But it wasn’t, and he knew it the moment he stepped out of the bathroom with one of the towels wrapped round his hips. She was standing by the window in a blue towelling bathrobe, which looked familiar to him. Could it be the same one of his from his house in Athens that she used to pinch all the time because she liked to feel him close to her skin? Her hair lay down the back of it, her hands were lost in its cavernous pockets. He wanted to go over there and wind his arms around her but anger and frustration and outright damn need held him back from doing it.
Did he want to let her go again? Not in this lifetime. ‘You can use the bathroom now,’ he said as calmly as he could do and turned away from her.
‘I will when you’ve gone,’ she replied.
He was about to recover his scattered clothes when she said that but his movements froze on a sudden warning sting. ?
??In case you have forgotten,’ he finished, bending to pick up his trousers, ‘you are coming with me.’
‘No, I’m not.’
His legs suddenly felt like lead beneath him. ‘Of course you are,’ he insisted. ‘You cannot stay in this place, and your mother is…’
She turned to look at him then. His ribcage tightened in response. She looked so pale and fragile—ethereal, as if she could float away if the window were open.
‘I would appreciate it if you could put my mother up for tonight,’ she requested politely. ‘You are right about this hotel; it isn’t the place for her and I don’t want to upset her further by moving her on again. But I’ll stay here and collect her tomorrow in time for us to catch our flight home.’
‘You come with me,’ he insisted yet again and did not want to think about tomorrow.
But she shook her head. ‘I think we’ve made enough mistakes for one day.’
‘This is not a mistake.’ Had he really just said that? While he had been locked away in the bathroom he had agreed with her. Now, when he could look at her again, he did not want it to be a mistake! ‘We’ve just made love—’
‘No,’ she denied that, and what made it all the more frightening was that she did it so calmly. ‘You’ve made your point.’ A slight tilt of her head acknowledged his success at it. ‘Two can lie in that narrow bed—I stand corrected. Now I would like you to leave.’
Leave, he repeated inwardly. She was dismissing him. ‘So that the Adonis can get back in?’
Spark, he urged her silently. Say something like—Of course, he’s waiting outside the door! Then I can retaliate swiftly. I can toss you back down on that blasted bed!
But she didn’t say anything. She just turned and walked into the bathroom and left him standing there like a fool!
CHAPTER FIVE
LEANDROS turned to stare at the small hotel bedroom, with its scuffed grey marble flooring and the furniture that must have been there since the First World War. He stared at the bed with its coffee-coloured sheets covered with an orange spread made of cheap nylon, and thought of his own luxurious seven-foot bed set upon smooth white tiling and draped in cool mint-green silk over the finest white cotton sheets.
No effort was required to place Isobel’s image on the mint-green coverlet, or to sit her cross-legged on the cool white floor while she sorted through a new set of photographs. Wherever he placed her in his bedroom, she created a glorious contrast to everything. He had missed that contrast in more ways than he had dared let himself know.
But he now had to ask himself if it was because he had missed her that he had gone to Spain and rarely returned to Athens for two years. Was it her ghost that had driven him out of his home and even now forced him to take a deep breath before he could walk back into it?
The sound of the shower being shut off had him moving out of his bleak stasis. By the time the bathroom door opened he knew what was going to happen next and that Isobel was going to have to accept it.
‘What do you think you are doing?’ Isobel came to a halt in surprised protest.
He was dressed and in the process of packing her suitcase. Beside the case, draped like a challenge on the bed, lay fresh underwear and the only dress she had brought with her to Greece.
‘I believe that must be obvious,’ he answered coolly.
‘But I said…’
His glance flicked towards her. The way it slithered down her front made her heart give a shuddering thump. ‘I recognise the robe,’ he announced.
Without thought, her fingers went up to clutch the edges of her robe together across her throat. ‘I…’
‘You what?’ he prompted, his dark eyebrows rising to challenge the guilty flush trying to mount her cheeks. ‘You took it with you by mistake when you left me, then forgot to send it back to me? Or you stole it because you needed to take a part of me with you and have been hugging me next to your beautiful skin each time you have worn it since?’
‘It’s comfortable, that’s all,’ she snapped, shifting impatiently. ‘If you want it back—’
‘Yes, please.’