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His hard mouth flicked out a tense grimace. He’d found her sunbathing on the beach in front of the rented villa. It had taken them two hours to fall madly in love with each other, two weeks before they gave in to their raging desires and finally took their feelings over the edge, followed by two weeks of totally rampant, reckless loving then two weeks of hell once Louisa told him he’d made her pregnant.
Her parents had despised him. His parents had despised him—but they’d despised Louisa more.
‘They think I’m a cheap little slut…’
Andreas winced at the memory of those words leaving her pain-stifled throat. Back then he could not even deny the charge because his parents had thought of her in that way. Her parents had seen him as an over-privileged, over-indulged, over-sexed seducer of innocent young females, but he could take their contempt because he had been indifferent to it. Louisa, on the other hand, could not take his parents’ low opinion of her.
‘They will come to love you as much as I do once you produce their first grandson,’ he could hear himself reassuring her with all the careless arrogance of his youth.
It had been great to believe at the age of twenty-two that love could conquer everything. With hindsight and eight years to add to his twenty-two he could now positively say that if he had been forced to live in Louisa’s shoes back then he would have walked away from their marriage a lot sooner than she had made her escape.
Maybe she should have run sooner. If she had run then maybe their son would still be alive now and he would have more than this ache he lived with night and day along with this—
He stopped the car.
Climbed out of it.
Walked away from it with his shoulders racked like iron bars.
He came to a stop at the head of the peninsula that separated the harbour town on his left from the luxury villas spread out along the coast to his right. Pushing his hands into the pockets of his black silk trousers, he honed his frowning gaze onto the string of white ferry lights once again.
Time to let go of the past and move on, his father had said. Andreas wished the hell that someone would tell him how he could make the past let go of him.
Had Louisa let it go? The question flicked like the tip of a whip across his grim features. How would he know? How the hell would he know anything about her when they’d had no contact in five years? She could be shacked up with some nice, steady Englishman for all he knew, giving him those soft, loving touches and smiles and—
His stomach muscles contracted—all of him contracted: mouth, jaw, throat, chest, loins…
Turning away from what was now threatening to eat into him, Andreas wrenched at his tie as he walked back to the car. The strip of dark silk slid from around his shirt collar and landed on the passenger seat. He followed it with his jacket then flipped diamond-studded cuff-links out of his white shirt cuffs and discarded them the same way. A minute later and he was back behind the wheel and heading for town with his shirt tugged open at his brown throat and the sleeves rolled up his hair-roughened forearms, his mind grimly fixed on only one thing.
Finding a bar and getting drunk to blot out the memories.
Resting her forearms against the ferry rail, Louisa watched a set of car headlights glide over the peninsula that formed a natural barrier between the island’s tiny harbour town and the more luxurious homes which lay in a scatter of twinkling lights along the side of the hill. If she looked hard enough she would be able to pick out the lights belonging to the Markonos villa—but she didn’t look that hard. The villa might have been home to her once but she felt no attachment to it now.
A sigh feathered her as she leant against the ferry rail with the warm breeze gently blowing her silk gold hair back from her face. She’d been making this pilgrimage once a year for the last five years to visit her son’s resting place and not once in those five years had she stepped foot on Markonos land. It was as if, once she’d left Andreas, she’d severed almost all links with the Markonos name.
Coming here simply brought her back to her son.
‘OK?’ a gruff voice questioned beside her.
Turning her head to look up at the tall, dark, rather handsome young man who’d come to stand beside her, Louisa saw the anxious look in his eyes and smiled.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about me, Jamie. I come back here too often for it to be a major stress to me.’
And time softens pain, she added silently as she turned to watch the set of car headlights disappear from view down the other side of the peninsula. It would be on its way to meet the ferry, she judged. By the time the ferry opened its doors, the tiny port would be swarming with activity, the café bars lining the waterfront alive with a festive atmosphere that traditionally hit the island once a week.
‘Do you remember any of this?’ she asked her younger brother.
He had been so young when they first came to this island, but now look at him, Louisa thought fondly as he dipped his long body so he could rest his forearms on the rail beside her own. The scrawny little boy with a thatch of blonde hair had grown into a male hunk—youthful-style. And his hair was no longer blonde but dark and cropped to suit the current fashion, his attractive face trying its best to shed the last of its baby softness that still lingered around his cheeks.
‘I remember standing right about here with you to watch as we rounded the hill,’ he murmured.
‘You mean you were hanging over the rail in excitement,’ Louisa teased him. ‘I was so scared you were going to topple over and fall in the water that I had a death grip on the waistband of your jeans.’
Jamie grinned, all flashing white teeth and man-boyish charm. ‘Mum and Dad were no use. They’d caught the holiday bug and were too busy canoodling further along the rail to notice if we both fell in the water.’
Louisa’s blue eyes widened. ‘You remember that?’
The grin changed to a grimace. ‘I remember too much about that time if you want the truth. Like you meeting Andreas and flipping your lid over him then all the craziness that followed which ended up with you being abandoned here.’
‘I was not abandoned!’ Louisa protested.
‘Our parents abandoned you, to the Greek family from hell.’
‘That’s just not true—’
‘Then Andreas abandoned you.’
‘Because he had to finish his degree,’ Louisa pointed out.
‘Because he got you pregnant,’ Jamie said bluntly, ‘was forced to marry you then ran away—the coward.’
‘Jamie!’ his sister gasped out. ‘I always thought you liked Andreas!’
‘I did,’ he shrugged, ‘until he messed you up then threw you out of his life.’
‘He did not throw me out of anything,’ Louisa denied, shocked that he was saying any of this. ‘I left Andreas of my own free will. And I would love to know, Jamie, why on earth you invited yourself along on this trip if you still feel so bad about what happened back then!’
Straightening away from the rail, her brother shoved his hands into the pockets of his low-slung baggy jeans. ‘For Nikos,’ he said. ‘I wanted to pay my respects to Nikos and I knew I wouldn’t get another chance for years once I go to uni and…’ he pulled in a deep breath ‘…and I’m looking forward to coming face to face with Andreas so I can punch him.’
Louisa couldn’t help it—she laughed. ‘He would kill you before you lifted your fist to him,’ she mocked. ‘Have you forgotten he’s six feet three inches tall and built like a tank?’
‘I’ve been working out,’ her brother said stiffly.
‘For this chance to punch Andreas?’
‘No,’ he shifted uncomfortably, knowing that his sister knew that he’d been working out purely and simply to impress the girls, ‘but I would still love the chance to have a go at him.’
‘Because you believe you have—what right?’
His chin thrust forwards. ‘The right of a brother who never did understand why Dad didn’t beat the hell out of Andreas years ago when he left you in the state you were in.’
Grief-stricken, in other words, Louisa recalled bleakly, so inconsolable Andreas had taken himself out of her presence to work out his own grief elsewhere. When she had finally given in to pressure and let her parents take her back to England with them, she’d expected Andreas to come and get her but he never had…
Shaking her head, she stopped herself from going down that particularly bumpy pathway. To recall how she’d eventually run back to him, only to discover how he had found his own form of consolation, was a fool’s game, she told herself.
‘Well, you are out of luck because Andreas won’t be here,’ she informed her brother. ‘His mother’s email said he’s in Thailand. And since this trip here is about Nikos not Andreas,’ she then added curtly, ‘I would prefer it if you kept your vengeful thoughts to yourself.’
With that she spun back to the ferry rail, frowning and wondering why she had bothered to defend Andreas when he had turned out to be such a rat, a wimp, a useless, faithless—
Beside her Jamie shifted his stance. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.
‘Look,’ she said quietly, ‘we’re turning into the harbour…’
Sure enough, the ferry was nosing round the headland and the town, with its pretty whitewashed tumble of buildings hugging the curving hillside, was floating into view. Lights from the line of open-air café-bars glowed softly in the warm night and the sound of Greek music drifted across the still water, welcoming them in.
The warm breeze tried its best to soothe the savagery out of his face as Andreas drove down the hill into town, the gold strap to his watch glinting against his hair-roughened wrist as he passed beneath lamplights that lit the narrow streets. As he swung the car onto the road which ran alongside the harbour the familiar sound of Greek music floated towards him from the row of café-bars lining the other side of the street.
The ferry had beaten him in, he saw as he crawled at a snail’s pace, hunting for a parking space in a street lined nose-to-nose with every kind of vehicle imaginable. As luck would have it, an old truck pulled out of the line of parked vehicles and he shot into the vacant space, switched off the engine then just sat back in his seat with the brooding darkness of his gaze fixed on the flow of people trailing down the ferry companionway along with the usual offload of trucks and cars.
He did not know why he was still sitting here instead of heading for one of the bars as he had promised himself. He didn’t even know why he had come into the town at all. That blazing desire to find a bar and get drunk had been an impulse, he admitted, borne on the back of an old solution to memories he did not want to face. But it had been many years now since he’d drowned his sorrows in alcohol. These days he preferred to immerse himself in work and—
His thoughts suddenly ground to a standstill. His heart did the same thing, every muscle he possessed locking up tight as his eyes fixed on the young woman walking off the ferry with the warm breeze gently lifting the silk gold of her hair back from the softly pointed shape of her face.
A face he would not forget in two lifetimes. A face that had been haunting him for five long years.
It was Louisa. Louisa was walking off the ferry wearing loose white trousers and a pale blue T-shirt.
She’s come home, was the next thought to hit.
Jamie had taken charge of their two canvas holdalls. Having hitched her backpack onto her shoulders, Louisa had taken charge of her brother’s backpack then they’d joined the steady stream of people making their way off the boat.
It was good to reach solid land again but the smell of burning diesel fumes as the roll-on roll-off process went on around them made them hurry to reach cleaner air.
‘I need to put some credit on my mobile,’ Jamie announced as soon as they reached a clear patch of concrete close to the street. ‘Do you think one of those bars will sell top-ups?’
‘This might be a lazy backwater of a place but I think it knows about cell-phones,’ his sister said drily. ‘Try the bar opposite,’ she suggested. ‘But I thought you topped it up before we left England?’
Her brother suddenly looked truculent. ‘I’ve already used most of it up texting my friends.’
‘Dump the bags next to me,’ she told him. ‘Kostas hasn’t arrived to collect us yet, so I’ll wait for you here.’
‘Right.’ Placing the two heavy bags at her feet, her brother suddenly reached out to engulf her in a bruising bear hug. ‘Sorry about before. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘I know you didn’t.’ Louisa pressed a quick forgiving kiss to one of his cheeks. ‘Now go.’
With a grin Jamie strode off, his mood back to its normal buoyancy, leaving Louisa to push a floating strand of hair from her cheek while she glanced down the street, looking for the silver Mercedes that belonged to the Markonos family. The only concession she made to still being a Markonos was that she never came here without first alerting her mother-in-law so that Isabella could then confirm that Andreas would not be here.
Not that she ever expected to see him. In truth, she suspected that Andreas was made aware of her visits here so that he could stay well away.
Crazy situation, she thought with a sigh as she placed Jamie’s backpack on top of the larger bags then stripped off her own. Was Isabella afraid she was going to throw herself at her precious son all over again if they ever did happen to meet?
More to the point, did Andreas fear it?
Straightening up, she sent another flickering glance up and down the busy street, looking for Kostas. It wasn’t like the old family retainer to be late. Usually he was parked in prime position with the boot of the car already—
It was then that she saw him and her mind suddenly emptied, everything spinning right out of focus for a few dizzying seconds before it spun violently back into focus again on his tall, dark, very still stance.
He was standing less than six feet away, leaning against an open-top sports car. Bright white shirt, black trousers, lustrous dark skin. Her heart gave a wild leap against her ribs then just rolled over and over. For the next few dizzy seconds she tried hard to convince herself it was not really him. It was impossible, she told herself. He was in Thailand. She was dreaming him up because her row with Jamie had planted his image in her head!
Then he moved, flexing those wide shoulders inside the white shirt as he straightened away from the car’s shiny black bodywork with the old well-remembered smooth animal grace. Heat poured a burning hot trail down her front. It was physical, it was sexual, it was breathtakingly familiar.
‘Andreas,’ she breathed on the thick shaken whisper.
‘Louisa,’ he returned huskily.
CHAPTER TWO
THE rough silk texture of his voice played across her flesh in a complicated mix of pain versus pleasure. Shocked, she felt tears suddenly sting at her throat. Her mouth even wobbled. She had to push a hand up to cover it.
Something blazed in his eyes and he took a step forward only to pull to a stop again, tension singing from every taut sinew as he sent his gaze swinging across the street to the bars.
When he looked back at her the blaze had cooled to black ice. ‘What the hell is going on?’ he raked at her.
Louisa blinked, unable to make sense of the angry question. Did it mean that he was as shocked to see her standing here as she was to see him?
Dragging the hand from her mouth, ‘W-we’ve just arrived on—on the ferry—’
‘I saw,’ he bit out. ‘So who is the good-looking toy boy you brought with you?’
Toy boy? Did he mean Jamie? She let out a thick laugh. ‘But surely you—’
A loud noise coming from directly behind her suddenly grabbed her attention. Twisting her head, she didn’t get a chance to finish what she was saying before a group of people were almost on top of her and she was being jostled in their eagerness to head across the street to the bars. One of them gave her a hard nudge in the back, pushing her forwards. With the bags still sitting heavily at her feet she found she had nowhere to go. A startled cry left her lips as she began to topple forwards, her hands shooting out with an instinctive need to break her fall.
The next thing she knew a pair of hands had clamped around her waist and she was being lifted right off the ground and over the top of the bags. Her fingers closed around taut male biceps. Her cheek brushed against a tense parted mouth. She looked up—he looked down. How Andreas had managed to move so fast she would never know but as fresh shock merged with the tight sizzle of awareness that spun up through her body a soft gasp left her strangled throat.
Mou theos! Andreas cursed inwardly as her warm breath brushed across his mouth. Her familiar scent raked over his senses, the feel of her slender shape in his hands made the beat of his heart accelerate. She fitted against him as if she belonged there and for a few twisting, taut seconds all he wanted to do was to wrap her even closer and kiss—kiss—kiss the hell out of her.
Or strangle her.
His mood was that hairline it could take him either way! He was angry. What the hell did she think she was doing bringing another man here to this island?
‘OK?’ he rasped once he’d let her feet touch sure ground again.
Her quivering mouth parted on a breathless little, ‘Yes—th-thank you,’ said so very politely it snapped his lips into a biting, tight line.
She tried to take a step back from him but the bags were now firmly planted against the backs of her heels, forcing him to re-establish his grip on her when she almost toppled backwards, his long fingers splaying out around her narrow ribcage, his thumbs daring to move in a sweeping arc that settled them just beneath the warm thrust of her breasts.
She was wearing no bra. The knowledge stung him. She was still so slender his hands could almost span her. Still so physically fragile he could snap her in two. And the latter prospect was definitely winning at this precise moment because she had come here to his island with another man and she was wearing no bra beneath the skimpy vest-top!
Louisa needed to breathe but found that she couldn’t. She needed to put some space between them—in fact it was critical that she did so because her senses were confused enough by this meeting without having to endure his intimate touch as well!
And she did not want her senses confused. It was over between them. The link, the union had been broken a long time ago.
‘Please take a step back,’ she instructed unsteadily.
To her relief he did as she bade, removing his hands from her body and taking that vital step backwards. The reprieve from his closeness sent a violent quiver shooting through her as she unclipped her fingers from his arms and slid them away too.
Then the tension came back, an ear-screeching silence. Louisa stared at the jostling crowd talking loudly in a foreign language she did not recognise as they swarmed across the street, eager to eat and drink before they had to return to the ferry before it sailed away to its next destination. For a wild moment she wanted to flee herself.
