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Sadie’s sly remark earned her an amused grin from Nikos. ‘Thank you,’ he said, inclining his head. ‘And may I say that a true English rose like yourself is much admired in my country?’
Katie shook her head as Sadie blushed. ‘What a load of b—’
‘Don’t spoil it, Katie,’ Sadie interrupted, casting her friend an irritated glance. ‘Do go on,’ she begged Nikos with a throaty laugh.
Katie glared at her friend indignantly—she was flirting, and flirting pretty well. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re a sucker for a pretty face?’
‘Frequently,’ Sadie admitted. ‘I’d better go,’ she added as the ambulance crew began to display impatience to be off. ‘Call me later.’ She smiled at the paramedic who, after checking that his passengers didn’t require anything, had taken a seat at the opposite side of the vehicle.
‘I feel terrible leaving you to cope with all of this mess,’ Katie fretted.
‘You know me, I thrive on challenge,’ Sadie replied, cheerily waving goodbye.
‘Your friend is very nice.’
‘She’s just recovering from an extremely messy divorce. So leave her alone, the last thing she needs is some slick operator moving on her,’ she warned him grimly.
‘I can pass the time of day with a woman without contemplating sleeping with her, you know.’
Katie snorted and Nikos looked amused. ‘I have never been in an ambulance before,’ he remarked, looking around with interest as the door closed. ‘Or even,’ he added with a mock growl, ‘made love in one.’
‘Very funny.’ No doubt tonight’s events would be regurgitated for the amusement of his glitzy friends—with suitable witty additions—for many weeks to come. ‘I suppose you ride around in gold-plated limousines.’
‘No, as a matter of fact I fly my own helicopter when possible. So do you really think I have a pretty face?’ he continued seamlessly.
Talk about anything you say being used in evidence!
‘That was a figure of speech.’ Actually his was not a pretty face, it was a formidably beautiful face. She didn’t need to look to see his dark, fallen-angel features or be transfixed by the brooding sensuality of his sexy eyes and mouth—they were etched in her mind.
How, she puzzled, could something as basic as the arrangement of planes and angles of a face make it so…? She struggled for a term adequate to describe it—unforgettable was a term casually bandied about, but in this instance it was fully deserved. Her memory would never be free of the image, she acknowledged, looking down at her hands tightened into fists on her lap.
‘If you continue to breathe like that the professionals—’ Nikos glanced towards the uniformed figure who had left his seat opposite and was now talking to the driver ‘—will assume that you need oxygen.’
Katie was disconcerted to discover that his eyes were contemplating the rapid rise and fall of her breasts…actually, disconcerted didn’t really cover the things that were happening to her body. Nikos had to have noticed at least one of them as his attention was riveted in one of the areas in question; her breasts felt tense and tender and her nipples were active in a pleasurably painful way.
It had reached the point where she couldn’t be sure what shocking surprise her body was going to spring on her next. Even the things coming out of her mouth seemed to be bypassing her brain.
‘Why did you tell them I’m you’re wife?’ she asked in a desperate attempt to divert his attention from her aching, brazen breasts.
‘You are my wife.’
Her inability to dispute this made Katie scowl. ‘Only when it suits you,’ she pointed out tartly.
Somehow she doubted Nikos would have been so eager to recognise their relationship if she’d turned up at his place of work declaring to all and sundry that he was her husband! What she couldn’t figure was why he’d carelessly gone public, in this admittedly limited way, now. The last thing he struck her as being was a careless man; quite the contrary, she was pretty sure he never did anything without a reason, but what reason?
Possibly his actions were simply designed to wind her up?
For the past seven years he had successfully managed to forget he had a wife so she could strike the possibility that he’d decided she was the perfect bride for him.
No, he was up to something.
‘We may have gone through a ceremony and signed on the dotted line, but it takes more than a signature on a piece of paper to make me your wife!’ she told him scornfully.
‘So, what does it take…?’
Katie shuffled away to lessen the contact of his heavy thigh against her own. The action only increased the worrying air of smug triumph she sensed in him.
‘It takes…oh, for goodness’ sake, will you stop that?’
‘Stop what?’
‘Will you stop looking at…you know?’
‘No.’
Katie gave a snort of exasperation; the innocent look sat very uncomfortably. ‘Well, how would you like it if I kept looking at your…?’ Content she’d made her point, and deeply embarrassed into the bargain, she decided it would be expedient to move quickly on.
Nikos, however, seemed in no hurry to do so. ‘I think I would find it quite stimulating,’ he said.
Taking a deep steadying breath, Katie gritted her teeth and doggedly refused to allow him to distract her. ‘It takes…’ she began.
‘What does it take?’ he prompted, his curiosity genuinely aroused by the wistful expression he saw flit across her delicate, fine-boned features.
Katie shook her head; she was not about to expose her idea of an ideal marriage to his cynical scorn.
‘Do you think they might let us a share a room at the hospital?’
‘I suppose in Greece that passes for a sense of humour?’ She gave a disdainful sniff and tried to stop herself coughing. ‘Just for the record, I’m not sharing a room with you and I’m not staying in any hospital.’
Nikos shook his head. ‘Did nobody ever tell you it’s dangerous to tempt fate?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘MARRIED?’ the on-call radiographer, or Clare, as she had introduced herself, glanced towards Nikos. ‘Yes, of course you are,’ she said, not without a hint of envy. ‘Date of birth…?’ Katie gave it and the older woman checked the details on the form and nodded. ‘Is there any possibility you are pregnant?’
She stood with her pen in her hand waiting for Katie’s response. Katie, aware of Nikos’s very interested presence beside her, felt her face flush. After a lengthy pause she shook her head and mumbled an indistinct, ‘No, there isn’t.’
The radiographer obviously misunderstood her hesitation. ‘If you’ve any doubts?’
‘I’ve no doubt at all,’ Katie responded firmly. ‘I can’t possibly be pregnant. I haven’t…’ she choked.
‘Oh, I see…’ The radiographer nodded understandingly and shot a speculative look in Nikos’s direction. ‘So long as you’re sure.’
‘We have been living apart,’ Katie was dismayed to hear him suddenly volunteer glibly. Equally suddenly he picked her hand up from where it lay twisted with its partner on her lap. With a tender smile he raised it to his lips. ‘We are only recently reunited.’
His words and the fervent kiss he planted on her open palm managed to hint at a lovers-parted-and-reunited story of epic proportions.
The radiographer was clearly a big fan of a happy ending. ‘Oh, isn’t that lovely?’ she sighed soulfully. ‘You just wait here a moment, Mrs Lakis, and I’ll be right back.’
The instant she was gone Katie snatched her tingling hand away and wiped it across her lap vigorously, as though she could wipe his touch away.
‘Was that charade really necessary?’ she enquired icily. It seemed he couldn’t resist any opportunity to provoke and embarrass her. Or maybe, she mused scornfully, he just couldn’t let the implied slur on his manhood stand. Yeah, that would be right.
‘So you’re not sleeping with Tom?’
Katie stiffened defensively as his question took her off guard. ‘That’s none of your business, but if I was,’ she added confidently, ‘I certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to get pregnant.’
Though she wasn’t as a rule a judgmental person, she had always found it hard to understand how in a day and age when contraception was so readily available people still fell pregnant unintentionally—though the falling was part of the self-deception as far as she was concerned; there was nothing accidental about it.
‘Maybe, maybe not…people in the grip of passion do not always think logically.’
‘Rubbish.’ One dark brow lifted at her forceful denunciation. ‘There’s absolutely no excuse for neglecting to take basic precautions.’
Katie frowned to hear herself sound so self-righteous and dogmatic…it was the sort of uncharacteristic response he brought out in her. He said night and she was almost falling over herself to screech day.
An enigmatic half-smile touched the corners of Nikos’s wide, passionate mouth as he observed the flare of panic in her eyes.
‘So you don’t think that the dizzy heights of passion could make a person, could make you, forget?’ His heavy lids lifted and Katie found herself captured and as helpless as a butterfly caught on a cruel pin by his dark gaze. ‘Forget your own name, where you begin and your lover ends…?’ he persisted throatily.
His rough velvet voice was describing a situation that was beyond her understanding, but one that held a dangerous appeal. Just listening to his sweetly insidious drawl made her feel hot and cold at the same time, and increased that tight, achy feeling that had been a more or less constant presence low in her belly all night.
The way his knowledgeable eyes were scanning her face made Katie, bitterly ashamed of her body’s wanton response, shift uncomfortably in her seat.
‘Forget the most basic precautions? Do me a favour,’ she scoffed stubbornly.
‘You cannot visualise yourself in a situation like that?’
‘No!’ Katie gritted through clenched teeth as she tried very hard not to allow the images he spoke of to crystallise in her mind. Even though she tried very hard some images filtered through her mental block; they were of limbs entwined, warm brown skin gleaming with sweat, fractured gasps and soft moans. She was hard put not to moan herself.
Nikos was beginning to think that the favour that would most benefit her would come from someone who could wipe that smug look of superiority from her face—his narrowed gaze homed in on the soft contours of her full lips—and why should that person not be him?
The voice of reason in his head immediately provided at least half a dozen legitimate reasons why it should not. Despite this, the idea, however ill advised, lingered on.
‘No matter how sophisticated society becomes, mother nature has built in some very efficient safety systems into the human design that will ensure the continuation of the species despite our best attempts to foil her.’ In a voice that was all honeyed temptation and earthy suggestion, he expanded his theory into territory Katie found even more uncomfortable, yet despite this she found herself perversely hanging on his every word. ‘It is not by accident that we are intoxicated, that sense and reason are suspended in the heat of passion.
‘Men,’ he proclaimed confidently, ‘are programmed to impregnate and woman are programmed to bear children.’ He shrugged and studied her shocked face; it seemed to Katie that the silver flecks in his eyes glittered like stars in a night sky. ‘You can’t fight against basic instincts, pethumou.’
She tried to escape but her restless gaze was repeatedly drawn back to his; a stab of sexual longing so fierce it robbed her of breath lanced through her body.
Katie shook her head. ‘You can’t talk like that,’ she gasped in an agonised whisper. The men she knew didn’t casually discuss impregnation in hospital waiting rooms.
‘You find my frankness offensive? Such things make you squeamish?’
Offended? She was terrified.
‘I am not squeamish. I just don’t think this is the appropriate time or place for talking about such things,’ she told him repressively. Unfortunately Nikos was not so easily repressed.
‘Sex is not a subject for open discussion?’
‘Not between people who are virtually strangers.’
‘So if I was Tom you would feel comfortable discussing sex.’
Katie took a deep, infuriated breath. ‘Tom and I do not discuss sex,’ she yelled.
‘Mrs Lakis…?’
Katie spun around to find the radiographer standing there.
‘We’re ready for you now.’
Her ankle was declared a nasty sprain, which they strapped with a stretchy support bandage and advised her to keep elevated. The doctor said he was satisfied that she had not sustained any damage to her lungs, though he did suggest Katie might like to stay in overnight to be observed.
To her relief when she politely but firmly refused the invitation he wasn’t too perturbed.
‘The doctor should be finished with your husband in a few minutes,’ the nice nurse who had attended her promised, showing her to a waiting area.
I can hardly wait.
Katie had caught sight of her reflection in a plate-glass door so wasn’t surprised that on the way there she was the focus of a number of curious stares.
Not to put too fine a point on it, she looked scary!
It was hard to tell what the original colour of Sadie’s once lovely dress was and there were several rips in the long skirt that revealed more than was decent of her long, grubby legs. Though she’d had the opportunity to wash the worst of the dirt from her face and hands, what she longed for most was to soak in a lovely hot bath until the acrid smoky smell that seemed to have penetrated pore-deep was gone.
‘I feel awful for asking, but I don’t suppose you’ve got any change for the phone, have you? I didn’t exactly come prepared,’ she explained with a rueful glance down at her ruined outfit.
Katie waited until the helpful nurse was out of sight before she headed for the pay phone she’d spotted in the foyer. First she phoned Tom; he wasn’t at home and he wasn’t answering his cell phone. She was about to leave him a message, but thought better of it…there was nothing he could do and telling him about the fire would only alarm him unnecessarily.
Next she rang Sadie’s mobile number.
‘I was starting to think they were keeping you in,’ Sadie said, sounding tired but pretty upbeat, which in the circumstances said a great deal for her powers of endurance.
Sadie got the bad news over with first.
‘Your flat’s a write-off. The good news is they managed to contain the fire to the top floor. The rest of the house is all right, barring some smoke damage in the hall and down the stairs. I’m staying with the Jameses next door tonight, they said you’re quite welcome to kip down on their sofa. I’ve got the spare room.’
‘Say thanks to them from me, but actually I can’t face the journey back.’ The hospital was a fifteen-mile trip from the village and she was ready to drop; in fact, remaining upright was difficult. ‘I’m just going to get a taxi to the nearest hotel and sleep for a week.’
‘Fair enough, see you tomorrow?’
‘Definitely,’ Katie agreed. ‘Sadie…I’m really sorry,’ she added in a rush.
‘God, we don’t even know if it was your fault and I’m the one that didn’t get around to refitting the fire alarms after the painters finished last month. Besides, nobody was hurt, that’s the main thing, and I’m extremely well-insured,’ she added cheerfully. ‘So don’t beat yourself up about it.’
It wasn’t until she’d hung up that Katie realised she had no money for a taxi, hotel room or, for that matter, any more for the phone. Don’t panic, think about this calmly and logically, she told herself.
So logically she had no money, and calmly she had no transport, her head hurt and she was dressed in revealing rags—Katie reckoned she was entitled to panic a little and to feel mildly despondent.
