by Julia James
She took a mouthful of the wine, hoping it would steady her, then got back to focussing on the gourmet food she was eating. That, at least, was a safe thing to do.
Beside her, Nikos’s long lashed eyes rested on her averted face. There was speculation in his gaze. As if he were asking himself a question.
A question that had the dazzling beauty that was Mel Cooper at its heart.
* * *
Mel sighed luxuriously and leant her head back against the soft leather headrest of the car seat. ‘This,’ she announced extravagantly, ‘has been the best evening ever.’
Nikos, sitting beside her in the back of the chauffeur-driven car, turned his head towards her and smiled. ‘I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,’ he replied.
‘Definitely,’ she assured him, turning towards him.
Their eyes met. Mel could see, even in the dim light of the car’s interior as it made its way through the nearly deserted streets of London long after the midnight hour, that there was an expression in them that made half of her want to pull her own gaze away immediately, because that was the most prudent thing to do, and half of her want to go on letting her gaze entwine with his.
For a moment she almost let her gaze slide away—then didn’t. The evening was going to end very soon now, and she was going to make the most of the short time left.
Make the most of Nikos.
He was just too damn gorgeous for her to do anything else.
It was a thought that had been forming all evening and now, with the end fast approaching, cocooned in the privacy of the car, she let herself indulge in the last luxury of gazing at him, drinking him in. She could feel the wine she had drunk with dinner filling her veins, could feel its effects upon her, but she didn’t care. Right now it seemed good—very good—just to enjoy the moment.
‘That’s a pretty definite vote of approval,’ Nikos said. His mouth quirked.
She tilted her head slightly. She must remind herself of just why Nikos had taken her with him this evening. Not for her own sake, but to serve as a foil against another woman’s unwanted attentions. It would be sensible not to forget that. Especially when they were alone together in this confined space, with the driver behind his screen and the anonymous streets beyond.
‘Do you think Fiona will try and pursue you again?’ she asked.
The quirk deepened. ‘Hopefully not.’ The dark eyes were veiled as his long lashes swept down momentarily. ‘Not now you’ve introduced her to Sven.’
Mel gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘He’s not called Sven,’ she remonstrated. ‘He’s called Magnus—and anyway his name doesn’t matter. Only that he’s a Viking hunk and runs some trendy Nordic telecoms company, which means that Fiona can consider him dateable.’
‘Let’s hope he considers her dateable. It was you he was chatting up when you disappeared off to the powder room,’ Nikos retorted.
There was, he realised as he spoke, a discernible bite in his voice. Seeing Mel walk back to their table with the ‘Viking hunk’ at her side had sent a primitive growl through him. Only when she’d made a point of introducing the Viking to Fiona and leaving them to it had the growl subsided.
‘I let him—precisely because I wanted to hand him over to Fiona,’ Mel riposted. ‘I felt genuinely bad, cutting her out—she needed a consolation prize.’
‘Well, I hope Sven keeps her busy—and away from me,’ he replied.
‘Happy to have been of use.’ Mel smiled with exaggerated sweetness.
‘And I’m very grateful to you, I assure you...’
There was a husk in Nikos’s voice as he spoke—she could hear it. Could feel it vibrating deep within her. The humour of a moment ago was gone, and suddenly the breath was tight in Mel’s lungs.
She knew she had to break that gaze holding her motionless like this, making her breathless, but it was impossible to move. Impossible to breathe. Impossible to do anything other than just sit there, her head turned towards Nikos, feeling him so close, so very, very close to her...
Then she realised something had changed. The car had stopped moving. She jerked forward, jolting her gaze free to look out of the passenger seat window.
‘We’re here,’ she said. Her voice sounded staccato.
Breaking that compelling, unbreakable gaze had freed her. Freed her to get out of the car, go back into Sarrie’s sandwich bar and bid farewell to the evening. Farewell to Nikos Parakis.
A terrible sense of flatness assailed her. The evening was definitely, definitely over. The flatness was crushing. Her brief encounter with Nikos Parakis was at an end.
The chauffeur was opening the passenger door for her and, gathering her skirts, she made herself get out. The night air seemed chilly...sobering. As if all the fizz had gone out of everything. She knew that the alcohol in her bloodstream was exacerbating her reaction, but the knowledge didn’t help counter it.
Nikos followed her out, giving a brief dismissive nod to the driver, who got back into his seat at the front of the car.
Mel painted a bright smile on her face. ‘Thank you for a fabulous evening,’ she said. ‘I had the best time ever. I hope Fiona is now duly convinced that she doesn’t stand a chance with you, and focusses on her Nordic telecoms hunk instead,’ she rattled out.
In a moment the evening would truly be over. Nikos would bid her goodnight and she would get the sandwich bar keys out of her bag and go inside. Nikos would get back into his chauffeur-driven car, and go off to his fancy apartment, back to his glittering, luxurious life filled with tuxedos and five-star hotels and champagne.
She’d go back to making sandwiches. And to booking a flight on a budget airline, heading for the Spanish costas.
She waited for the customary little thrill of anticipation that always came when she thought about her future life—but it didn’t come. Instead an unexpected chill of despondency sifted through her. How could something that only a few hours ago had been her sole burning ambition now seem so...unburning?
Because a few hours ago I hadn’t spent the evening with Nikos Parakis!
Had she sighed? She couldn’t tell. Could only tell that she was making herself stretch out her hand, as if for a brisk farewell handshake. A handshake to end the evening with before she walked back into her own life.
‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘And goodnight.’
She would do this neatly and briskly and they would go their separate ways. He to his world, she to hers. They had been ships that had bumped briefly into each other and were now back on course to their original destinations. And that was that.
You had fun—now it’s over. Accept it. Accept it graciously and go indoors.
Right now.
And stop looking at him!
But she could not stop staring at him, or gazing into his ludicrously gorgeous face and imprinting it on to her memory.
She felt her hand taken. Steeled herself to give the brisk, brief handshake that was appropriate. Nikos Parakis wasn’t a date—this whole evening had been a set-up...nothing more than that. She’d done what she’d been asked to do, had had a wonderful time herself, and now it was time to bow out.
So why did she feel so damn reluctant to do so?
She could feel the blood pulsing in her veins, feel her awareness of his searing masculinity, his ludicrous good looks, as she stood on the bleak bare London pavement at two in the morning, the night air crystal in her lungs. She seemed ultra-aware of the planes and contours of his face, the dark sable of his hair, the faint aromatic scent of his skin and the shadowed darkening of his jaw.
Why, oh, why was she just stuck here, unable to tear herself away, while she felt the warm, strong pressure of his hand taking hers? He was folding his other hand around hers as well, drawing her with effortless strength a little closer to him. Looking down at her, his long-lashed eyes
holding hers just as effortlessly as she gazed helplessly up at him.
‘Goodnight—and thank you for coming with me this evening.’ There was a husk in his voice that belied the prosaic words.
Her hand was still enclosed in his and she was standing closer to him now. So close that she could feel her breasts straining, as if she wanted only to press forward, to bind herself against the strong column of his body. She longed to feel that sheathed muscled strength against the pliant wand of her own body, to lift her mouth to his and wind her fingers up into the base of his neck, draw that sculpted mouth down upon hers...
It shook her...the intensity of the urge to do so. Like a slow-motion film running inside her head, she felt her brain try to reason her way out of it. Out of the urge to reach for him, to kiss him...
It had been so, so long since she had kissed a man—any man at all. And longer still since she had given free rein to the physical impulse of intimacy. Jak had left for Africa long ago, and since then there had been only a few perfunctory dates, snatched before caring for her grandfather had become all-consuming.
And now here she was, gazing up at a man who was the most achingly seductive man she’d ever encountered, wanting only to feel his mouth on hers, his arms around her.
As if he heard her body call to him he bent his head to catch her lips, and his mouth was as soft as velvet. As sensuous as silk.
Dissolving her completely.
She moved against him and felt her breasts crushed against his torso, that strong wall of steely muscle. Her other hand lost its grip on her evening bag. It fell to the ground, letting her freed hand do what it so wanted to do—to slide beneath the fall of his tuxedo jacket, her fingers gliding around his back, strong and smooth and so, so warm to her touch.
Her eyes fluttered shut as she gave herself to a slow, velvet kiss that seemed to lift her right off her feet, that absorbed every part of her consciousness. Gave herself to the sensuous caress of his lips on hers. Assured, expert, arousing...he knew exactly how to glide and tease and coax her lips to part for his, to deepen the kiss with skilled touch until he had everything of her he sought.
How long he kissed her for she didn’t know. She knew only that her fingers were pressing into his back, holding him fast against her, and that her hand, still crushed in his, was being held in the valley of her breasts, whose peaks were taut against his chest and beneath whose surface her heart was beating like a soaring bird.
His mouth let hers go and he was looking down at her—at her parted lips, her dazed eyes, her heated cheeks. His face was unreadable, but there was a shadow somewhere deep in the dark pools of his eyes... There were words he wanted to speak—but he kept silent...
How long she stood there, just gazing at him, overwhelmed by his kiss, she couldn’t tell. Something ran between them. She could not quite tell what, but she would not let herself read that wordless message. Would only, with a breathy little catch in her throat, step back from him, separating their bodies.
Then, with a jerky movement, she bent her knees and scooped up her evening bag, made her fingers open the clasp, extract her keys. She focussed on movement, focussed on stepping towards the door, unlocking it, opening it. When she was half inside, she turned.
He hadn’t moved. He was still standing there, watching her. Behind him, his car purred silently at the kerb. It would take him back to his world and she would never see him again.
There was a sensation of tightness in her chest suddenly, as if breathing were impossible. Her eyes rested on his outline one last time.
‘Goodbye, Nikos,’ she heard her own voice say, softly now. Then she turned away, heading towards the back room.
The evening was over now. Quite over.
Outside on the bare pavement Nikos went on standing for a while, motionless. Then, with a sudden jerky movement of his body, he turned on his heel and got back into the car.
It moved off along the deserted road.
In his head, that wordless message hung.
It was a message he did not want to hear—never wanted to hear. Had spent his life blocking out.
A message that challenged all the precepts by which he lived his life.
CHAPTER FIVE
WITH A YAWN, Mel set the tap running to fill the hot water urn and started her routine preparations for opening up the sandwich bar. But her thoughts were a million miles away, remembering everything about the evening before. It filled her head as if she were there again, reliving it all. Reliving, most of all, that melting goodnight kiss from Nikos...
For a moment—just a moment—she experienced again that sense of questioning wonder she’d felt as they’d gazed into each other’s eyes. Then, with an impatient shake of her head, she shook it from her. For three long years she’d had no romance in her life at all—no wonder she was feeling overwhelmed, having been kissed by an expert kisser like Nikos Parakis!
Her mouth gave a wry little twist. He’d have acquired that expertise by kissing scores of females in his time. Kissing, romancing and moving on. Keeping his romances simple—transient. Avoiding serious relationships.
Well, she could sympathise. Right now, with freedom beckoning, that was the way she saw things, too—no commitments, no complications. Just enjoying light-hearted, fun-time romance if it came her way...
She made a face as she set croissants to warm. Well, it wasn’t going to come her way courtesy of Nikos Parakis—that was for sure. He’d kissed her goodnight and headed back to his own life. He hadn’t wanted anything more of her than that single evening.
She paused in the act of reaching for a packet of butter from the fridge.
What if he had? What if he’d asked for more?
Like feathers sifting through her mind, she felt again that moment when he’d finished kissing her—when they’d parted but had still simply been looking at each other, their eyes meeting. A message had passed between them...
A message she hadn’t been able to read—wouldn’t read.
She shook her head, clearing the memory. What did it matter anyway? Nikos was out of her life as swiftly as he’d come into it and she wasn’t going to be seeing him again. That melting goodnight kiss was what she’d remember of him—the final icing on the amuse-bouche that had been the evening she’d spent with him.
And in the meantime she had a loaf of bread to butter.
* * *
Nikos was running. Running fast. But not fast enough. He upped the speed on the treadmill, his feet pounding more rapidly as his pace picked up. But he still could not outrun the memory in his head.
The memory of his kiss with Mel.
It kept replaying in his head...the feel of her mouth, soft and sensuous beneath his, that taste of heady sweetness in her lips...and it was still doing so now, back in Athens, over a week later. He was still remembering the words he had not spoken—the words he’d come so close, so very, very close to murmuring to her...
Don’t let the evening end now—come back with me—come back and stay the night with me...
But, as they’d drawn apart, as he’d finally relinquished her mouth, her soft, slender body still half embraced by his, she’d gazed up at him with that helpless, dazed expression in her beautiful eyes and the words had died on his lips. That wordless, unspoken message that had flowed between them had been silenced.
He knew why.
To have invited her to stay the night with him would not have been fair to her. He did not know her well enough to risk it—after such intimacy she might expect of him what he could not, would not give. He could not offer her anything other than a brief, fleeting romance.
Oh, he was no Lothario, getting a malign pleasure out of rejecting women after they’d fallen for him. He would far rather they didn’t fall for him. Far rather they shared his terms of engagement. His short-term view.
Because the best relationships were short-term ones. He had ample personal evidence of that. His jaw tightened. And ample evidence that those who did not adhere to that view ended up in a mess. A mess that had fallout for others, as well.
Like children.
He knew only too well, with bitterly earned self-knowledge, that was why he did not risk long-term relationships. Because they could become a trap—a trap to be sprung, confining people in relationships that became prisons. Prisons they were incapable of leaving.
His expression darkened. That was what had happened to his parents. Locked in a destructive relationship that neither of them would or could relinquish. A macabre, vicious dance he’d had to watch as a boy. Still had to watch whenever he spent time with them and saw them gouging at each other like two wounded, snarling animals trapped in the same locked enclosure.
Why the hell they hadn’t divorced years ago he could never fathom. Whenever he’d challenged either of them as to why they’d stuck together they’d both turned to him and said, ‘But it was for your sake we stayed together. So you would have a stable home. There’s nothing worse than a child growing up in a broken home.’
He gave a choke of bitter laughter now. If that had been their reasoning, he wasn’t grateful for it. He’d headed for university in the USA with relief, then found his own apartment once he’d graduated and come back to take his place at the family bank.
He was still trying to avoid their recriminations about each other. He left them to it. Heard them out, but did not really listen. Got back to his own life as quickly as he could. Took up with women who would never be like his mother, would never turn him into a man like his father. Women who understood, right from the off, that while he spent time with them he would be devoted to them—but when that time ended he’d simply move on. When it came to the goodbye kiss, goodbye was what it meant.
Would Mel have understood that?
That was what he did not know—had not risked asking that night in London. Which was why he had to put that evening behind him, that kiss behind him—why he had to stop remembering it.