Evangelos’s specialty was the wine, and at least three different varieties of both white and red had been brought out by the time the coffee and ouzo appeared.
It was an amazing lifestyle, Sophy thought, as she glanced round the beautifully decorated room beyond which the lights on the patio showed the gardens stretching away into the dusky night. Incredibly luxurious and opulent, and yet all the money in the world hadn’t enabled Evangelos to do the one thing he had wanted with all his heart—to protect the woman he loved from further hurt in her life.
He had brought her out of the shame and misery which had been thrust upon her, provided the ivory palace of fairytale stories and more or less wrapped Dimitra up in cotton wool, but still the older woman had suffered to the point where her mental health had been broken when Theodore had rejected her so cruelly. And it had been cruel, wickedly cruel. She couldn’t see Andreas treating his mother so badly, whatever the circumstances.
Immediately the thought materialised, the warning bells were clanging. What did she know about Andreas? Nothing at all beyond the fact that at times he could be just as hard and uncompromising as Theodore had been, so he might be quite capable of hurting Dimitra. Whatever, it was none of her business. This family was nothing to her beyond Jill’s involvement with them. The old feud with its ongoing ramifications, along with the lives of Andreas and his parents, would soon be a distant memory once she was back in England; two weeks was just a brief flash of time in the overall span of things.
The air was heavier and more humid than it had been the night before, and when Dimitra suggested that they take their coffee on the patio to benefit from any slight breeze everyone agreed. Sophy especially was longing for a change of scene.
It was a little cooler outside and almost dark, the night sky of dark charcoal streaked with bands of silver grey and dull mauve. The scent of the climbing roses which twined all over the back of the house was rich and sweet in the warm air, and Sophy found her taut nerves were beginning to relax a little as she sat and sipped her coffee and listened to the others chat.
Christina had just bustled in and poured the women another coffee when Jill said, ‘I think I’ll just go and check on Michael before I drink mine,’ turning to Dimitra as she finished and adding, ‘Would you like to come with me?’ Dimitra had apparently accompanied her daughter-in-law the night before when Jill had looked in on her son before retiring, and it had touched Jill how Dimitra had stood for ages just watching her grandson sleep.
As the two women stood up, Evangelos also rose, saying in an aside to Andreas, ‘I’ll make that telephone call to Athos to confirm the shipping dates now. I won’t be long,’ and before Sophy could blink she found herself alone with Andreas in the warm scented night.
She wasn’t aware she had shifted uneasily until the smoky voice at her elbow said softly, ‘Relax, Sophy. I’m not about to leap on you if that’s what you are thinking.’
She made the mistake of turning to look him full in the face, and the dark sardonic gleam in the grey eyes informed her all too clearly he was loving her confusion.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said stiffly, wishing she could think of a crushing retort to put him in his place.
‘A kiss. I am to be hung, drawn and quartered for a kiss. Is that it?’ he asked very quietly.
Put like that it sounded nothing, she admitted silently, but she knew—as well as Andreas did—that something vital and e
lectric had leapt into being between them the moment his lips had touched hers. And if she hadn’t called a halt, who knew what might have occurred in the perfumed darkness by the pool?
‘You are determined not to mellow an inch, are you not? I am cast into the role of wicked philanderer and this will make it easier for you to ignore the truth,’ he stated flatly.
‘The truth?’ she asked warily, wondering what was coming.
‘The truth your body recognised from the first moment we met—that we are compatible sexually in a way that happens with few couples.’ He looked at her, daring her to deny it.
‘We’re not a couple,’ she pointed out swiftly, hot colour burning her cheeks, ‘and you can’t possibly say that, considering we’ve never even—’ she paused for the briefest of moments before finishing ‘—slept together.’
‘I am more than willing to put my theory to the test,’ Andreas offered helpfully, leaning back in his chair as he crossed one knee over the other and surveyed her from laughing grey eyes, his face remaining completely serious.
Sophy gritted her teeth. ‘How kind, but if you don’t mind I’ll decline your generous offer.’
He grinned openly then and she didn’t like the rush of sensation that almost overwhelmed her as the hard, handsome face relaxed and softened.
He had slid into the seat Dimitra had vacated as the others had left, and now he stared at her for a moment before saying softly, the amusement dying from his face, ‘You have the most beautiful eyes, do you know that? And they are a deeper violet than Jill’s. Your hair is different too. Yours is a little paler than Jill’s, silver almost, like moonlit water. You really are not so alike after all.’
He was close enough for her to be wrapped up in his male aura and it took a second for her to be able to say, her voice striving for lightness, ‘There is no danger of mistaking us then?’ as she tried to wrench her gaze from his.
‘None at all.’ He took one of her hands as though he had the right to do so, and when she instinctively tried to pull it away secured her fingers in one hand with her palm uppermost as his other hand casually stroked the soft full flesh. ‘Soft and silky,’ he murmured almost to himself, ‘such fine transparent skin.’ And then he had raised her palm to his lips, touching her flesh gently just for a moment.
A tingle shot straight up her arm and this time when she pulled away he let her go, settling back in Dimitra’s chair more comfortably as his eyes narrowed on her flushed face. He folded his arms over his chest, and then said evenly, as though the rest of their conversation hadn’t happened, ‘Come out to dinner with me tomorrow night, just the two of us. I know a little place you would love down by the seafront.’
Was he mad? Sophy placed her hands in her lap and stared at him through the whirling in her head. ‘No, thank you.’
‘Why not?’ he responded immediately.
He knew darn well why not! ‘I don’t want to,’ she said ungraciously. ‘Okay?’ She eyed him defiantly.
‘That’s not an answer. Give me a reason. Is it because you are frightened to be alone with me, little English mouse? You think I will take advantage of you? Or perhaps it is yourself you are frightened of, eh? Maybe that is it?’
He was absolutely on the ball there but Sophy would rather have walked on red-hot coals in her bare feet than admit it. ‘I am here to keep Jill company,’ she said stiffly, ‘as you well know. Not to go gadding off with every Tom, Dick or Harry.’