But she had to think. She had to stop feeling and force her mind to concentrate on what really mattered. She had almost ruined everything. Almost destroyed her chances of rescuing her family from the total disaster that faced them. The man before her, tall and strong, with the sunlight playing on the silken black hair, the bronzed skin of his face and chest, might be everything she most wanted in the world right now, but she had to force that weak, indulgent feeling from her mind and think.
And what she had to think was that this must not, could not, happen.
If she wanted to save her family, then Theo Antonakos was forbidden to her.
And so she wrenched up the dangling strap of the swimming costume, wincing in distress as the white Lycra scraped over the sensitised tip of her aching breast. Pulling the little clothing she had as high as it would go, she forced herself to face Theo’s cold-eyed fury with what she hoped looked like a degree of calm she was far from feeling.
‘I don’t give a damn about your “other ways”!’ she managed, the brutal control she was exerting over her voice making it sound high and tight, and absolutely cold with rejection. ‘The one thing you listen to is what I say! And what I say is no—got that? N-O. No! I’m saying no and I mean no.’
For one fearful second there was such a maelstrom of rage in his face, blazing in his eyes, that she actually feared he would ignore her and reach out, grab her once again. She had nerved herself for flight when she saw him recollect himself, shake his head faintly and impose a degree of control over his actions that she had to admire even as she welcomed it with a shaking rush of relief.
But if Theo had controlled his physical impulses, he had not yet restrained his tongue.
‘You say that now, sweetheart,’ he declared with brutal cynicism, ‘but that no was a long time coming. So tell me, my lovely, what was it that forced the rejection from you? Was it the thought that someone else might see us—your mama perhaps?’
‘Mama?’ Skye echoed blankly, unable to believe he had used the word. Had he really said…?
‘Because if that’s what it was, my angel, then I’m certain you don’t need to worry. I’m sure she’d be perfectly happy for us both.’
‘Happy?’
Just what was he talking about? Every word confused her even more. What had her mother to do with this? Did Theo know…?
‘Keep it in the family, so to speak. Your mother, my father—you and me.’
Your mother, my father…
Skye’s thoughts reeled sickeningly. He thought her mother was his father’s fiancée! He actually believed that she was here with her mother and that her mother was the one about to marry Cyril Antonakos!
‘Well?’
Skye’s silence, the stunned look on her face, puzzled Theo. Defiance he could understand; even anger would be perfectly explicable. But all the anger that had burned in her seemed to have fizzled out, subsiding like a damp squib that had never actually exploded.
And in a way that disappointed him.
He was spoiling for a fight. Had been ever since she had tried to claim that she didn’t want him any more. It stung his pride to hear her declare that, especially when a tension in the sexy body in the clinging white swimsuit and a particular light in the depths of those dove-grey eyes revealed the statement for the lie that it was.
She couldn’t have been more aware of him if she had been a nervous young deer who had come upon a hunting tiger in the middle of a clearing. She seemed unaware of the way that she was uneasily shifting her weight from one foot to another, her eyes warily watching his slightest move. Even the fine nostrils seemed to flare in apprehension every time he moved or spoke.
Like hell, she’d had enough of him! Just as there was no way that he had ever tired of her.
Anger and hurt pride had pushed him into action, making him pull her close. And her reaction had been everything that he had anticipated. Everything he had wanted. She had turned to flames in his arms, going up like the driest of kindling laid at the base of a fire, her passion so fierce that he had almost felt his skin might have melted in the heat of it. She had responded to his kiss with all the hunger and the desire that he’d dreamed of.
And he had been lost. Swamped by heat and desire; his body hardening in a second. He had lost all awareness of where he was.
He had thought that he had taken her along with him. Her responses had been everything he could have wanted, her kisses adding fuel to the fires blazing within him. He had been so sure that she was his. That once more he would have her in his bed—and that this time he would make sure it was for much longer than one night.
One night with her had already taught him that it was nowhere near long enough to sate himself on her body. One night had only made him realise what hunger really was and how much he wanted this woman in his bed. Finding her here like this, after his vain search for her in London, had been such an unexpected thrill and he was prepared to do whatever it took to keep her here.
The fight, the tension between them had only added to the electrical current of desire that sparked his appetite for her. And her sudden rejection of him, the way she had pulled away, had left him fiercely frustrated, his aroused body ready to take the satisfaction it needed.
Now she had just backed down.
Apparently with nothing to say, she was simply staring at him as if he had suddenly grown an extra head, her big eyes wide and clouded with something that looked like shock.
‘Well?’ he repeated. ‘What do you say?’
‘I…’ she began, but her voice trailed off, dying into silence once again.
Theo’s hands clamped tight shut at his sides, struggling to resist the urge to shake her from this trance she seemed to have fallen into.
‘Skye!’
But as he spoke another voice came from the direction of the house, breaking into what he had been about to say and silencing him too.
‘Theo! There you are! Amalthea said you had arrived.’
Taken by surprise, Theo muttered a dark curse under his breath. His father’s appearance was the last thing he wanted right now.
After five years’ estrangement, not speaking, not even sending letters, this first meeting with Cyril was going to be awkward enough without anyone else there. The presence of someone else—and just who that someone was—was a complication he could do without.
‘Pateras.’
A sudden movement drew his eyes from the dark, heavyset man now approaching and back to Skye. She had snatched up the white towel from the ground and was once more knotting it hastily round her body. Such unexpected modesty on her part frankly surprised him. And so did her sudden loss of colour. Every trace of blood had ebbed from her cheeks, leaving her looking strained and almost ill, the wide grey eyes huge pools above the ashen cheeks.
‘Skye?’
It came out on an undertone of concern, keeping the lowvoiced question from his father’s hearing. Theo knew better than most that the older man could be difficult and autocratic in his business dealings and with other men. But with women—particularly young, attractive women—he was usually a practised charmer, unlikely to cause such a panicstricken reaction in any member of the opposite sex.
So was there some tension between his father and Skye Marston that he knew nothing about? It was going to make for an awkward relationship between Cyril and his about-to-be stepdaughter if that was the case.
But Skye had already turned away from him and was watching Cyril’s approach, her face hidden so that he couldn’t read any further changes in her expression.
‘So you two have met already.’