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Kris was forced to curb a smile at this point. ‘You haven’t met Kimmie. She isn’t impressed by wealth.’
‘She’s a saint?’ his uncle demanded in a sceptical voice.
‘She knows who I am, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference,’ Kris explained as Kimmie’s combative gaze swam into his mind.
‘That’s only what she’s showing you on the outside,’ his uncle assured him. ‘Who knows what she’s really thinking?’
‘Is that how you felt about my aunt when you two first met?’
The silence was deafening, and Kris knew he’d overstepped the mark. His uncle had been passionately in love with his wife, Kris’s aunt, for more than forty years, but sometimes Uncle Theo needed reminding that other people had feelings too.
Even Kris?
Sitting here in his study at the beach house, he remembered shifting uncomfortably at that point, and longing to put down the phone. The last thing he had intended was to upset the man to whom he owed so much. After the call, it occurred to him he could have it all. Practical arrangements would have to come first, but as neither he nor Kimmie was exactly familiar with the trope of love, he couldn’t see a problem.
Except for the fact that she was a true romantic?
No, no, no—she was an intelligent woman. It would not be a case of lavishing gifts on Kimmie, but employing calm reason and winning her trust. Others might see the gifts he bought them as fair exchange for their time, but Kimmie was not only likely to return any gifts he gave her, but would expect more from him emotionally than he was willing or able to give...
He had almost talked himself out of pursuing another encounter with Kimmie when her beautiful face flashed into his mind. Quirky, unpredictable, passionate Kimmie, bruised and damaged by life, but she always bounced back. What a woman. What a match for him. Feisty and independent, and so scorching hot he had to have her. Kimmie was everything he’d ever wanted and more.
At what cost?
Previous partners couldn’t do enough for him in the bedroom, which was all that was required of them, but when it came to finding a wife...someone to spend time with, talk to and get to know, to care deeply about, a woman with whom he could build a family...
Forget it! He didn’t have his uncle’s talent where that was concerned.
* * *
A wonderfully sunny afternoon faded into a spectacular sunset as Kimmie and her friends left for their various rooms at the guest house to get ready for the fiesta in the village. The blood-red sky threw Kris’s ship, the Spirit of Kaimos, into sharp relief, taunting her as Kimmie stared out of her bedroom window. There’d been no sign of him and, far from that being a relief, she felt as if a dead weight had lodged in the pit of her stomach. She looked forward to the celebration and hoped it would be a distraction. If nothing else, it would be a great send-off for the wedding guests, and her friends deserved nothing less.
Finding something suitable to wear wasn’t so hard as her simple wedding trousseau, bought on the high street, remained untouched. She settled on a white cotton summer dress, which she teamed with flat sandals, before brushing her hair until it sprang around her shoulders like an angry purple storm cloud. She was angry. Mike had let everyone down, and hadn’t even had the decency to show his face to apologise, or to make any sort of explanation to their friends.
Put him behind you! You don’t have to think about Mike again.
Correct. Thus armed, she left her room and jogged downstairs to join the others. Kyria Demetriou’s generosity in wanting to introduce them around in the village was a great opportunity, and Kimmie made sure to take her sketch pad. Confident she’d find endless inspiration for her paintings, she’d work on preparatory sketches until she ran out of lead.
And Kris?
Forget about him too!
Could she? What if she saw him in the village with someone else? Someone sophisticated and beautiful—the type of companion she imagined he should have.
Suck it up.
Determined to put on a buoyant and optimistic front, she reached the foot of the stairs and stopped dead. There was no mistaking that voice. Kris was here. Her heart was beating so fast by the time she reached the door of the communal sitting room, she could hardly breathe.
But she could breathe, and she would...steadily, Kimmie told herself firmly as she walked into the room. She could handle this and any situation.
Could she, indeed?
Had she really thought she was ready to see Kris again? Why was she standing rooted to the spot, staring at him as if he was the only person in the room? Because there was no preparation possible for the sight of Kristof Kaimos contained in a very small room when he took up every inch of space with his personality alone. It didn’t help that her friends were staring fixedly at Kimmie, waiting to see her reaction.
Move! And be quick about it. Say something!
‘How nice to see you again,’ she said politely, walking forward with her hand outstretched like a character out of My Fair Lady.
Nice? Kris was standing with his jeans-clad hips propped against the wall. Nice? He looked even more like that Titan from myth and legend tonight. He was so hot she needed a bucket of iced water to tip over herself. The worst of it was that a nervous smile seemed to have fixed itself to her trembling mouth.
He had no mercy. Straightening up, he towered over her and, right on cue, her body responded.
Yes, please, and as soon as you like, flashed through her mind. Forget her fear of sex. She couldn’t fight the primal imperative of facing this big, potent male. And she didn’t want to.
Because she was still suffering from the rebound response
, Kimmie’s killjoy inner caution warned.
And it got worse. When Kris’s big fist closed around her hand, all she could think about was him touching her, kissing her, and progressing those kisses until...
‘Good to see you again,’ he murmured, sounding faintly amused, as if he could read every damning word in her mind.
Dressed casually in snug-fitting jeans that revealed far too much of what she remembered of his incredible body, he took her breath away. Far from being cool and collected as she had determined to be if he attended the fiesta tonight, she was staring back at him like some ingénue idiot. There was no getting around the fact that she wanted Kris to be the one to remove her fear of physical intimacy for good. She couldn’t imagine trusting anyone else. How crazy was that when she didn’t even know him?
‘Are you ready to leave?’ he prompted, his mouth tugging up in a sexy half-smile.
Right now, she wasn’t sure what she was ready for, only that she wanted to be with Kris. Determined not to be thrown by his darkly amused manner, she turned to speak to Kyria Demetriou. ‘I’m really looking forward to our night out. Thank you so much for arranging this.’
‘Kristof did most of the arranging,’ Kyria Demetriou revealed to Kimmie’s surprise, and now their elderly host was beaming at Kris like a proud mother.
Kris’s intent eyes caught hold of Kimmie’s stare and held it firmly in his. She could only hope her eyes were as eloquent as his when it came to her earnest desire to smack him. She might want him, but not on any and all terms. She knew he was playing her like a big cat with a mouse, and now the entire room was holding its breath and it took Kyria Demetriou to break the tension. ‘We’d better go now,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘or all the best tables will be taken.’
Kimmie speared a look at Kris. Couldn’t the local billionaire do anything about that? Surely Kristof Kaimos received special treatment on the island he owned.
The lift of one sweeping ebony brow and a lazy, mock scolding look informed her in no uncertain terms that Kris expected to be treated like any other man on the island, no better, no worse. Brownie points duly awarded, she consented to return his smile, with the predictable result that he held her gaze for far too long and her heart raced off the scale.
