He jerked his head once, emphatically. ‘I should have made it my business to find out.’ He took a step towards her, and then pulled up abruptly.
This close she could see beyond the blankness of his rigid control. She saw the turmoil in his eyes, the doubt and…pain?
A shaft of something sharp pierced her chest at the idea of him, the man who’d rescued her from torture and death, blaming himself for the violence of others.
It didn’t matter that he’d behaved abominably ever since she’d turned up on his doorstep. Now, for the first time since she’d arrived, Tessa saw traces of the man she’d first met and admired. The strength. The unquestioning acceptance of his role as her protector. The innate decency. Some of her icy shell of self-protectiveness thawed at the recognition.
She saw past his air of invulnerability and she was swamped by the need to reassure him.
Tentatively she raised a hand towards him, reaching out to touch his arm. Then her courage failed and she let her arm drop. Far better to avoid physical contact.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she whispered over a throat clogged with raw emotion. ‘You did everything you could. More than anyone else did.’
Again that single abrupt jerk of the head in denial. ‘But that wasn’t enough.’ His tone was bitter. ‘I had made myself responsible for you.’ He stared over her head as if the very sight of her pained him.
Perhaps it did.
Suddenly the onslaught of memory, the swirl of unsettling emotions, were too much. Tessa’s knees buckled and she swayed. She stumbled a step and dropped onto a wide, padded sun-lounger, hunching forward to wrap the luxurious towelling tight round her trembling legs.
An instant later he was crouching beside her, eyes piercing as they surveyed her.
‘You’re ill.’
She shook her head, frowning at his concern.
‘You need a doctor.’
‘No! There’s nothing wrong with me.’ Nothing that rest wouldn’t cure.
‘That’s not what the doctor said.’ His gaze seared her and she blinked.
‘You talked with the doctor about me? What about patient confidentiality?’
He didn’t even bother to answer. Presumably what Stavros Denakis demanded, he got.
If she’d had more energy Tessa would have made an issue of that. But at the moment the churning mass of emotions in her stomach kept her fully occupied.
She was confused, wanting to hate this man who stomped without apology through her life, yet undercut by her weakness for him and the unexpected sight of his vulnerability. For all his air of refined savagery, Stavros Denakis was a decent man.
He simply hid it well.
He surged to his feet, drawing a cell-phone from his pocket. An instant later he was issuing directions in staccato Greek. But one word Tessa caught: Michalis. That was the name of the doctor.
‘No. I told you I don’t need to see a doctor again.’ She leaned forward to interrupt, putting her hand out to touch his.
A bolt of sensation rocketed through her as flesh touched flesh and she gasped. The feel of warm, hair-roughened skin beneath her fingers was far too intimate.
Had he felt it too? Unerringly her gaze darted to his, to find his expression once more impenetrable. Did she imagine the flare of heat she saw there?
She whipped her hand away as if the contact scorched her, then wished she hadn’t as his brows rose imperceptibly. He’d noted her reaction and no doubt catalogued it away for future use against her.
‘The doctor will be here soon.’ His voice gave nothing away.
There was no point in another consultation. All she needed was rest, nourishment and the medication the doctor had already provided. She was hardly some delicate flower.
Tessa notched her chin at the man towering above her. ‘Then I hope you and he have a nice chat. I won’t see him.’
For a heartbeat Stavros’ expression remained stony, then, to her amazement, the corner of his mouth kicked up in the barest hint of a smile. Even that was enough to transform his face from forbidding to seriously sexy.
Tessa’s heart thumped harder against her ribs.
‘Don’t push your luck, Ms Marlowe. While you’re in my house I’m responsible for your wellbeing. I take no chances.’
Casually he folded his phone and shoved it into his pocket. He didn’t move away, just stood, far too close for comfort, looming above her. His spicy masculine scent teased her nostrils.
‘After all,’ he continued in a musing tone, ‘we don’t want you claiming neglect or physical maltreatment, do we?’ His gazed bored into hers and she leaned back away from him, startled by the speed with which he’d morphed from sympathetically human to sneeringly superior.