‘Why?’ she breathed shakily. ‘Why have you changed your mind about me?’
He did not even attempt to misunderstand the question. He knew they were back to divorce. ‘I still want you,’ he said. ‘I thought that was obvious. All you need to do now is accept that you still want me and we can move on without all of this tedious arguing.’
‘And if we make each other miserable again?’
He turned abruptly as if the question annoyed him. ‘We will deal with that if or when it happens. Now, can we finish up here? Your mother’s possessions still need to be packed and I would like to get away from here before the next power cut hits.’
He wasn’t joking, she realised only half a second later, when there was a click, the lights went out and the fridge shuddered to a protesting halt. Problem solved, she mused bleakly. Stubborn desire to keep fighting him appeased.
Without another word she collected her clothes and returned to the bathroom, where it was pitch-black because there was no natural source of light in there. By the time she had fumbled into her clothes and knocked different joints against hard ceramic, she was more than ready to leave this hotel. Coming out of the bathroom, she found Leandros waiting for her by the open outer door.
‘We are getting out of here while there is still enough light left to get down the stairs,’ he said impatiently.
‘But the bags—’
‘The hotel will finish it and send your things on,’ he announced with an arrogance that had always been there.
Before she knew it she was feeling her way down the dim corridor with her hand trapped securely in his.
‘The city is being hit by lightning strikes due to a pay dispute,’ he explained as they made it to the stairwell. ‘The strikers are working on the principle that, because it is high season here in Athens, if they hit the tourist areas the government will sit up and take more notice, so the main residential areas are being left alone.’
‘For how long, do you think?’ She was feeling her way down the first flights of stairs while Leandros walked a few steps ahead of her.
‘That depends on who is the most stubborn,’ he replied, and turned his dark head to offer his first wide white grin. He was talking about them, she realised, not the strikers or the government.
Opening her mouth to make some tart reply, she missed her footing and let out a frightened gasp as she almost toppled. But he was right there to catch her. His hands closed around her slender waist and her body was suddenly crushed against his. Her stifled expression of fright brushed across his face and, on a soft oath, he trapped her up against the wall then lifted her up until their faces were level.
‘I want you back in my life, my home and in my bed,’ he declared with deep, dark, husky ferocity. ‘I don’t want us to fight or keep hurting each other. I want us to be how we used to be before life got in the way. I want it all back, agape. Every sweet, tight, glorious sensation that tells me that you are my woman. And I want to hear you say that you feel the same way about me.’
With her body crushed between the wall and the wonderful hardness of his body, and their eyes so close it was impossible not to see that he meant every passionate word, offering him anything but the truth seemed utterly futile. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I want the same.’
In many ways it was a frighteningly naked moment. In other ways it was a relief. The truth was now out in the open and the only thing being held back were those three little words that would make exposure complete.
His dark eyes flared with the knowledge of that. She held her breath and refused to be the first one to say the words. ‘Ruthless little witch,’ he muttered thickly then his mouth found hers.
They actually shared, on that dim stairwell, the most honest kiss they had ever exchanged. It contained emotion, real emotion, the kind that rattled at the heart and dug its roots deep into that place where the soul lay hidden—along with those three small words.
When they were disturbed by the sound of someone else coming down the stairs, neither came out of the kiss breathing well. When Leandros levered his body away from her, he did so with a reluctance Isobel shared. She couldn’t look at him, she was too busy trying to deal with the inner spread of those greedy roots of that oh-so-fickle thing called hope, that said yes, I want to take a risk on this. It is what’s been missing for all of these years.
They continued their way downstairs into the foyer. The profusely apologetic manager listened as Leandros issued curt instructions about the packing of possessions and where to send them. The other man tried not to appear curious as to why the wife of Leandros Petronades had been staying in his hotel in the first place.
‘He thinks we are very odd,’ Isobel remarked as they stepped outside into a pink-glow sunlight.
‘I feel very odd,’ he came back drily—and caught hold of her hand.
Life suddenly felt so wonderful. Leandros’s car was parked fifty feet away. It was low and sleek and statement-red and so much the car for a man of his ilk. Opening the door to the Ferrari, he guided her into the passenger seat, watched her coil her long legs inside, watched her tug her skirt down, filled her up with all of those sweet, tight sensations he had been talking about on the stairs, then closed the door to stride round the long bonnet and take the seat at her side.
The air was electric. He turned the key in the ignition and brought the car alive on a low, growling roar. The nerve-ends between her thighs flicked in tingling response to the car’s deep vibration. The man, the car—it was like being bombarded by testosterone from every possible source, she thought breathlessly.
Did he know she was feeling like this?
Yes, he knew it. She could see his own tension in the way his long fingers gripped the squat gear stick, and the way his sensual mouth was parted and his breathing was tense as he looked over his shoulder so he could reverse the car in the few inches available to him to ease them out of the tight parking place. There was a hint of red striking along his cheekbones; his eyes glittered with that strange light that told her she was sitting beside a sexually aroused male. When he turned frontward again, she was showered with static. He changed gear, turned the steering wheel with one of those smooth fingertip flourishes that said the man controlled the car and not the other way around.
With a blaring of car horns he eased them out into the stream of traffic. The low sun shone on her face. She reached up to pull down the sun-visor and found her hand caught by another. The way he lifted it to his mouth and kissed the centre of her palm stifled her ability to breathe for long seconds. As he drove them through the busy streets of Athens, they communicated with their senses. He refused to release her hand, so when it became necessary to change gear it was her hand that felt the machine’s power via the gear stick, with his hand holding it there.
It was exciting. She could feel sparks of excitement shooting from him, could feel the needle-sharp pinpricks attacking her flesh. Beneath the dress her breasts felt tight and heavy, between her thighs it was as if they were already having sex.
When they were forced to stop at a set of traffic lights he turned to look at her. His eyes filtered over her face then down her front. The dress was short, but not as short as she had used to wear three years ago, when glances like this used to be accompanied by a frown. This time her thighs were modestly covered but still he made her feel as if she were sitting there naked. The inner tingling turned into a pulsing. She tried pressing her thighs together in an effort to contain what was happening to her. His eyes flicked up, caught the anxiety in her eyes, the way she was biting down on her soft lower lip.
‘Stop it,’ she protested on a strangled choke of breathless laughter.
‘Why?’ was his devastatingly simplistic reply.
Because I am going to embarrass myself if you don’t stop, she thought helplessly, but suspected that he already knew that.
The lights changed and he turned his glance back to the road again. She managed to win her hand back and tried to ignore what was passin
g between them. But the bright white of his shirt taunted her with what hid beneath it. If she reached out and touched him she knew she would feel the tension of muscles held under fierce control, and she could see a telling pulse beating in his strong brown neck that made her heart thump madly with the urge to lean across the gap separating them and lay her moist tongue against his throat. The way he moved his shoulder said he’d picked up on the thought and was responding to it.
They began to climb out of the city where the mishmash of buildings gave way to greener suburbs and breathtaking views over Athens to the sunkissed waters of the Saronic Gulf. Eventually they began to pass by the larger properties, set in their own extensive grounds and built to emulate classical Greece. Leandros’s mother had a house here, though further up the hill. They drove past the Herakleides estate, where his Uncle Theron lived with his granddaughter Eve, who had been perhaps the only person in the family Isobel felt at ease with.
But then Eve was of a similar age and she was also half-English. She might be the very spoiled and the worshipped grandchild of a staunchly Greek man but she had always determinedly hung on to her British roots.
‘Eve is married now,’ Leandros broke their silence to inform her.
‘Married?’ Isobel turned disbelieving eyes on him. The girl she remembered had been a beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed handful of a creature who’d constantly foiled her grandfather’s attempts to sell her into bondage—as Eve had called it.
‘It’s a long story,’ he smiled, ‘and one I think you will enjoy more if I let Eve tell it to you.’
The smile was rueful and turned her heart over because it reminded her of when he’d used to offer her sexily rueful smiles all the time. Rueful smiles which said, I want you. Rueful smiles which said, I know you want me but we will have to wait.
This smile was rueful because he knew what she was thinking about his precocious cousin Eve. But Isobel didn’t smile back because she was remembering that, for all her staunch Englishness, Eve was adored by her Greek family. It was Eve’s mother who had never made the grade. As Eve had once told her, ‘They accept me because I do have their blood in my veins, even if I like to annoy them all by pretending I don’t. But my poor mother was looked upon with suspicion from the moment she came here with my father. Thankfully, we spent the first ten years of my life living in London so the family didn’t have a chance to put any spanners in the works of my parents’ marriage. When they died and I was sent here to live with Grandpa they felt sorry for me so I got the sympathy vote. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what they can be like, Isobel. Just do me one great favour and don’t let them win.’
But they had won in the end. And, although Isobel remembered that Eve’s grandfather had always been pleasant to her, she had never trusted his genial manner. Because like his much younger sister, Thea Petronades—Leandros’s mother—Theron had no real wish to see the Herakleides blood-line further diluted with yet more English blood.
‘Who did she marry?’ she asked Leandros. ‘Someone from a great Greek family no doubt?’
‘Eve, meet Theron’s expectations?’ He grinned. ‘No, she married a tough British bulldog called Ethan Hayes. And I don’t think he is ever going to recover from the shock.’
‘Who, Theron?’ she prompted with just enough cynicism to wipe the grin from his face.
‘No, Ethan Hayes,’ he corrected. ‘And your prejudice is showing, agape.’
Her prejudice? She opened her mouth to protest about that accusation then closed it again when she realised that he was right. She was prejudiced against these people. The knowledge did not sit comfortably as he turned the red car in through a pair of gates that led to the house that had once been her home.
This house was not as grand as the Herakleides mansion—or the Petronades mansion further up the hill. Leandros’s mother still occupied the other home along with the rest of the Petronades family. But still, this building had its own proud sense of presence and made no secret of the fact that it belonged to a very wealthy man. Leandros had bought it just after they were married in an attempt to give them some private space of their own in which to work out the problems they were already having by then. His mother had taken offence, said it was not the Greek way, and if Isobel could not live with the family then maybe it should be Thea and the rest of the family who should move out, since the Petronades home had belonged to Leandros since his father’s death.
Problems—there’d been problems whichever way she’d turned back then, Isobel recalled with a small sigh. Leandros heard the sigh, pulled the car to a stop in front of the neat entrance, switched off the engine then turned to look at her.
Her expression was sad again, the flush of sensual awareness wiped clean away. He wanted to sigh too, but with anger. Was the sight of their home so abhorrent to her? He glanced at the house and recalled when he’d bought it as a desperate measure in the hope that it would give them some time and space to seal up the cracks that had appeared in their relationship. He’d even got a friend in to refurbish the whole house before he’d brought Isobel down here to surprise her with his new purchase.
But all he had achieved was yet another layer of discontentment. For she’d walked in, looked around and basically that was all she could do. He had realised too late that to have the house decorated and furnished ready for occupation by some taste-sensitive interior designer had been yet another slight to Isobel’s ability to turn this house into a home for them.
Home being an awkward word here, he acknowledged bleakly. For it had never become one—just a different venue for their rows without the extra pairs of ears listening in. He had still worked too many hours than were fair to her. She had still walked away from him down this sunny driveway each morning without a backward glance to see if he cared when he watched her go.
It was her one firm statement, he realised now, as they sat here remembering their own history of events. Because his working day had begun later than Isobel had been used to in England, she had left him each morning with her best friend, her camera, when really she knew he would much rather have been lingering over breakfast with her—or lingering somewhere else. If he came home at siesta time, she had rarely ever been here to greet him. After he’d burned the midnight oil working, she had been very firmly asleep when he’d eventually joined her in the bed. If he’d woken her she’d snapped at him and the whole circus act had begun all over again. Stubbornness was her most besetting sin but his had been gross insensitivity to the lonely and inadequate person she had become.
Strange, he mused now, how he did not move back into the big family house after she had left him for good. Strange how he’d preferred to leave Athens completely, having continued alone here for almost a year.
Hoping that she would return? he asked himself as he climbed out of the car and walked around its long, shiny red bonnet to help her alight.
Long legs swivelled out into the sunlight, cased in sheer silk; he caught the briefest glimpse of lacy stocking tops before the dress slid back into place. Classically styled and an elegant blue, the dress was not dissimilar to the one Diantha had been wearing the day he’d made his decision to break his marriage link to Isobel. But as she took his hand to help her to rise upright, there was nothing else about this woman or the dress that reminded him of any of those thoughts he’d had back then. In fact he could not believe his own thick-skinned arrogance in believing he could prefer Diantha’s calming serenity to this invigorating sting of constant awareness that Isobel never failed to make him feel.
She was beautiful, stunningly so. As she came to stand in front of him he watched the loose fall of her shining hair as it slid silk-like across her slender shoulders, the curving shape of her body moving with innate sensuality beneath her dress. The length of her legs would make a monk take a second look but, for him, they made certain muscles tighten because he could imagine them wrapped tightly around his waist.
He was just contemplating that such a position might not be a bad
idea with which to make the transition from here into the dreaded house, when he noticed a familiar car parked beneath the shade of a tree. His brows came together on a snap of irritation. Drawing Isobel towards him, he made do with dropping a kiss to the top of her head as he closed the door to the Ferrari and wondered how he was going to explain this away.
There was no explanation, he accepted heavily. He was in deep trouble and the only thing to do was to get it over with.
CHAPTER SIX
WALKING towards the house took more courage than Isobel had envisaged. The moment Leandros swung the front door open her stomach dipped on a lurching roll of dismay. The late-afternoon heat gave way to air-conditioned coolness in the large hallway, with its white glossed banister following the graceful curve of the stairs to the landing above. The walls were still painted that soft blue-grey colour; the tiles beneath her feet were the same cool blue and grey. To the left and the right of her stood doors which led into reception rooms decorated with the same classy neutral blend of colours and the kind of furniture you only usually saw in glossy magazines.
This house had never felt like home to her but instead it was just a showcase for this man and a bone of contention to everyone else. She had been miserable here, lonely and so completely out of her depth that sometimes she’d used to feel as if she was shrinking until she was in danger of becoming lost for good.
A strange woman dressed in black appeared from the direction of the kitchens. She was middle-aged, most definitely Greek, and she offered Isobel a nervous smile.
‘This is Allise, our housekeeper,’ Leandros explained, then introduced Isobel to Allise as my wife.
Wondering what had happened to Agnes, the cold fish his mother had placed here as housekeeper, Isobel smiled and said, ‘Hérete, Allise. It’s nice to meet you.’
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