At home here.
Well, if she had made herself at home, she could make him a meal! He was definitely growling with hunger. ‘So—do I get a late lunch? A sandwich will do.’ His tone changed. So did the expression in his eyes. ‘You’ve fixed me a sandwich before now—remember?’
Remember?
Oh, yes, she remembered, all right…
Instantly Sophie’s vision cut her back in time.
CHAPTER SIX
MIDNIGHT—they’d been to the theatre, eaten beforehand, then afterwards wandered along the South Bank, holding hands, counting the dolphins carved curlingly around the Victorian lampposts, talking of nothing and everything, until her feet in her high heels had ached. Nikos had conjured a car from nowhere and taken her home, and they’d realised how hungry they were. So she’d taken him down to the kitchen and made him a towering club sandwich with half the contents of the fridge. It had toppled over on the table and they had burst out laughing, and he’d caught her, and kissed her, and kissed her again…and she’d been dazed and dizzy with bliss…
Pain, like a knife, sliced through her memory, cutting it away. Deliberately she purged it.
‘It will only be cheese and ham,’ she warned, her voice terse. She didn’t want to make him a sandwich. Didn’t want him standing there, so damnably close. Didn’t want him anywhere near her. Disturbing her. Making her feel his overwhelming presence in the close, confining space.
Why does he have this impact on me? How? I’m not twenty any more, and I’m way, way past caring about men—but this one…
This one still overwhelmed her. This one still had the same power he’d always had! Four years had done nothing to change that.
Quiveringly aware of him, she yanked open the fridge door. At least making him a sandwich would distract her, give her something to focus on other than him. Extracting butter, ham and a hunk of cheese, she plonked them on the table, then pulled off the lid of the bread crock and roughly hacked two slices to make the sandwich he’d demanded. Deliberately blank-faced, she handed it to him on a plate. He took it with an abstracted thank-you, and nodded at the colander full of strawberries that was on the draining board.
‘Any chance of dessert?’ he enquired.
Wordlessly, she scooped some into a bowl.
‘Share them with me,’ he invited. ‘And let’s eat outside. I’ll take out one of these kitchen chairs for you.’
He hefted one up effortlessly and headed out for the garden, leaving a tight-lipped Sophie to follow him with the bowl of strawberries. She didn’t want to share dessert with him. She didn’t want to share anything with him—least of all her company. She wanted him to go. To stop disturbing her.
To leave her alone.
For ever.
Again.
She felt the knife slide into her side, a physical pain. Losing Nikos had been an agony.
He was never yours in the first place! Never! You were a fool—a selfish, stupid little fool! Weaving your infantile fantasies! Dreaming your puerile, egoistical happy ending to what was never real!
Angrily, she marched out into the garden, as if she could leave behind her tormenting thoughts. But the object of her torment was sitting himself down at the little table she had lugged out onto the tiny patio, getting stuck into the doorstep sandwich with every appearance of relish. The hot sun beat down, and he had taken off his jacket, hitching it around the back of the chair. Worse, he had dragged his tie loose and undone the top button of his shirt, loosening his cuffs and rolling back his sleeves, exposing his strong, lean forearms.
She felt her stomach hollow.
Oh, God, he looked so good! The whiteness of his shirt against the Mediterranean dusk of his skin tone. She wanted to gaze and gaze and gaze.
The way she had the first time she had ever set eyes on him. Every time she had ever set eyes on him.
What is it about him—what is that draws me to him?
Her thoughts were anguished, self-hating, and impossible to endure.
He glanced up at her. ‘Come and sit down,’ he said.
Her legs as weak as a kitten’s, she sat, plonking down heavily on the chair. Her mind was in turmoil, her thoughts hopeless, jumbled, and as impossible to decipher as her maelstrom of emotions. She watched helplessly as he made short work of the sandwich. At least he wasn’t looking back at her—that would have been unendurable. Instead he was looking around him at the little walled garden, his eyes taking in the difference between the pristine, dug-through areas she had been tackling and the untouched overgrown ones. Where she’d last been working was a pile of weeds, fast wilting in the afternoon sun beside her abandoned gardening tools.
Nikos frowned. ‘You didn’t have to do any of this,’ he said abruptly.