He catapulted out onto the landing and down the stairs, briefly checking his study for email messages. Fruitless, he knew. His staff would ring his cell-phone immediately they picked up her trail.
Somehow this one woman had escaped the massive network he’d mobilised to locate her.
Fear hollowed his chest as he drew in a shaky breath. The emptiness he felt inside terrified him.
It was more than fear for her safety. Far more than anger or pique at her departure.
He felt…lost.
Tessa woke to the caress of fingers over her hair, stroking down her neck to her collar-bone and out to her shoulders. The warmth of bare palms against her arms, the sound of that rich, mellow voice in her ear.
‘Your cheeks are wet,’ he murmured, nuzzling her throat, kissing her cheekbones where the skin felt tight and cold from the tears she’d shed.
One large hand drifted across the cotton of her nightshirt, his T-shirt, the one she’d taken in a moment of weakness because it still bore his scent.
‘You mustn’t cry, glikia mou. I don’t like it when you weep.’ This time the voice was stronger, firm with command, enough for Tessa to realise with a jolt of shock that this was no dream. It was real.
Her eyes snapped open and there he was, just a breath away. Stavros. Just like in her dream, only so much more spectacular in the flesh. The soft light of the bedside lamp illuminated the olive-gold skin, the gleam of black hair falling forward over his brow, the handsome face, the sensuous, well-defined mouth. Those clear grey eyes. Tessa had never read that expression in them before.
‘Stavros?’ She blinked. Impossible that he was here. He didn’t even know where she was. Vassilis had promised not to tell him. How on earth…?
‘Surely you knew I’d come after you.’
That look in his eyes clawed at her soul. So hotly intent, but so pained. What was going on?
She scrambled back, across the wide bed, and his arm fell away as he let her go. Tessa grabbed the cotton sheet and hauled it up over her breasts as she sat hunched against the headboard. Her pulse thudded hard and urgent as she surveyed him, the man she loved, sitting here on the side of her bed, large and real and utterly compelling with his dishevelled hair and his gleaming eyes.
She wanted to reach out and touch him. Her body cried out for him. He looked so wonderful in black jeans and a black pullover that was a perfect foil for the broad strength of his chest and shoulders. Instead she clenched her hands into tight fists.
‘How did you get here?’ Her voice was a thready whisper, thin with the emotion that clogged her airways.
‘Over the fence and through the window.’ He shrugged as he gestured to the sheer curtains behind him that billowed gently in the night’s cooling breeze. ‘I had the security code to silence the alarm, so it was easy.’
Climbing two storeys of sheer wall was easy?
‘Why?’
‘I had no interest in talking with my father again. It’s you I wanted to see. Alone.’
Something dipped in Tessa’s stomach at that last word, and at the possessive gleam in his eyes. She felt herself weakening, the urge to reach out to him strong and growing stronger by the second.
‘Vassilis told you I was here?’ How could he have betrayed her? He’d been so kind. No father could have been more caring with a daughter than when she’d shown up here, at his home, distraught and desperate for help.
‘No.’ Stavros shook his head. ‘My father did his best to make me believe you were already in Athens. He took your side against me, his own son.’ The silence between them was thick and weighty, as the implications of Vassilis’ actions filtered into Tessa’s confused brain.
‘I knew he was hiding something, but I didn’t realise it was you.’ He reached for her hand then stilled as she cringed from him. She couldn’t bear his touch. Not now. Not when she’d finally found the strength to make a break.
His face grew grimmer than she’d ever seen it. Each stark line seemed etched hard as if in unyielding crystal. She watched the muscles in his throat move as he swallowed before continuing.
‘It wasn’t till we’d checked every ferry, fishing boat and aircraft that I realised you hadn’t left the island.’ He bared his teeth in a semblance of a smile that made her shiver. ‘I would have been here sooner, glikia mou, if not for that. Even so, I had my staff checking pensions and hotels in Athens when I decided to break into my father’s home to look for you.’
Tessa’s eyes widened. They were checking hotels in Athens? There must be hundreds, thousands of hotels in the city. The very idea of it was mind-boggling.
‘I didn’t take the pendant,’ she said quickly. That could be the only possible reason for such a large-scale search. ‘I left it for you on the—’