Nell hunted around for something trite to say to fill in the gap.
But what came out was miles away from trite. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Plate cleaned. Baby adequately fed.’
‘I did it for you, not the baby!’ he snapped.
That she didn’t believe him showed. He uttered a sigh, his indulgent manner disappearing without a trace. ‘Does it actually matter what motivated me?’ he posed curtly. ‘Am I not allowed to be concerned for you both?’
He glanced at his watch then and stood up to remove the tray. ‘I have a meeting to return to. I’ll see you later.’
With that punishing slice of ice, he left. Nell threw herself back against the pillows and wished she knew how she should feel about him, but she didn’t. Everything she had come to love and trust about him over the last three weeks had been shattered by a day-long series of hard knocks.
The telephone call from Vanessa being the hardest knock.
Restless now, she got up, feeling an instant chill on her skin because of the difference between a hot Greek summer and a cooler English one. Rubbing at her bare arms, she wandered around the bedroom, aimlessly picking things up, putting them down again, and would have gone and done the same in the sitting room but she couldn’t be absolutely sure that someone might not come in from the office and catch her half-naked, and Xander seemed to have forgotten to have her suitcase brought up.
In the end she escaped to the bathroom and decided to indulge in a long, hot soak in the invitingly huge bath. A few carefully placed candles would have been nice to help her relax, but she had to make do with selecting a couple of soft downlighters. She found no sign of any female soapy things hanging around, which mollified her restless mood somewhat.
So Xander didn’t indulge his women here, she mused as she lay submerged in hot, steamy water liberally laced with Xander-scented bath oil. Maybe he did have a purple and red velvet-lined pad in Soho. With a mirrored bed and flying cupids embroidered on the velvet, she extended with a soft laugh.
‘Cheered up at last?’
‘Oh!’ She flicked her eyes open to find him casually propping up the doorframe. Sheer surprise had her slithering into a sitting position, causing a minor tidal wave to slosh around the bath. ‘You were quick,’ she said disconcertedly.
‘I didn’t like the company,’ he drawled, dark eyes glossed by silky eyelashes as he looked her over from loose topknot to water-slicked breasts being caressed by steam.
It was stupid to feel shy after spending three weeks mostly naked around him, but telling herself that did not stop the blush from mounting her skin. Nell tried to make it look casual when she drew her knees up and looped her arms around them. The action did not change that look she knew so well on his lean, dark face.
He’d lost his jacket and his tie, she noticed. His shirt collar was undone and the shirt cuffs too. And if ever a man knew how to lounge sexily in a doorway then Xander had the pose down to a finely tuned art. Long legs relaxed, hands loosely looped in his trouser pockets, silk dark hair finger-ruffled just enough to add that extra brooding appeal.
Her body responded, breasts growing heavy, nipples peaking where she crushed them against her thighs. Even her lips felt as if they were filling and pulsing.
‘You forgot my suitcase.’ To Nell, it was an inspired stab at the prosaic.
It didn’t alter his hungry look one iota. ‘Stashed in the sitting room five minutes after we arrived,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you bother to look?’
‘No.’ She added a grimace. ‘Maybe you could get it for me?’
‘Why?’
‘So I can put something clean on?’ she suggested ever so sarcastically to what she thought a stupid question to ask.
Xander clearly didn’t. He straightened up and began approaching the bath. ‘You can wear me instead,’ he murmured huskily and began to undo the rest of the buttons on his shirt.
‘Don’t you dare try to get in here!’ she cried, causing a floor-sloshing wave as she shifted up the bath. ‘I’m still angry with you! I don’t even like you any more! I will not be your sex slave just because you need—’
‘Watch it …’ His hand darted out, capturing her hair just before it tumbled out of the topknot into the bath.
Shaken by panic, utter confusion and a rotten desire to finish the job with his shirt, she glared at his hair-roughened breastplate while he re-knotted her hair with an infuriating finesse.
‘There,’ h
e said. ‘Now you won’t have to spend half an hour drying it before we get to bed.’
‘I’m not sleeping with you ever again.’
‘Did I mention sleep?’
Nell tried to calculate if she had enough room to make a run for it while he was busy stripping off his clothes.