And Nikos?
Now she realised just what she had been trying to grasp hold of in her mind yesterday by the pool, when Nikos’s kisses and caresses had driven her so distracted with need that she hadn’t been able to think of her own name, let alone grasp the elusive, whispering little voice that had tried to warn her that not all was well. That there was something she really should be thinking of before she jumped in too deep and let the dark waters of sexuality close right over her head.
Now, too late, she knew what it was—and she also knew that it meant that her life would never be the same. She also knew that it had been too late yesterday, too late from the moment she had confronted Nikos in his London office, seeing him again for the first time. Too late to go back to her old way of life, to managing to live without Nikos in it, without knowing that she still loved him. From the moment she had set eyes on him again she had fallen right back in love with him—though in those first days she had never realised the truth.
If, in fact, she had ever really fallen out of love with him. She had been terrified of being in love with a man who didn’t love her at all. And so she had forced herself to believe that she hated him because it was safer for her, easier that way.
‘Safer!’
Sadie actually spoken the word aloud, the way she was feeling turning it into a sound of shaken laughter. Safer just didn’t come into it. Safer wasn’t possible. Because the truth was that she had done exactly that, no matter how careful her personal safeguards had been.
She was in love with Nikos Konstantos and Nikos…Well, Nikos wanted her. He desired her intensely sexually; she could be in no doubt about that. He had spent last night and half of yesterday proving just that to her. He might even want to marry her. But only to get her into his bed and keep her there. He’d said as much yesterday.
‘Hell, yes. I’d have done anything to get you into my bed.’
But he had spoken no word of love. Had never shown any sign of even considering that such an emotion existed. And probably, for Nikos, it never had. He had never loved her in the past, didn’t love her now. And there was no hope that he would ever come to love her at any time in the future—if they had one together.
‘Oh, Nikos!’
Sighing, Sadie forced herself to throw back the covers and get out of bed. What was it they said about the cold light of dawn? Yesterday had been wonderful, the night a sensual fantasy come true. But now, with the morning light shining bright on the new day, and with Nikos no longer in her bed to kiss her distracted, keep her thoughts from the ‘what nexts’ and ‘if onlys’ that plagued her, she was forced to face the probability that last night had not been a beginning, a start to a future, but instead a one-off final fling.
Wasn’t it far more likely that Nikos had seen last night as a way, as he had said, ‘to deal with what is between us’? To get her out of his system once and for all. He had made no promise, offered her nothing else. And she would be all kinds of a fool if she looked for anything.
But for now she’d take what was on offer, she resolved as she headed for the bathroom and the shower. The truth was that she was weak enough to admit to settling for anything. Just one more day…just one more time…
That phrase was still repeating inside her head when, fresh from her shower, naked and with dripping hair, she wandered back into the bedroom. Only to stop dead at the sight of the dark figure standing by the window.
‘Nikos!’
With the sun blazing behind him, his imposing frame was just a black silhouette, his face a shadowed blank. But there was something about the way he stood, a tension in the broad shoulders under the soft blue linen shirt, in the way his hands were pushed deep into the pockets of his pale trousers, that warned her about his mood. He was not here for light conversation, and if she was any judge he was definitely not here to resume the lovemaking that had occupied so much of the night.
‘What is it?’ she asked sharply in the same moment that he spoke too.
‘We need to talk.’
It clashed with her own words, but she caught it and it sent her spirits, already only precariously balanced between good and low, plummeting right down on to the floor beneath her bare feet. How many ominous, difficult conversations had begun with just those words? We need to talk implied that something had gone wrong—or was about to go wrong.
But what?
‘OK.’
It was all she could manage, and in a way that was totally ridiculous after the night they had just spent together she found herself wishing that she had wrapped a towel around her before she had left the bathroom. Standing here like this, totally naked, she felt so vulnerable and exposed, needing to hide. She certainly didn’t feel up to any ‘we need to talk’ type of discussion anyway.
‘Not like this. Get some clothes on first.’
Obviously Nikos felt the same about her appearance. Which should have been a relief but, in fact, only added to her tension. Last night, nothing would have distracted him from the fact that she was naked—or from taking full advantage of it. Now it was an awkward obstacle in the way of what he wanted to get done.
Which didn’t promise well for this talk.
‘Of course.’
But her clothes were in her room, not here in Nikos’s bedroom where they had spent the night.
‘I’ll…’
But Nikos was already moving, heading for the door as if he couldn’t get out of there quickly enough.
‘I’ll be in my office,’ he tossed over his shoulder at her.
‘I’ll be there.’
Somehow Sadie managed to keep her tone buoyant, when in fact, it should have been sinking with her spirits. She had admitted to herself that she expected her dismissal from his life to come sooner rather than later, but not this soon. She doubted if Nikos even heard her anyway, as the door swung to behind his hasty exit.
He was a fool, Nikos told himself as he headed for the stairs, the pace of his steps matching the state of his thoughts. A stupid, total fool and he had just proved it to himself.
He should have known. He did know, damn it! He’d left Sadie sleeping in his bed this morning and she had been totally naked then. And then, when he had gone into the room and heard the shower running in the bathroom, any idiot would have assumed that when she emerged she was not likely to be wearing any clothes.
But he had not been thinking straight. With his mind so full of the news he had been given this morning, he hadn’t been thinking about anything else at all. And so when Sadie had finally emerged, beautifully naked, with her soft skin still pink and glowing from the shower, the sight had hit him like a blow to his already unfocussed head. And that was something he didn’t need. In two ways.
He already had the image of Sadie’s naked body in his mind. Gamato, after last night he knew that it was etched there permanently, never to be erased. If he had hoped that the sensory indulgence of the past eighteen hours or so would sate him on her charms and leave him free to live his life again, then he had been very badly mistaken. There was no way he was sated at all. The truth was that he doubted if he ever would be. There was no way he could have enough of Sadie Carteret, and one passionate night of total abandon had done nothing to appease the appetite he had for her.
If anything, it had only whetted it so that he was far hungrier now than he had ever been in the years they had been apart.
And that was why the article he had read in the English gossip columns had sent his mental temperature soaring,