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She did not want to be standing here with Andreas. She did not want to look at him at all! She had been so very careful over the years to make sure that it didn’t happen, now she felt awkward and vulnerable and…
Oh, where was Jamie? Where was Kostas? Tugging in a tense breath, she took a quick look around.
‘Your lover is having to queue,’ Andreas said harshly.
Swinging her gaze back to him, she caught the full icy blast of his anger. Her own anger snapped to the fore. ‘He’s not my lover,’ she denied, ‘and if you just let me—’
‘Whoever he is, you had no right to bring him here.’
So loftily stated—a Markonos declaration in every which way she wanted to take it because they always did believe they were the ruling gods here.
‘Your family does not own this island, Andreas,’ Louisa hit back furiously. ‘I can visit here with whomsoever I please! And if you just let me finish what I keep trying to tell you then you would know by now how stupid you are going to feel when I—’
‘Your navel is showing.’
As a brain-stopper it worked like a dream. Beginning to feel very confused and a little disoriented, much as though she’d stepped off the ferry straight into a nightmare, Louisa glanced down.
The sizzling spit of his anger held Andreas imprisoned as he followed her gaze to the narrow band of creamy, smooth flesh left bare by the low-cut style of her trousers. When his mouth began to moisten he tightened his lips back against his teeth, further infuriated that his memory bank seemed perfectly happy to feed him the sensation of tasting the perfect oval laid bare for anyone to see!
She hitched up the low-cut trousers.
He could not stop himself from making a taut, restless shift of his stance. Mad feelings were running riot inside him—the residue of shock from seeing her walk off the ferry, a gut-stirring awareness of how breathtakingly beautiful she still was. How had he managed to let himself forget that? How the hell had he gone five long years without his head reminding him of what it was about her that had driven him crazy over her in the first place?
He did not have the answer but for those first few shock-rolling seconds as he’d followed her progress off the ferry he’d sat behind the wheel of his car and been tossed right back into an eight-year-old pot of hot, bubbling lust! Until he’d noticed the man walking behind her, seen the ease with which she’d disappeared into his arms before the guy had shot off across the street.
His wife—his wife, cavorting in public with another man right here on his island, where everyone knew who she was and what had happened between them.
His gut ripped him in two and he swung his back to her at the same time that she swung away from him. Tension sang between them, anger, a bright, burning antagonism that made even less sense than everything else he was feeling right now.
‘Much you know about backwaters,’ a new voice intruded on the grinding atmosphere. ‘They don’t do top-ups in the bars over there, so I’m going to have to wait until tomorrow to find a bank or a hole-in-the-wall and…’
Jamie’s dry tone slid into silence when he saw Andreas. Louisa watched helplessly as her brother’s face closed up like a drum. After the words they’d exchanged on the ferry she had no idea how he was going to react once the shock had worn off at having his main target standing right here.
‘S-say hello to Andreas, Jamie,’ she prompted warily.
What he did was stiffen up like a soldier.
‘Jamie…?’ Andreas swung round. Surprise hit his lean features then he pushed out a laugh. ‘Mou theos, so it is!’
Andreas stepped forward to offer her brother a friendly hand in greeting. Louisa caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she waited for Jamie to respond. He didn’t take the hand but shifted his gaze from her face to Andreas. A different kind of tension suddenly pulsed in the warm evening air. She saw the slight stiffening in Andreas’s long spine as he stood there with his hand still determinedly outstretched and she knew he’d caught on to Jamie’s frame of mind. Fresh silence sang like an out-of-tune melody and Louisa felt her heart begin to pound. The last thing she needed right now was for her brother to turn macho and try to carry out his threat.
‘Jamie,’ she breathed helplessly.
With a reluctance she felt creep all over her skin like a shiver, Jamie finally found some stiff manners and took the offered hand. For the next few minutes Andreas joined the younger man in conversation, forcing answers to the questions he put to him with a smooth aplomb that showed up the differences in maturity between them.
When Jamie eventually excused himself to go and stash his wallet in his backpack, Andreas turned to her. ‘I owe you an apology,’ he said gruffly.
‘Not really.’ She sent him a brief tense smile. ‘He has changed an awful lot since you saw him last.’
The fact that she was letting him off for being so downright arrogant and loathsome to her didn’t seem to impress him much because he flattened his mouth into that thin, flat line again.
Then he changed the subject. ‘Presumably you are staying with my parents at the villa,’ he said briskly, only to add grimly, ‘It is a shame they did not see fit to warn me you were coming then maybe this—’
‘We’re not—’
‘Not what?’ He frowned down at her.
‘We’re not staying at the villa,’ she provided, saw a complete lack of comprehension stamp itself onto his lean, hard features and struggled to hold back a sigh.
Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she slid her eyes away from him and tried to decide what the heck she was supposed to say next. She was in no doubt that Andreas had been as surprised to see her standing here as she had been to see him, which had to mean that his mother had not been possessed with a sudden urge to confess her complicity in keeping her trips here a secret from her son. And if Isabella was maintaining her silence then Louisa had no wish to drop her mother-in-law in it by blurting out any stupid hints.
It was then that she saw Kostas standing by the silver Mercedes now parked a few car spaces down from where they stood. Her heart kicked out of rhythm. The old family retainer’s expression was guarded to say the least. Kostas wasn’t sure what to do next. Well, join the club, she thought drily.
‘We thought you were in Thailand,’ her cool-toned brother announced.
‘Thailand,’ Andreas repeated, his eyes narrowing on Jamie. ‘An—interesting mistake to make,’ he murmured ever so softly.
Louisa closed her eyes on a silent curse because that silken tone told her things she did not want to hear. One thing she could never call Andreas was slow on the uptake once all the clues started falling into place—Thailand had just become a very big clue.
When she opened her eyes again Andreas was looking directly at her and his eyes had narrowed even more. A tight flutter took up residence in her chest and she swerved her attention to Jamie.
‘Kostas has arrived,’ she murmured, waving a horribly shaky hand towards the old man standing by the silver Mercedes. ‘W-will you stash our things in the car?’
It was like balancing on a knife-edge, she thought. Flashing glimpses of steely expressions kept lancing her way. Jamie was reluctant to move and leave her alone with Andreas. Andreas had swung round to look at the old family retainer, now he was looking back at her and his expression had turned cold. Tension zipped around all three of them and on a hot Greek summer evening she suddenly felt so chilled her flesh grew goose-pimples.
Then her brother bent and with a jerk he picked the bags up. There was no missing his mood, no misunderstanding the look he flicked at Andreas before he strode away. She and Andreas both watched in thrumming silence until Jamie reached Kostas.
Then, ‘Would you like to explain to me what is going on?’ Andreas drawled.
‘Not really.’ With a rueful honesty she knew didn’t help the situation one tiny bit, Louisa ended up adding another sigh then straightened her shoulders and made herself look up at him. ‘I’m here to visit Nikos.’
Hearing their son’s name spoken between them for the first time in five years locked the muscles in his dark golden features so tightly a thick lump formed in her throat so she couldn’t breathe.
They both broke eye contact at the same time.
‘I had already gathered that,’ he returned without any noticeable inflexion in his voice. ‘While I was supposed to be safely out of the way in—Thailand, I think your brother said?’
‘You know he did,’ she responded edgily.
‘Which, to hazard a rough guess, brings my parents into this.’
Irritated now, ‘You don’t have to be sarcastic about it,’ she snapped back at him.
‘I have been set up. I will be as sarcastic as I want to be.’
He’d been set up? ‘Why aren’t you in Thailand?’ Louisa demanded.
‘Because I was summoned here obviously,’ he replied. ‘How often have you come here without my knowledge?’
There was just no way she was going to answer that one. ‘It’s getting late,’ she hedged instead, flicking a blind glance at her wrist-watch, only to frown when the time she saw did not make any sense. But then what did around here? she asked herself and dropped her wrist away. ‘We need to go if we don’t want to lose our rooms…’
‘What rooms?’ The frown came back.
It was like jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire then back again, Louisa thought heavily. ‘We are staying at The Hotel.’
The Hotel being the only hotel on the island.
‘Like hell you are,’ he rasped. ‘My wife does not reside in a third-class hotel when a ten-bedroom villa stands waiting to welcome her home!’
‘Estranged wife.’ It was out before she could stop it. So was, ‘And the Markonos villa is not home to me any more.’ Then before he could respond yet another sigh shot from her. ‘For goodness’ sake, Andreas, it should be obvious that I have no wish to stay at the villa. I am not here as a member of your fabulous family, I am here as myself for myself!’
‘You are a Markonos,’ he uttered stiffly.
I’m just not going there, Louisa decided, eyes as restless as her frazzled nerves now. ‘We are staying at the hotel,’ she repeated stubbornly.
‘And my mother allows this?’
He just was not going to let up until he knew it all, Louisa realised and, pinning her lips together, she gave a curt nod, knowing it was way too late to keep Isabella’s part in her visits here out of this.
Another silence followed—a cold, stiff Markonos silence that could freeze the blood in your veins. Her arms came up to fold across the tension packed inside her ribcage. Kostas had helped Jamie stash the bags in the boot of the car and now both of them were standing watching them and she felt a sudden urge to scream and shout and stamp her feet.
‘Look,’ she tried a more diplomatic approach, ‘I don’t…’
Andreas spun his back to her and walked away. Staring after him, Louisa wondered how she could have forgotten how overbearing he could be when the mood took him. Did he think she was finding this situation any less awful than he was? Did he think she wanted to be faced with her estranged husband, whose hot affairs with even hotter women had been splashed all over bright, glossy magazines for years?
He’d gone to speak to Kostas. Tall, dark, animal-lean with the potent promise of—
Oh, dear God, what was she doing? Don’t go there, she told herself. Just—don’t!
Taking a deep breath, she made herself track after him, noticing the way Andreas was so deliberately ignoring Jamie it was putting an angry flush in her brother’s face. She arrived at the Mercedes as sets of car keys were exchanged. Kostas sent her a sheepish look then nodded politely before walking off towards the open-top sports car.
Andreas pulled open the rear door of the Mercedes. ‘In,’ he commanded.
Jamie immediately bristled at his tone. Needing to get this ordeal over with as quickly as she could, Louisa gave her brother a nudge and a glaring look that told him to get in the damn car.
She climbed in after him. The door shut.
‘Who the hell does he think he is?’ Jamie muttered.
A man who knows he’s been duped by his own mother into coming here to the island and who doesn’t like it. Louisa didn’t blame him; she didn’t like what was going on either. What was Isabella playing at?
‘Shh,’ she hissed at her brother.
Andreas slid into the driver’s seat, the bright white of his shirt accentuating the muscular breadth of his shoulders and the rich, smooth warmth of his olive-toned skin. Louisa found herself staring at him—caught a pair of dark eyes looking right back at her through the rear-view mirror and felt pinned to the seat by an electric charge.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS hot, it went deep and it was bone-meltingly intimate, the dark depth of his eyes burning with a personal knowledge Louisa just hoped was not reflected in hers. She wanted to look away but found that she couldn’t. Her mouth had run paper-dry, lips trembling and parting on a soundless denial that died on the tingling tip of her tongue as the years fell away in the sultry shadows separating the two of them, until she felt like that young seventeen-year-old looking at the younger man who’d so captivated her shy and vulnerable heart.
Yet he had altered more than she would have thought possible, grown so much leaner and harder as if that younger man had been carefully honed and toned during the years to present this fully matured and tougher version she was looking at now. His face had fined down, the bone structure gaining so many new angles—the high cheekbones, the ruthlessly carved shape to his jaw and his chin. His nose had never been fleshy but it had managed to slim out even more and his wide, sensual mouth that had used to flash out fabulous, sense-stealing smiles now had a grim cut to it that she didn’t like to see.
Or was it finding himself faced with her again that was putting the grimness there? She didn’t know, couldn’t think beyond the agonising fact that he was still the most visually stunning man she had ever set eyes on, still so sensually armoured it was no wonder she was feeling as weak and susceptible as she’d always been around him.
Then she suddenly remembered how he’d looked the last time she’d seen him in their apartment in Athens, and a flash of pain hardened to a lump that lodged itself behind her ribs.
She dragged her eyes away.
As she did so the open-top sports car gave a throaty roar. Jamie glanced out of the side window to watch as the low, sleek, shiny black car made a U-turn in the street with Kostas at the wheel, and it was a mark of how angry her brother was that he could resist making a comment. He was crazy about powerful super-cars.
The Mercedes saloon came alive to a more sedate engine sound, its luxury interior almost masking the fact that the engine was running at all. It too made a neat U-turn then was gliding smoothly up the street.
The mood inside the car was not so sedate. It spat and it crackled.
This trip to Aristos was already turning into a disaster and they’d been here for less than half an hour. She dared another glance at Andreas’s stern profile. Five years was a long time not to lay eyes on the man she had once loved to the point of self-destruction. In the dimness of the car’s interior his lean cheek and jaw line looked even more severe than it had done a minute ago and his mouth was turned downwards slightly and tight.
What was he thinking? What did he suspect was going on here?
Well, she wasn’t going to ask him, she determined. But she couldn’t stop her eyes from drifting up to his dark hair, so fashionably cut to the shape of his head, then dropping to the span of his wide shoulders where fine shirting did very little to hide the muscular bulk beneath.
The last five years had been good to him, she acknowledged as her gaze wandered down a white shirtsleeve to the point where it had been folded back from a muscular forearm. The gold strap to his wrist-watch glinted against a strong, hair-roughened wrist, the long-fingered hand attached to it lightly gripping the leather-bound steering wheel.
Those fingers tightened suddenly, sending her eyes flickering upwards to clash with his eyes yet again. Her breathing stopped as time made that flip backwards once more and those glinting dark eyes held her totally transfixed. Thoughts started to flick between them, shared thoughts, intimate thoughts—a mutual knowledge of what made the other tick. Could he tell that she was sitting here battling to stifle a million different sensations she’d only ever felt with him?
A mobile phone began to play some weird trendy tune and Jamie dived into his pocket then began hitting buttons so he could pick up a text message.
Andreas was the first to look away this time, returning his attention to the road ahead, leaving Louisa to wilt in her seat. A few seconds later and her brother was chuckling at something, his bad mood evaporating with the help of some amusing comment one of his friends must have made. His long, rangy frame relaxed into the seat as he began spelling out his reply.
As the strangely soothing staccato beep of the phone-pad filled the silence, Louisa found her eyes drawn back to the rear-view mirror to find that Andreas was looking at her again too. They couldn’t seem to stop doing it. New memories began to flow between them, the kind of memories that added a disturbing darkness to his eyes. They had used to text each other all the time with silly little things like, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Do you miss me?’ ‘I need you.’ ‘Why aren’t you here?’
She shifted tensely on the seat. Mobile-phone technology had not been as advanced back then as it was now, especially at the beginning of their marriage, when they had used to communicate more by long-distance telephone than by text—share real conversations in which they touched with their voices to help get them through the long separations.
Duty calls, his brother Alex had used to call them. ‘Our mother will have his head on a stick if he dares to miss his daily duty call to his wife.’
Alex had resented her more than the rest of the Markonos family. He claimed that she’d ruined his brother’s life. ‘Women fawn all over him. Do you think he’s resisting their delightful temptations while you sit here growing fat with his child and he is thousands of miles away?’
She pulled her eyes away from the mirror. As she did so Andreas wondered what the hell had placed that pained look on her face.
He had—who else?
Damn the memories, he cursed silently. They were both cluttered up with them. Even her brother was suffering the knock-on effect. They had used to be good friends now Jamie looked on him as he would a poisonous snake. And it hurt. It touched something tender inside him in a place he did not want to visit because it was linked in some indecipherable way to his son.
His son…A hard lump formed in his throat as he looked at her—the mother of his lost son. She had not changed, nothing about the softly feminine shape of her beautiful face was different, the wide-spaced blue eyes, the straight little nose, the soft, full, sensational mouth she was holding tense at the moment but was still the most kissable mouth he had ever—
A sudden burn low down in his gut sent his gaze back to the dark road ahead. And he refused to look in the rear-view mirror again if that was where his thoughts were going to take him.
The car sped on through the darkness, heading up the peninsula then dropping down on the other side. A few minutes later and he was making a sharp turn and diving into woodland on the dusty track which led down to the only hotel the island possessed. It had a name, though Andreas could not recall it. To the residents of Aristos it was simply The Hotel. If you did not know it was at the end of this track you would be lucky to find it, yet the sturdy, whitewashed building with its attached taverna sat right on the edge of one of the prettiest beaches on the island.
They came upon it now, driving out from beneath the canopy of trees onto a tiny car park lit by a single low-wattage light hanging from the canopy above the hotel entrance. Bringing the car to a smooth halt, Andreas killed the engine then climbed out. The rear doors were already being pushed open and his two passengers climbed out then stood glancing about them as he strode to the back of the car.
