Chosen by the Greek Tycoon: The Antonakos Marriage / At the Greek Tycoon's Bidding / The Greek's Bridal Purchase

CHAPTER TEN

‘I’M SORRY.’

Skye felt obliged to say it.

‘I never meant you to feel used.’

The truth was that it was the last thing she had expected.

‘But can’t we forget about that night—put it behind us?’

‘You know damn well that we can’t!’

Theo’s voice was rough and husky and his eyes burned like polished jet as they scoured her face.

‘It’s still there—between us. I can’t forget about it—can you?’

Never in her life, Skye acknowledged, but she was going to have to try. There was no way she and her family could have a future if she didn’t escape from the past.

‘I have to,’ she said with what she hoped sounded like conviction. ‘We have to. Nothing can happen between us. I’m marrying your father. We have to live as if we’d never met before. As if we’d never…’

‘And you can do that, can you?’ Theo put in when her voice failed her, lacking the courage to complete the sentence. His tone was dark with cynical scepticism, making his disbelief all too plain. ‘You can pretend that we were never lovers—that we have only ever been stepmother and stepson?’

No! No, I can’t do it—I can’t bear it! Skye’s heart felt as if it were being ripped in two at just the thought. She didn’t want to be Theo’s stepmother. She didn’t feel at all motherly towards him. She wanted…

But she couldn’t have what she wanted. That was forbidden to her. She had to put even the dream of it out of her mind and learn, somehow, to live with what was real.

She found the strength to straighten her back, lift her head. She even managed to look him straight in the face, meeting the black-ice stare of those coldly assessing eyes.

‘Yes,’ she managed, and was stunned to hear an assurance that she could never have felt actually sounding in her voice.

But was it enough to convince Theo? He had to be convinced. She didn’t know how she could go on if he wasn’t.

He didn’t look convinced. But then she didn’t know what he did look. She couldn’t read his still, inscrutable expression. Couldn’t tell a single thought that was passing through his coolly assessing brain. She could only hope and pray.

Still with his eyes fixed on her face, Theo stirred slightly. He drew in a long, thoughtful breath, inclined his head to one side, ever so slightly.

‘Prove it,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Prove it,’ Theo repeated, with a harder, slashing emphasis. ‘If you’re so convinced that you can act as if we’ve never been lovers—as if there is nothing between us—then do it. And get some practice in before my father comes home. He said I would look after you; I think I’d better start doing that.’

‘But…’ Skye tried to protest, but Theo cut through her stumbling attempt to speak.

‘Spend the rest of the day with me. We’ll do a guided tour of the island—that seems like the sort of thing a good stepson would do. Be my stepmother—nothing more. And if at the end of the day you can still say you can live with things that way, then I swear I’ll leave you alone—for good.’

I’ll leave you alone—for good.

Skye’s mind swung violently between hope and despair; agreement and total, desolate rejection of his suggestion. One part of her wanted to do this so that he would leave her in peace—and yet the thing she most wanted in all the world was that he would never leave her. But the way she wanted that was what was totally forbidden to her.

She was going to have to learn to live with that. And perhaps the way that Theo had suggested—the idea of practising, of trying to get used to the idea, without the fear of having Cyril’s eyes following every move—might just work.

She didn’t know. But the one thing she was sure of was that the ruthless, determined set of Theo’s hard features made it only too plain that if she refused then he would put his own interpretation on that fact. An interpretation that spelt death to her hopes of any peace of mind in the future.

It seemed to her that she had only one possible choice.

‘All right,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ll do it.’

Was he really going through with this? Theo asked himself when they were in the car and heading down the rough, winding road that led away from the house. What had happened to his doubts, to the private acknowledgement of the risks he ran, the temptation he would have to endure if he stayed?

The truth was that he wanted that temptation. He couldn’t turn away and just leave it. When he was with Skye he felt more involved with everything, more alive than ever before, and he wasn’t going to abandon a chance to experience that sensation once more, even if it was for the last time.

Besides, he hadn’t been back to Helikos in all the five years he had been apart from his father. He wanted to reacquaint himself with the place, revisit his favourite spots, the places he had loved as a boy. And he would enjoy seeing them afresh through her eyes.

‘We’ll follow the coast road first,’ he told her. ‘That way we can visit the ruined monastery and take a look at some of the caves before we head for the village. I know a wonderful little taverna where we can eat dinner. The people who own it were like family to me.’

And almost more than family, he recalled. Berenice, the oldest daughter, a woman not much more than five years older than himself, had had an intense affair with his father at about the time that the old man had tried to push his son into an unwanted marriage. He remembered how, in one of the last conversations he had had with Cyril, he had flung the fact into the older man’s face.

‘If you’re so desperate to have more heirs,’ he had shouted, ‘then why don’t you marry your mistress? Start a new family with her!’

‘I might just do that!’ Cyril had responded.

But it seemed that now Berenice was out of the picture. Obviously, his father had thought twice about making a simple village woman the fifth Mrs Antonakos.

Instead he had chosen this English girl who was less than half his age. A girl who was not at all the type his father usually went for.

Berenice was much more his father’s type. Cyril Antonakos was drawn to that small, black-haired, dark-eyed, full-bosomed type of woman. Not the tall, slim, Titianhaired seductress that Skye Marston was.

A woman who, simply by existing, made Theo live in a state of constant hunger, of a desire so hot and painful that it was an agony of frustration to sit so close to her in the confined space of the car. An agony of yearning to inhale the delicate fragrance of her skin with every breath he took, and not do anything about it.

A woman who made him want to slam on the brakes, bring the car to a screeching halt and turn in his seat, reaching out for her in desperation. Made him want to drag her into his arms, haul her close and take her mouth, kissing her hard and long, demandingly, until they were both senseless with heady desire, an explosive cocktail of hunger and frantic passion impossible to control.

‘Theos…’ Cursing under his breath, Theo gripped the steering wheel so tightly that the knuckles on his hands showed white under the tanned skin. Pebbles flew up from underneath the tyres, clanging against the underside of the car and making Skye look up in stunned confusion.

‘Is there a problem?’

‘I forgot how primitive the island roads can be. You can’t afford to let your concentration slip for a moment.’

‘The view has much the same effect,’ she smiled. ‘I never knew the sea could be so many wonderful shades of blue.’

If she smiled at him like that once more, then he was lost. Theo forced his attention back to the road

‘This is October. You should see it in the summer—it’s like the most brilliant jewel in all the world then.’

‘I’d love to see it.’

Skye’s voice had an odd little break in it, one that made it sound suddenly vulnerable and dangerously appealing so that Theo had to clench his jaw tight against the way that that softness twisted in his guts.

‘You will do,’ he said, the fight he was having with himself making his words come out far more harshly than he wanted. ‘You’ll be living here then—as my stepmama.’

If he had reached out and slapped her hard across the face, it couldn’t have had a more dramatic effect on her. She shrank back inside herself like a small, frightened rabbit retreating into the protection of its burrow. The sudden clouding of her eyes and the way that her sharp white teeth dug into the softness of her mouth were like a reproach to him, making him curse himself for the roughness of his reply.

But at least she had lost that tempting smile. And the way that she turned from him, fixing her concentration back onto the azure spread of the ocean at the bottom of the dramatic fall of the cliffs, meant that temptation no longer tormented him with thoughts of the softness of her breasts beneath the lilac dress, the shortness of her skirt.

If she kept her back turned to him, her gaze on the view before her, then he might just be able to keep a grip on the hunger; stop it from running away with the last bit of sense he possessed.

If she kept her back turned to him, her gaze on the view before her, then she might just be able to keep a grip on her emotions, Skye told herself. She had made a near fatal mistake in turning, in smiling at him, as she had.

Turning had brought her too close to him. It had made her so intensely aware of his physical presence beside her. She had inhaled the scent of his body with her swiftly indrawn breath, and her smile had been directed straight into those watchful black eyes. And she was sure there had been some flicker of response in them that had had her holding her breath in disbelief.

But then suddenly he had changed. She had seen it in his face, heard it in the tone of his voice as he had drawled cruelly, ‘You’ll be living here then—as my stepmama.’

Did he know how much it hurt to be slapped in the face by that reminder? He had to. It was why he had done it. He was making sure that she remembered exactly where she would stand with him if she went through with the marriage to his father.

A marriage she had to go through with if she was to have any chance of ensuring her parents’ future.

And any chance of saving her mother’s life. The memory of the phone call she had had with her father last night invaded her head, dragging dark shadows with it. She had wanted to speak to her mother, but Claire Marston had been sleeping. They weren’t prepared to wake her…

A tiny gasping sob escaped her, impossible to hold back. She had been a fool to think that she could ever go through with this stepmother act.

‘What’s wrong?’

The hard demand sliced through the atmosphere inside the car like a slashing knife, making her jump with the force of it.

‘Nothing.’

Her heart lurched painfully as she heard his muttered curse and felt the car come to an abrupt halt, spraying pebbles wildly around the tyres.

‘Something has upset you and I want to know what.’

‘Do you really have to ask?’ Skye twisted in her seat, turning back to face him, blinking ferociously to drive away the weak and revealing tears in her eyes.

‘I mean—I’m sure you know only too well. Or can guess. Why are you so determined that I shouldn’t marry your father?’ she demanded when she saw his dark frown of incomprehension. ‘Why does it matter so much to you?’

‘Because you would be living a lie—we both would.’

‘We had one night together! It doesn’t have to affect the rest of our lives.’

‘One night I can’t forget. And I don’t believe you can either.’

There was no hint of yielding in his face. His features were set in hard, ruthless lines, his eyes glittering with the coldest anger.

‘You were a virgin—you know what they say about always remembering your first.’

That burned so much into her already wounded soul that Skye closed her eyes briefly against the pain. But then she immediately forced them open again, dragging herself back into the role of careless indifference she had chosen for her own protection.

‘Well, don’t flatter yourself that that’s true for me. You might want to imagine that you were unforgettable, but I’m afraid that’s just not the case.’

Not true, her outraged conscience reproached her, crying out against the betrayal of the truth. She hadn’t forgotten Theo’s touch, his kisses, his lovemaking. The vivid intensity of her memories, the blazing Technicolor brilliance of her dreams, left her in no doubt at all that the images would never fade.

She’d insulted him savagely too. She could see it in the flaring rage in the black brilliance of his eyes, the tightness of every muscle in his face that scored white lines of fury around his nose and mouth, stretched the skin ferociously over the broad cheekbones. It hurt to see what she had done, and she longed to open her mouth and protest sharply, to take back the terrible words. But even as her conscience lashed at her for the lies, her sense of self-protection recognised the need for it; the shield she had put up against the dangers of letting this man get too close.

But he was already too close, she admitted miserably. He was in her mind all day, every day. In her dreams each night.

In her heart.

But no! She wouldn’t allow herself to let that idea into her head. She couldn’t risk it, didn’t dare to even consider the possibility that she had come to care for Theo Antonakos more than was safe.

‘Is that why you bolted? Because I was so forgettable?’

He was starting the car again as he spoke. Starting it with a roar and a crunch of gears that, even after such a short acquaintance with his driving techniques, she knew was completely non-typical of him.

He was beyond angry. He was furious—coldly furious. But while she shivered inside at the thought of his rage, she also welcomed it. His loss of temper had distracted him, taken him away from the thought of probing into why she had been so upset. It had stopped him from asking any more questions that she would find impossible to answer and so, while she couldn’t relax, she could at least feel that she only had one thing to concentrate on. Theo’s obvious dislike of and contempt for the woman she was pretending to be, the mask she was hiding behind, was hard enough to cope with. But at least it kept him from digging any deeper into areas that she couldn’t even begin to explain.

‘Or was it that you were shocked rigid at the discovery of your own sensuality and you were running scared?’

‘I wasn’t scared! What is there to be scared of?’

‘What?’

Once more the car screeched to a halt on the deserted road. Theo had barely had time to yank on the brake before he had flung off his seat belt and was turning towards her, grabbing hold of her arms and pulling her towards him with a force that made her own seat belt lock, holding her immobile.

Cursing savagely, he stabbed a long finger on the button that released the strap, catching her as she tumbled into his arms.

‘What is there to be scared of? I’ll show you…’

Arms like steels bands fastened around her, twisting her in her seat as he hauled her up against him. His mouth came down on hers with a savage demand, crushing her lips cruelly and forcing them open under the pressure of his.

But then, in the space of a single, jerking heartbeat, everything changed. Her mouth wasn’t crushed open, but yielding swiftly and softly, letting him in rather than having no option. The taste of him was as intoxicating as fine wine, rushing straight to her head, coiling along her senses so that she couldn’t get enough of him. Her tongue tangled with his, taking in more of him, inviting, offering more of herself. And he took it. He took her mouth, he took her senses, he took her hunger and fed it, making it grow and rage out of control.

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