifully quiet. The twins were teething, and after a restless night had been in no mood to embrace foreign travel. The disruption to their usual routine had been unwelcome, and the boys had complained vociferously during the flight. Katie hoped that an uninterrupted nap when they arrived at their destination would help her sons catch up on the sleep they had missed out on.
The limo purred up a formal avenue towards a vast villa that looked as if it had been around for centuries, and Katie could not resist a rueful grin. Alexandros had never seemed quite comfortable in the ultra-modern house in Ireland. Classical grandeur, however, provided him with a perfect backdrop. As she entered the villa, she was handed a phone.
‘Will you join me for lunch?’ Alexandros enquired.
An instant smile curved her generous mouth, for she had been disappointed that he wasn’t on the spot to greet them. ‘I’d love to…but I do have to get the twins settled first—’
Overhearing that declaration, the new nanny, Maribel, made frantic signs to indicate that there was no need whatsoever for Katie to join her in that endeavour.
‘Oh—no…no, it’s okay. I can come now.’ Katie returned her attention to the phone. ‘Where are you?’
‘The car will bring you to me.’
The limo moved off again, and turned slowly down a cobbled lane overhung by trees. Katie smoothed damp palms down over her summer dress, a simple but madly fashionable item composed of fine lilac-sprigged organza and shaped with ribbon below the bust. A few minutes later the car came to a halt, and she slid out.
Alexandros strolled out from below an ivy-clad arched gateway. He wore a slate-grey designer suit, casually cut and teamed with a striped black shirt. He exuded cool cutting-edge style. Katie tried not to be dazzled, and struggled to suppress her usual response to his sleek, dark good-looks. Friends, she repeated inwardly. Even so, her mouth still
‘Today will mark a new beginning for us…’
Katie moistened her lower lip in a nervous gesture ‘Yes…’
Coal-black lashes low over his stunning golden eyes, Alexandros studied her luscious pink mouth with ferocious intensity. He could not understand how she should look so wildly sexy in a dress that concealed her slender curves and showed only a modest length of leg. He could not understand either how he had dismissed her attractions just a few days earlier and yet now burned to get her back into bed again by whatever stratagems necessary. Perhaps, he acknowledged, his strong reaction was magnified by the simple fact that he had never been so focussed on a woman before.
From the moment when it had occurred to Alexandros that his staying single meant Katie stayed single too—with all the freedom and all the choices that status entailed—he had seen the need for aggressive action. Unlike with most of the young women Alexandros met, the acquisition of a rich husband was definitely not the summit of Katie’s ambition. Katie didn’t want to marry him. That revelation had challenged him as never before, rousing hunting instincts that had stayed dormant because he had never had to chase a woman. So he had plotted Katie’s downfall with the same ruthless and resolute precision with which he made financial deals. Romance? Success came easily to Alexandros in every field, and he saw no reason why he should not be able to do romance as well as he did everything else. And he had baited the trap with care.
Katie was captivated by her first glimpse of the turreted stone folly through the trees. The winding woodland path petered out into a lush green glade. A glorious rose-entwined loggia rimmed the lower floor of the tower. She fell still under the shade of a chestnut tree, to better appreciate the sheer quality of the scene before her. On the terrace below the climbing roses sat elegant ironwork chairs, festooned with colourful floral quilts and silk cushions, and a white marble table which was a work of art: glittering crystal glasses, delicate silver and glass dishes, offering a mouthwatering selection of finger foods.
Kicking off her shoes, Katie let her toes flex in the springy grass and kept on staring. For perhaps the very first time she was truly appreciating how very rich Alexandros was. An al fresco lunch was being offered in an exquisite theatrical display worthy of a glossy magazine spread.
‘This is out of this world…’ Katie whispered. ‘But you don’t like eating outdoors—’
‘And you do.’
‘Since when did you put what I liked ahead of what you liked?’ Katie asked, genuinely not trying to score a point, just saying it as it was.
‘I try to do something thoughtful and kind and you want to argue about it?’ Alexandros chided in his rich dark drawl.
Guilty pink mantled Katie’s cheeks
‘Naturally I knew that you would enjoy this sort of thing.’ The gesture of a lean brown hand encompassed the superb picnic scene. ‘My sole objective was to please.’
‘It’s just beautiful.’ Embarrassed by the tactlessness that had made her sound more critical than appreciative, Katie got very busy spreading a couple of quilts on the grass and dropping cushions in rather pointless heaps here and there.
Alexandros shed his jacket, lounged back against the table and poured the wine. Katie drank with more thirst than delicacy, for even below the wide canopy of the chestnut tree she was warm. She sat down on a quilt and contemplated the ancient tower. ‘Was it built just to embellish the woods, or did someone actually live in it once?’
Alexandros spun out an ironwork chair for her occupation. ‘The palazzo was built by a nobleman in the sixteenth century. He kept his mistress in the tower.’
Relaxed on the quilt, Katie ignored the invitation to eat at the table. ‘Was he married?’
Releasing the chair with an acknowledgement that the informality of the quilt would work to his advantage, Alexandros sent her an amused glance. Sometimes her innocence made him want to laugh out loud, but he did not want to hurt her feelings. He offered her a plate of canapés and refreshed her wine glass. ‘I’ve never thought about it, but I expect so…’
‘A wife and a mistress within walking distance…’ Katie veiled her gaze, his gorgeous image imprinted on her senses like a brand. She was tempted to quip that she was sure that he would behave no better were he to marry purely out of a sense of duty. She wanted so badly to ask him about Ianthe, but resisted the urge as he had made it plain that that was a conversational no-go area. That exclusion hurt, reminding her when she did not need reminding that she had no proper status in his world.
Alexandros settled down beside her with the predatory grace of movement that had always attracted her attention. She made herself look away while he asked her about the twins and the flight. As she talked, her nervous tension ebbed and she relaxed, basking in the dappled sunshine piercing the leaves above her. The heat had stolen her appetite, and she felt a little light-headed from the wine.
‘It’s so beautiful here—but I suppose you take it for granted because you were born to all this ‘
‘But I wasn’t born to it,’ Alexandros murmured flatly. ‘My grandparents took me in when I was six years old, and adopted me two years later.’
Thunderstruck by that admission, Katie stared at him.
‘My parents weren’t married. I was the result of a one-night stand,’ Alexandros extended wryly. ‘My mother was a flight attendant on the family jet at the time. She got into drugs when I was a toddler, and died when I was five. I was in foster care when my grandfather, Pelias, learned of my existence.’
Katie was aghast at what she was hearing. ‘Didn’t your father do anything?’
Alexandros shrugged. ‘He never acknowledged me or helped my mother. He was a waste of space. My grandparents spent their lives clearing up after him. He died in a skiing accident when I was ten.’
‘I’m sorry…’ Her eyes were stinging with tears. She felt so guilty for the false assumptions she had made about his privileged beginnings. Her heart was wrenched by the reality that in his earliest years he had been denied the love and security that every young child deserved.
Alexandros watched her fighting back her tears in silent wonderment at the depth of her sympathy for the child he had long since left behind. He had found her weeping over a children’s cartoon fairytale once, and had been fascinated by the tender-hearted emotionalism that went hand in hand with her hot temper. Fascinated—and then appalled—he acknowledged, swiftly burying the memory again. ‘I survived,’ he said lightly. ‘You look delectable in that dress, pedhi mou.’
That change of subject and mood totally threw Katie off balance. She blinked. Belatedly aware of Alexandros’s gleaming golden appraisal with every fibre in her slender body, she felt her face warm and her heart-rate speed up. Her fingers tightened round her glass, as if it was a lifebelt and she was in danger of drowning. ‘I think I’d like another drink…’
Alexandros removed the goblet from her grasp. ‘Sorry—when you haven’t eaten much, two glasses is your limit.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Katie gasped.
‘Three glasses make you giggle and crack chicken-crossing-the-road jokes,’ Alexandros reminded her without hesitation. ‘Four make you wiggle your booty and get on my lap. And that much encouragement could be dangerous.’
That mocking recollection of her behaviour at a certain lunch back in Ireland made Katie flush to her hair-roots. Her defences were blown wide open by that mortifying reminder. ‘I really acted the idiot!’
Laughing softly, Alexandros ran a light fingertip along her collarbone in a soothing gesture. ‘You always go for the bait. I was only teasing you.’
Casual and brief though his touch had been, it left Katie phenomenally short of breath. ‘I wasn’t used to drinking wine.’
‘I thought you were very natural and sexy. But I suppose I shouldn’t be telling you that now.’
Starved of such compliments, Katie was hanging on his every word, disbelieving what he was saying but still revelling in it. The entire dialogue had suddenly taken on the tantalising tones of the forbidden, and she tried hard not to succumb to that lure. ‘No, you shouldn’t…isn’t there someone else in your life?’
‘There would’ve been, but I wanted you more,’ Alexandros admitted without hesitation.
In the act of admiring the stunning symmetry of his lean bronzed features, her green eyes collided with the smouldering gold of his. Framed by black spiky lashes, his gaze was a potent weapon. Her heart was already beating so rapidly that she was scared she might be on the brink of a panic attack, and his honesty touched something deep inside her.
Alexandros had almost stopped breathing as well, and the discovery shook him. Almost as quickly, however, the fierce surge of sexual arousal took precedence over the soul-searching that was anathema to him. With unhurried cool and single-minded purpose he laced his fingers into the tumbling mass of ringlets trailing over one slight shoulder and tilted her face up to his.
‘I want to kiss you, the spinis mou,’ he told her huskily.
Say no, a little voice urged inside her head. Say no. She was rigid with tension and yet astonishingly aware of the tingling sensitivity of her breasts, the warm sense of melted honey pooling in the pit of her stomach. She felt insanely alive and reckless at one and the same time.
‘One kiss,’ Alexandros murmured, soft and low, his earthy appraisal full of masculine power and energy.
Katie trembled, knowing it would not stop at one kiss, knowing she would want it to go further. She hated herself, but his aura of sizzling sensuality held her tighter than any chains and tormented her with her weakness. ‘But we—’
‘Burn for one other.’ Alexandros bent his darkly handsome head slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. Even then he did not do what she expected. Tugging her head back, his hand firm in her coppery mane of hair, he let his firm sensuous mouth forge a delicate trail across her collarbone, skim up the length of her satin-smooth throat and nip at the tender skin below one small ear.
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