The Greek Children's Doctor

‘Half my buttons are missing,’ he murmured, reaching out a lean hand and catching her chin. His eyes danced with humour. ‘Do you know anything about that?’

Libby pulled away from him, her face flaming as she recalled how totally uninhibited she’d been. She stooped to retrieve her shoes, wondering what had happened to her.

How could she have done such a thing?

She, who prided herself on her self-control.

But then her self-control had never really been tested before, she reminded herself, her eyes sliding to Andreas and resting on his broad shoulders as he shrugged on his jacket, effectively disguising the fact that half the buttons were missing on his shirt.

He shot her a wicked, sexy smile that made her pulse rate bolt.

‘Ready to go back to the party?’

Libby lifted a hand to her tangled blonde hair, still totally confused by her feelings. She absolutely didn’t love him. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered, painfully self-conscious. ‘I look—’

‘You look stunning,’ he said quietly, stepping towards her and cupping her face in his hands.

He kissed her softly and then threaded his fingers through hers and led her back across the grass, past groups of people who were all enjoying the cool night air after the stifling heat of the ballroom.

Libby kept her face down as they walked and when they reached the terrace just outside the ballroom Andreas stopped and lifted her chin so that she was forced to look at him.

‘Your guilt is written all over your face,’ he murmured, his tone amused as he stroked her hair away from her flushed face. ‘If it really troubles you that much, go to the ladies and redo your make-up.’

Totally shaken by what had happened and glad of an excuse to have five minutes to herself to gather her thoughts, Libby nodded and pulled away from him, hurrying inside to the ladies.

She locked herself in a cubicle and leaned against the door, her eyes tightly closed.

She didn’t love him. She couldn’t possibly love him.

It was just sex.

But she didn’t do just sex.

She wasn’t sure which was worse—the fact that she’d done something so reckless in the first place or the fact that she desperately wanted to do it again.

Oh, help!

What had she been thinking? And she knew the answer to that, of course. She hadn’t been thinking at all. All right, so Andreas was the sexiest man she’d ever laid eyes on but at the same time this was her, and she just didn’t behave like that. She’d never been interested in sex outside the confines of a serious relationship.

But, then, she’d never experienced good sex before tonight, she acknowledged wryly, opening her eyes and taking a deep breath. Suddenly she was aware of what she’d been missing all her life.

So what happened now?

She wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Andreas wanted anything other than a short-term relationship. She was just an interesting diversion to him.

But that just wasn’t going to work for her.

She liked him. A lot.

And, given a chance, she knew that it could be more than a lot.

Shaken by the intensity of what had happened between them, she knew that it wasn’t an experience that she could risk repeating. Sooner or later she’d end up being seriously hurt. She knew that she couldn’t enjoy that sort of physical closeness with a man without it developing into an emotional closeness, and that was something that Andreas wouldn’t want.

Neither did she, Libby reminded herself firmly. She didn’t want it either.

Which meant that she had to move on and pretend that it had never happened. Yes, that was it. She just needed to pretend that it had never happened. Isn’t that what people did after one-night stands? They just went their separate ways and never referred to ‘it’ again.

She groaned. Unfortunately, ‘it’ was something that she was never going to forget. And working with Andreas every day just made things doubly difficult.

She ran a hand over her face, wondering whatever could have possessed her to do something quite so stupid.

But she knew what had happened.

She’d been overwhelmed by the chemistry between them, seduced by his warmth and his breathtaking sex appeal. He had an amazing way of making her feel as though she were the only woman in the world.

As if he really cared.

In fact, she’d been so overwhelmed it would have been all too easy to convince herself that he really felt something for her.

Which was utterly ridiculous.

She sucked in a breath and gave herself a sharp talking-to.

She was becoming delusional. Seduced by the romance of the evening. She needed to go home to the familiarity of her flat before she did something stupid.

Having made the decision, she slid out of the ladies’ toilets with the minimum of fuss and made her way up the stairs, walking purposefully in the hope that no one would stop her.