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.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SOPHIE was tearing up weeds. Ruthlessly, urgently. As if pulling weeds out of her own heart. Weeds that had the face of Nikos Kazandros! Emotion scythed through her. Dear God, how close, how perilously, disastrously close she had come to letting him kiss her—
Kiss her! Just like that—there and then!
She had so nearly let it happen! Nearly let herself yield to him! The strength it had taken to pull away, back to safety, to sanity, had been almost beyond her! But she’d done it, and thank God for it!
Gradually, as she worked, her heart-rate slowed and she started to calm, to regain some shred of composure. It was all right. She was safe. He hadn’t come after her. He was leaving her alone. And when she heard, a short time later, the throaty roar of Nikos’s car, she felt safer yet. Safer still if she didn’t let herself dwell on what had nearly happened. Safer if she kept herself doggedly working, until the shadows lengthened across the whole garden, and her back was aching, and she knew she needed to stop.
Stiffly, she got to her feet. There was sun now only in the treetops, high above. The walled garden itself was completely in the shade. She gave a little shiver. It was cool to the point of chill. And as she looked around the shadows seemed to bring a pall of melancholy sifting over her—a sense of slow, abandoned desolation.
She was alone. Completely alone. Nikos was long gone. And, for a reason she did not want to think about, she felt suddenly bereft.
For a moment she just stood there, staring bleakly. Then, as she knew she must—for what else could she do?—she squared her shoulders and went indoors.
She would fill the evening ahead as she had filled all those up till now. She would wash, make herself some supper, and watch something on TV—whatever was on, she didn’t care much—then go to bed. And she would not think herself lonely, the evening ahead empty…