Only now the smile had gone. It had died on his lips, leaving nothing in its place but a look of withering contempt.
‘You are,’ he said. ‘You’re priceless. Do you really think that I would have cold-bloodedly had sex with you, just to make a better photo? I’ve heard of naked ambition, but really! Just how far do you think my dedication to the company goes, Jess? Do you think I would have done the same if I’d only just met the model, or found her physically repulsive? That I’d be acting like some kind of male whore?’
She glared at him. How dared he try to turn this round? ‘You were talking to loads of different women at the party!’ she accused. ‘You know you were. Just not to me. But then, you’ve been hiding me away like a dirty secret, haven’t you? You acted like you barely knew me at the party. Like we were strangers!’
He frowned. ‘Because I didn’t think either of us were ready to go public right then. And yes, I was talking to other women there—but it doesn’t automatically follow that I was planning on having sex with them.’
Her eyes bored into his. ‘Not even Maya?’ she accused.
‘Maya?’ he echoed blankly, until his face cleared. ‘Oh, Maya. You mean my ex-lover? Why, would you have had me blank her and be rude to her by ignoring her? That isn’t the kind of behaviour I’d expect from a classy lady like you, Jess.’
His sarcasm washed over her and she glared at him. ‘You hired me for all kinds of reasons,’ she bit out. ‘But I got the distinct impression that the main one was because you wanted to get even with me. That you’d never quite forgiven me for everything that happened before. And please don’t try and make out I’m a fool, Loukas—or that I imagined it. You did. You know you did.’
There was a pause before he answered and then he sucked in a breath and nodded his head slowly. ‘At the beginning, maybe I did,’ he said. ‘But things change, Jess—only you seem to be blind to them. You only ever see the shallow stuff—you never dare scratch beneath the surface, do you? When we reconnected again after all those years I agree that initially I felt a mixture of anger and lust. And if you really want the truth, I thought that getting you out of my system was going to be simple.’
‘By sleeping with me?’ she demanded.
‘Neh. By sleeping with you.’ He gave a cynical laugh. ‘Actually, sleeping had nothing to do with it. I wanted you wide awake and very present. I wanted to do something that I’d been unable to forget and that was to have sex with you again. But you fought me all the way. You didn’t just fall into my arms, even though I knew you wanted to. You forced me to get to know you again and to realise—’
‘Realise what?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He shook his head and his voice had grown cold now—as cold as the icy glint from his eyes. ‘None of it does. Doesn’t matter that I indulged you—’
‘Indulged me?’
‘Neh. I treated you with kid gloves,’ he gritted out. ‘I was cautious and careful. I put my business on hold and came to live with you here because I know you don’t like London, but it still wasn’t enough, was it? Because nothing is ever enough for you, Jess. You couldn’t wait to think the worst of me—to give you a reason not to trust me. A reason to send me away and lock yourself away again—with all your beauty and your warmth hidden behind the frozen front you present to the world.’
‘Loukas—’
‘No!’ he flared impatiently. ‘I don’t intend to spend my life tiptoeing around you, while you imagine the worst. Believe what you want to believe, because I’m done with this. And I’m done with you.’
His tone was harsh and Jessica stared at him, wondering what he was doing, then realised he was tugging his car keys from the pocket of his jacket and preparing to leave.
He was preparing to leave, only this time the look on his face told her he would never come back.
‘Loukas,’ she said again, fingertips flying to her mouth in horror. But her gasped word didn’t stop him or make his stony face relax. He was opening the front door and the chill March wind was whistling through the door as he walked out, sending the temperature plummeting.
Frozen, he’d called her, and she felt frozen. Frozen enough to feel as if she were encased in ice when she heard a door slam and the sound of an engine firing into life. She turned her head to see the car bumping over the grass onto the unmade road, with Loukas’s stony profile staring straight ahead.
He was going.
He was going.
‘Loukas!’ She ran outside and the cry was torn from her throat as she screamed it into the wind, but if he heard her, he didn’t stop. And if he saw her that made no difference either, because the car continued to move forward. Waving her arms in the air, she started to run after it. To run as she hadn’t run in years. It was like running across the court for a ball she knew she would never reach, only...
The last time that had happened she had ruptured her cruciate ligament and ended her career with a sickening snap, but this time she couldn’t move as fast as her teenage self and her footsteps slowed to a stumbled halt. This time all that she had ruptured was her heart, yet somehow the pain seemed just as intense.
Sinking to her knees on the damp ground, she buried her face in her hands and began to cry, great sobs welling up from somewhere deep inside her chest until they erupted into a raw howl of pain. She wept at her own stupidity and timidity—at her lack of courage at going after something she realised now was irreplaceable. She could have had him—the only man she had ever cared about—but she’d been too proud and too stupid and too scared to give it a go. Too afraid of being hurt to take a risk, when everyone knew that love never came without some element of risk.
Hot tears dripped through her frozen fingers, drying instantly in the chill wind, and as she began to shiver she knew she couldn’t stay there for ever. Her teeth chattering, she rose slowly to her feet, blinking away tears as she stared into the distance and saw the dark shape of a distinctive car parked on the clifftop and her heart missed a beat.
Loukas’s car.
She blinked again as she realised that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her, but that it was definitely his car and he hadn’t gone.
He hadn’t gone.
With stumbling steps she began to run—expecting at any moment to see it disappear into the distance in a swift acceleration of power. But it didn’t and her stride became longer—her panting breath making clouds of vapour in the chill air as she began to make silent pleas in her head. Please don’t go. Please just give me one more chance and I’ll never let you down again.
Out of breath, she reached the car at last. He was sitting perfectly still, staring straight ahead until she began to rap on the window and then he turned his head to look at her. His black eyes were flinty and his dark features were unreadable, but these days such a look was rare. She remembered the night when she’d been exhausted and wrung out in Venice. When he’d put her to bed and fed her melted cheese. When he’d made her feel safe and cherished as well as desired, and her heart swelled with an immense feeling of love and longing.
‘Don’t go,’ she mouthed, through the glass. ‘Please.’
He didn’t say a word as he took the key from the ignition and climbed out of the car. He stared down at her for a long moment and then the flicker of a smile appeared on his lips.
‘I wasn’t,’ he said, ‘planning on going anywhere. I just needed time to cool down, before I said something I might afterwards regret.’
‘Oh, Loukas,’ she said, her words still muffled from all the crying she’d done.
But as Loukas looked at her he knew it had been more than that. He’d wanted to see if she would come after him, and she had. He’d