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Greek Affairs
To Take a Bride

The Markonos Bride
MICHELLE
REID
The Greek Tycoon’s Reluctant Bride
KATE
HEWITT
Greek Doctor, Cinderella Bride
AMY
ANDREWS

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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THE MARKONOS BRIDE

About the Author

MICHELLE REID grew up on the southern edges of Manchester, the youngest in a family of five lively children. But now she lives in the beautiful county of Cheshire, with her busy executive husband and two grown-up daughters. She loves reading, the ballet and playing tennis when she gets the chance. She hates cooking, cleaning, and despises ironing! Sleep she can do without and produces some of her best written work during the early hours of the morning.

CHAPTER ONE

THE atmosphere in the Markonos summer villa could not grow any cooler if an ice storm had swept down from the Arctic and in through the open terrace doors.

Eyeing his father across the width of the dinner table, Andreas Markonos delivered a cold, clipped, ‘No,’ with an economy that brought the shutters slamming down on his hard, handsome face.

His father ripped out a sigh of frustration. ‘I do not understand you!’ he muttered. ‘You tell me you are ready to take full control from me and here I sit ready to hand that control over to you! So what is your problem—?'

The problem was simple in Andreas’s estimation. ‘I will not respond to blackmail.'

‘It is not blackmail but good business sense!’ the older man rapped out. ‘If a man wishes to succeed in our world he must have stability in his personal life! Think about it,’ he insisted. ‘We make snap decisions by mobile telephone, we throw our weight around by electronic mail—we can even look our victims directly in the eye via satellite technology. There is a real danger of becoming drunk on one’s own power!'

‘Are you suggesting that I am drunk on power?’ Andreas demanded.

‘Ah—’ the flick of his father’s hand was dismissive ‘—you know very well that you shock and impress everyone with your ability to think at the speed of light,’ he conceded. ‘But I have been there before you, Andreas. I know how it feels to fly so high you are in danger of singeing your wings! I keep you grounded to some extent at present but who will do so when I retire?'

‘Myself?’

It was like waving a red rag at a cantankerous old bull. Orestes Markonos lurched forward in his seat, his seventy-year-old world-toughened expression pinning his son with a ferocious look. ‘Don’t use that sarcastic tone on me, Andreas,’ he warned thinly. ‘You know what it is I am talking about. I had your mother and my beloved children to keep me firmly tethered to God’s good earth. You merely have some very loose ties to some very loose women. It is not good enough!'

‘I still will not marry again to please you,’ Andreas returned coolly.

‘You did not marry to please me the first time!’ his father hit back. ‘And Louisa was a mistake, you confessed as much yourself.'

A sudden stillness grabbed hold of Andreas, he felt it freeze the muscles in his face. Raising the heavy arc of his glossy black eyelashes, ‘Never,’ he incised very softly, ‘have I ever said that Louisa was a mistake.'

‘You were both too young and impetuous then,’ growled Orestes, going for the compromise while clearly resenting doing it. It showed how much of his bluster was just a cover-up for his waning power in the face of his son’s growing potent mental strength.

Which was why Andreas rarely allowed it to show like this. He respected the old man too much to want to make him feel the pinch of his ageing weaknesses.

This, however, was different. This subject was forbidden territory and his father knew it. No one spoke Louisa’s name in his presence without feeling the icy whip of his response to it. And nobody mentioned his defunct marriage!

A hard sigh had him tossing aside his napkin and climbing to his feet. Turning, he strode across the room towards the drinks cabinet, with his lean body clenched inside the formal black dinner suit his mother always insisted her men wore when they sat down to eat dinner at home.

Home, he mused, slicing a glance around the elegant dining room belonging to an island villa that had been in the family in one form or another for as long as a Markonos had existed on this earth.

An island home he rarely visited these days. A place his father had been forced to issue what amounted to a royal summons to get him to come to at all! He’d understood what the summons had been about, of course, or he would have found a pressing excuse to be elsewhere. He had understood why his mother had politely excused herself after dinner and left the two of them alone.

His father’s retirement from the fast-paced, cut-throat spin of empire-building was long overdue. It was time for the great Orestes Markonos to step aside and hand control to his oldest son.

For an unacceptable price.

‘I am proud of you, Andreas,’ his father fed after him. ‘You are rib of my rib, blood of my blood! But if you want to walk in my shoes then I will insist that you find a new wife who will curtail your propensity to—'

‘I am already married,’ Andreas cut in as he picked up the brandy decanter.

‘A situation that can be remedied quickly enough,’ said the older man, tossing that legal problem to one side as if it did not count. ‘My lawyers will deal with it—'

‘Your lawyers?’ As he swung round, the sudden spark to hit Andreas’s dark eyes made his father add quickly,

‘To make mere preliminary enquires on your behalf, of course.'

‘Of course,’ he turned back to the decanter, ‘but not without my consent.'

The message was clear. His father hissed out his breath. ‘Five years is long enough to grieve a past which cannot be altered.'

Was it? Pouring brandy into a squat crystal glass, Andreas chose to ignore that loaded comment.

‘It is time for you to move on from it and build a new life for yourself on the solid foundations I am offering you here, with a good wife to help to keep you grounded—more sons!'

The final part of that recklessly tactless statement grabbed hold of Andreas’s gut like a violent twist of a fist. ‘Do you want one of these?’ he managed to ask evenly enough.

‘No!’ Orestes barked out. ‘I want you to listen to me! It is not healthy to lead the life you do these days! You upset your mother with it and lead me to despair!'

‘Then you have my sincere apologies for upsetting you both.'

‘I don’t want your apology!’ His father shot to his feet, five feet ten inches of sturdy Greek male in his seventh decade ready to take on his lean, muscled, beautifully constructed six-foot three-inch thirty-year-old son. ‘I am still your father no matter how big you feel you are for the size of your shoes these days, so you will listen to the sense that I speak!'

‘When you say something I want to hear!’

The angry rasp of his voice ripped around the elegant dining room. In the silence that thundered after it Andreas pulled in a tense, seething breath, angrily aware that any minute now his mother was going to come in demanding to know what was going on!

He decided to remove himself from the battlefield. Turning on his heels, he walked out through the doors which led onto the terrace. Behind him he heard his father throw back his chair and winced. As he stood glaring out across the villa’s sweeping gardens towards the silk-dark ocean beyond, his grim glinting gaze settled on the string of ferry lights just gliding into view.

With no room for an airstrip on the island the weekly ferry provided an essential lifeline to the small island of Aristos. Within the hour, Andreas judged from a lifetime’s experience, the small harbour town would be bursting with activity when the efficient transfer of cars, trucks, products and people began to take place. Two hours after that and the ferry would sail away again, leaving the island to settle back to its usual easygoing pace.

He liked it this way. He liked to know that without air access to tempt mass tourism here this small part of Greece would remain simply Greek. In the height of the summer season a few holidaymakers found their way here but they were rarely intrusive. Beautiful though the island was, it did not offer enough to hold most visitors here a full week until the ferry came back again. And if it were not for the advantages of being members of the rich and powerful Markonos family, with private helicopters to fly them in and out, even they would rarely get back here.

A sound of movement told him that his father was coming to join him.

‘Louisa was—’

‘My wife and the mother of my son,’ Andreas put in. ‘And you are mistaken if you believe that my youth or Louisa’s youth made it easier for either of us to deal with what happened five years ago, because it didn’t.'

‘I know that, son,’ Orestes acknowledged huskily, ‘which is why I have left the subject alone for as long as I have.'

Fixing his attention on that string of ferry lights, Andreas had to fight to stop from spitting out something cutting because his father had not left the subject alone. He had not left it alone when Louisa had first come to live here as his young and pregnant daughter-in-law. He had not left it alone when, shrouded in grief, she had caught that ferry and left the island for good.

For the best had been the phrase Orestes had used on that occasion. For the best had returned each time the older man had attempted to bring up the subject of divorce.

Divorce, Andreas repeated to himself as he stared at those damn ferry lights. Now, there was a word that mocked itself. For how did you divorce yourself from the woman who’d lain in your arms night after night and loved you with every look and touch and soft sigh she uttered? How did you divorce yourself from the sight of her giving birth to your child?

And how did you divorce yourself from the inconsolable sight of her the day you placed that child in the ground?

You didn’t. You lived with it. Night and day you lived with it. Night and day you scanned through a kaleidoscope of memories; some light, some dark, some so unbearable you wished you could switch off your head. And for the best became a soul-stripping insult, just as time to move on did. For how did you divorce yourself from all of that grief and agony and move on in your life as if it had never happened at all?

You didn’t. You just lived with it.

‘Andreas—’

‘No.’ Cold as ice now, he turned to put his glass down. ‘This conversation is over.'

‘This is madness!’ the older man exploded, losing all patience. ‘Your marriage is finished! Accept it! Divorce her. Move on!'

Grim features cut from rock, Andreas turned and walked down the terrace, his long stride driving him down the steps and into the gardens with the darkness swallowing him up. Two minutes later he was behind the wheel of his open-top sports car and roaring away.

He should not have come here, he told himself as he sent the car sweeping down the driveway. He should have ignored his father’s summons and done what he usually did at this time of year, which was to put himself as far away from this damn island as he could!

The tense shape of his mouth bit back hard against his teeth when he was forced to stop at the road to allow an old man and his ambling donkey and cart to pass by.

Life at its most idyllic, he observed cynically. A donkey, a cart and a bottle of ouzo stashed somewhere. A smallholding up in the hills with a homely, fat wife waiting for him, a few olive trees, some chickens and a small herd of goats to tend.

A way of life in other words, so detached from his own way of life that it was impossible to believe that he and the old man had been born on this same small Greek island at all.

Like chalk and cheese, he contrasted. Like two alien beings that happened to find themselves occupying the same patch of ground.

Like him and Louisa when he had been the arrogant twenty-two-year-old home from university for the long summer break and she had been a sweet seventeen spending six weeks with her family in a rented villa by the beach.

Six weeks that had changed both their lives forever. He had not been able to keep his hands to himself and she had been so willing to be seduced.

Stupid, blind, reckless youth, Andreas damned that mindless time in his life. They had fallen for each other like a pair of blind lemmings and taken on the whole damn opposition from two different worlds! Three years after their first meeting the two of them had grown so old that the man in his cart and his homely, fat wife would look—feel—younger now than he and Louisa had done back then.

A thick curse raked the back of his throat as he breathed it. Throwing the car into gear, he set it moving again, feeling the silken heat of the summer evening brush his face in much the same way it had done on the fateful night he had driven this same route into town. His only intention then had been to meet with his friends in a bar by the harbour where they would indulge in their favourite occupations—drinking beer and discussing fast cars and even faster women as they watched the weekly ferry come in.

He had not expected to see a leggy, long-haired blonde walking off the ferry wearing a pale blue miniskirt and a tiny top that barely covered the tender thrust of her breasts. Blue, blue eyes, he recalled, and the most amazingly smooth, creamy skin that blushed fire when she’d caught them all staring at her. She had been holding on to her younger brother’s hand, lagging behind her parents because the nine-year-old boy had wanted to look at the other boats tied up at the quay.

And there he had been, Andreas remembered, already living with the arrogant belief that he was a sexual cynic, yet so blown away by the sight of her that he was left to suffer the kind of hot dreams about her which sent him out to hunt her down the next day.

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.

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.

All around them the cicadas were calling, the warm evening air tangy with the scent of citrus and pine.

‘I can hear the ocean,’ Jamie said to his sister. ‘Are we right on the beach here?'

So, Jamie had not made this trip before, Andreas surmised from that. Louisa answered so quietly that he lost what she said as he swung up the boot lid.

He was about to lift the bags out when Jamie came up beside him. ‘I’ll do that.'

‘Don’t be a pain, Jamie,’ he said levelly, and the younger man flushed at the smooth shoot-down.

Yannis, the owner of the hotel, came hurrying out of the entrance just then to greet Louisa with warm smiles and words of welcome, only to stop dead when he saw Andreas standing there and not his old friend Kostas.

Yet more tension hit the atmosphere. Andreas ignored it as he stepped over to greet the hotel owner with a polite shake of his hand.

But Louisa knew that Andreas was aware that Yannis had stopped dead like that because he had not expected to see both of them in the same place at the same time. The island was small and the memories of its people were long. Everyone here knew how the eldest son of Orestes Markonos had fallen head over heels for a teenage tourist, made her pregnant and married her against the wishes of both families. They also knew about their son’s tragic accident. They knew they lived separate lives. They knew that Andreas never came to the island when Louisa was visiting.

In quiet words of Greek he instructed Yannis to help Jamie with the luggage. Andreas waited until they’d disappeared inside the hotel before he closed the car boot then turned to Louisa, who was still standing by the rear passenger door.

‘By tomorrow we will be the talk of the island,’ he drily predicted.

‘So what’s new there?’ Louisa responded, only to instantly regret the acid in her tone. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured.

‘Why be sorry for speaking the truth?’ He came to lean against the car beside her, side-on so he was facing her, hands in his pockets—too close for comfort and placing her senses on full alert. ‘I don’t give a damn about what others wish to say about me.'

‘You never did.’ Folding her arms across her body, Louisa fixed her eyes on her flat shoes and tried not to notice how tall he seemed standing this close beside her, how big and so skin-tinglingly masculine he—

‘No,’ he agreed. Then he really shattered her comfort zone by lifting up a set of fingers to gently stroke her cheek. ‘I was shocked out of my senses when I saw you walk off the ferry,’ he confided softly. ‘For a moment I thought I was dreaming.'

‘Stuff nightmares are made of.’ Lifting her chin up, she winged him a brief, tense smile then looked away again, dislodging his fingers at the same time.

All he did was to move the fingers to hook a stray lock of hair behind her ear. ‘Not from where I was standing, agape mou.’

This time Louisa stiffened right away from him. ‘Don’t toy with me, Andreas,’ she said tensely. ‘I was touching, not toying.’ ‘You have no right to do either.’ ‘I feel like I do …’

That was some blunt confession to utter! ‘How dare you say that?’ She swung on him furiously.

He grimaced, the hand going back in his pocket. ‘Because you are still my wife?'

Stark, cold images of what he had been doing the last time she’d seen him in their apartment in Athens sprang like a burning blister into her head. Louisa tensed away from him then used up every single one of the next ten seconds to struggle with what was now crawling around inside her, while he dared—dared to lean against the side of the car and watch her with that lazily mocking challenge on his too handsome face!

She lost the battle. On a seething short breath she stabbed her left hand out. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘no gold wedding ring on my finger. No sign that I ever belonged to you at all! I use the name Jonson now—Miss Jonson! I do not think of myself as a Markonos any more!'

‘Washed me right out of your life?’ he quizzed idly.

‘Yes!’ she confirmed it.

He grabbed her and kissed her.

It was so unexpected that before she’d even realized what was happening he’d crushed her hard up against him and was in full, burning possession of her mouth. Lights switched on all over her body. It was that quick, that explosive, like being dragged into a seething cauldron of remembered intimacy that felt crazily as though she had never lost it at all!

Her breath caught in her throat as her lips responded, parting to his warm, moist invasion like hungry traitors to greedily invite him to do his worst. She didn’t want to believe this was happening—in some wildly shocked part of her brain she was horrified that he could still do this to her, yet at the same time she was drowning in the sheer pleasure of it, lost without a shred of control. His hands had control of her body, long fingers, passionately restless, moving on her hips and her spine. He was pressing her close; she could feel stirring evidence of his passion and felt her senses stir in response.

And through it all their mouths moved on each other, hot, hungry, deeply intimate. Oh, so dreadfully intimate it came as a terrible shock when he just as suddenly pushed her back from him, making the air between them splinter with the sound of their mutual thick groans.

Holding her at arm’s length, he let his fingers bite into her shoulders, eyes like glinting black lasers locked onto the swirling, shocked passion darkening her own.

Then he spoke, hard, tight, cruelly mocking. ‘Not quite washed me away, agape mou, hm?'

The unforgivable taunt crowned her tumbling sense of degradation. She began to tremble violently. Tears stung hotly in her throat.

‘Me and the thousand others,’ she hit back in thick and shaking, seething disgust then pulled free of him and ran into the hotel.

Andreas watched her go and struggled to believe he’d actually said and done that.

Why had he done it? What the hell was the matter with him?

A string of tight curses raked from his tense lips as he spun around to face the car, because he knew the answer. It lay in the million dark forces running riot inside him—not one of them fit to justify him grabbing her like that.

Her and the thousand others.

What a damn great joke, he thought bitterly, and another set of curses leapt from him as he tugged the car door open and slammed himself inside.

Still cursing, he took off from the hotel with a cruel spin of tyres.

Leaning back against the hotel doors listening to the tyres spit up gravel as the car took off, Louisa was trembling so badly she felt ready to sink into a weak, limbless huddle on the floor.

And her lips were throbbing, the hot, bitter tears that burned her eyes threatening to spill. How could he do that? How could he have just grabbed her and kissed her like that?

A shimmer of something horrendously desperate went riddling right through her. It settled like a sting between her thighs and on the tips of her breasts.

‘You OK?’

The sound of Jamie’s uncertain tone dragged her gaze to her brother. ‘I’m f-fine,’ she lied, fighting to pull herself together.

He did not look convinced. ‘Did he say something to upset you?'

‘No,’ she lied yet again. ‘We—we’re both suffering from shock, that’s all.'

But there was a lot more than shock rattling around inside her, Louisa had to admit hours later when she was still pacing her bedroom too shaken up to think beyond the whole face-to-face meeting with Andreas followed by that kiss and the humiliating way she’d fallen into it without a fight.

‘Oh, give me strength,’ she groaned as a flood of heat pooled low down in her abdomen, taunting her with her own wildly uncontrolled response.

How could she have done that? She couldn’t still want him. She didn’t want to still want him! Wrapping her arms around her body, she paced over to the window to stare out at the velvet-dark night. It was late and the old-fashioned double bed standing behind her should have been inviting, but each time she so much as glanced at it her stupid imagination conjured up an image of him lying there naked and waiting for her like a terrible guilty wish and—

With a jerk she took herself off to the tiny bathroom and switched the shower on. Ten minutes later, shivering with cold and grim determination, she dived between the cool linen sheets and told herself to get over that stupid kiss and go to sleep.

Andreas lounged on a chair on the terrace, the glittering darkness of his gaze fixed on the silk dark night. In front of him on a table stood the decanter of brandy and a large pot of strong coffee keeping warm on a burner.

He had changed his mind about getting drunk tonight.

His recent conversation with his parents had been short and pithy, his father’s only saving grace being that he had not known Louisa was on the ferry when they’d had their after-dinner chat.

His mother had been a different matter. Her lack of apology in the face of his anger had been nothing short of defiant. ‘I have to admit that I did not intend for you to just bump into each other as you did,’ she’d admitted. ‘But I did intend to make it happen before you flew off again. It is time, Andreas, that the two of you faced each other. Now perhaps you can both bring some kind of closure to your marriage.’

‘You set this up because you expect closure to result from it?'

‘What else? I am tired of watching you drift through the years in a state of marital limbo. It has to stop.'

Well, limbo was not where he was right now. He was angry, on Louisa’s behalf, that she had been subjected to this. He was angry for himself. He was perfectly happy with the way he ran his life. He did not want closure. He liked to recall what a lousy husband he had been. It helped to keep his emotions locked up tight.

Not so you would notice, mocked a voice in his head. You might be an emotional desert with every other woman you’ve known but one look at Louisa and you’re spinning right off the emotional planet!

And that was the reason why he was sitting here drinking brandy and strong black coffee. The brandy was the method by which he meant to numb what was flying around inside him, the coffee the means by which he aimed to keep himself awake while he did it so that by tomorrow he would have himself back in control. Then he would visit Nikos before flying away from here, he determined, leaving Louisa to commune with their son without his interference or fear of being grabbed and kissed by the man she clearly despised.

She’d kissed him back.

Her soft mouth had parted and she’d pressed in against him and it had been like—

Cursing as something hot went spurting through his blood, Andreas got up to pace the length of the terrace then back again.

What the hell was the matter with him? They’d been separated for five years! Had not set eyes on each other once in those five years! She had walked away from this island without offering him so much as a phone call to warn him she was going to go back to England, or to give him a chance to—

‘Damn,’ he cursed as he glared at the disappearing ferry lights and wished he could control what was happening to him. He was thirty years old now—a mature and sophisticated man! Yet he felt as fired up as that lusty twenty-two-year old had felt the night he first laid eyes on her.

Which said—what to him?

‘Ouch,’ Louisa choked as she caught the open toe of her sandal on an unseen stone and almost tripped up.

What other idiot would decide on impulse to go for a walk in the middle of the night? she railed at herself as she lifted up her foot to rub the bruised end of her big toe.

And how far had she come from the hotel since she started out on this crazy venture? With only a slithery moon hanging low in the sky, it was difficult to tell. When all of that hot, senseless restlessness had sent her creeping out of bed and eventually out of the hotel, she’d only intended to take a brisk walk down the beach. How she had ended up going as far as to strike out on one of the many narrow pathways scoured into the hillside by hundreds of years of grazing goats she had no idea.

Yes, she did, she then argued with herself. She’d decided that if she couldn’t sleep she might as well watch the sun come up. She’d intended to walk as far as a plateau of rock she had used to like to sit on to watch the sky slowly turn from navy blue to rich vermilion to a soft azure blue.

Her teeth buried themselves in her bottom lip when it suddenly occurred to her that it wasn’t even coming light yet. Could she have got her timing all wrong? Putting her foot back on the ground, she squinted at her watch but it was too dark to read the tiny silver face.

A sigh shook her. She really should turn back.

But she didn’t want to turn back.

She did not want to be alone in that hotel bedroom tormenting herself with things she had no right to feel any more! Being out here was different because while she was using up energy she wasn’t thinking. She wasn’t scared for her safety—not on this tiny island where the people were more honest and upright and true than a monastery of monks!

But standing on a rough-hewn hillside while it was still dark was beginning to feel just a bit spooky. If anyone happened to catch her skulking around they were going to think that she was a bit spooky too.

A soft giggle broke from her. It was crazy to do it but she suddenly saw the humour of it, the total juvenile silliness of being out here at all!

Then something warm touched her shoulder and she let out an ear-piercing shriek. It was a bat—a bat! she told herself, spinning around to check out that theory, only to have the breath fly from her body when she found she was staring at the tall, dark figure of a man dressed in ghostly grey.

CHAPTER FOUR

ONE of her hands shot up to press against her chest where her heart was hammering. ‘Andreas!’ she gasped out. ‘You scared the life out of me!’ ‘My apologies,’ he said.

He was standing barely two feet away from her but how he’d managed to get that close without her hearing him was enough to send cold shivers chasing up and down Louisa’s spine.

‘What are you doing out here?’ he demanded. ‘Are you out of your mind, Louisa, to be walking about on your own at three-thirty in the morning?'

Three-thirty? ‘I thought it was four-thirty,’ she mumbled, dragging her hand away from her pounding chest to take another look at her watch. She still couldn’t read the tiny silver face but a sinking feeling inside was telling her she must have reset it to the wrong time as she’d flown in to Athens yesterday.

‘Does an hour make a difference? It is still dark out here!'

‘It does to the dawn,’ she murmured faintly. ‘I wanted to watch the sun come up.'

The way he pulled in a deep breath told her he did not think that an adequate excuse. But she’d always loved to watch the sun rise and set in Greece; surely he must remember that?

‘So what’s your reason for being out here?’ Looking up, she all but threw the question at him. Then another thought hit her. ‘You haven’t been following me, have you?'

‘Oh, yes,’ he ground out. ‘I spent the night camped outside your window, waiting for the moment you would decide to do something as stupid as this.'

His sarcasm hit the spot it was meant to. Stuffing her hands into the baggy pockets of her white cotton trousers, Louisa snapped her lips together and glared down at her sandaled feet. The raw tension flitting between them was suffocating, the rumbling tumble of emotions put there because of that totally uncalled for, totally unwarranted—

‘I was running,’ he pushed out.

Running, she repeated to herself and at last took notice of what he was wearing, resentful blue eyes shifting from her feet to his. His running shoes were old and scuffed. Grey cotton jogging bottoms covered his long, powerful legs, with telling sweat marks darkening the fabric in certain places, especially around the tightly packed bowl of his hips, where—

Mouth paper-dry, she dragged her gaze upwards. He was still panting a little from his run up the hill and she felt the full visual impact of his hard male torso trapped inside a damp grey T-shirt that clung so tightly it could pass for skin.

‘On the beach,’ he added, and she missed his new husky tone as her eyes clung to the moisture glossing his strong brown throat. Her tongue snaked out. There was a sudden tense movement of his muscular breastplate which dragged her eyes down to it.

‘I was on the way back to the villa when I saw you stumble ahead of me on the path—Stop looking at me like that, agape mou,’ he said abruptly. ‘It is dangerous …'

Startled, she flicked her eyes back to his. He wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t even being sardonic. Every nerveend in her body grew stretched and tense. Tugging in a breath, she felt a flush of colour rush into her cheeks and wanted to drag her eyes away from him but she couldn’t because this warm, dark, very physical man was the whole reason she’d made the impulsive decision to walk out at this ridiculous time of the night! She had not been able to lie in that bed without thinking about him being there with her.

Dear God, she thought helplessly. What a confession to make.

‘I’ll go back …’ Jerking into movement, she sidestepped around him.

‘I will walk with you.’

‘I don’t want you to.’

‘It was not a request, yineka mou,’ he said coolly. ‘I am not your wife!’ she flicked out. ‘What are you, then?’

The heck if she knew, Louisa thought angrily. Not his wife, not free and single.

Pinning her lips together, she refused to answer and just took off down the slope, walking quickly—carelessly—because she needed to get as far away from him as she could before she did something really stupid and told him what was—

The hand closing around one of her wrists pulled her to an abrupt standstill. ‘Don’t be more foolish than you have been already,’ Andreas said harshly. ‘This path is treacherous.'

Panicked—spooked beyond any sight of reason because she knew what was going to happen next and that it was her own crazy weakness that was driving it—Louisa tried to wrench her captured wrist free. When he refused to let go of it she made the big mistake of swinging round to glare at him. Her troubled little world tilted as she took in his full six feet three inches of lean, sleek, muscular height. The eyes, the hair, the fabulous bone structure, the gorgeous, gorgeous sensual mouth. His hair was damp—spiked, like the eyelashes that framed his glinting dark eyes and the few curls of hair she could see clustered around the V-neck of his shirt. Trickles of sweat were still trailing down each taut cheek and the strong column of his neck and her tongue moistened with a desire to reacquaint herself with its clean, salty taste.

‘Please,’ she begged in a low, husky groan as the breath came and went from her body, the darkness surrounding her beginning to thicken with a new sultry heat.

‘Louisa …’ he breathed tensely. ‘Don’t do this.’

He knew what was happening to her. The glitter in his eyes and the taut set of his mouth told her so and she choked out a small whimper because she knew it was already too late. She should not have looked at him. She should not have let him see what was tormenting her! Knowledge brought intimacy and intimacy brought a complete collapse of all that was sensible and sane the way it had with that kiss they’d fallen into at the hotel.

‘I have to go …’ She tried to pull free again, desperation making her voice shake.

He muttered something in Greek then pulled her towards him. She felt the full burning heat of him as she made impact with his chest. She looked up, was instantly trapped by dark eyes swirling with an angry glint. She watched his damp brown throat move up and down as he swallowed before his tense lips parted so he could speak.

But she didn’t want him to speak. She didn’t want him to say anything. She just wanted to—

On another choking groan she gave in to what was driving her and reached up to hook a hand around his neck so she could bring his mouth down onto hers because that was what she wanted him to do with that sensual mouth!

Sensation flashed across her senses. It had been bad enough the first time when they’d kissed in the hotel car park; this time she just did not have a single ounce of control. She wanted him. She’d always wanted Andreas! He was a cross she had to bear because he was her first love, her only love—who really knew what made her this vulnerable to him?

Who knew what made her cling to and kiss him with a wild, hot, begging urgency that drove her tongue between his lips and sent her eager body arching into the hardness of his? All she did know was that it took only seconds for the whole thing to make the giant leap back through five years to a place in time when this explosive kind of passion had been normal to them.

The clean, damp smell of him permeated all around her. It was so exciting she just couldn’t keep still. When his hands made a compulsive slide down her body she dragged her mouth away so she could lick that warm, salty gloss from his throat and heard him hiss out something very rude.

Then he sent his hands thrusting up beneath her T-shirt, stroking her smooth naked back, and pressed her even closer. His heart was thundering, the bowl of his hips filling with that potent force that made her cling all the more desperately to him. She could not get close enough, could not taste enough of him.

With a fevered whisper of, ‘I want you,’ she went back to his mouth.

He took the kiss over and lost them both in the pleasure of it, the hungry stab of their tongues growing greedier and more demanding as the whole thing rushed on. Maybe the darkness helped, the feeling that they were alone in the world as they stood there on the side of the hill.

Then it was gone.

Andreas was the one to stop it. He was the one to push her away from him yet again. He was the one to spin his back to her while all Louisa could do was to stand there gasping and trembling with shock at the loss.

‘If you want sex that badly, then I am more than happy to provide it,’ he rasped out, twisting back to catch her pained flinch. ‘But not here on a dusty track, rutting like a pair of goats.'

‘Why not?’ Louisa challenged shrilly. ‘It was pretty close to how it happened the first time between us. You did not seem so picky then!'

Something flashed across his eyes. At first she thought it was a cruel type of cynical amusement, then she realised that it was pure, glinting rage. She’d touched a nerve she hadn’t even known he possessed and suddenly she’d been grabbed and pulled back against him again.

‘You want to re-enact our first time?’ he raked down at her. ‘You want me to roll you down on the ground and lose my head again, reintroduce you to what it is like to have sex with a man out of control?'

‘No,’ she whispered, horribly aware that this was all her fault. ‘I’m s-sorry … I don’t know what came over me. I—'

‘I came over you. Want came over you. Need—lust. A sudden desire for sex with your hot-blooded Greek!’ His contempt whipped her skin. ‘I must therefore assume that your last five years in the sexual company of Englishmen has not been enough to satisfy you.'

‘And what’s your excuse?’ she hit back at the cruel-tongued brute. ‘What drove you to respond as you did? A sudden desire to re-enact the deflowering of your teenage virgin?’ She was going to cry any second now. She was going to break down and weep! ‘Have the countless lovers who’ve passed through your bed not quite lived up to the excitement of having your very own personally trained sex object, one untouched by another male hand?'

‘Well, I am sure the last part no longer counts,’ he threw back in derision.

And how would you know? You haven’t even bothered to ask how I was doing in five years! Louisa wanted to shout. Instead she took off down the track again, hating him so much she just couldn’t understand how he could still get to her the way that he did!

Her knees still felt as if they didn’t want to support her. Her body was on fire. Her angry eyes flashed forked lightning out into the darkness in front of her and her pulsing mouth shook with tears.

She caught her toe on another stone jutting up in the pathway—the same toe she’d hit before! As she stumbled with the same sound issuing forth from her throat a curse rattled out from behind her as an arm looped around her in a flying hook that launched her off the ground. The next few seconds went by in a grappling blur as a pair of running shoes fought for friction on the loose gravel slope. She was winded yet sobbing and panting at the same time.

Setting her feet down on the path, Andreas spun her round to face the full fury her reckless dash had unleashed. ‘Are you crazy or something?’ he bit down at her. ‘How many fatal falls in this family will it take to make you—?'

He stopped like a man who’d been frozen. A white ring of tension circled the tense shape of his mouth. He wasn’t looking at her. He wasn’t looking at anything. And his fingers bit like talons into her arms while the night air screamed out what he had not said.

He’d meant Nikos. He’d been referring to the fatal fall their son had taken on a path just like this.

‘Oh, dear God,’ Louisa choked, how could she have been so stupidly thoughtless? ‘I just didn’t think,’ she whispered painfully.

He suddenly came alive with a hard, tight, rasping rip of the air from his body. Before she knew what was happening he’d heaved her upwards until their faces were level and caught her quivering mouth with the all-consuming delivery of his. Half a second later and true pandemonium broke out, the passion of before swung back into dominance with a hot and seething sexual urgency that grabbed hold tight.

Louisa didn’t even know which of them was first to fall victim. All she did recall was her head jerking back so she could look into his burning black eyes and any hint of common sense or self-control was tossed aside as their mouths met again in a wide, tight compulsion that she fell into mindlessly.

So much for not wanting sex on a dusty pathway, she thought hazily as he pushed her down onto one of the grassy embankments that ran along both sides of the path. The kiss didn’t even break as they made the manoeuvre, lips fused, tongues seducing, claiming—demanding. Louisa was the one to push up his T-shirt to expose his beautiful muscular body before her shirt followed suit.

He released a husky groan as her breasts arrived against his hot naked flesh. She went up in flames. Their hands were all over each other; nothing in the least bit sophisticated about this. It was sexual compulsion taken down to its most basic function. They devoured each other with touch and taste—aroused and tormented each other, the gasping tugs of their breathing twisting all around them, wanting, demanding and getting without question. When Andreas reared back to strip the white cotton trousers from her legs, Louisa stared at the hard contours of his face, strapped tight by a need that reverberated inside herself, then she dropped her gaze to the proud jut at his thighs she had already exposed and caressed with her hands to bring him to this virile state.

‘You always were a witch,’ he husked as he came back to her, and his thick curse was only part of what was attacking him as he entered her with a single sweet, driving thrust.

Her shuddering gasp of pleasure brought his mouth back to hers to devour the sound. He drove into her like a man trapped in a fever. If she didn’t know better she could have convinced herself that he had not done this for years. He was hot, he was trembling, his kiss so deep it was all she could do to clutch at his shoulders as he drove the whole wild experience on. As she began to reach that blinding white pinnacle he wrapped his strong arms right around her to lift her even closer and increased his pace. The tight sting of orgasm hit and just kept on coming, owning, controlling, flaying them both with its ripples of pleasure that dragged him groaning into the same frantic place.

Reality hit later when it was over. An awful silence filling with the terrible knowledge of the way they had behaved. It hit them both with a cold wash of dismay followed by a bone-tensing question as to what they were going to do next to extricate themselves from this.

Andreas muttered an earthy expletive as a final shudder shook him in the act of attempting to withdraw. Something tugged him right back again and Louisa’s thick little whimper confirmed what that something was. She had just come all round him in a wild multi-orgasmic flow yet she still wasn’t ready to let him go.

Or her inner body wasn’t, he amended that as he felt her clenched fists push at his chest. ‘Get off,’ she choked out.

He leapt backwards, ignoring the next protesting shudder to hit him as he shot to his feet and turned his back on her while he straightened his clothing and allowed her the privacy to do the same thing.

Turning his back had not been a good idea, he realised a few seconds later after watching the white trousers slide out of his line of vision and he listened to the urgent rustle of clothing as she got dressed.

Eventually everything went still. The new silence flicked like a whip all around him. How the hell did he turn and face her now? What was he supposed to say to the woman he had just tossed down on the ground and taken in an utterly primitive, no-finesse, raging lust?

His wife. The mother of his son.

He compromised by only half turning, his eyes carefully hidden beneath the heavy droop of his eyelids as he stretched out a hand in a silent offer to help her to her feet.

She ignored it and scrambled up under her own steam. Her hair and her clothes were speckled with dirt and bits of dry grass and thyme, and she was trembling so badly she almost stumbled again.

‘I—’

‘Don’t.’ Her voice shook as she silenced him.

Heaving in his breath, Andreas supposed that she was probably right and silence at this moment was the only way to deal with what they had just done. Yet right on the back of that grim thought a sudden thick laugh caught hold of him. ‘We never could control it, could we?'

It was like lifting the lid off a volcano, she launched the flat of her palm at his face.

‘No …’ He caught her wrist before the hand had a chance to make contact. ‘You don’t slap my face because you cannot control yourself around me, Louisa.'

‘I hate you,’ she whispered, wrenching her wrist free so she could spin her back to him, her slender arms wrapping around her body in soul-cutting self-defence. ‘How could we do that?’ she tremored. ‘How could we just fall on each other like that?'

‘It never took much.’ His voice was grim again.

She swung back. ‘Is that any kind of excuse?’

Andreas just shrugged. He’d wanted her from the moment he had watched her walk off the ferry. And, even standing here regretting the whole damn mad incident, he felt fresh need already pumping away inside him like some greedy monster he had never been able to feed anywhere else.

He cast a glance at the way she was standing there, upset, shaking with shock and horror and the close onset of tears. Beautiful, he thought bleakly, still so beautiful, even with her hair all over the place and her clothes covered with dirt.

‘Wh-what if I get pregnant again?’

It came out of nowhere, the one thing he had not been prepared to hear. It totally shook him. ‘You said that to punish me,’ he pushed out hoarsely.

The way those dark blue eyes looked at him gave him his answer long before the breathy little, ‘No,’ arrived in his ears.

He bit out a word that made her wince, her kiss-swollen mouth quivering before she shot back bitterly, ‘Well, that just about covers it.'

Then she left him standing there. Throat clogged by hot, shamed tears, Louisa started walking. When he came up behind her, her shoulders racked up with rejection because she thought he was going to grab her again.

But he didn’t grab. ‘Just walk,’ he rasped as he stepped in front of her then began to lead the way back down the path.

Louisa followed him in thick, bubbling silence, shame consuming her a little more with each step. She did not look at him but kept her eyes fixed on the ground as they trod the soft sand on the beach. When they arrived at the hotel he stopped at the entrance and she kept on going. Neither bothered to offer up a hypocritical ‘goodnight'.

When she finally crawled back into bed she hid her head beneath the pillow and tossed bitter recriminations at herself until she finally dropped into an exhausted sleep only to be woken up a few hours later by a knock on her bedroom door.

Struggling to drag herself awake, she rolled out of the bed without knowing she had done it. Then her eyes connected with the pile of clothes left to fall where she’d dropped them and instant recall had her falling like a stone back onto the mattress as the whole shocking episode robbed her of the ability to stand up.

She’d had sex with Andreas like a slut with no morals. She cringed inside her own flesh.

‘Louisa!’ Jamie knocked again. ‘Breakfast—I’m starving!'

‘Coming,’ she called weakly. ‘S-see you down there.’ Then she dived for the damning heap of clothes and stuffed them to the bottom of her bag with urgent, trembling fingers as if hiding the evidence would take the crime away.

It didn’t. As she headed for the bathroom she groaned at the subtle aches in places that made her quiver in shame and she hated herself. Catching sight of her face in the mirror froze her to the spot in dismay. She looked washed out through lack of sleep and all tumbled and tousled. A shocking inner glow burned like a sultry secret in the darkened blue of her eyes and in the soft pulse of her still swollen mouth.

I look like a lush, she thought in disgust and spun away from the mirror to step beneath the punishing heat of the shower spray.

Ten minutes later, showered, dressed and feeling about as composed as she was ever going to feel, she joined her brother on the shady terrace that overlooked the beach. The sun was already hot and glinting like crystal on the blue water. As they sat quietly planning their day while they ate breakfast, vivid flashbacks of what she and Andreas had done kept catching her out to send her senses spinning into hot, dipping dives.

Someone stepped around the corner of the hotel building from the direction of the car park. Glancing up, she felt her senses take a different kind of dive.

Well, this is a first in five years, she thought cynically as her mother-in-law walked towards their table.