She glanced towards him uncertainly. The reason she was pale was because she’d spent the first part of the summer in the north of England, teaching, and her days here were spent in rehearsal. But all she could say—again in that same deliberately light voice—was, ‘I’m working on it!’ Then, in order to avoid any more awkward questions, she gave a little yawn. ‘Do you know, I really do think I might have a little siesta? Champagne at lunchtime has made me sleepy.’ She slid her dark glasses off her face—no point getting white circles around her eyes—and gave a swift smile to her hosts. ‘Wake me up if I start snoring,’ she warned them humorously.
‘You could never snore!’ Philip said immediately, clearly aghast at the idea of his goddess doing anything so un-goddess-like.
His cousin gave a low laugh. He found that her throwaway comment, so insouciantly self-mocking, appealed to him. But then, of course, almost everything about Mademoiselle Sabine was appealing. Everything physical, at least.
Bastiaan’s eyes clouded meditatively as he let his gaze rest on her slim, lissom body. Her eyes were closed, and that allowed him to study her face at leisure, while his cousin busied himself fiddling with his iPod’s playlist and fishing out earphones now that the object of his admiration was so annoyingly determined to doze off.
She really is incredibly lovely to look at.
That was the thought uppermost in Bastiaan’s consciousness. She had taken off her make-up, he realised, presumably to replace it with sun cream, but it had not dimmed her beauty in the least. He found himself studying her face as she lay there with her eyes studiedly closed. Curious thoughts flitted across his mind. Now she was neither film noir vamp nor sixties siren.
So who is she?
The question was in his mind...but he was finding no answer.
He frowned. What did it matter what image Sabine Sablon chose to present to him? What did it matter that she appeared to have an engaging sense of humour about herself? What did it matter that as she lay there, her face bare of make-up, being blessed by the sun’s rays, all he could see in her was beauty...?
All he could feel was desire...?
He settled himself on his lounger and started to make his plans. The first step, he knew, must be to remove Philip from the vicinity—and for that he had an idea forming already.
Then it would be time to turn his attentions to the woman—the beautiful, alluring woman who was lying so close to him—and bring her right up close and very, very personal...
CHAPTER SIX
SARAH SAT, MERMAID-LIKE, on the sun-warmed rock at the sea’s edge, watching Bastiaan approach her through the water with swift, powerful strokes. He and Philip were racing each other from the shore to the pontoon moored a little way off. Philip was on the pontoon now, timing Bastiaan.
She watched Bastiaan getting closer to her and tensed. She really must grab this moment to try and speak to him. She’d been looking for an opportunity since she’d woken from her siesta and they’d all headed down to the sea. So far Philip had stuck to her like glue, delighted to introduce her to the delights of the villa’s private stretch of rocky shoreline and encouraging her to swim out with him to the pontoon.
As Bastiaan’s long arm touched the rock and he twisted in the water, his muscles bunched to start on his return, she leant forward.
‘Bastiaan...?’
It was the first time she’d addressed him by his name directly, and it sounded odd to her. Almost...intimate.
Dark eyes lifted to her immediately, a question in them. ‘Yes?’ There was impatience in his voice, and more, too.
‘Can I... can I speak with you privately...before I go?’
Dark brows tugged together, then relaxed. ‘Of course,’ Bastiaan said smoothly. ‘I am at your service, Sabine. But not right now.’
Was he being sarcastic, ironic, or was he just in a hurry to complete his race? Maybe the latter, for he twisted his powerful torso and plunged back into his strokes, face-down in the water, threshing with fast, vigorous movement towards the pontoon.
Sarah breathed out, feeling her tension ease a tad. Well, she’d done it, but she didn’t look forward to it—didn’t want any private conversation with Bastiaan Karavalas on any subject whatsoever.
In her head, silent but piercing, came a single word. Liar.
An hour or so later, after a refreshing dip in the villa’s pool, she announced that she needed to be going. She glanced at Bastiaan, hoping he would remember her request to speak to him.
Smoothly, he took her cue. ‘Let me show you back to where you got changed,’ he said.
He gestured with his arm towards the villa’s interior and Sarah walked ahead of him, glad that the sarong around her was veiling her somewhat.
As they gained the marble-floored hall she heard him speak.
‘So, what is it you want to say to me?’
His tone was neutral, yet Sarah felt that she could hear in its timbre a kind of subtext. She paused at the foot of the stairs and turned. Now that the moment had come she felt excruciatingly awkward. Should she really tell this forbidding man who had such dangerous power over her senses that his young cousin was hopelessly enamoured of her? Did he need telling in the first place? Wasn’t it obvious that Philip was smitten? Maybe she didn’t have to broach the subject at all—