‘Will you come with me now? And whatever complications there are will you leave them aside?’
Something shifted in her eyes, in the very depths of them. They were green—as green as emeralds. Memory came to him. He remembered how he’d wanted to drape her in emeralds. It seemed odd to him just then. Irrelevant. Unimportant. Only one thing was important now.
The answer she was giving him with her beautiful, emerald-green eyes, which were softening even as he held them. Softening and lightening and filling with an expression that told him all he needed to know.
He smiled again. Not in triumph this time, nor in possession. Just smiled warmly upon her.
‘Good,’ he said. Then he drew her to her feet. His smile deepened. ‘Let’s go.’
He led her to his car and helped her in.
* * *
The rest of this week, thought Sarah.
The wealth of time seemed like largesse of immense proportions. The panic that had been in her breast and the tension that had bound her lungs with iron, her throat with barbed wire, were gone. Just...gone. They had fallen from her as she had risen to her feet, had her hand taken by Bastiaan. Her feet felt like cushions of air.
I’ve been set free!
That was what it felt like. As if she had been set free from all the complications that had been tearing into her like claws and teeth ever since she’d surfaced that morning, realizing what she’d done. What she—Sarah, not Sabine—had done. And now... Oh, now, it didn’t matter—didn’t matter who she was.
Max understood—understood the entire impossibility of what had been tying her in knots for days now, ever since Bastiaan Karavalas had walked into her life.
Right man—wrong time.
But no more—not for a precious handful of glorious, wonderful, liberating days.
I can do what I’ve been longing to do—what I succumbed to doing last night. This man alone is different from any I’ve ever known. What happened last night was a revelation, a transformation.
She quivered with the memory of their passion as he started the car, gunning the engine. She turned to look at him, her eyes as bright as stars.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
She had asked that last night and he had taken her to a new, glittering realm of enchantment and desire, passion and fulfilment.
‘My villa,’ he answered, his eyes warm upon her before he glanced back to steer the car out of the little town, along the road that curved towards the Cap.
Gladness filled her. The apartment in Monte Carlo was glitzy and glamorous, but it did nothing for her. It was his villa that charmed her.
‘Wonderful...’ she breathed. She felt as light as air, floating way, way up into the sky—the carefree, bright blue sky, where there were no complications to tether her down.
I’m free from everything except seizing with both hands this time now! Right man—right time. Right now!
Her spirits soared, and it seemed they were at the villa in minutes. For a brief interlude Sarah felt self-conscious about encountering Paulette again. If the woman had considered her a threat to Philip, what might she think of her cavorting with her employer? But Paulette, she discovered, had a day off.
‘So we’ll have to make our own lunch,’ Bastiaan told her.
He didn’t want to make lunch—he wanted to make love. But his stomach was growling. He was hungry. Hungry for food, hungry for her. He would sate both appetites and life would be good. Very good.
He had Sabine back with him, and right now that was all he wanted.
As he headed towards the kitchen he glanced out of the French windows to the terrace beyond. Only a few days ago they had lunched there, all three of them—he and Sabine and Philip.
It seemed a long time ago.
* * *
‘So...’ Bastiaan set down his empty coffee cup on the ironwork table on the villa’s shady terrace and leant back in his chair, his eyes resting on Sabine. ‘What shall we do now?’