‘Naked!’ she spat angrily.
‘In a word, yes.’ He swam closer, hard muscled arms slicing through the dark depths to emerge briefly in the moonlight, silver and gleaming. ‘Is it my fault you are one uninhibited lady?’ he drawled softly when he was closer.
‘I am not uninhibited,’ Sophy hissed furiously, bitterly resenting the innuendo that she was quite happy to take off all her clothes in front of a virtual stranger.
‘So you’re inhibited?’ he asked in tones of hateful sympathy.
‘No, of course I’m not.’ She glared at him and then stamped her foot. ‘And don’t try any of your mind games on me, Andreas Karydis,’ she warned furiously. ‘I know your little tricks.’
‘That’s an improvement.’
‘What?’ She glared at him, resenting the easy tone.
‘You actually called me by my first name. Of course, the Karydis came after, but I still count that a step forwards.’
She just didn’t believe this man. She stared at him before drawing herself up and saying icily, ‘You can count it any way you want, but I still think you’re disgusting. To spy on people like that! It’s totally beyond the pale.’
‘I wasn’t spying on you, Sophy,’ he said silkily. ‘Any more than you were on me earlier.’
‘Me?’ He couldn’t, he couldn’t know about that?
‘On your balcony?’ he reminded her gently. ‘You happened to be there and I happened to be underneath; I understand that perfectly. And tonight I happened to be in the pool and you…’ He let his voice die away and smiled up at her instead.
Sophy had always considered herself a very non-violent person but right at this moment she wanted to commit murder. ‘That is utterly different and you know it,’ she managed through gritted teeth. ‘There was no time for me to make myself known.’
‘My point exactly,’ he said appeasingly.
His hair was wet and black and he raked it back with one hand as he stood up, the water now reaching to just above his waist. His eyes hadn’t left hers but he made no attempt to get out of the water, perhaps sensing she would run if he did.
‘I…I’m going back to the house,’ she said tightly. ‘I didn’t come down here to bandy words with you.’
‘Of course you didn’t,’ he agreed smoothly. ‘You came here to swim, so swim. No one is stopping you.’
Oh, yes, they were. The swimming costume she had brought with her was a modest one-piece affair in black lined silk. It was perfectly decent but she almost felt as naked as she had been a few minutes earlier with those lethal grey eyes fixed on her.
His maleness was even more flagrant in the dark shadows of the pool and, far from being chilly as she had been a few minutes before, she now felt feverishly hot. She wanted to moisten her dry lips but, knowing he would read the gesture for what it was—nerves—she restrained the impulse, and said instead, ‘I came here to be alone, actually.’
‘Don’t be childish.’ He turned in the water as he spoke, taking off for the deep end with a ruthlessly powerful drive. ‘There’s plenty of room for both of us in here, and I promise I won’t talk to you or interfere with your swim in any way. Okay? Does that satisfy you?’
No, it didn’t satisfy her at all, but Sophy felt as though she were between the devil and the deep blue sea, or perhaps the devil and the deep blue swimming pool was more correct.
She was still in the same position when Andreas swam back, his voice decidedly mocking now as he said, ‘Frightened of the big bad wolf, Sophy? Is that it? Believe it or not, I have actually seen a woman naked before and the sight of your body—although undeniably a nice bonus on a night like this—will not turn me into a sex-crazed monster. You’ll be quite safe.’
Impossible man! But the overt derision settled the matter and when he again turned and swam away Sophy wasted no time in entering the water. Once the first shock of the cold had abated she found it was pleasant, and after three or four lengths of the pool when she steadfastly ignored the dark figure cutting backwards and forwards in the opposite direction to her she found she was quite warm.
However, after some ten minutes or so in the pool, when Andreas had said not a word, the silence had become so loud Sophy felt like screaming to break it. Instead, at the point where their bodies passed each other, she said a trifle breathlessly, ‘I thought you had gone home. There was a car earlier?’
‘That was my driver, Paul, arriving, not me leaving.’
‘He’s here too?’ For a moment she almost expected the little gnome like man to pop out from behind a bush.
‘There were some papers I wanted my father to look at tonight before he went to bed, and it was easier for Paul to bring them and a change of clothes for me so we could go straight to the office from here in the morning,’ Andreas explained briefly, before swimming in the opposite direction.
His eyes had been black in the shadows and the bulk and breadth of him somewhat alarming so close to, his teeth gleaming white and the drops of liquid on his face and hair catching the moonlight as he had talked. Sophy felt a stirring in the pit of her stomach, a flood of sexual awareness that was impossible to deny. She continued on her route, splashing a little more than was necessary as her arms and legs seemed unable to follow the commands of her brain.
Andreas spoke the next time they passed. ‘You couldn’t sleep?’
‘No. There’s been so much happening today and, I suppose, a strange bed and all that…’ Her voice tailed off breathlessly.