She felt like someone had burrowed beneath her skin and taken over her body.
Achileas, who had been scrolling down the messages on his phone, turned. There was a moment of silence as the ripple of his gaze moved through her, and even though she tried to stop it her stomach knotted fiercely.
If their relationship had been real, he would have told her she looked beautiful and kissed her, but he just nodded and said, ‘Good, you’re here.’
Stretched taut between fantasy and reality, she could only manage a nod in reply. He had changed, too, into a linen suit. On some men, linen could look cheap and crumpled. But Achileas was not like most men. It didn’t matter what he wore. Nothing could disguise the authority that was as much a part of him as those dazzling sapphire-blue eyes.
‘Good,’ he said again, and then he frowned. ‘I almost forgot...’ Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out a small square box. ‘You’ll need to put this on.’
A muscle was working in his jaw, as if he wanted to say something more, but instead he opened the box. She stared down at the engagement ring, her heart thumping so loudly she was surprised the villa’s staff didn’t come out to investigate the noise.
Feeling all thumbs beneath his scrutiny, she slid it clumsily onto her finger. Surely the ring wouldn’t fit.
Astonishingly, it did, and she felt a sudden wild desire to laugh. Because it didn’t feel real. It was as if she was dressing up in someone else’s clothes like she had when she was a child. Only then it had been her mum’s nightie—not a designer dress and a diamond that was probably worth more than her entire block of flats.
‘Ready?’
He stared down at her, the slow burn of his gaze making her skin tingle. No, she thought.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly.
Picking up his napkin, Achileas glanced across the table to where Effie sat gazing down at the menu.
After arriving at Mykonos, they had wandered around the upmarket waterfront boutiques hand in hand, and now they were here having lunch at I Karydiá, a restaurant that was currently creating a big buzz among foodies in that part of the world.
Everything was going according to plan—his plan. So, by rights he should be feeling good. Only for some reason nothing felt as it should.
But perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised.
The day had started badly. He had woken early, in darkness, his body twitching like a sleeping dog chasing rabbits. But it was Effie who had been running in his dreams. Effie just out of reach, the pale soles of her delicate feet always one step ahead, as she darted through a landscape that was both familiar and alien. And he’d wanted to catch her, just as he had wanted to keep kissing her last night. More than kiss her, he had wanted to strip her, to stretch her out beneath him and open her body to his—
He gritted his teeth as his groin hardened painfully.
He had stopped himself—stopped both of them going further...going all the way. He’d had to. Sleeping with Effie would complicate an already fraught situation. But taking her virginity—
He felt a beat of frustration skim over his skin.
Dreaming about Effie had been unsettling enough, and lying there alone in bed, with lust tugging at his night-heightened senses, had been like an exquisite form of torture. In the end, he’d given up and got up. Without even bothering to get dressed, he had gone down to the lagoon, stripped off his pyjama shorts and swum until his muscles burned.
But the pain had been worth it.
Emerging from the water, he had felt everything suddenly become clear to him. He had been trying too hard, thinking he needed to treat her differently because she was going to be his wife. But in public, where it mattered, Effie was no different from any other woman.
There and then, he’d made up his mind to start over. Act as he always did. And if that meant hopscotching around the neighbouring islands on a boat or idling over a meal in the best restaurant in town then so be it.
This day out together was supposed to have pressed the reset button—only thanks to Effie he felt tenser than he had at the villa.
He scowled at a passing waiter. He’d seen how she lived. She should be excited by all this. Grateful, even. Okay, on the surface she was making all the right noises, looking up at him with those huge saucer eyes, but he knew she was faking it and that annoyed him.
Women didn’t fake it with him.
Only it didn’t make any sense for him to feel that way, because everything about the two of them was fake, and that annoyed him even more.
His eyes dropped to the graceful line of her throat, then lower, to a beauty spot the size of a pinhead at the top of her cleavage.
It didn’t help seeing her dressed like that.
He’d thought it would. He’d assumed that if she dressed like his previous girlfriends then it would be business as usual. He would feel attached rather than interdependent. But maybe because he was fighting to keep from touching her, he felt as if Effie was surrounded by some invisible glass barrier.