‘Thank you,’ Claire politely replied.
She was offered a long-fingered, very slender white hand. Claire’s own palm began to tingle in anticipation of having to brush against the other woman’s satin-smooth skin.
Then the need to touch each other at all was suddenly saved when Claire remembered belatedly that her right hand was in a sling—at about the same moment that Desmona noticed it.
‘Oh, you are injured,’ she remarked. Her English was superb, spoken with an accent that was barely noticeable.
Claire smiled nervously. ‘An accident.’ She didn’t bother to elaborate. ‘So I am afraid I can’t …’ She gave a jerky gesture towards Desmona’s outstretched hand; the hand fluttered a little then dropped.
Clearly picking up on the tension suddenly surrounding them all, Melanie let out another protesting cry. Desmona’s eyes flicked from Claire to the baby, and in the sudden taut silence which followed something in her expression subtly altered.
‘She is like you, Andreas,’ she remarked casually enough, though.
‘She is my daughter,’ he answered just as casually. ‘What else would you expect?’
No reply was forthcoming, but the silence lashed to and fro with the kind of bitter words Claire could sense but not follow.
Then the silver eyes were shifting back to Claire, and the cold mask, which had slipped slightly, was suddenly back in place as Desmona politely excused herself before walking gracefully away along a formally set pathway that took her around the side of the house.
‘Good grief,’ Claire breathed as the air left her body in a single relieved whoosh. ‘What was all that about?’
For a moment Andreas didn’t answer, his attention thoughtfully fixed on Desmona’s steadily receding figure. Then he surprised Claire with a short, sardonic laugh. ‘You have just met the family choice for my bride,’ he said dryly.
‘Your late brother’s wife?’ she gasped, tipping her head back to stare at him in shocked disbelief.
He was already looking down at her, so their eyes clashed. The surface of her skin began to tingle, her insides along with it. She could feel herself beginning to fall into those devilish black eyes again and couldn’t seem to do a single thing to stop it.
‘Timo was a lot older than me,’ Andreas was explaining, seemingly unaware of the strange sensations Claire was beginning to experience every single time she looked into those eyes now. ‘They think I owe his widow something for inheriting on his death.’
‘But that’s archaic,’ she denounced, having to struggle to keep her mind locked on the conversation and not on the man she was having the conversation with. ‘When did your brother die?’
The bleak, pained look that came into his eyes occasionally was beginning to make more sense now, she realised as she watched it appear again. ‘Just over a year ago,’ he replied.
So, he had lost a wife he loved six years before, and a brother only recently. ‘I’m sorry,’ Claire murmured.
‘So am I.’ He smiled that brief grim smile. ‘I miss him.’
‘I know.’ She nodded in understanding. ‘You catch yourself looking round to speak to them only to feel that dreadful clutch of emptiness when you find they’re not there and you remember …’
His dark lashes gave a flicker. Claire’s breath caught on a softly inhaled little gasp when she saw the usual knock-back on its way. So she was totally unprepared for it when instead he bent his head and kissed her fully on her mouth.
If this was another punishing kiss for encroaching where he didn’t want her to, then it didn’t quite work out like that. Caught so off guard with her lips parted and her body relaxed, she was powerless to stop what happened next as she fell headlong into that kiss.
I don’t need to be looking into those eyes to feel like this, she realised as her whole mouth softened and drew him deeper, touching tongues—tongues that caused a sharp, hot electric charge to go racing through her blood. It was devastating, the most passionate encounter she had ever experienced. And if he wasn’t feeling it with her, then he was certainly feeling something that made a muffled groan break in his throat and his chest heave against her resting head before he completely caved in and threw himself passionately into that kiss.
If he hadn’t been holding Melanie, Claire had a horrible feeling he would have fallen on her like a ravenous wolf. As it was his stance shifted slightly and the hand resting at her waist became a clamp to wedge her back hard up against the full length of his side with a need to increase and compound upon what was suddenly running rife between them.
It was crazy—totally crazy, she kept on telling herself over and over. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was a business arrangement. No intimacy.
No intimacy. But if this wasn’t being intimate then she didn’t know what was. And she could smell the clean spicy smell of him—was being enveloped by it—stormed by it! Even her bruised ribs weren’t bothering to put up any protest at being clamped so tightly against him—they were too busy being under attack from the other side where her heart was pounding wildly in response to the whole mad, hot onslaught.
Then he groaned again, and in the next moment she was abruptly set free. In a dizzy haze of complete and utter disorientation, she reeled away. Legs like lead, eyes in a fog, she stumbled from beneath the terrace overhang and out into the sunshine.
‘Where are you going?’ His voice sounded hoarse and husky. But it brought her to a stop.
‘I—don’t know,’ she answered honestly, too confused to care how stupid she must sound.
Or stupefied, she then thought numbly, and wished the grass beneath her feet would open up and swallow her whole so she didn’t have to make herself turn around and face him.
Not that she needed to look to know exactly what she would see—a dark devil who had the kiss of hell in his repertoire, she thought fancifully.
A dark devil no less, who was cradling a sweet little baby on his arm, she added, and let out a strangled laugh that seemed to echo plaintively in the somnolent warmth of the afternoon quietness.
Yet he didn’t sound like a devil when he said, ‘Come back, Claire,’ very gently. ‘You’re quite safe here; please believe me …’
Safe, she repeated to herself. Tears sprang. Wretchedly she blinked them away. Then, on a small, tight, thickened suck of air, she attempted to pull herself together before turning round again.
She didn’t look at him—refused to do so as she made her shaking limbs carry her back into the shade. Coming to her side, he paused for a moment, and her senses began to sting in an agony of need for him to say not another word!
He must have sensed it and held his silence, which was something else she was realising about him—he picked up her feelings very easily.
Which made her what? Claire wondered dizzily as they both began walking in silence along the terrace towards the door. Pathetically transparent? ‘I …’ Desperately she searched her foggy brain for something casual to say so she could pretend the kiss just hadn’t happened. And found it when the sound of a car engine powering into life reminded her of Desmona. ‘Does Desmona live here in this house?’
‘She has her own apartment in Athens,’ he replied. ‘But she comes to visit my grandmother quite regularly. Claire, listen to me,’ he then urged huskily.
‘Oh, good,’ she cut in, agitatedly aware he was going to say something about that wretched kiss, and equally sure she did not want to hear it. ‘Then I won’t have to watch my back for flying knives,’ she joked, and managed to gain some reassurance from the fact that she could joke while she was feeling like this.
They turned together into a vast