The Demetrios Virgin

Quickly she turned away as she heard Andreas saying, almost mundanely, ‘I’m going to have a shower, and if you’ll take my advice you’ll do the same. Then, when we’re both feeling cooler and calmer, we can discuss this whole situation less emotively.’

A shower! With Andreas! Saskia stared at him in mute shocked disbelief. Did he really think that she would...that she could...?

‘You can use the bathroom first,’ he told her.

First! So he hadn’t meant... Relief sagged through her, quickly followed by a furious burst of toxic anger.

‘I don’t want to use the bathroom at all,’ she burst out. ‘What I want is to be at home. My own home, with my own bathroom and my own bedroom. What I want is to be free of this stupid...stupid charade... What I want...’ She had to stop as her feelings threatened to overwhelm her, but they refused to be contained, spilling out in a furious fierce torrent of angry words. ‘How could you let your mother and sister think that you...that we...?’ She shook her head, unable to put into words what she wanted to say.

Andreas had no such qualms.

‘That we are lovers?’ he supplied dramatically for her. ‘What else should they think? I’m a man, Saskia, and you and I are supposed to be engaged. And if in reality we were, do you think for one minute that I wouldn’t—’

‘Want to test the goods before you bought them?’ Saskia threw wildly at him. ‘Oh, of course, a man like you would be bound to want to do that...to make sure...’

She tensed as she saw the way he was looking at her and the bitter anger in his eyes.

‘That kind of comment is typical of a woman like you,’ he ground out. ‘Reducing everything to terms of money. Well, let me tell you—’

But Saskia wouldn’t let him finish, defending herself sharply instead as she insisted, ‘You were the one who said...’

But Andreas immediately checked her.

‘What I said, or rather what I was trying to say before you interrupted me,’ he told her grittily, ‘was that if I genuinely loved you there would be no way I would be able to deny myself—or you—the pleasure of showing that love in the most intimate physical way there is. There would be no way that I could bear to let you out of my sight or my arms, certainly not for the length of a whole night.’

Saskia discovered that she had started to tremble almost violently as his words struck sharply sensitive chords deep within her body that she had not even known existed. Chords that activated a deep core of feminine longing, that brought her dangerously close to the edge of tears she had no idea why she wanted to cry. Panic raced through her veins, flooding out common sense. She could feel her heart thumping frantically with anxiety.

She opened her mouth to tell Andreas that she had changed her mind, that she wanted to go home, that she was not prepared to stay a minute longer, no matter how much he tried to blackmail her into doing so. But her panic didn’t stem from any fear of him. No. It was herself she feared now, and the way she was beginning to feel, the thoughts she was beginning to have. She couldn’t allow herself to feel that way about him. She couldn’t be attracted to him. He wasn’t her type of man at all. She abhorred the way he had treated her, the way he had misjudged her. But the shocking shaft of self-awareness, of longing she had felt as he’d described his desire for the woman he would love wasn’t going to be dismissed.

‘I can’t...’ she began, stopping as Andreas held up his hand warningly, silencing her as someone knocked on the door.

Dry-mouthed, Saskia waited whilst he went to open it, watching as their cases were brought in—not by the driver of the Land Rover but by another smaller, older man to whom Andreas was talking in Greek, smiling warmly at him as he did so, and then laughing good-humouredly as the older man looked past him at Saskia herself, before clapping him on the shoulders with a wide, beaming smile.

‘What was that all about?’ Saskia demanded curiously once he had gone and they were on their own again.

‘Stavros was saying that it is high time I had a wife...and that I must lose no time in getting myself a fine boy child,’ he added mercilessly.