They talked some more before Jill wandered off to find Dimitra and Michael whilst Sophy got bathed and dressed, but long after Jill had left Sophy continued to sit in the sunshine. Her eyes were fixed on a mass of oleanders in the distance, the rich green clusters of foliage crowned with bursts of pink and white flowers quite beautiful, but Sophy wasn’t really seeing them at all. Her vision was all within herself.
Would she ever have children? she asked herself silently, the conversation with Jill having sparked off a vague feeling of depression. She couldn’t imagine going through life childless, and yet she had never really seen herself and Matthew in a family setting somehow. She had heard women remark that they were longing to have their partner’s baby, but she’d never felt like that about Matthew. Was that wrong?
But Matthew had always been ill at ease with children, she reminded herself in the next moment, and the fragility of babies had frankly horrified him. When one of their close friends had asked him to be godfather to the
ir first-born he had refused point blank, deeply offending the couple in question.
Now, in spite of Andreas’s big, powerful build and aggressively masculine demeanour, she could picture him cradling an infant with the utmost tenderness, and his easy rapport with Michael had been immediate. He would be a natural as a father. Andreas Karydis as a father holding his newborn baby… Making babies with Andreas Karydis…
The harsh jarring call of what sounded like a peacock somewhere outside the confines of the grounds brought Sophy back to earth with a bump, and when she realised what she had been daydreaming about she went hot with mortification.
She was losing it, she really was! She’d be a candidate for the funny farm at this rate. She didn’t know what had happened to her from the minute she had stepped foot in this country but she didn’t like it one little bit!
She jumped up from the chair and stalked into the bedroom, her face set. But one thing had changed this morning; she was darned if she was going to high-tail it back to England like a little scared rabbit. Jill had called her a fighter and maybe she was at that, because now, in the cold clear light of day, the thought of running away was just not an option. She hadn’t been herself last night—not in any way, shape or form—but that was last night and today was today and things were going to be different.
Andreas Karydis was just a man like any other; she had blown this whole thing up into something it wasn’t. When she saw him again—if she saw him again—she would offer a cool apology for her last words to him the night before, at the same time as making it perfectly clear she had no intention of being so foolish as to repeat the exercise that prompted her outburst. Simple, she assured herself as she began to run a warm bath. No need for dramatics or rushing off home to England or anything else. She was a mature and competent woman who could deal with any hiccup life chose to inflict on her. Andreas might be rather a large hiccup, but a hiccup he was, nevertheless.
The three women and Michael spent a lazy afternoon by the pool after a light alfresco lunch. Jill and Dimitra insisted on it, declaring Sophy must take it easy after such a bad headache the night before. Their concern made her feel horribly guilty but Michael’s transparent joy at being able to hop in and out of the pool all day eased her sore conscience a little. The small boy was clearly having a whale of a time and was already turning nut brown, although Jill and Sophy spent most of their time under the shade of the trees at the far end of the pool, mindful of the effect of the burning sun on their pale English skin.
After a couple of dips in the pool Sophy changed into a thin white cotton shirt top and long matching skirt, mid-afternoon. In spite of staying out of the sun her skin was turning rosy pink and she used that as an excuse to cover up. In actual fact, it was more the fact that Andreas might—just might—call by before returning to his own home, and if that happened she wanted—needed—to be as different from the girl he had met by the pool in the darkness of night as it was possible to be.
She lay on one of the loungers, the dark shade broken into patches by dappled sunlight, and idly watched Dimitra playing with Michael in the shallow end of the pool; Jill was fast asleep on another lounger at the side of her.
She wasn’t aware of shutting her eyes, but the few hours of fragmented rest she had managed the night before must have caught up with her, because when she surfaced from a deep sleep it was to the realisation that the sun was no longer high in a blue sky but falling softly into the shadows of evening, and Andreas had taken Jill’s place on the lounger beside her.
There was no smile on Andreas’s face as he watched her eyes slowly focus and then widen as she sat up abruptly, and his handsome face was cold and still as she stuttered, ‘I…I must have fallen asleep. What—where are Jill and Michael?’
‘It is seven o’clock. Michael has had his tea and his mother is getting him ready for bed.’
There was a brooding quality to his presence and he looked devastatingly foreign, his formal shirt and loose tie, along with his suit trousers, indicating he was still in his office attire. The collar of his shirt was undone and revealed his bronzed muscled neck, and she noticed his eyes were so dark a grey as to be black, with a glittering fire in them that spoke of some emotion. Anger at her, no doubt, after last night.
She didn’t stop to think, she just said, ‘I want to apologise for what I said last night, Andreas. It was unfair and untrue. You aren’t a bit like Theodore.’
He said nothing at all for a moment, and then moved in his seat, leaning back and stretching his long legs. ‘Thank you. I won’t argue with you.’
There was more than a touch of dryness in his voice but Sophy was relieved he hadn’t been more difficult. ‘Last night—’ she waved what she hoped he perceived as a casual hand ‘—I was overtired and not thinking straight.’
‘I see.’ He let his dark gaze run over her soft blonde hair and creamy, sunkissed skin, and she found herself flushing scarlet in spite of all her efforts to appear nonchalant and in control.
‘I was not overtired and there was nothing wrong with my thinking,’ he drawled with silky composure. ‘I wanted to kiss you; I had been wondering what you tasted like from the first moment I saw you at the airport.’
She stared at him, immediately on the defensive. ‘Look, Andreas, I’m here to keep Jill company, that’s all,’ she said quickly, relieved her voice sounded more firm than she expected.
He gave her a hard look. ‘Do I take it you are informing me there will be no repeat of last night?’ he asked expressionlessly.
‘Exactly. I’m sorry.’ She was relieved it had been so easy.
His frown changed to a quizzical ruffle which did the most peculiar things to her nerve endings. ‘You’re not at all sorry,’ he said mildly. ‘Right from the first you have been fighting me, have you not?’
First Jill, now him. Had she got ‘fighter’ tattooed on her forehead or something? ‘Not at all,’ she said carefully. ‘I admit we haven’t hit it off, though, but that’s life.’
‘The hell we haven’t.’ He straightened in the chair and she had to force her body not to react. ‘Don’t you recognise sexual chemistry when you feel it? The issue here is not that we haven’t hit it off, Sophy, but that we’ve hit it off too fiercely for your mind to cope with. Your body, however, knows exactly what it wants.’
She couldn’t believe he was sitting there saying these things to her with such a matter-of-fact tone of voice. She glared at him, her body stiff and tense and her face expressing her outrage. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said icily. ‘And you know it.’
He refused to accept her self-denial. ‘No, it’s the truth whether you like it or not.’
‘I don’t like it,’ she shot back tightly. ‘Neither do I appreciate the fact that you obviously think I’m the sort of woman who sleeps around.’