She arrived at the door as he had predicted, looked disconcerted to find him standing by the bathroom mirror, then mulish when she realised she had been outwitted by him.
‘Choose your weapon,’ he invited without allowing his eyes to leave the mirror, where his own reflection showed him a man who had changed a lot in the last twenty-four hours. Gone were the harsh lines of cynicism he had watched increase over the previous three years. Now he saw a pretty good-looking guy with a decent pair of shoulders and sexily provoking promise about him.
She did this for him, he acknowledged. This moody woman with the slicked-back wet hair and the sensationally smooth white skin.
She leapt without warning. Dropping the razor into the washbasin, he swung round in time to catch her against his chest. Green eyes glittered, her mouth quivered, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.
‘I don’t want to go tonight!’ she cried out plaintively.
She chose her weapon well. Anger he could deal with—a physical attack. But true tears and fear were different things entirely. ‘Don’t cry, agape mou. That isn’t fair.’
‘Can’t we wait a few days before you toss me to the wolves again—please?’ she begged.
The please almost unmanned him. He recovered while carrying her back to the bed. ‘If anyone so much as glances at you wrongly I will strike them down, I promise you.’
‘They can still think what they like about me, Andros!’
Andros; she was the only person to ever get away with calling him that, so when she did it, it turned his senses over, it tied possessive ropes around his heart. Vulnerable, cowardly, beautiful Isobel—the Isobel she let no one else ever see.
With grim intent he sat down on the bed then, as she still clung to him, he rolled them both backwards until they lay on their sides. ‘Do you truly believe that we two are the only ones to regret what happened before?’ he demanded. ‘My mother had to watch me go to pieces. Within the year after you left I left here also and rarely ever came back again.’
‘Where did you go?’ She was diverted. He almost laughed at the irony. He revealed weakness and she suddenly became the strong one! ‘To Spain,’ he replied. ‘To a place called San Estéban. I ran my companies from a stateroom on my yacht and learned to live with myself by pretending Athens didn’t exist.’
‘You should have come to me!’ Her fist made contact with his shoulder. He trapped her beneath him on the bed. Her legs still clung though. She was not letting go of him and she was wearing nothing beneath the T-shirt.
‘I did come to you,’ he growled. ‘Every night in my dreams!’
‘Not good enough.’
‘Then we have a lot of time to make up for,’ he gritted and entered her—no preliminaries. Her cry was one of pleasure because she was ready to receive him. She clutched his head and brought his mouth crashing down onto hers. They rode the hot wind of raging passion. When it was over and he felt his strength return to him he got up as still she clung and walked them both beneath the shower, where he began the whole exhilarating ride all over again.
Getting ready to go out was not easy when he was feeling laid-back and slumberous. Fortunately, Isobel had wisely disappeared to the other bedroom so at least the temptation to forget tonight’s party and remain lost in her was removed—in part. He was all too aware of that soft, pulsing sense of continued possession. He had only to think of her and he could imagine her crawling all over him in her desire to lay claim to every exquisitely receptive inch of his skin.
He grimaced as he retrieved the black jewellery cases from the chest of drawers, then went to find his red-haired tormentor. If she launched another attack on his defences, they would not be going anywhere, he promised his impatient senses.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE ENTERED the room with a light tap to warn of his arrival. Isobel turned to the mirror to take one last look at herself and could not decide if she liked what she saw.
Nervous fingers fluttered down the short, close-fitting lined straight dress she had chosen to wear. It was made of a misty-jade silk-crêpe that clung sensually to her slender figure without being too obvious—she hoped. Her make-up was light and natural, her kitten-heeled lightweight mules matched the colour of the dress. But had she struck the note she had been striving for, in a different key to the old downright-provocative Isobel, without appearing as if she had conceded anything to the Greek idea of what was good taste?
‘What do you think?’ She begged his opinion while anxiety darkened her eyes and she wished to goodness that she’d worn her hair down—it had not occurred to her before that she liked to use her hair to hide behind and now she felt very exposed.
Leandros didn’t reply, so she turned to gauge his expression, only to go breathlessly still when she found herself looking at a man from any warm-blooded woman’s dreams. He’d discarded the conventional black dinner suit in favour of a white dinner jacket, black silk trousers and a black bow-tie. He looked smooth and dark and so sexually masculine that those tiny muscles inside her that were still gently pulsing from their last stimulation began to gather pace all over again.
His darkly hooded eyes moved over her in a way she recognised only too well. Mine, the look said. ‘Stunning,’ he murmured. ‘Nothing short of perfect.’
So are you, she was going to say, but as he walked towards her she noticed the black velvet jewellery cases in his hand and recognised them instantly.
Nervous fingers feathered the front of her dress again. ‘S-so you got them back,’ she said.
‘The heirlooms?’ His mouth twitched. ‘As you see,’ he confirmed easily.
With the neat flick of a finger he opened the flat case, gave her a few seconds to stare down at the platinum scrolls pierced with glowing emeralds and edged with sparkling diamonds that she had thought so beautiful when first she saw them. But that was before his sister’s scornful, ‘He’s given you those old things? Mother always refused to wear them. Though they are definitely wasted on you,’ had taken their beauty away.
Now those same long fingers were lifting the necklace from its bed of velvet. ‘Turn around,’ he commanded.
‘I…’ Reluctance to so much as touch any of the pieces lying in that case was crawling across her skin. ‘I gave you them back,’ she pointed out edgily. ‘I don’t really want—’