Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks

Flowers? Chocolate? She had no idea what he was playing at, but it had sent her into a tailspin. Even as she bustled around in the small kitchen, making him his mug of coffee, she was acutely aware of him sitting in her lounge, just a matter of a few metres away. Whatever he was up to, she thought firmly, she was having none of it. She reminded herself that he had a girlfriend. A bright, sparkling, picture-perfect model with limited vocabulary. Just the kind of woman he was inevitably drawn to, never mind his brief diversion with her. And anyway, she was a free and liberated young woman now, no longer hiding behind routine and safety to protect her from the big, bad world.

She found him obediently sitting where she had told him to sit, doing nothing more offensive than flicking through one of the computer magazines she liked to read occasionally, just to make sure that she was keeping in touch with the latest technology. He closed it as soon as she entered the room and handed him the coffee.

‘Interesting reading material,’ he commented. Well, at least the rehabilitated producer was not on the premises. Either that or he didn’t mind going into hiding for an indefinite period of time.

‘Why have you come?’

‘How did your date go?’

‘As you can see, I’m sitting here in one piece so your fears about Ted were misplaced.’ And little do you know by how much, Rose thought wryly. ‘Is that why you came? Your over-developed sense of duty kicking in again? Compelled to make sure that I wasn’t cruelly taken advantage of and left sobbing somewhere on my own?’

‘No.’

Rose felt confused once again. ‘Then why?’

‘I…I’m not very good at admitting things like this, but I didn’t like seeing you with other men last week at that party.’

She held onto her common sense as tightly as she could and remembered the vital truth, which was that this man was not interested in a proper relationship with her or anyone else for that matter. Which brought her neatly to the redhead.

‘I’m surprised you even noticed me, Nick. Wasn’t your attention on your date?’

‘You know it wasn’t,’ Nick said huskily.

‘You mean you brought a woman to Lily’s party when you weren’t even interested in her?’

‘So it would appear.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I thought she might be able to make me forget that I’m still attracted to you. It didn’t work.’ Nick rested his mug on the table in front of him and strolled over to the sofa where Rose was curled at one end with her feet tucked under her. ‘Because I am—still attracted to you. Believe me, I don’t want to be, but I can’t help myself.’ He decided he would keep the little mortifying fact that he had spent the evening spying on her to himself. Confession might be good for the soul but total cleansing was downright stupidity.

‘Have you missed me?’ he asked roughly.

‘I…This is mad…’

‘Have you? I’ve been going crazy thinking about you, Rose. Ever since last weekend, I’ve been going even crazier thinking about you and another man.’ He took her hand in his, stroked her palm with his finger and then, devastatingly, kissed the soft, tender flesh.

It was like being burnt and Rose gasped and half closed her eyes.

This was all wrong. Playing the field was one thing when it was a journey of discovery. Playing the field with this man was no journey of discovery. She had discovered way too much on this particular journey.

But when he was leaning over her like this…telling her all this stuff…opening up and whispering how much he had missed her…

She let him scoop her legs onto his lap, knowing that she should be pulling away. The redhead, he was telling her now, had barely impacted on him. In fact he hadn’t contacted her since the party and hadn’t slept with her. She didn’t turn him on. Not as she, Rose, did. Music to her ears.

‘I’ve dreamt about your body, Rose…your ripe, sexy body. I’ve dreamt about your breasts…’

In response to that, Rose felt her breasts harden, disobeying all the strict rules she was laying down in her head about sticking to her guns.

‘Will you let me touch them?’

‘No,’ she said weakly.

‘Things didn’t end between us, Rose, and you know it as well as I do.’

‘It wouldn’t work, Nick.’

‘Sex between us can’t fail to work.’

‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’

She tried to wriggle her legs into a more dignified position, a position more in keeping with a woman in control of her own mind and body. However, her legs had turned to jelly. Worse, they were obeying someone else’s commands, and when he ran his hand lightly along her inner thigh they fell apart, willing slaves to whatever he wanted to do.

‘You tell me that you’re breaking away from the shackles that kept you locked up…’ His voice was low and seductive and his hands were now doing even more inappropriate things, slipping under the elasticated waistband of her jogging bottoms, easing them lower so that he could caress her stomach. ‘Break away with me, Rose.’

‘You should go.’

‘If you said it like you meant it, then I would.’ His hand left her stomach to explore upwards now, until he was cupping her breast. No bra. This was his very own wet dream. ‘But you don’t want me to…’ He touched the tip of her nipple, which was hard, and felt her sharp release of breath. ‘You want me to do this…Do you want me to do more? Do you want me to suck those big, rosy nipples?’ He flicked up the baggy tee shirt and this time it was his turn to inhale as he saw the vision that had been playing in his head ever since they had last made love.

‘No…yes…no…I don’t know…’

He did know. He recalled how much she loved him playing with her breasts and he began to suckle one of the rosy circles, loving the taste of her and hungry for more, like a starving man suddenly sitting at a banquet. As he sucked and pulled her nipple into his mouth his tongue flicked and darted over the sensitised tip, sending her into wild throes of abandon.

Somehow their bodies moved in harmony with one another, until she was sitting up, with her head flung back and Nick positioned kneeling between her legs so that he could lavish all his attention on her breasts.

He licked his way down and pulled down the jogging bottoms along with her underwear in one smooth, swift movement.

With his fingers, he parted the delicate folds of her and inserted his tongue, wriggling it towards the honeyed sweetness of the little bud that throbbed and begged for satisfaction.

And Rose accordingly groaned and lifted her hips off the sofa, tensing every muscle in her body as his questing tongue flicked and teased and his mouth tasted every inch of her most private parts.

She reached down to try and push him away and reclaim some of her will-power, and felt her fingers curl in his dark hair, urging him to bring her to completion right here, right now.

But Nick needed more than that and he couldn’t wait. He was barely aware of taking off his clothes until he was standing in front of her, big and proud. Rose opened her eyes drowsily and smiled before reaching out and taking his throbbing member in her hand, where she proceeded to give it the same attention that he had given her.

Yes, she had missed this too. Missed him and missed touching him, missed the way her hands and mouth could turn this impressive, powerful man to putty.

By the time he drove into her, they were both so close to coming that it just took a few deep, urgent thrusts to send them tipping over the edge.

Rose recovered to the dull, depressing knowledge that she had made the same mistake. She had allowed her body to do what it wanted to while her brain trailed along somewhere far behind, raising its weedy objections.

The sofa felt cramped and uncomfortable. ‘I need to go and get cleaned up,’ she said, and Nick, catching onto the tone of her voice and hearing the shutters begin to slide into place, turned to her and frowned.

‘You’re not regretting what we just did, are you?’

‘We’re back to square one, Nick.’

‘We need one another.’ She was making to stand up and he yanked her back down so that she fell onto his lap where he could easily keep her prisoner. ‘You didn’t hear what I said, Rose. I missed you. I missed you from the minute we parted company at the airport and I haven’t stopped.’

‘Which is why you felt the need to replace me.’

‘I told you, I thought I needed distraction. I was wrong. I need you. I need this. And so do you. You can say whatever you want, Rose, but your sweet, sexy body tells another story.’

‘It tells a different story. I want you, and, yes, I was weak, but I want more than just sex.’

‘Then come live with me.’ Nick uttered the words, but they failed to evoke the horror he might have expected. He had never lived with a woman in his life before, but right now it didn’t seem such an outlandish proposition.

To Rose, his proposal, noble though it was, especially for a man like him, was a halfway measure driven by lust. Love would have demanded a proposal of quite a different nature. Nick wanted her, but he also wanted to keep his options open. Boredom, for him, was lurking just around the corner and he was canny enough to realise that dumping a wife was completely different from dumping a live-in lover.

And, Lord, it was tempting. Tempting to think of having this bliss, but the inevitable rider of ‘for however long it lasted’ was too much of a threat to her peace of mind.

‘No.’

‘What do you mean no?’ Nick looked at her in stunned surprise. He wasn’t even aware of her standing up and sticking on her clothes. ‘What do you mean no? Have you any idea what sort of a leap a commitment like that takes for a man like me? To have a woman share my space?’

‘And I appreciate it…’

‘But you really want marriage.’ He was incredulous. He had just offered her something beyond the reach of every other woman he had ever known and she wanted more.

‘I really do.’ Rose took a deep breath and decided that there was no point playing any more games. She sat on the side of the sofa and looked at him carefully. ‘You told me that you never wanted to carry on wanting me. Well, Nick…’ she shot him a rueful smile ‘…I never wanted to fall in love with you, but I did. That’s why I want to marry you. You tell me that we’re sexually compatible. I tell you that we’re compatible in far more ways than that. I tell you that we have what it takes. So…will you marry me?’ Rose could actually feel the hammering of her heart. If someone had asked her to do a bungee jump off the Clifton Suspension Bridge, she couldn’t have felt more terrified than she did at this very moment, but what was the use trying to keep the truth to herself any longer? Pride and dignity was all well and good, but if she walked away without telling him how she really felt it would haunt her for the rest of her life. She would always wonder what if, and ‘what if’s were too closely related to ‘if only’s for her liking.

Nick looked at her, aghast.

Love? Marriage? He couldn’t contemplate it. Freedom of movement was so deeply ingrained in him that the thought of relinquishing it was unthinkable.

And, anyway, since when did women do the proposing?

He felt a surge of anger that she just hadn’t been able to accept his already extreme sacrifice of moving in with him.

‘Don’t worry answering,’ Rose said neutrally. She stood up and walked towards the door. ‘Your answer’s written on your face.’ Now, she couldn’t look at him, so instead she stared out into the hallway, hearing him get dressed and then feeling him move towards her.

‘I’m not the marrying type of man. You always knew that, Rose. Why couldn’t you have just accepted the parameters and appreciated the fact that I asked you to live with me? It’s as good as…’

Rose took a deep breath and looked at him. She had her arms folded and she could feel her fingernails pressing painfully into her forearms. If they weren’t she was sure that she would be shaking like a leaf. ‘Because,’ she said calmly, and where that dreadful calm came from she had no idea, ‘marriage is all about commitment. Real commitment. Not just the “yes, let’s stay together while the going’s good” variety.’

‘My commitment’s always been to my work,’ Nick told her baldly. ‘You’re the closest I have ever come to sharing myself with another human being, but marriage…’

‘Just one step too far?’ Rose laughed mirthlessly and walked towards the front door.

There was a flat, cold feeling inside her, but, strangely, she was still glad that she had said what she had said, given it her best shot, so to speak. She didn’t think he would be back now. In his mind, he would have opened a Pandora’s box and, having slammed the lid back shut, he would never make the mistake of reopening it.

‘We could have had fun.’ His voice was cold and accusatory.

Rose shrugged and opened the door. ‘Have a good life, Nick.’

She didn’t watch him leave. Instead she closed the door quietly and leaned against it. She could hear the deep revving of his car as he pulled away from the kerb and then the sound of the engine was replaced by silence and she made her way up the stairs, into the bathroom, so that she could have a shower.

When she lay in bed, she replayed in her head this last night spent together. Before, even in the aftermath of Borneo and thinking that things were finally over for good, there had been, she realised now, an element of hope and a certain restless dissatisfaction. Now, there was closure. It made her neither happy nor unhappy. She just felt dead inside.

Life would carry on and it did. On the surface, Rose functioned as she always had. Competent and reliable at work, sociable enough with her circle of friends.

Breaking out of the mould was well and truly abandoned. The only surprise was her sister’s reaction. Lily was disproportionately upset at the turn of events and that touched Rose.

‘You’ll get over it, Lily,’ she laughed wryly down the phone. ‘And so will I. In a year’s time, we’ll both see this as just another experience in the great adventure that is life.’ She couldn’t stand the thought that the damage done was irreparable. Surely not. Broken hearts mended, didn’t they? Every magazine assured her of that.

But six weeks down the road, and Rose still found it hard to find a way through the dense fog of misery. She felt like a robot, going through the motions while underneath everything wilted and shrivelled away and died.

She had no idea what Nick was doing and she avoided buying any tabloids just in case she was tempted to open up those scurrilous gossip pages where she might see a picture of him cavorting with another redhead, mark two. Mark one might have been a distraction, but mark two would certainly have been the truly-narrow-escape replacement.

In the midst of this never-ending battle with her torn emotions and the sheer effort needed to carry on going to work, socialising with friends and pretending that all was well in the world of Rose Taylor, the dawning realisation that something else was very wrong took a little while to filter through.

When it did, the fragile glue that was binding her daily life together dissolved like wax in a flame and the truly sickening question reared its ugly head.

What on earth was she to do now?

CHAPTER TEN

ROSE was on her way up to see him. Right now. At three in the afternoon. Right here. In his office.

Nick had no idea what she wanted. It had been nearly two months since he had set eyes on her and he had daily told himself that her disappearance from his life was the best thing that could have happened. He told himself that he had offered her the unthinkable and she had turned him down, proving his theory that women, each and every one of them, were out to change the men they purported to care about.

He had replayed countless times in his head that moment when she had told him that she was in love with him. If she were in love with him, he thought, why couldn’t she have accepted what he had offered?

Because her aim had been to turn him into the domesticated animal that he was not and never would be.

It was a source of constant and relentless frustration that he still couldn’t dismiss her from his head, where she had taken up residence and refused to budge.

He knew that his work was being affected. Not his ability to work, which was part and parcel of the essence of him, but his demeanour at work.

More than once he had been tempted to call her, but he hadn’t and he never would. Pride would never allow him to pick up that phone and dial her number.

But, and this was the thought that haunted him late at night when there was nothing to distract him, he longed for her. He wanted her loving him. He missed her. And he didn’t know why.

Now his secretary had buzzed up that there was a certain Rose Taylor in reception, asking if she could come up and see him, and for the first time in weeks Nick felt a curious sense of peace. He immediately told his secretary that he was busy, that she might have to wait for half an hour while he wrapped up his conference call, but that he could squeeze her in after that.

Okay, it was childish of him, but she had always managed to turn him into a kid.

Then he sat back in his massive black leather chair, swivelled it to face the floor-to-ceiling plates of glass that overlooked the city of London, and turned his mind to what she wanted.

It could only be one thing. She had had ample time to think about his proposal and she had come to her senses. Nick contemplated the idea with intense satisfaction. He would even be tempted to say that he felt elated. He would have her back in his life, would have her sharp wit and clever mind and sexy body, and there would be no more talk about trying to infiltrate his life by putting a ring on his finger.

She loved him. Of course she would return. It was to be expected and Nick felt warm with the anticipation of having her back. Course, he would have to make it clear that his views hadn’t changed. That a mistress was a far cry from a wife and matrimony was not on the agenda, but he didn’t anticipate a problem.

After forty minutes, he buzzed through to his secretary to tell her that she could send Rose up now, and then he relaxed back, facing the heavy door to his office, and waited for her to enter.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ were his opening words as Rose cautiously entered his office and shut the door behind her.

She had prepared herself for this, but all her hours of preparation now flew out the window as she looked at him, despairingly aware that he still had as much of an effect on her now as he had the last time she had seen him. So much for time and its great healing properties.

Not wanting to leave the door because it represented her fastest route out, Rose remained hovering where she was, not quite sure how to answer his frowning observation, until he told her to have a seat. He actually stood up, pointed to the chair facing his and then proceeded to perch on the side of the desk so that she was forced to sidle forwards and sit at an awkward angle to avoid contact with his thigh.

‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Haven’t you been eating?’

‘I haven’t come here to talk about my diet, Nick,’ Rose answered irritably. She was aware that she was fiddling with the hem of her skirt and made herself stop. Nervous gesture. But she had a lot to be nervous about. In fact, she had spent the past two weeks in a state of near panic. Ever since she had clocked that she had missed a period. Ever since she had gone to the chemist’s and bought one of those home pregnancy kits that were virtually one-hundred-per-cent accurate, leaving no doubt that she was well and truly pregnant with Nick’s baby. That last time—no contraception. It had been wild and spontaneous and, unlike the very first time they had made love when they had omitted to use contraception, she hadn’t been in her safe period.

And, yes, she had lost weight. She hadn’t been eating properly and although, standing naked in front of the mirror, she could see that her stomach was more rounded, everywhere else was skinny in comparison to the curvy woman she had been. Who needed diets to lose weight? A healthy dose of misery worked a treat.

Not that she would look thinner for much longer.

She closed her eyes and felt suddenly dizzy. It was a good thing that she was sitting down. Collapsing on his office floor would have been a very disadvantageous way to begin proceedings.

‘What’s the matter?’ Nick frowned because for a minute there he had actually thought that she was going to faint. Something kicked hard inside him, some inarticulate fear that she was ill. He removed himself back to his chair and tried to get himself together, because once that thought had inserted itself in his head it began to eat away at his logic, burrowing away until he was consumed with the conviction that there was something ominous that she was keeping from him.

For the first time since she had been announced, Nick entertained the possibility that she might not have come to his office because she wanted to engineer a reconciliation.

He had been on a high, anticipating her stammering admission that she couldn’t keep away from him. He had even begun playing with thoughts of how the rest of his day would pan out. At his place. Uninterrupted sex. Touching her, feeling her, enjoying the things she could do to his body and all the myriad things he could do to hers.

But, now she was sitting in front of him, he could see that she was pale. This was not the demeanour of a woman looking forward to embarking on a heady and fulfilling sexual relationship with a man.

In fact, this was the demeanour of a woman who was nervous about blurting out an uncomfortable truth. Nick, astute when it came to reading other people, felt something shift inside him. He was scared, terrified in fact.

Everything seemed to slow down and he became uncomfortably aware that he had broken out in nervous perspiration. He could barely ask the question he knew he had to.

‘Would you like something to drink? Tea? Coffee? I could ask my secretary to bring you some…’

Just the thought of tea or coffee made Rose feel nauseous. She went a couple of shades paler and shook her head.

‘I won’t be long, Nick,’ she said, clearing her throat and making an effort not to be pathetic.

‘No rush. Mind if I have a cup of coffee?’ He buzzed through to his secretary to bring him in a cappuccino and Rose smiled wanly at him.

‘Since when do you ask permission for anything, Nick?’

Since he wanted to buy some time before he heard what she had to say?

He was increasingly convinced that there was something seriously wrong with her. She looked terrible. As white as a sheet. And not because she was nervous, even though she clearly was. No, there was something underlyingly wrong, and as something close to terror continued to eat away at him Nick realised, in a moment of truth, what he had been missing all along.

He had let his own stubborn pride dictate his life. Nick Papaeliou, the man who could have any woman he desired, who had lived his life taking his pick and telling himself that his freedom was the most important thing he possessed, had clung to his vow never to commit like an idiot clinging to a lifebelt in a bath. No woman had ever been able to tempt him out of his conviction that bachelordom was the only way to go and so, when Rose had come along, he had steadfastly ignored all the glaring signs that had gradually begun to clutter his life.

He had mistaken his missing her when she wasn’t around as missing her body. He had longed for her and explained it away as just a normal red-blooded-male reaction to craving a woman who turned him on. And when he had offered her the epitome of commitment as far as he was concerned, the chance to share his house with him, he had blithely assumed that the gesture signified no more than a desire to have what he wanted on tap until he became bored, until they both became bored.