‘So have you missed me, agape mou?’ he murmured, cursing himself against the now exquisitely painful ache.
It was a long time since she had heard that particular term of affection—it was one of the first and few Greek phrases she had learned and now it took her by surprise. But more crucially, it took her back to a time and a place which she had sectioned off as being too dangerous—rather as you might wire-fence a crater you’d found lurking at the bottom of your garden.
Forgetting Kyros had been something she’d taught herself to do after he’d gone. It hadn’t been easy—but time had helped and so had practice. Yet seeing him here like this hurtled her back to a forgotten time and suddenly she found she had no defence against the flood of memories which washed over her.
They had met during her first month at college—at a party thrown to welcome the ‘freshers’. She had been eighteen and bright and eager to learn about anything life could throw at her and Kyros had been the pin-up Greek who was just starting his final year. Everyone had known Kyros—and he had been more exotic than anyone she’d ever met in the small town where she’d grown up.
His glowing olive skin, black hair and hard tall body were the dream package. And so too were his arrogance and unashamedly macho attitude. At a time when Englishmen had been trying to get in touch with their feelings, Kyros had been their dark antithesis and women had clustered around him like flies.
Alice remembered feeling slightly appalled at how obvious some of those women could be and he was rumoured to have slept with at least three of them. But she hadn’t paid him any attention—not because of some kind of sophisticated game-plan, because she hadn’t had the experience to play games. No, she had simply looked at him and decided that he was way out of her league, her experience, her world—everything, really.
Years later she would understand that men like Kyros were natural predators—that they liked the chase and they liked the new. It had been her freshness and innocence and her lack of interest in him which had drawn him to her—just as nature had programmed her to respond to his alpha qualities.
Physical attraction was one thing but Alice had fallen in love with him because, well, because he was Kyros and she couldn’t not have loved him. And for a time he had loved her too—or so he’d said. But love had not prevented him from walking away from her as clinically as he had. Leaving with a regretful shrug, which had done nothing to dull the pain of his words.
But you must have known I would return to take over the family business, agape mou. In time I shall no doubt marry a beautiful Greek girl who will produce at least five children—most of whom will be sons! And they in turn will take over the business from me one day. That is the way these things work.
No, she had not known at all—or rather, had not allowed herself. She had wanted their relationship to endure and she had cried—but at least she had stopped short of begging him not to go.
And once Alice had seen that his mind was made up, she had forced herself to allow herself a glimpse of her own future. And despite her heartache, she had allowed herself the first faint flare of hope. Soon she would have a degree with which to launch her career. She might no longer have Kyros, she had reasoned—but out there lay travel and fun and excitement for her to sample.
That her life had not materialised according to her dreams was nobody’s fault—let alone Kyros’s.
The memories cleared and Alice saw his ebony eyes gleaming in the moonlight as the music from the party drifted down the garden towards them. She swallowed. What had his question been? The one which had set off all those bitter-sweet thoughts about the past? Had she missed him? he had asked—with all the sensitivity of a steamroller. How could a man be so dense? In the beginning, she had missed him with the agony of someone who’d had one of their limbs cut off!
But worse than missing him had been the realisation that never again would she meet a man who came anywhere close to Kyros Pavlidis and the way he made her feel. She remembered understanding that with a painful kind of clarity and she had been proved absolutely right.
She would never tell him that, of course—his ego did not need such a boost—but neither could she deny having missed him at all, for surely it was impossible to tell an outright lie of that magnitude? It would make her sound like a fraud.
But she could choose how to tell him, for she was no longer a young, impressionable girl rocked by the urgent power of first love.
‘It was inevitable that I should miss you to some extent,’ she said. ‘We’d been an item for nearly a year. It went from full time to nothing.’ Still warmed by the cocktail, she even managed a fairly convincing smile. ‘I suppose what I found odd was the abruptness of it all. You never wrote, or phoned. You disappeared completely from my life. I never saw you or heard from you again.’ So that sometimes it had seemed like some strange and glorious dream.
His mouth curved into a hard, mocking line. ‘It was better that way,’ he said. ‘If we’d stayed friends…’ What? He might have been tempted to come back and to take her to bed and lose himself in her body over and over again? He had wanted—no, needed—to make a clean break with her. To forget his blonde lover—with her long legs and her emerald eyes.
But he had never forgotten her, he realised that now. Nor got her completely out of his system. He had buried his hunger for Alice—and he was only just discovering how deeply. And now? Just like a seed which had lain dormant all these years and been suddenly fed light and air and water, his desire for her was fizzing over like a warm glass of champagne, given life by the sight of her sitting like some goddess in the moonlight, her hair a silvery fall down her back.
‘We could never have stayed friends, Alice,’ he said harshly. ‘Ex-lovers don’t make good friends.’
‘No,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘I guess you’re right.’
Her green eyes were unreadable in the dim light. He had expected—what? That she, of all people—having tasted the pleasures of his body—would respond to him as other women did? That she would be pouting and sending out silent signals that she wanted him? But Alice had not done that.
It was true that she was dressed like a siren—but she had not followed that up with any suggestiveness. And hadn’t that always been part of her attraction to him? Her cool blonde beauty hiding the rampant sensual fire beneath?
So what was he going to do about it? He was going to do what he always did—take what he wanted, and then walk away.
Reaching out his hand, he splayed his fingers over the base of her throat—just below the necklet of fake gemstones. He could feel her pulse skittering beneath the delicate skin, could see the way that her lips parted instinctively. In the fading light her eyes darkened.
‘Kyros…’
He pulled her into his arms and stared down at her, his features tense and black eyes bright with sexual hunger as they roved over her face. Alice knew in that moment that he was going to kiss her and that it would have been easier to have floated down to the end of the garden than to have resisted him. He knew that and she knew that. ‘You bastard,’ she whispered.
His laugh was soft as he trickled a careless finger over the pert bud of her satin-covered nipple and it tightened in response. ‘But you like that. You like your hard, tough, Greek macho man, don’t you, my beauty? It turns you on. It always did.’
‘Kyros—’ But any protest was lost then for he was crushing his lips down on hers and she was kissing him back as if her life depended on it.
Her fingers fluttered up as they sought the broad shoulders, pressing against the hard muscle and wanting to tear away the T-shirt and to touch the silk of the olive skin beneath. She sucked in a breath—his breath—and moaned his name into his mouth.
With an angry kind of curse he pulled her down from the bench onto