Sophy hadn’t heard anything more after the staying overnight bit. She drew a deep breath and said quietly, ‘That’s impossible and you know it. I couldn’t possibly take off with you anywhere.’
‘Why? You wanted me to tell you about Greece. I’m showing you instead, which is far better,’ he said reasonably, ‘now isn’t it?’
‘Not with Jill to consider, not to mention your work.’
He opened his eyes and sat up straighter. ‘I’m the boss; I can take a few days holiday if I like,’ he said mildly, ‘and I know for a fact that Jill and Michael have been invited on a trip on Stevos’s parents’s yacht.
If Jill knows that you will be otherwise occupied, she wouldn’t feel so bad about leaving you.’
‘Jill didn’t say anything to me about a trip.’ Sophy felt ridiculously hurt that Andreas knew more than she did.
‘Perhaps because she doesn’t know yet,’ Andreas drawled lazily, ‘but Stevos’s father works for me and he told me what he had in mind. I thought it was an excellent idea.’
Sophy stared at him. If it wasn’t the height of presumption, she could almost imagine that Andreas had put Stevos’s father up to this, but that was too ridiculous. He wouldn’t do all that just to be with her. ‘Whatever, I couldn’t possibly just take off with you,’ she repeated firmly. ‘You know I couldn’t.’
He sent her a mildly amused smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘You could do exactly that,’ he argued gently.
‘Whatever would your parents think?’
‘That I was being the perfect host?’ he suggested softly.
‘Ha!’ She glared at him, hardly able to believe he was serious.
Andreas considered her for another moment. ‘Is that rather cryptic exclamation supposed to mean something?’ he asked at last.
He was being purposely obtuse. ‘You know exactly what it means,’ Sophy fumed, swigging the last of her cocktail in her anger, and ignoring the warning the fuzziness in her head was trying to give her regarding the potency of Paul’s cocktails. ‘It would look as if—’ She stopped abruptly, seeing that the amusement had now crept into his eyes and that his firm mouth was twitching slightly. He was laughing at her! She gritted her teeth and continued, ‘As if we were more than just friends.’
‘Separate rooms, I promise.’ He surveyed her from under dark brows. ‘And I’ll make that clear to everyone, although why on earth two adults of our age have to answer to anyone but ourselves beats me,’ he finished as though she was being unreasonable.
‘Because I’m not like that and I don’t want your parents to get the wrong idea,’ she hissed tightly. ‘I wouldn’t dream of going to bed with someone I hardly know.’
‘Exactly.’ His smile was as sharp as a knife. ‘And the best way to get to know someone is to spend time with them, right? We’ll explore together, eat together, be together. No strings attached and strictly on your terms. You are Jill’s sister, Michael is our shared nephew, so we owe it to them to be nice to each other, yes?’
‘That’s the worst line I’ve heard yet.’ She scowled at him to prevent her lips twitching with amusement at his transparent hypocrisy. ‘I can’t believe you’d use an innocent little boy to get your own way.’
‘Neither can I,’ he said with a remarkable lack of remorse. ‘It just shows me what lengths you’ve driven me to. You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ he added reprovingly.
‘Me?’ There was no way, no way on earth she would agree to such a crazy, dangerous suggestion. ‘Me ashamed of myself?’
‘Say you will come, Sophy.’ He’d risen swiftly to his feet, pulling her up with him, and as always his accent gave her name a sensuousness an English voice couldn’t hope to achieve. He kissed her, hard and long and very completely, and by the end of it her breath was shuddering and her legs were fluid. The heat of the sun was warm now rather than hot, the fierceness of the day mellowing to a delicious caress, and overhead a lone gull wheeled and circled in the air currents calling its melancholy cry to the wind. Nothing seemed real any more, only Andreas…
‘Just a few days out of real life,’ he whispered coaxingly against her mouth, teasing her with his tongue. ‘A golden time to remember.’ His hands came up to frame her face and they were gentle, incredibly gentle for such a big man. ‘It will be good.’
He kissed her again, tasting and teasing until she kissed him back, and then his hands followed the smooth line of her throat, over the soft swell of her breasts where they lingered to caress the peaks into tortured life before continuing to the narrow span of her waist. ‘Just a few days,’ he murmured again.
He kept the pace slow, kissing her deeply one moment and then returning to cover her forehead, her temples, her eyelids, her cheekbones in hot little burning kisses that made her mouth search for his long before he assuaged its hunger once again.
The blood was surging through her veins now in a riot of sensation, the scent of him all about her as his lips and his hands continued to work their magic.
She could feel him trembling as he pulled her hard into the length of him, the kiss suddenly deepening into sheer hot and heady passion as she felt the power of his arousal against her softness. And then, almost as though he had recognised his control was slipping, he moved her away from him slightly, kissing her hard one last time before he said, ‘Say yes, Sophy.’
She opened heavy lids, shattered and breathless by the flood of feelings he’d ignited and her head whirling. ‘Andreas—’
‘Say yes,’ he commanded again, his dark eyes glittering as they looked down into her flushed face. ‘Nothing will happen that you do not want, I promise you this.’
‘You promise?’ Her eyes were still dilated with desire. ‘Separate rooms and nothing heavy?’
‘If that is what you want.’