YOU little liar, Isobel accused as she made good her escape. You meant what he thought you meant. What you didn’t expect was the counter-thrust that punched another hole in your stupid heart!
But he wasn’t coming after her, which probably meant they were back to square one, she thought heavily. Why am I here? Why am I letting him get to me like this? A three-year long separation should have dulled these wretched emotions out of existence!
The hotel was only a short walk away but by the time she arrived there she had the beginnings of a headache, so the last thing she needed was to walk into the hotel foyer and straight into a bored and weary reception party. Her mother, Clive and Lester Miles were all sitting on the few comfortable chairs the dingy foyer possessed. On a low table in front of them lay the remains of an indifferent-looking afternoon tea.
‘Where have you been?’ her mother demanded the moment she saw her. ‘I’ve been worrying myself sick about you.’
‘But I left you a message at Reception,’ she said frowningly as she walked towards them.
‘I got your message, Isobel,’ her mother said impatiently. ‘“I’ve gone out for while,” does not really cover a three-hour disappearance, does it? Having dragged me all the way to Athens, I did think you would have spared a little time to be with me.’
‘But I thought …’ she began, then changed her mind. Her mother was right and attempting to shift responsibility on to the fact that Clive was supposed to be taking her out for the day wasn’t good enough. Especially when it only took a glance at Clive to know he was wishing he hadn’t invited himself along on this trip.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, and bent to press a contrite kiss on her mother’s cheek. It felt warm and she looked flushed. It occurred to her that they all looked flushed. Clive was sweating and Lester Miles had lost his suit jacket and tie and was fanning himself with an ancient-looking magazine.
It was then that she realised the air-conditioning wasn’t working, and that it was as warm inside as it was out.
‘It’s broken,’ Clive offered, noticing the way she’d glanced up at the air-conditioning vents set in the walls.
Broken, Isobel echoed wearily. No wonder her mother was cross. She had promised her faithfully that the hotel would be cool when she’d bullied her into coming here with her. With a deep breath she braced herself. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we go upstairs and all take a nice shower, then we can find somewhere to—?’
‘We can’t go upstairs, either.’ It was Lester Miles that spoke this time. ‘The lift has broken down as well.’
‘As well?’ she gasped. ‘You have to be joking.’
‘Nope.’ It was Clive again. ‘We are in the middle of a power cut, in case you haven’t noticed. No lights, no air-conditioning and no lift,’ he pointed out. ‘Apparently it happens all the time.’
‘So you tell me, Isobel,’ Silvia said crossly, ‘how a wheelchair-bound, feeble woman climbs four flights of stairs to get her much-needed cool shower?’
I don’t know, she thought, and wondered what they would do if she plonked herself down on the floor and had a good weep? Nothing had gone according to plan from the moment she’d left here this morning. She wished she hadn’t come to Athens. She wished she was still at home in rainy England, plodding away at her mundane photo-imaging job! She certainly wished she hadn’t had to set eyes on Leandros again. He cut her up, he always had done. She lost her calm and steady sense of proportion whenever she was around him.
‘You two men don’t have to stay down here if you prefer to go and cool off in your rooms,’ she murmured a trifle unsteadily. ‘I’ll see if Mum and I can find—’
‘Trust me, Isobel,’ Clive put in deridingly, ‘we are sitting in the coolest place right now.’
‘This place is a dump,’ her mother added.
‘I’m sorry,’ her daughter apologised once again, realizing she was going to cry. She placed a hand to her aching head and tried to think. ‘Just give me a few minutes—all of you—and I’ll see if I can find us another hotel to—’
‘Is there a problem here?’ another, deeper voice inserted.
If it was possible, Isobel’s spirits sank even lower as she turned with fatalistic slowness to face her nemesis. Leandros didn’t look hot, she noticed. He didn’t look anything but cool and smooth, suave and handsome and …
‘What are you doing here?’ It was her mother who asked the abrasive question.
‘And good day to you, too, Silvia.’ Leandros smiled, but his eyes remained fixed on Isobel’s pale face. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her gently.
Gentle did it. Her mouth began to wobble. The tears bulged in her eyes. ‘I …’ She tried to think but found that she couldn’t. ‘I …’ She tried to speak again and couldn’t even do that. It wasn’t fair. He wasn’t fair. He’d spun her round in circles until she didn’t know what she was doing any more.
Leandros’s hand came out in front of him. She saw he was holding her camera case out by its strap. She must have left it at Vassilou’s restaurant. Maybe she’d left her courage there too. She reached out to take the camera back, missed the strap and found herself clutching at a solid male wrist instead. He didn’t even hesitate, but just used her grip to propel her towards him and the next moment her face was pressed into his shoulder and she stayed there, not even caring who watched her sink so easily into the enemy.
One of his hands was gently cupping her nape; the other just as gently curved her waist. The camera was knocking against the back of her leg and her fingers were clutching at a piece of his shirt. He felt strong and reassuringly familiar and, though she did not want to feel it, there was not another place that she would rather be right now.
Someone was talking, someone was tutting. Someone else was also sobbing quietly and she knew it was her. He didn’t speak. He just stood there and held her and listened.
Then she heard her mother snap, ‘This it is all your fault, Leandros.’
‘Quite,’ he agreed, the single word vibrating in his deep chest and against Isobel’s hot forehead. ‘Mr Miles,’ he spoke to her lawyer, ‘would you do me a great favour and go over to that excuse for a hotel receptionist and tell him that Leandros Petronades wishes to speak to him?’
This blatant bit of name-dropping brought Isobel’s face out of his chest. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.
‘What you once told me I am good at,’ he replied. ‘Which is solving other people’s problems.’
It was an old gripe, and it stiffened her spine to be reminded of it. ‘I can do that for myself.’
‘Stay where you are.’ The hand at her waist slid up her back to keep her still. ‘This is turning out to be one of the best days of my life, and you are not going to spoil it by turning back into the tough-lady I know so well.’
Her worst day, his best day. That just about said it all for Isobel.
As you would have expected, when Leandros threw his weight around, the hotel manager came out of his hideaway at great speed to begin apologising profusely in Greek. Leandros answered him in equally profuse but incisive Greek. The conversation was so swift and tight that Isobel couldn’t follow it all. By the time the little man had hurried away again, Leandros was letting her ease away from him, and she then had to brace herself to face their audience.
Which made it the third time in one day she’d had to do it. Well, they said that bad things always come in threes, so maybe her luck was about to change, she thought hopefully as she glanced from hot face to hot face.
Her mother was staring at her as if she couldn’t quite believe that her daughter had just wept all over her estranged husband. Lester Miles had put his jacket back on and was looking invigorated because he had been given something to do. Clive had come to his feet and was weighing up the competition. If he had any sense, it was all he would do, Isobel thought, then took in a deep breath and decided it was time to introduce him to Leandros.
‘Clive, this is my husband Lean—’
‘Silvia, thoes! You do not look well.’ Cutting her off with a brusque exclamation, Leandros didn’t even glance at Clive as he went to lean over her mother. ‘This has been too much for you,’ he murmured concernedly and took possession of one of her hands. ‘You must accept my sincere apologies on behalf of Athens. You will give me five minutes only and I will make your life more comfortable, ee pethera, I promise you. If the manager is doing as I instructed then a car is on its way here as I speak. It will carry you with air-conditioned swiftness away from this miserable place.’
As Isobel watched, her stubborn, tough, I-hate-this-man mother melted before her very eyes. ‘This hotel was all we could afford,’ she told him miserably. ‘Isobel wouldn’t listen to sense. She wouldn’t let you pay. And she wouldn’t let me stay in my own home where at least I could make myself a cup of tea if I pleased.’
‘Away to where?’ Isobel cut in on this very enlightning conversation.
‘To our home, of course,’ Leandros replied. ‘Isobel is a very stubborn woman, is she not?’ he conspired with her mother. ‘Which she gets from you, of course,’ he added with a grin.
‘I don’t cut my nose off to spite my face,’ Silvia pointed out.
‘What do you mean, to your home?’ Isobel gasped in outrage.
‘Our home,’ he corrected. ‘I am relieved to hear that, ee meetera. It is such a beautiful nose. Perhaps between us we could persuade Isobel to leave her nose where it is?’
‘You always were an inveterate charmer, Leandros,’ Silvia huffed, but her cheeks were now flushed with pleasure rather than heat.
‘Leandros. We are not going to stay at your house,’ Isobel protested. ‘The power cut will be over in a minute or so, then everything here will be back to normal!’
‘And if it happens again when your mother is in her room?’ he challenged. ‘Is it worth risking her being trapped up there?’
‘Just what I’d been about to say before you arrived.’ Her wretched mother nodded.
Isobel threw herself into one of the chairs and gave up the fight. ‘What about Clive and Mr Miles?’ she tossed into the melting pot of calamities that were befalling her today. ‘They will have to come too.’
There was a sudden and stunningly electric silence. Then Leandros rasped, ‘Your lover can sleep where the hell he likes, so long as it is not in my house.’
Her mother stared at him. Clive looked as if he had turned to stone. Lester Miles just watched it all avidly, like a man watching some gripping drama unfold.
Isobel’s heart stopped dead. Oh, dear God, she groaned silently and covered her eyes and wished the world would swallow her up. Too late, she remembered that she’d left Leandros with the impression that she and Clive were lovers.
She couldn’t take any more. She stood up. ‘I’m going to my room,’ she breathed shakily, and headed for the stairwell on legs that shook.
By the time she’d climbed up four flights and felt her way down a dingy inner corridor to her room, she was out of breath and so fed up that she headed straight for the telephone and got Reception to connect her with the airport. If she could get them home tonight then they were going, she decided grimly. Even if that meant travelling in the cargo hold!
No such luck. When a day like this began it didn’t give up on turning one’s life into a living hell. No seats were available on any flight out of Athens. She was stuck. Her mother was stuck.
‘I’m sorry,’ a voice said behind her. ‘My coming here seems to have made a lot of problems for you.’
‘Why did you come, Clive?’ She swung round on him. ‘I don’t understand what you aimed to gain!’
He was standing propping up the doorway. ‘I thought I might be of some use.’ His shrug was rueful. ‘Your mother agreed. It didn’t occur to me that your husband would view my presence here with such suspicion.’
He didn’t just suspect—he knew because she had told him! Oh, heck, she thought and sighed heavily. ‘He’s been having me watched,’ she explained. ‘When he heard that you were here he automatically assumed the worst.’
‘It’s nothing to do with him any more what I am to you,’ Clive responded curtly. ‘You came here to agree a divorce, not ask his permission to take a lover.’
Isobel released a thick laugh. ‘Leandros is a very powerful, very arrogant, and very territorial man. The moment he heard about you, the divorce thing was dropped. Now I’m stuck with a man who has decided to work on his marriage rather than give me up to someone else.’
‘That’s primitive!’
‘That’s Leandros,’ she replied, then sighed and sat down on the end of the bed.
‘You don’t have to go with him.’
No? I wish, she thought. ‘He’s already sweet-talked my mother with promises of air-conditioning and I can’t even begin to list the rest of the luxury she is now looking forward to.’
‘She doesn’t even like the man.’
‘Don’t you believe that front she puts up,’ she said heavily. ‘My mother used to think he was the best thing that ever happened to me.’ Until it all went wrong; then she’d wished him in hell.
Clive slouched further into the room. He was built like a cannon. All iron with a sunbed-bronzed sheen. The women adored him and flocked after him in droves. He worked at a fitness club. He spent hours patiently helping broken people to mend. He was nice!
‘You came to Athens hoping I would need putting back together again after meeting Leandros, didn’t you?’ she suddenly realized.
The painful part of it was that he didn’t deny it. ‘A man can hope.’
And a woman could dream. Her dream was downstairs right now, taking over her life. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured huskily.
He came to sit beside her on the bed. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
Cry my eyes out? ‘Give it a chance.’ She shrugged.
On a sigh, Clive put a big arm around her and gave her a sympathetic hug. It was a nice arm, strong and secure and safe. But it was the wrong arm and the wrong man, though she wished it wasn’t.
‘Well, this is nice,’ a very sardonic voice drawled.
Isobel felt her heart sink to her toes. Clive gave her shoulder a final squeeze then stood up. As he walked towards Leandros she could feel the hostility bouncing between the two of them. It conjured up images of dangerous cats again, only these were two big male predators considering testing each other’s weight. They didn’t speak. It was all part of the test to keep silent. Clive didn’t stop walking and Leandros didn’t move so their shoulders brushed in one of those see-you-later confrontations you expected from a pair of strutting thugs.
The moment Clive had gone, the bedroom door closed with a violent thud. Isobel got up and went over to the small chest of drawers and pulled open the top drawer for some reason she couldn’t recall.
‘My car has arrived,’ Leandros informed her levelly. ‘Lester Miles and my driver are taking your mother on ahead.’
‘You should have gone with them.’ It was not meant nicely.
‘And leave you alone with the body-builder? You must think I am mad.’
‘Clive is a friend, not my lover.’ There, she’d told him. Now he could relax and return to the issue of divorce.
‘Too late for that, agape mou,’ he said deridingly. ‘Though ex-lover, he most definitely is.’
‘He is not my lover!’ she swung on him furiously.
His black eyes flared. He moved like lightning, making her heart pound as he pushed his angry face up to her. ‘Don’t lie to me!’ he barked at her. ‘I am not a fool! I can count as well as you can!’
‘Count?’ She frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’
His breath left his lips through clenched white teeth. If he touched her she had a feeling he would end up strangling her, he was in such a rage. But he didn’t touch. He brought up his hand and placed four long fingers in front of her face. ‘Four people. Three rooms,’ he breathed severely. ‘You tell me how that adds up! You tell me where the extra person sleeps!’
‘Why, you …’ The words got lost in a strangled gasp as it sank in what he was getting at. ‘Clive did not share this room with me!’ she denied shrilly. ‘He didn’t come as one of my party. He came under his own steam. Booked in under his own name—and his room is not even on this floor!’
He didn’t believe her, she could see it as the savagery locked into his face. Without another word she slapped his hand away then stalked across to the wardrobe, threw open the doors then stood back. ‘My room. My clothes!’ she said furiously. ‘My single bed!’
Her hand flicked out, sending his angry gaze lashing across the utilitarian plainness of a three-foot divan set in the shoebox this hotel called a single room.
‘You know what you are, Leandros? You’re the original chauvinist pig! You dare to come up here showing me your contempt for what you believe I’ve been doing with my sordid little life—while you shack up with Diantha Christophoros on your super-expensive bloody yacht!’
He spun to stare at her. ‘What I said before about Di—’
‘Talk about double standards,’ she sliced over him. ‘I really ought to go and confront her now, just to even things up a bit. Shall I do that, Leandros?’ She threw out the challenge. ‘Shall I strut the strut? Get all territorial and threaten to smack her in the face if she so much as looks at my man? Maybe I should.’ She sucked in a fiery breath, breasts heaving, eyes flashing on the crest of a furious wave. ‘Maybe I should just do that and let the whole upper echelons of this damn city know that Isobel, your scary slut, is back!’
She was gasping for breath by the time she had finished. He wasn’t breathing at all and his face had gone pale. But the eyes were alive with a dangerous glitter. ‘Slut,’ he hissed out. ‘You’re no scary slut but just an angry woman on the defensive!’
‘Defending what?’ she asked blankly.
‘Your blond Adonis.’
At which point she knew she was in trouble. He didn’t believe her about Clive, and was coming towards her with the slow tread of a man about to stake his claim on what he believed belonged to him.
‘Don’t you dare,’ she quavered, beginning to tremble as his arm came up. His hand purposefully outstretched and angled to take hold of her by the waist. If she backed up she would be inside the wardrobe; if she stayed where she was she was as good as dead meat for this predatory male.
‘Andros—no,’ she murmured shakily and tried a squirming shift of her body in an attempt to evade what was going to come.
His hand slid further around her waist and banded her to him. ‘Say that again,’ he gritted.
‘Say what?’ Too distracted by his closeness, she just looked blank.
‘Andros,’ he murmured in that low, deep, huskily sensual way that robbed her of her ability to breathe. Had she said his name like that? She couldn’t remember. She hoped she hadn’t because it gave too much away.
His other hand came up to coil around the thick silk lock of her pony-tail and began tugging with gentle relentlessness so he could gain access to the long column of her neck. She knew what was coming, her breath caught in her throat. If she let him put his tongue to that spot beneath her earlobe she was going to explode in a shower of electric delight.
‘Say it,’ he repeated, his eyes dark like molasses, his face locked in the taut mask of a man on the edge. His lips had parted, and were coming closer to her angled neck.
She released a stifled choke. ‘Andros,’ she whispered.
His mouth diverted. It was so quick, so rewarding that she didn’t stand a single chance. He claimed her mouth with devastating promise. He devoured it while she fought for breath. Her breasts heaved against his hard chest, her hips ground against the glorious power of his. Nothing went to waste, the kiss, touch, taste, scents, and even the sounds they made were collected in and used to enhance the whole experience.
It had always been like this. One second nothing, the next they were embroiled in a heady, sensuous feast. His fingers were in her hair. The next moment it was flowing over his hand and she quivered with pleasure because it always felt so very sexy when he set it free like this. Her T-shirt was easy; it disappeared without a trace. His shirt came next, revealing a torso that made her groan as she scraped her fingernails into the curling black mass of hair.
They kissed like maniacs; she nipped his lip, he bit back. Their tongues danced, their eyes locked together. She slid down his zip and covered him with the flat of her hand. He groaned something. He was hot and hard and out of control but then so was she. With one of his swift silent moves he picked her up and put her down on the divan bed then bent to rake the rest of her clothes down her legs.
‘I’m going to eat you alive,’ he said as he stripped himself naked. And he meant it. He began by bending his dark head and fastening on to one of her breasts. She squirmed with pleasure, her fingers clutching at his shoulders so she could pull him down next to her on the bed. He was magnificent, he was beautiful, his skin felt like oiled leather and she stroked and scored and kneaded it until he couldn’t take any more and came to claim her mouth.
Every single inch of him was pumped up and hard with arousal. Every single inch of her was lost in a world of fine, hungry tremors that demanded to be quelled. They kissed, they touched, they rolled as a single sensual unit. When he reached between her legs, she cried out so keenly that he uttered a black oath and had to smother the sound with his mouth. The room shimmered in the golden light of the low afternoon sun. The heat was tremendous, their bodies bathed in sweat. His first plunge into her body brought forth another keening cry. He muffled this one with his hand. She turned her teeth on him, latching on to the side of his palm until he groaned in agonised pleasure, then pulled the hand away and finally buried his mouth in her neck.
Starbursts swirled in the steamy atmosphere. Her legs wrapped around his waist. With each thrust of his body she released another thickened cry and he groaned deep in his throat. It was a blistering, blinding coupling, incandescent and uncompromisingly indulgent in every sense. He brought her to the edge, then framed her face with his hands. His heart was pounding. His eyes were black, his beautiful mouth tight, his total commitment to what was about to happen holding his features drawn and tense.
The first flutters of orgasm took her breath away. He groaned, ‘Oh, my God,’ as her muscles rippled along the length of his shaft. His eyes closed, her eyes closed, and each flutter lengthened with each driving thrust until the whole experience became one long, tempestuous shower of sensation. It had always been like this for them; there wasn’t a place where they could separate the sensuous storm at work inside each other.
Tenderness followed. It had to. They couldn’t share something so deeply intimate and special then get up and walk away. Leandros rolled onto his back and took Isobel with him, curving her into his side with a possessive arm while he took deep breaths. Her cheek lay in the damp hollow of his shoulder; her arm lay heavy across his chest. She could feel the aftershocks at work inside him and turned her mouth to anoint him with a slow, moist kiss. It was one of those exquisite moments in time when nothing else mattered but what they were feeling for each other and through each other.
Then the lights flicked on. The small refrigerator in the corner began to whir. Muffled cheers sounded through the thin walls and reality returned with the electricity.
Leandros jerked into a sitting position then jackknifed off the bed. ‘Tell me again that this bed is not big enough for two people,’ he rasped and strode off to her tiny bathroom, slamming the door behind him in his wake.
He must be mad, he told himself as he turned on the poor excuse for a shower and attempted to wash the sweat from his flesh with tepid water that dribbled rather than sprayed.
Did he really want all of this back again? Did he want to feel so out of control all the time that he could barely think? She touched him and his skin was enlivened, she spat fury at him and it excited him out of all that was sane. She hated his family, she hated his lifestyle, she had learned his language but had not bothered to tell him so she could listen in like a sneaky spy on every conversation happening around her. She was already threatening to cause trouble and he would be a fool not to take her seriously.
He knew her. She was a witch and a hellion. Had he not reminded himself of these things only two weeks ago in Spain? Sluicing water down the flatness of his stomach, his hand brushed over the spot where she had laid her final kiss. Sensation quivered through him; hot and sweet, it caused a fresh eruption of flagrant passion to flow through his blood. Her barbs were not always sharp, he recognised grimly as he switched off the shower.
Grabbing one of the stiff hotel towels, he began to rub himself dry with it. It smelled of Isobel—her perfume was suddenly back on his skin and floating round his senses like a magic potion meant to keep him permanently bewitched. Did this dump of a hotel not even change the towels daily? Glancing around the tiny bathroom, he saw the signs of female occupation but no sign of a man’s stamp anywhere.
No hint of a man’s scent lay on the towels. Was she telling the truth? Ah, he would be a bigger fool to believe it, he told himself harshly. If the muscle-bound hulk did not know what it was like to fall apart in that woman’s arms then he was no man, in his estimation.
Did he really want all of this back in his life?
It had been a day of madness, that was all; pure madness. He had seen and remembered and wanted and now had. It should be enough to let the rest of Isobel return to her other life so he could return to his.
But it wasn’t, and he knew it the moment he stepped out of the bathroom with one of the towels wrapped round his hips. She was standing by the window in a blue towelling bathrobe, which looked familiar to him. Could it be the same one of his from his house in Athens that she used to pinch all the time because she liked to feel him close to her skin? Her hair lay down the back of it, her hands were lost in its cavernous pockets. He wanted to go over there and wind his arms around her but anger and frustration and outright damn need held him back from doing it.
Did he want to let her go again? Not in this lifetime. ‘You can use the bathroom now,’ he said as calmly as he could do and turned away from her.
‘I will when you’ve gone,’ she replied.
He was about to recover his scattered clothes when she said that but his movements froze on a sudden warning sting. ‘In case you have forgotten,’ he finished, bending to pick up his trousers, ‘you are coming with me.’
‘No, I’m not.’
His legs suddenly felt like lead beneath him. ‘Of course you are,’ he insisted. ‘You cannot stay in this place, and your mother is …’
She turned to look at him then. His ribcage tightened in response. She looked so pale and fragile—ethereal, as if she could float away if the window were open.
‘I would appreciate it if you could put my mother up for tonight,’ she requested politely. ‘You are right about this hotel; it isn’t the place for her and I don’t want to upset her further by moving her on again. But I’ll stay here and collect her tomorrow in time for us to catch our flight home.’
‘You come with me,’ he insisted yet again and did not want to think about tomorrow.
But she shook her head. ‘I think we’ve made enough mistakes for one day.’
‘This is not a mistake.’ Had he really just said that? While he had been locked away in the bathroom he had agreed with her. Now, when he could look at her again, he did not want it to be a mistake! ‘We’ve just made love—’
‘No,’ she denied that, and what made it all the more frightening was that she did it so calmly. ‘You’ve made your point.’ A slight tilt of her head acknowledged his success at it. ‘Two can lie in that narrow bed—I stand corrected. Now I would like you to leave.’
Leave, he repeated inwardly. She was dismissing him. ‘So that the Adonis can get back in?’
Spark, he urged her silently. Say something like—Of course, he’s waiting outside the door! Then I can retaliate swiftly. I can toss you back down on that blasted bed!
But she didn’t say anything. She just turned and walked into the bathroom and left him standing there like a fool!