It was not meant to insult, and oddly she didn’t try and turn the remark into one.
Maybe this was a good time for Vassilou to bring them both fresh cups of coffee. He smiled, murmured a few polite pass-the-time-of-day phrases to which Leandros replied. Then, as he was about to leave, he turned back to send Isobel a teasing look. ‘You never mentioned your handsome husband to me. Shame on you, pethi mou,’ he scolded. ‘Now see what you have done to my son? His hopes are dashed!’
With that he walked away, leaving her alone to deal with Leandros’s new expression. ‘Never?’ he quizzed.
‘For what purpose?’ She shrugged. ‘Our relationship had no place here.’
‘You mean I had no place here—other than to keep eager young waiters at bay, of course,’ he added silkily.
Without thinking what she was about to do, Isobel lifted her left hand up with the intention of flashing her wedding ring, which to her made the statement he was looking for without the need of words.
Only the ring wasn’t there. Tension sprang up, her ribcage suddenly felt too tight. No ring, no marriage soon, she thought and tugged the hand back onto her lap as an unwanted lump of tears tried to clog up her throat. Leandros looked on with his eyes faintly narrowed and his expression perfectly blank.
‘Vassilou was making a joke.’ Impatiently she tried to cover up the error.
‘I know it was a joke,’ he answered quietly.
‘Then why have you narrowed your eyes like that?’ she flashed back.
‘Because the young waiter in question has been unable to take his eyes from you since you sat down at this table.’
‘You’ve been watching for that long, have you? What did you do, hide behind a pillar and take snapshots every time he smiled at me?’
‘He smiled a lot.’
She sat forward, suddenly too tense to sit still. She was beginning to fizz inside again, beginning to want to throw things at this super-controlled, super-slick swine! ‘Why don’t you just go now that you’ve made your apology?’ she snapped, and picked up her coffee-cup.
Those luxurious lashes of his lowered to the cup; he knew what was going through her head. She’d done it before and thrown things at him when he’d driven her to it. Punishment usually followed in the shape of a bed.
But not this time, because she was not going to give him any more excuses to jump on her, she vowed, and took a sip at her coffee. It was hot and she’d forgotten to put the sachet of sugar in that she found necessary when drinking the thick, dark brew the Greeks so liked.
‘Where is the lover?’
‘What…?’ Her head came up, green eyes ablaze because she was at war.
With herself. With him. She didn’t know any more what was going on inside. She wished he would go. She didn’t want to look at him. She did not want to soak in the way his head and shoulders were in a shaft of sunlight that seeped in through a gap in the striped awning above. She didn’t want to see strength in those smooth golden features, or the leashed power in those wide shoulders.
He was gorgeous. A big, dark Latin-hot lover, with a tightly packed body lurking beneath his white shirt that could turn her senses to quivering dust. She could see a hint of black hair curling over the gap where he’d undone the top few buttons of the shirt. She knew how those crisp, curling hairs covered a major part of his lean torso. His rich brown skin was gleaming in the golden sunlight, and the sheen of sweat at his throat beneath the tough jut of his chin was making the juices flow across her tongue.
He was a man whom you wanted taste. To touch all over. A man whom you wanted to touch you. His hands were elegant, strong, long-fingered and aware of what they could do for you. Even now as they rested at ease between the spread of his thighs they were making a statement about his masculinity that sent desire coursing through her blood. His mouth could kiss, his eyes could seduce, his arms could support you while you flailed in the wash of rolling ecstasy the rest of him could give to you.
In other words he was a dark, sensual lover and she suspected one did not need personal experience of that to know it. A few weeks spent on his yacht in Spain and Diantha Christophoros must know it by osmosis. He was not the kind of man to hold back from something he wanted—as she knew from experience.
‘The blond hunk with the lazy smile,’ he prompted. ‘Where is he?’
She blinked again and lowered her eyes. Oh, the temptation, she mused, as she stared at her coffee. Oh, the desire to say what was hovering right on the end of her tongue. ‘His name is Clive and he’s a physiotherapist.’ She managed to control the urge to draw verbal pictures of Clive left sleeping off an hour’s wild sex.
But her heart was still hammering out the temptation. She heard Leandros utter a soft, mocking little laugh. ‘That cost you,’ he taunted softly. ‘But you had the sense to weigh up the odds of my response.’
‘How is Diantha?’ she could not resist that one.
Touché, his grimacing nod reflected. ‘I have changed my mind about the divorce,’ he hit back without warning.
‘Well, I haven’t!’ she responded.
‘I was not aware that I gave you a choice.’
‘I don’t think you have much control over my choice, Leandros,’ she drawled witheringly. ‘Why have you changed your mind?’