MIDNIGHT—they’d been to the theatre, eaten beforehand, then afterwards wandered along the South Bank, holding hands, counting the dolphins carved curlingly around the Victorian lampposts, talking of nothing and everything, until her feet in her high heels had ached. Nikos had conjured a car from nowhere and taken her home, and they’d realised how hungry they were. So she’d taken him down to the kitchen and made him a towering club sandwich with half the contents of the fridge. It had toppled over on the table and they had burst out laughing, and he’d caught her, and kissed her, and kissed her again…and she’d been dazed and dizzy with bliss…
Pain, like a knife, sliced through her memory, cutting it away. Deliberately she purged it.
‘It will only be cheese and ham,’ she warned, her voice terse. She didn’t want to make him a sandwich. Didn’t want him standing there, so damnably close. Didn’t want him anywhere near her. Disturbing her. Making her feel his overwhelming presence in the close, confining space.
Why does he have this impact on me? How? I’m not twenty any more, and I’m way, way past caring about men—but this one…
This one still overwhelmed her. This one still had the same power he’d always had! Four years had done nothing to change that.
Quiveringly aware of him, she yanked open the fridge door. At least making him a sandwich would distract her, give her something to focus on other than him. Extracting butter, ham and a hunk of cheese, she plonked them on the table, then pulled off the lid of the bread crock and roughly hacked two slices to make the sandwich he’d demanded. Deliberately blank-faced, she handed it to him on a plate. He took it with an abstracted thank-you, and nodded at the colander full of strawberries that was on the draining board.
‘Any chance of dessert?’ he enquired.
Wordlessly, she scooped some into a bowl.
‘Share them with me,’ he invited. ‘And let’s eat outside. I’ll take out one of these kitchen chairs for you.’
He hefted one up effortlessly and headed out for the garden, leaving a tight-lipped Sophie to follow him with the bowl of strawberries. She didn’t want to share dessert with him. She didn’t want to share anything with him—least of all her company. She wanted him to go. To stop disturbing her.
To leave her alone.
For ever.
Again.
She felt the knife slide into her side, a physical pain. Losing Nikos had been an agony.
He was never yours in the first place! Never! You were a fool—a selfish, stupid little fool! Weaving your infantile fantasies! Dreaming your puerile, egoistical happy ending to what was never real!
Angrily, she marched out into the garden, as if she could leave behind her tormenting thoughts. But the object of her torment was sitting himself down at the little table she had lugged out onto the tiny patio, getting stuck into the doorstep sandwich with every appearance of relish. The hot sun beat down, and he had taken off his jacket, hitching it around the back of the chair. Worse, he had dragged his tie loose and undone the top button of his shirt, loosening his cuffs and rolling back his sleeves, exposing his strong, lean forearms.
She felt her stomach hollow.
Oh, God, he looked so good! The whiteness of his shirt against the Mediterranean dusk of his skin tone. She wanted to gaze and gaze and gaze.
The way she had the first time she had ever set eyes on him. Every time she had ever set eyes on him.
What is it about him—what is that draws me to him?
Her thoughts were anguished, self-hating, and impossible to endure.
He glanced up at her. ‘Come and sit down,’ he said.
Her legs as weak as a kitten’s, she sat, plonking down heavily on the chair. Her mind was in turmoil, her thoughts hopeless, jumbled, and as impossible to decipher as her maelstrom of emotions. She watched helplessly as he made short work of the sandwich. At least he wasn’t looking back at her—that would have been unendurable. Instead he was looking around him at the little walled garden, his eyes taking in the difference between the pristine, dug-through areas she had been tackling and the untouched overgrown ones. Where she’d last been working was a pile of weeds, fast wilting in the afternoon sun beside her abandoned gardening tools.
Nikos frowned. ‘You didn’t have to do any of this,’ he said abruptly.
What on earth had she done it for? It just didn’t square with anything he’d expected. He’d expected to find her sulking, outraged at being relegated to this mouldering, deserted house, bored out of her pampered skin, itching for the bright lights, wanting someone—anyone—to spend some money on her! Wanting the easy life she’d always had, always wanted to keep…
His eyes hardened unconsciously. But not at his expense, thank you! He’d seen to that four years ago—and he was seeing to it now, as well. He’d settle her debts, but he was damned if she was going to get a luxury holiday, as well!
Yet as he gazed about him, seeing the evidence of hard manual labour all around him, he started to feel his thoughts shifting. They shifted even further when she answered him.
‘I told you. I enjoy it,’ she said tightly. ‘It’s very peaceful.’
Nikos’s gaze snapped back to her. She didn’t look like someone at peace—tension was visible in the set of her shoulders, the straightness of her back. His eyes worked over her, oblivious for the moment of the stiffening in her pose under his scrutiny. He still couldn’t get over how totally different she looked from when he had last set eyes on her.
His eyes rested on her. She looked a million times better like this! Straggling hair, smut of dirt on her cheek, shabby T-shirt—none of it could distract from what was keeping his eyes on her.
Her beauty. Her sheer, extraordinary, breathtaking beauty! Her bones, her eyes, her mouth—all were just so…so…
He stopped analysing and just gazed, feeling an emotion go through him that seemed to be scouring him out from the inside. Memory kept pouring down into his consciousness—so many memories! Each one a vivid, vibrant picture in his head—of Sophie, Sophie, Sophie… So young, so beautiful…so magical…
Oh, she was older now, but her beauty had ripened, filled out, and without that tawdry mask of make-up it was as if he was seeing her all over again for the first time.
Abruptly she snapped her head away, sheering her gaze from him, her complexion paling beneath the honeyed hue that the summer sun had tinted her exposed skin with. The movement severed the moment. With a mental wrench, Nikos pushed aside his empty plate and reached for one of the luscious ruby strawberries glistening in their bowl. The warm ripeness was lush on his tongue, and he focussed on savouring it—blocking out as best he could his urge to scrutinise Sophie again.
Leave her alone! There’s no point at all in looking…she’s not for you, ever again!
But his thoughts seemed to be ringing hollow in his brain. Oh, he knew the score, all right—how could he not? He’d ripped Sophie Granton from him four long years ago, and he had no intention—none whatsoever—of letting her take root again. None. The hell with what he’d felt when he’d seen her again! That disastrous, fatal flash of desire. That had to be killed again, stone dead.
Which was exactly why he’d come to see her. Not because he wanted to see her again—never that!—but simply to drive home to her that, pay her debts he might, but pamper her he would never do! She’d have to put up with being dumped here, with all the privations it entailed, however much she resented it!
Except that she didn’t seem to be resenting it….
Seemed, indeed, to have made herself at home here—humble though it was, self-reliant though she had to be. Seemed, indeed, to have got stuck in, quite unnecessarily, to diligent peasant labour! And found it peaceful!
Nikos found his gaze going out again over the garden. But then it was peaceful….
Warm and sunny and somnolent, with bees buzzing and birds chirruping. Unconsciously he reached for another strawberry, savouring again its sweet ripeness. He felt his muscles relax, and out of nowhere a sense of well-being start to steal over him. He stretched his long legs out and crossed them at the ankle, hooking an arm around the back of the chair as he continued with the strawberries. Across the table he could see Sophie’s fingers reach out tentatively, stiffly, and take a strawberry for herself.
‘They’re very good,’ he remarked. ‘Are they from that bed over there?’ He nodded in the direction.
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘They’re ripening every day now. I had to clear away the weeds first.’
‘Well worth it,’ responded Nikos. His eye was drawn as a bird darted down to the pile of weeds and hopped on to the bared earth, pecking suddenly.
‘What’s that?’ he enquired lazily, indicating the bird with his hand.
‘It’s a robin. It’s after the grubs and worms in the soil. It’s been dropping in every day. It’s probably got a nest somewhere.’ She was trying to talk normally, but it was hard. Harder still to go on sitting here, tense and awkward, while just across from her Nikos was stretching out in all his masculine glory, making himself at home, replete and relaxed.
Why can’t he just go away? Why can’t he clear off and leave me alone?
But the anguished rhetoric sounded hollow. Her sense, her sanity, might want him to disappear, but there was a part of her—a weak, dangerous part of her—that only wanted to let her gaze rest on him again, now that he was no longer looking at her, and gaze and gaze and gaze…
Feast on him even as he was feasting on the strawberries she’d picked.
‘Feeding her chicks?’ mused Nikos.
‘His chicks,’ she corrected. ‘That’s the male.’
‘How can you tell?’ His enquiry was as lazily voiced as his pose was relaxed.
‘His red breast. Very handsome. Pulls the females.’ There was a tart note in her voice.
Nikos gave a low chuckle. His gaze flicked to hers.
Mistake.
Mistake, mistake, mistake.
Nikos smiling—laughing. How many times had she seen him smiling at her, laughing with her? Her breath caught.
Oh, God, don’t let me remember—don’t let me remember!
She stifled the memories, fought them back. Fought just as hard against the tug of unstoppable attraction that pulled like a rope, lassoing her. Four years had only made him even more devastating, more magnetically compelling!
‘So what do the females look like?’ His question pulled her round.
‘Very dull. Brown. Boring. Plain.’
He cocked an eyebrow again. ‘How curious that nature is so different from humans. With us, it is the female who lures with her beauty—the male is the dull one, the plain one.’
Her eyes went to him. Not you! Never, never you!
She shifted in her seat, taking yet another strawberry. Focussing on that, not on him.
‘So, tell me, what do you think of the place?’ His query came invitingly, at odds with his former riling provocation.
‘What?’ She looked across at him again.
He took another strawberry too. ‘You’ve been here four days—what do you make of the place? I take it you’ve wandered around? Not just confined yourself to this small garden? So, what do you think? Who knows? Once I’ve restored it and it’s a hotel you might stay here one day.’
He spoke lightly, nonchalantly. But even as he did so he could suddenly see in his mind’s eye Sophie as a guest at the hotel. A thought stabbed at his mind—what if there were no blighted past between them? What if he were to meet her at the hotel in the future for the first time? Attraction, unfettered by poisonous memories, flared in him.
How can she be so beautiful, even making no effort, like now, so full of natural grace that I cannot take my eyes from her?
His eyes rested on her, and Sophie felt her emotions plunge wildly, her breath catch. No, he mustn’t have that effect on me any more—he mustn’t!
But then he was getting to his feet, polishing off the last strawberry as he did so. He held a hand out to her. ‘Come and tell me what you like about the place and what you don’t,’ he said.
He was holding out a hand to her. Almost, almost she put hers into it, as if taking his hand were nothing at all. Once holding Nikos’s hand had been bliss itself. Now it would be nothing less than torture.
She got haltingly to her feet. Nikos was gesturing towards the garden door that led through into the main grounds. Numbly, she let herself be ushered out. Self-consciousness burned through her. They gained the terrace reaching along the front façade, and her gait was still stiff and awkward, then rounded the corner to the carriage sweep that led up to the grand front entrance. Skewed across the weed-infested gravel was a sight that brought her to a sudden halt.
She recognised it instantly—it was the same high-powered, low-slung car that he had been driving the very first day she’d ever set eyes on him. The exact same—she knew, because she’d become so besotted with him she’d learned the make, model and number plate. Memory overwhelmed her—the first time she’d seen him, driving along the street to her father’s house. The first time she’d been in the car herself.
And the last.
The time when he’d been driving her home late that last night, when her heart had been pounding with what she had been intending to do, her hands clammy with nerves.
And the sound of its engine had been the last noise she’d heard as he’d roared off into the night, leaving her weeping, demented, destroyed—clinging to the wall after he’d peeled her from him like a dirty rag…
‘You’ve got the same car.’
The words broke from her before she could stop them. Nikos twisted his head, pausing in his stride. She’d gone pale again, pale beneath the flush of the honey-tan that was already gilding her fair skin.
She’d been pale as milk when he’d first met her. Long hours indoors, in music studios, had made her as fair as porcelain. His hand on hers had been striking in its contrast, with its olive Mediterranean skin.
Not just his hand on her hand.
Her breasts as white as snow, her limbs like ivory, as she pressed against him, as he crushed her to him, all sense swept away from him, all sanity gone—only the heady paradise of the senses…
‘It’s become a collector’s item. Why update it when I can only legally use a fraction of its horsepower anyway?’ His voice broke cuttingly across his thoughts.
‘You let it rip at that racetrack you took me to.’ Again the words were out of her mouth even as the memory formed in her mind.
Herself standing at the trackside, heart in her mouth as she watched him roaring along the straight, then tightening into a curve so punishing she thought he must surely career onto the grass. Her heart filled with an exhilaration she could not contain, an exhilaration that had consumed her completely, when he’d taken her with him on the next lap, her breath punctuated by gasps of terror and excitement, all the time glorying in his skill, his strength, in the way he seemed so effortlessly to control the power of the car. She had thrilled to it all, thrilled to him…
Nikos’s eyes went to hers. For a second, a fraction of a second, they met and held. Then he pulled his gaze away.
‘Let’s take a look at the grounds first.’
He started off down a wide but overgrown pathway. Hesitantly Sophie followed him. The broad lawns were hayfields, stretching either side, and the once elegantly planted herbaceous borders had almost disappeared into the overgrowth.
But there was beauty here, all right.
‘There’s so much work to do!’ Sophie found herself exclaiming.
Nikos glanced back. ‘Too much for you, I think.’ But it was not an admonition—there was a wry smile on his mouth.
It tugged at Sophie, and she glanced away. No—please, not this. Not feeling his power again! Please no!
‘I think it would take half a dozen professional gardeners,’ she made herself respond. She kept her voice light. It seemed the safest thing to do.
‘More like a dozen,’ replied Nikos dryly. He paused as the pathway diverged. ‘I take it you’ve explored already?’ he said. ‘Any suggestions?’
‘There’s a lake of sorts to the left. There’s not much water in it, from what I could see. Irises and bulrushes have taken over.’
‘Let’s take a look,’ said Nikos. He strode off.
Numbly, she followed him. In part of her mind she knew that it was bizarre in the extreme for her to be exploring these neglected gardens with Nikos Kazandros.
Unreal.
And yet the reality of it was vivid. Far, far too vivid—
‘You were right—it’s hardly a lake at all any more.’ Nikos’s voice penetrated her thoughts. ‘This will call for dredging. All the same…’ He paused, scanning around him. ‘It will be spectacular one day.’
His gaze came round to Sophie again.
‘Did I do well, buying this place?’
There was humour in his voice and warmth in his eyes. She felt the breath squeeze in her lungs.
For a moment she did not move—could not. Only let her gaze be held by him, only let herself be warmed by the warmth in his eyes.
Once he looked at me like that all the time….
An ache started in her. She pulled her gaze away.
‘It’s very beautiful,’ she said. There was constraint in her voice now.
Did he feel the same? He must, for abruptly he turned away, checking out a stand of ash saplings that had invaded from the woods beyond the lake.
‘Those will have to go,’ he said. ‘And we’ll need more specimen trees planted.’
We…
The ache in her side intensified. There was no ‘we’. There never could be—never again.
She blinked. Nikos turned back. His eyes flickered over her, but she kept her expression veiled.
‘Time to see the house,’ he announced. His tone was brisk, businesslike.
Dutifully, Sophie followed him back through the long grass, up to the crumbling terrace.
‘This way,’ he said, and walked up to the door, fishing the keys from his trouser pocket, walking more quickly than he needed to. Briskly, he opened the front door of the house. The lock was stiff, but the door opened smoothly enough, even though the movement brought a strand of a cobweb floating down. He stepped inside, nostrils wrinkling at the dusty smell, and gazed around him.
Yes, he was right to have bought this place. On the verge of ruin it might be, but it was a gem of a house! Neglect and deterioration could not disguise the elegance of its proportions, nor the beauty of its interior. The moulding around the ceiling edge, the sweeping rise of the staircase, the dusty chandeliers suspended from the high central rose all testified to that.
‘So, what do you think?’
He half turned. Sophie was in the doorway, looking up and about her. She hadn’t seen the hall from this perspective before, and it was stunning.
‘It’s wonderful,’ she said. The words came out spontaneously as she craned her head, gazing upwards.
Nikos stopped looking at the beautiful proportions of the hall—another set of beautiful proportions were riveting his gaze. Sophie’s slender body was outlined in the sunlight filtering down through the high-set windows above the front door, making a halo around her hair. The exquisite line of her profile, the bow of her slightly parted mouth, the arched line of her throat, the gentle swell of her breasts all made his breath catch. He could not look away. Could not.
How does she do it? How?
Warning bells sounded inside his head, but he ignored them. Ignored, too, the warning words sounding there—be careful, be careful…
Instead he went on gazing, feeling emotion uncoil inside him as if from a long, long sleep of many years.
Then her gaze swept round and down, and back to him—and pulled away, breaking the moment.
‘Can you see this place as a hotel?’ he asked.
Her expression flickered a moment under the impact of his regard, then steadied, darting about a moment to take in the space around her.
‘Not really,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s just a beautiful grand house.’ Her brow furrowed slightly. ‘Who lived here?’ She’d wondered that on her earlier explorations, finding it sad that it was so clearly no longer inhabited.
‘A very elderly widow who’d married the owner and lived here for fifty years with him before he died. Her nephew inherited and wanted to sell.’
‘Fifty years?’ Sophie echoed. So many years of marriage! She felt her heart contract. So beautiful a house to live in, for so long! In her head burned, betrayingly, the thought that had pierced her the day she’d wandered around on her own. We could have lived here, Nikos and me…our own private paradise…
But paradise had not been waiting for her. Neither with Nikos nor without. To purge the traitorous thought, she made herself go on. ‘I’m sure it could be done up to make it work as a hotel,’ she said.
‘It has to be restored very carefully, with scrupulous period detail,’ Nikos replied, his gaze working methodically, assessing all that needed doing. ‘The historical architect who is to be in charge was to have met me here this afternoon. He’s been delayed until tomorrow. I’m staying overnight at a local inn. You’re in the only habitable part of the house.’
Sophie could only stare. ‘Oh,’ was all she could say. Dismay filled her, and more complex emotions too. Disturbing emotions.
He was opening doors now, looking inside the rooms opening off the hallway, pausing as if to make mental notes, but Sophie did not follow him. Only when he headed further into the interior of the hallway, beyond the staircase, did she follow him. A moment later she wished she had stayed where she was. Nikos had opened the double doorway to the music room. The covered bulk of the grand piano was instantly visible. He turned to look back at her.
‘Something of a find for you—though, I take it it’s out of tune?’ There was a timbre to his voice she didn’t want there. He was acknowledging a past where once the presence of such an instrument would have had her trying it out instantly. But no longer.
She spoke tightly. ‘I’ve no idea.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Surely you couldn’t resist playing it?’
‘I don’t play any more.’ Her voice was terse. Her mouth tight-lipped.
A frown creased between his eyes. ‘So much for the dedicated music student,’ he remarked caustically.
Of its own volition Sophie’s throat constricted. Parting with her piano had caused almost more anguish than having to sell the house. But her baby grand had been worth money, and money was all that she had allowed herself to focus on.
Nikos was looking at her, she realised. Frowningly.
‘I thought your music meant everything to you. What made you give it up?’
She could not answer him. Turning away, she stumbled blindly towards the baize door that led to the servants’ quarters. He strode after her, catching her arm to stay her. It burned like a brand and she pulled free. He caught at her again, catching her hand. Then abruptly he frowned, lifting her hand into the light and turning it over, seizing her other hand at the same time before she could stop him.
He was staring down at them, his frown deepening, while she tried desperately not to feel the touch of his cool fingers on her or feel the closeness of his body to hers.
‘They’re scratched to pieces!’ he exclaimed.
‘It’s just from gardening,’ she answered faintly. Again she tried to pull them away from him, but it did not make him let them go. Instead he smoothed his thumbs over her palms.
‘You should look after them more.’ His voice had softened, like his touch. Sophie’s stomach hollowed. The tone of his voice and the slow smoothing of his thumbs sent a thousand nerve endings sussurating.
He was speaking again, with the same timbre in his tone. ‘You always had such beautiful hands. You kept them as soft as silk. Your touch was like velvet…’
There was a husk in his voice. He was too close—way, way too close to her. Her hands were like imprisoned birds in his—birds that he was soothing, captivating. Her heart was thudding, slow and heavy, her breaths were shallow and uneven. Dear God, she couldn’t be here—she couldn’t! Couldn’t let him caress her palms like that—couldn’t let herself respond. Couldn’t. Mustn’t.
Somehow she had to break free, stop him…stop herself…
‘Nikos,’ she breathed. Her eyes fluttered to his. ‘Let me go…’
The tall bulk of his body was too close to hers, the spiced, heady scent of his skin too overpowering. She could see everything about him—everything. The darkening line of his jaw, the sculpted shape of his mouth, the blade of his nose and the dark, drowning eyes.
‘Let me go…’
It was a whisper. A plea.
Something moved in his eyes. They were alone in the house, alone in the world. And far, far too close—
‘I can’t,’ he said, his eyes pouring into hers.
As he spoke the words he knew them for the truth. The hopeless, stark truth. Slowly, infinitely slowly, his grip on her hands tightened, drawing her closer towards him, closer still. His mouth started to lower to hers…
‘I can’t resist you.’ His voice was nothing but a husk. ‘Sophie…’
There was longing in his voice, a caress.
Panic beat up in her—panic and more—much, much more! For a moment she was poised between the two, almost yielding to his voice, his touch, to his mouth so close to hers…
With despairing sanity, she freed herself. She stared blindly, her face aghast at what had so very nearly happened. Then, as if impelled by a reflex so urgent it possessed her totally, she pushed roughly past, tugging at the baize door and then hurtling down the stone-flagged corridor beyond, her footsteps echoing in the empty house.
Behind her, Nikos stood stock still.
What had he nearly done?
For a moment he, too, was poised in the balance, between what had so nearly happened and the hollowing realisation flooding through him now.
I nearly kissed her—
How had he let himself get so close to such a thing?
But he knew how—knew utterly. He’d wanted to kiss her. Feel for one long, blissful moment her soft lips beneath his…
Shudderingly, he pulled his mind away, banned it from the path it sought to follow. No! No, he must not allow this! Sophie was the past—the poisoned, tormented past. She was not the present—she must not be! Yet he had come that close to kissing her! That close to taking her slender, pliant body in his willing arms and kissing her…
With stringent effort, he sheered his thoughts away again. This had to stop! Now—right now! He should leave—right away—and never, never come near her again!
But would that stop him thinking about her? At his sides, his hands balled into fists. Four years ago, it had cost him more than he could bear to stop himself thinking about Sophie, by day and by night. And now—now that he stood so close to the edge of the cliff he had hauled himself up, hand over hand, so arduously four years ago—would he not be back exactly where he had once been?
I have to make myself immune to her! I have to see her as simply an ordinary woman, no one special. Beautiful, yes, but nothing more than that!
But how to make himself immune? As he stood, with the silent, deserted house all around him, it came to him. The logic clear and simple. Obvious. Slowly he felt his hands unfist. Of course! That was what he must do! That was his way out of this impossible impasse! He wanted immunity to her—well, the way to achieve it was staring him in the face! Immunity was achieved by exposure—that was how it worked. You exposed yourself to the infection and you gained immunity to it. If it worked with disease, it would work with the lethal vulnerability to Sophie Grafton that he was infected with!
As his hands unfisted he felt the tension drain out of him. Of course that was what he must do. Desensitise himself to her by treating her as if she were anyone—someone quite ordinary. Someone who had never had the disastrous impact on him that she had once had. Someone he could spend time with as easily, as uncomplicatedly, as any other person.
Over dinner, for example.
Yes, that was what he would do—he would take her to dinner tonight. A few hours in her company, in a public place, and he would soon be desensitised to her. See her not as a ghost from his past but as just a dinner companion, one of so many in his life. He would take from her the power to haunt him.
Resolution filled him. He glanced at his watch. By the end of the evening his purpose would have been achieved. Immunity from a woman he must never, never allow himself to desire again.