No! Don’t go there! Not even in imagination! Least of all that...
He took a shuddering breath. He’d been a rash and reckless fool to walk her back to her room—he should have resisted the temptation. But he hadn’t wanted to say goodnight quite yet. Had wanted to prolong the evening with her. Prolong it in a much more intimate way...
No! He was heading down dangerous paths again.
He clenched his jaw, exerting control over himself just as he had since that evening he’d allowed himself the sweet pleasure of greeting her with that all too brief and fleeting kiss. It had taught him that any contact with her would be like a match to tinder. That he must control himself, deny himself, until he had her all to himself.
As he would tomorrow.
Tomorrow night...the start of their honeymoon. The start of their marriage, when she would be his...
That low purring started up in him, so familiar to him now whenever he thought of the breathtakingly alluring woman who would soon—oh, so achingly soon now—be his entirely...
And until then...
He turned away, clicking shut the balcony doors and striding into his bedroom, stripping off his tie as he did so, slipping his cufflinks.
His eyes glinted. Until then the traditional remedy for thwarted passion was going to be very necessary.
He headed for the en-suite bathroom. Time for a cold shower. A very cold one...
* * *
Rosalie gazed, enthralled, as the helicopter started its descent, feeling again the leap of pleasure she’d felt when Xandros had announced, just after their wedding that morning, that he was taking her to his private island for their honeymoon.
She hadn’t thought they would have a honeymoon at all—not in a marriage like theirs. But then she had realised that, just as he wanted her to wear the fabulous diamond engagement ring and also, since the simple brief ceremony that morning, which had passed in a blur of Greek with an English translation for herself in a room at the town hall, her new wedding ring, so a honeymoon would be expected as well. To show the world—show her father—that theirs was a proper marriage.
And she knew she could be glad that it was to be on Kallistris. On Xandros’s private island they wouldn’t be on view for anyone else to think it odd they weren’t all loved-up...
Her eyes shadowed momentarily but she banished her thoughts. Last night had been...difficult. The understatement rang hollow. But in the sleepless hours that had followed she had come to terms with it. She’d had to.
Xandros had kissed her—she’d all but begged him to, and mortification burned in her as she remembered what he’d said to her—and promptly regretted it. Well, she had learnt her lesson. From now on she would be only what he wanted her to be—bright, cheerful, friendly, appreciative, enthusiastic...
She ran out of adjectives to describe the way she would need to be with this man who had called kissing her a mistake, and went back to gazing, rapt, as the little island—the smallest of a small cluster set in the azure Aegean—loomed closer and closer. And then they had landed, setting down on a small helipad by the sea’s edge.
Xandros vaulted out, thanking the pilot, and Rosalie, glad she’d changed out of her tailored wedding outfit into cotton trousers and top at the hotel before setting off, jumped down lightly. Xandros, too, had changed out of his customary business suit into chinos and an open-necked shirt—looking just as drop-dead gorgeous as he always looked.
Rosalie sighed inwardly.
‘Mind the downdraft!’ he warned, and hurried her to the edge of the helipad as the helicopter took off again in a whirl of rotors.
As it disappeared, Xandros turned to her. ‘Welcome to Kallistris,’ he said.
His eyes were warm, his smile warmer. She felt her insides give a little skip, but she only smiled back, and then both of them turned as a Jeep came rattling along the coastal track towards them.
‘Ah,’ said Xandros, looking pleased. ‘Panos.’
The weather-beaten face of his island’s caretaker broke into a huge smile as Xandros introduced him, warning Rosalie that Panos spoke little English, but that his wife, Maria, was more fluent.
‘Kalimera,’ said Rosalie, gingerly trying out her highly limited Greek.
Her hand was taken in a bear grip, and shaken vigorously.
‘Kyria Lakaris!’ exclaimed Panos, and it gave Rosalie a start to hear her married name.
I’ll have to get used to it, she thought to herself.
Just as she would have to get used to living with Xandros...but as friends, nothing more than that.