She heard the shop door open and, leaving Sarrie in the back room with the accounts and her packed suitcase, went through to serve their latest customer.
And froze.
‘Hello, Mel,’ said Nikos Parakis.
Emotions surged within her. Mixed emotions. Fighting each other. One emotion—the rational one that went with her head, that went with her packed suitcase, her airline ticket to Spain and her new life—was dismay. Just as she was finally on the point of leaving London, making a new start, putting him and their brief, intoxicating encounter behind her, this had to happen.
But that emotion didn’t last. Couldn’t last. It was flooded out by a far more vivid one.
Nikos was here—right here—just the other side of the counter, half a metre away and exactly as she remembered him. Tall, ludicrously, ridiculously good-looking, with his sable hair and his olive skin, and his eyes...oh, his eyes...all dark and velvety, with lashes you could sweep floors with. And the look in them was turning her stomach inside out.
The rush of emotion was unstoppable, palpable. Her face lit. She couldn’t stop it.
‘Nikos!’
The long lashes swept down over his dark, gold-flecked eyes. ‘I’m glad you’re still here,’ he said.
She bit her lip. ‘I’m flying off tomorrow morning,’ she said. Did her voice sound breathless? She didn’t know—didn’t care. Knew only that her heart had started pounding, her pulse racing. Nikos Parakis—no longer just a memory of a fabulous evening, a goodnight kiss to remember all her life—was here, now, right in front of her in real, glorious flesh.
He smiled, and the tug of his mouth was doing things to Mel’s stomach that it shouldn’t—but did all the same.
‘Then I’ve arrived just in time,’ he said.
She stared. ‘In time for what?’ she asked automatically.
He changed his stance, became relaxed somehow. It made Mel aware all over again of the long, lean length of him, of the way the jacket of his suit fitted like a glove across his shoulders, the way his silver-buckled leather belt snaked around his narrow hips, the way the pristine white of his shirt moulded the strong wall of his chest. She felt the force of his physical impact on her assailing her senses like an onslaught of potent awareness...
‘In time to ask you something,’ he elucidated.
There was an expression in his face now that Mel could not read. Truth to tell, she could not do anything other than gaze at him, feeling her heart-rate soaring in her chest.
The intensity of emotion inside her kicked once more. He was speaking again. Saying something that knocked the breath out of her. Stilled her completely.
‘Would you...?’ Nikos said, the eyes resting on her veiled suddenly, she realised, even though they met hers. ‘Would you consider a...detour...before you head for Spain?’
There was a husk in his voice as he put the question to her. The question he’d cancelled his engagements for, flown to London for. He’d driven straight here from Heathrow and walked into Sarrie’s Sarnies to invite this fantastically beautiful woman, whom he could not get out of his head, to come to Bermuda with him.
Seeing her again, now, he wanted to hear only one answer to the question. Just seeing her in the flesh had slammed the truth of that into him with the full force of a tangible impact. He’d felt a kick go through him—a stab of exultation. Desire had coursed through him like a flash flood.
Would she accept what he was offering her? Share a few weeks with him, no more than that, before she headed off on her travels and they went their separate ways?
His eyes rested on her and his brow quirked. She was looking at him. Was it with a wary expression in her luminous blue eyes?
‘I don’t understand...’ she said.
He elucidated. ‘I’m due to speak at a conference in Bermuda next week. I was wondering...’ his long lashes dipped over his eyes as he studied her reaction ‘...if you’d like to come with me?’
She didn’t answer—not for a full second. She’d gone very still. Then her expression changed.
‘Don’t tell me Fiona Pellingham is going to the conference, as well?’ she asked.
Mel’s voice was dry. But her emotions, whirling around inside her, were not dry at all—they felt as if they were in a spin cycle, like turbulent laundry. Was Nikos really standing there asking her to go to Bermuda with him?
He shook his head immediately. ‘Nothing like that,’ he assured her. His expression changed. ‘This is just for you and me.’
She was staring at him still. ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Why?’ he echoed. Then he smiled. ‘Because, Mel Cooper, I can’t get you out of my head—that’s why. One kiss,’ he told her, ‘was not enough.’ He paused. ‘Will you come with me?’