by Kim Lawrence
Dropping down onto his knees beside her, he had taken her small heart-shaped face between his hands, pushing aside the drenched strands of hair that had clung like fronds of exotic seaweed to her face.
He had been able to feel the rapid beat of the pulse that had throbbed in her blue-veined temple. Her taut breasts had lifted as she’d tried to drag air into her oxygen-starved lungs. The black swimsuit had clung to her supple young body as lovingly as a second skin. Her skin, he’d noticed, had an incredible, luminescent clarity, at that moment it had been icy cold.
The image of her lying there was so perfect it might have happened yesterday. His body responded to the memory as if it had been that night nearly four years earlier. He was rock-hard.
‘How could you be so stupid?’ he demanded then. He shook her until her eyes opened.
Amazing amber eyes, big and not quite focused, blinked back at him. She was exhibiting classic signs of shock, but he was in no mood to make allowances.
‘I didn’t think…I…I mean it was—’
‘Did you want to kill yourself?’ he ranted on, oblivious to her pitiful and barely audible apology.
‘Of c…course not.’
‘You could have drowned us both.’ Her eyes widened; the swimming depths reflected mute horror. ‘What the hell were you doing?’
‘I was swimming.’
‘No, you were bloody drowning!’ He watched her full lower lip tremble and without thinking covered her mouth with his own.
Even now, all this time later, he could recall her startled gasp, the salty taste of the soft lips that parted sweetly under his and the softness of her body as she went bonelessly limp. The deep, soundless shudder that sighed through her body would stay with him for ever.
From somewhere he dredged up the strength to lift his mouth from hers when all he wanted to do was explore the sweet, moist recesses. Her fierce little groan of protest as the contact was broken made him forget for several dangerous seconds why this wasn’t a good idea.
The tenacious fingers that curled tightly in his wet hair proved infinitely more difficult to resist than the tide that had tried to pull them under.
He grabbed her hands and pinned them above her head, just to stop her touching him. ‘You don’t want to do this.’
‘You’re insane,’ she contended, shaking.
‘Certifiable,’ Angolos agreed thickly. The slim body beneath his was burning up. He could feel the blast of heat through the layers of wet clothes that separated them.
‘Don’t stop!’ The husky command wreaked havoc with his already-shredded self-control. She was like fire in his arms, supple, soft and displaying the same sort of savage desperation that thundered through his veins.
He hadn’t held a woman for almost a year, let alone had sex.
When he had first been diagnosed, his life had been thrown into utter confusion. He had always known where he was going and how he was getting there. The only restrictions placed on him had been by the responsibilities that had come with the privilege attached to his birth.
His focus and self-belief had always been enough to get him where he wanted to be. Helplessness had never entered the picture; then he had lost control. Someone had moved the goalposts and he had been angry.
He hadn’t realised how angry until he had said to the consultant treating him, ‘Tell me straight, Doctor, could this thing kill me?’
‘Yes, Mr Constantine, it could, but not if I have anything to do with it.’
It was a week later that he had woken up next to a woman, and he hadn’t known her name.
It had been a wake-up call. He had never ducked a fight in his life, but that, he’d then realised, was what he had been doing.
He had never been a saint, but he had always been discriminating and one-night stands had never been on his agenda. He had told himself to stop wallowing in self-pity, and had cleaned up his act. Of course later, when the treatment had taken his body to the limits of endurance, escaping into mindless sex had not been an option. He hadn’t had the strength, let alone the inclination.
That evening on the beach had been the first time in months that he had felt the stirring of sex…finding the object of his fantasy in his arms, half naked and begging him to kiss her, had transformed those stirrings into a raw, raging hunger.
He must have retained a shred of sanity because he had tried to stop, he could remember loosing her wrists and putting out a hand to lift himself off her, but instead his fingers had closed over the soft curve of one small, perfect breast.
The air had suddenly vibrated with the sexual tension that had erupted between them. Angolos had been immobilised by a wave of lust. In his head he had seen himself pushing aside the black material to reveal the straining pink bud. He had seen himself run his tongue over the straining peak, had heard her soft moan of pleasure…no, the soft moan had been real.
‘That feels so…’ Mesmerised, he watched her lips form a soundless oh as, eyes closed tight, her body arched.
‘I want you.’
Her eyes flicked open, tawny and wild. The most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. ‘I’m yours.’ She reached up and slid her hands under his wet shorts, letting her fingers slide over his skin.
Of course he lost it; what man wouldn’t? He pulled her under him and traced the shape of her skull with his fingers, lifting the heavy wet hair from the nape of her lovely neck. The sound that vibrated in her throat as her head fell back reminded him of a cat’s purr.
Her eyes opened and he touched his finger to the corner of her wide mouth and traced the full, soft outline. ‘You have the most amazing lips,’ he told her thickly. ‘And such beautiful, beautiful eyes…tiger’s eyes.’
‘You’re amazing all over.’
He allowed himself to kiss her then, driving his tongue into her mouth. He felt her searching hands on his body, sliding beneath his steaming clothes, baring his flesh to the air.
As his body pressed her into the wet sand she was still shaking and so was he, no longer with cold or anger, but with a wild, frenzied desire. Through the wet clothes separating them he felt the fresh wave of sexual heat that washed over her skin. She wrapped her legs around him and gasped as she felt his erection press into her soft belly.
Angolos wanted to bury himself in that softness more than he wanted to take another breath. He might have done just that, if the night hadn’t suddenly been illuminated by a jagged shaft of lightning. Lightning so bright he could see it through his closed eyelids.
He rolled off her with a groan and as he lay there panting there was a roll of thunder that broke directly overhead. The rain began to fall then, cold on his overheated skin.
She touched his shoulder and he shook his head. ‘I am not in control,’ he told her thickly.
‘Me neither. Good, isn’t it…?’ She sighed. ‘You don’t have to worry. I’m not afraid of thunder, and the boyfriend…I was lying. I don’t really have one. And I don’t expect…’
He turned his head. ‘You don’t expect what?’
‘I don’t expect it to be…you know…the first time…’
The husky confidence made him freeze. ‘Theos! Can it be true…?’ He scanned her face and knew. ‘Dear God, it is.’
A man who prided himself on his control, he couldn’t believe what he had just done. If it hadn’t been for the storm he…
She reached for him and she looked hurt when he jerked back avoiding contact.
He had never wanted a woman so much in his life.
‘You’re mad with me…?’
He looked at the tears trembling on her eyelashes and cursed slowly and fluently under his breath.
‘No, I’m mad with me,’ he told her as he picked her up.
She lay passively in his arms as he carried her across the sand dunes to where his car was parked in a quiet lane. The place was totally deserted as he dumped her in the front seat.
‘Are you kidnapping me?’ There was no alarm in her voice, just a lazy curiosity.
> ‘No, I’m warming you up,’ he said, switching on the engine and turning up the heater full blast.
‘Maybe I should take off my wet things…?’
The only wet thing she was wearing was a black swimsuit with a zip up the front. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t,’ he said, trying hard not to think about that strategically placed zip. One tug…
‘I don’t think I should have got in a car with a stranger,’ she observed absently as he draped a jacket that had been in the back seat over her shoulders.
‘You didn’t get in. I put you in.’
‘So you did. I’m warmer.’ She leaned back in the deeply upholstered seat with a sigh. ‘You know, I don’t think I’m quite myself,’ she confided.
That makes two of us. ‘You nearly drowned.’
Her eyes, which had been closing, suddenly flickered open. Tawny eyes scanned his face. ‘You kissed me.’ She pressed a hand to her soft lips. ‘I liked it.’
Beside her he didn’t dare move; he didn’t trust himself to speak. The ferocious tension in his body was so extreme that he remembered the bones in his face aching.
‘I noticed,’ he admitted.
She lifted a hand and ran a finger down his lean cheek. ‘Are you going to do it again?’
‘You’re in shock.’
‘I’m something, but not that. I think you saved my life. How can I repay you?’
He caught hold of her wrist and dragged her hand from his face. ‘Well, you can cut that out, for a start.’
She flinched visibly at the cutting response. After a second’s hurt incomprehension, a tide of mortified colour washed over her face.
‘Theos! Don’t look at me like that,’ he pleaded throatily.
She bit her lip and fixed her eyes on her hands, which lay clenched in her lap.
‘I’m s…sorry,’ she stuttered. ‘I really don’t know what came over me.’
‘The same thing that came over me. Where do you live? I’ll take you home.’ And after that he was going to drive away in the opposite direction.
He didn’t do virgins.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘CAN we have the ball back, mister?’
The request dragged Angolos back from a time he mostly succeeded in blanking from his mind.
To his way of thinking, no useful purpose could be served from preserving the memory of a time when he had allowed himself to be humiliated and deceived, except possibly to learn a lesson. He would never trust a woman again.
Had it amused Georgette to see him oblivious to her affair? Had she laughed with her lover as they had planned to pass the child off as his…?
A muscle clenched in Angolos’s lean cheek as he pulled a hand across his brow to wipe off the moisture that clung to his tanned skin. It had started raining and he hadn’t noticed; neither had he noticed until now that he was within a hundred yards of the gate that led to the garden of the Kemp house, a slightly battered timber cottage with a tin roof. Bending, he picked up the ball that lay at his feet and threw it back to the family playing a game of beach cricket.
‘Good throw,’ somebody acknowledged cheerily before they returned to their game.
Angolos headed for the gate. It creaked on the rusty hinges as he pushed it open. His lips curled in distaste as his hand rested on the peeling paintwork. At one time he had found the shabby chic of the Kemp home, so totally unlike what he was accustomed to, charming. Now he just found it, well…shabby.
The family he had never found charming and the feeling was mutual. Her relatives had come across as a bunch of xenophobic idiots who had been appalled at the idea of one of their number marrying a foreigner. Later, when Georgette had confided that her mother had run off with a Greek waiter, her family’s attitude had been more understandable.
His critical glance skimmed the semi-screened area. The cottage and garden looked the same as he remembered; the only thing that hadn’t been here four years ago was the clutter of children’s toys. Angolos’s dark eyes were drawn against his will to the evidence of childish occupation…the tricycle, the plastic toy cars, the bucket of shells gathered from the beach.
His classical profile tautened as he averted his gaze and strode purposefully to the door. There was absolutely no point prolonging this.
The door was opened before he had an opportunity to announce his arrival. His raised hand fell to his side as he looked at the woman framed in the open doorway. She was, he judged, somewhere in her mid-fifties, her grey-streaked dark hair was cut in a short modern crop, she had intelligent blue eyes and an interesting rather than attractive face.
She was a stranger to Angolos.
‘Hello, I’m—’
‘Good gracious, you’re Nicky’s father.’
Angolos was so surprised by her automatic assumption that his response was uncharacteristically unguarded. ‘No, I’m not anyone’s father,’ he ejaculated bitterly.
‘Nonsense, of course you are,’ she dismissed, dealing him an amused look.
Angolos was taken aback by this response. ‘I will not argue the point with you.’
The woman scanned his face, then threw back her head and laughed, not intimidated by the hauteur in his manner.
Angolos liked that.
In his position there were too many people ready to say what he wanted to hear. They had been saying what he wanted to hear since the day he’d stepped into his dead father’s shoes at the age of twenty-two. He valued people who could look him in the eyes and say, ‘You’re wrong.’
‘Well, that would be rather pointless, wouldn’t it?’
‘It would?’
‘Most definitely,’ came the robust response. ‘You want to see Nicky…of course you do,’ she added before he had an opportunity to respond. ‘May I be frank?’
‘Can I stop you?’ he wondered.
The dry intonation brought a fleeting smile to the woman’s lips. ‘This puts me in an awkward position…’ she confided. ‘I have no idea what agreement you have…visiting rights and so forth? Actually I didn’t think you saw him at all.’ She studied the tall man’s face. ‘I can see you don’t want to discuss your personal business with a nosy old woman.’
‘I can assure you I have not come to kidnap the boy.’
‘I’m glad to hear it, but under the circumstances it might be better if you came back when Georgie is home.’
‘But the child is here?’ Angolos probed and saw the older woman’s expression become guarded. ‘The thing is, Mrs…?’
‘My name is Ruth Simmons. Miss.’
‘Miss Simmons, I’m rather pushed for time.’
The woman eyed him with patent disapproval. ‘After all these years?’
Angolos supposed he ought to have expected this. Georgette had obviously decided to paint herself as the injured party and him as the unnatural father. His broad shoulders lifted in an infinitesimal shrug. Did she plan to poison this child’s mind in a similar manner…poor kid?
‘When do you expect Georgette to return?’
Ruth Simmons looked uncertainly at the remote and quite sensationally handsome face of Nicky’s father and her brow puckered.
‘I really couldn’t say.’ Was this the sort of man who would turn his back on his own child? He didn’t seem the type…Of course, you could never tell, but the Greeks she had met were very family orientated.
‘Couldn’t or won’t…?’ He lifted one long-fingered hand in an unconsciously elegant gesture. ‘No matter.’ He consulted his watch. ‘I will return at a more convenient moment.’ And then again maybe I won’t… After all, the entire exercise was totally pointless. Better to get in his car and drive back to London.
The tall man’s mechanical smile did not reach his eyes; Ruth noticed all the same that it was effortlessly charming. In the flesh this man was even more startlingly good-looking. If I were twenty years younger…? The self-mocking smile that curved her lips vanished as a loud bang followed by an even louder wail emerged from the living room.
‘What now?’ she
cried, hurrying inside.
Angolos stepped through the open door.
A few moments later, with the crying child cradled in her arms, Ruth viewed the damage. It could have been worse. Still, it was a pity that her friend was fond of the hideous ornate Victorian bust that was now lying in fragments on the floor. The overturned chair was a clue as to how the three-year-old had managed to reach the shelf where it had been displayed.
‘Did you fall, Nicky?’ Her matter-of-fact tone and manner had a soothing effect upon the crying child, who stopped to catch his breath. ‘Poor you,’ she said, rubbing the obvious bruise that was developing on the child’s forehead. ‘Did you hurt yourself anywhere else, sweetheart?’
Nicky shook his head. ‘Granny will be cross…’
‘No, I’m sure she won’t.’
‘She will,’ the child, whose tears had subsided, retorted positively. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, poking a chubby hand in the direction of the stranger.
‘Gracious!’ Ruth exclaimed, realising for the first time that the tall Greek had followed her into the room. He was standing there frozen. The only flicker of movement in his body was supplied by his stunning eyes, which were trained on the child in her arms.
Without replying, he continued to draw air into his lungs through clenched teeth, like a man who had forgotten how to breathe. As he squatted, bringing his face level with the toddler, she saw that his gloriously golden skin had acquired a greyish tinge. She saw his lips move; nothing came out.
‘Gracious!’ she added once more and with feeling. The physical similarity between father and son was truly startling… Nicky began to cry again.
‘Nicky…your name is Nicky?’ The tearful boy nodded his head.
Georgie walked in through the open door weighed down by supermarket carrier bags filled with groceries. A car, she reflected wistfully, would make life a lot easier, but her budget didn’t run to such luxuries.