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‘And you do.’
‘Since when did you put what I liked ahead of what you liked?’ Katie asked, genuinely not trying to score a point, just saying it as it was.
‘I try to do something thoughtful and kind and you want to argue about it?’ Alexandros chided in his rich dark drawl.
Guilty pink mantled Katie’s cheeks
‘Naturally I knew that you would enjoy this sort of thing.’ The gesture of a lean brown hand encompassed the superb picnic scene. ‘My sole objective was to please.’
‘It’s just beautiful.’ Embarrassed by the tactlessness that had made her sound more critical than appreciative, Katie got very busy spreading a couple of quilts on the grass and dropping cushions in rather pointless heaps here and there.
Alexandros shed his jacket, lounged back against the table and poured the wine. Katie drank with more thirst than delicacy, for even below the wide canopy of the chestnut tree she was warm. She sat down on a quilt and contemplated the ancient tower. ‘Was it built just to embellish the woods, or did someone actually live in it once?’
Alexandros spun out an ironwork chair for her occupation. ‘The palazzo was built by a nobleman in the sixteenth century. He kept his mistress in the tower.’
Relaxed on the quilt, Katie ignored the invitation to eat at the table. ‘Was he married?’
Releasing the chair with an acknowledgement that the informality of the quilt would work to his advantage, Alexandros sent her an amused glance. Sometimes her innocence made him want to laugh out loud, but he did not want to hurt her feelings. He offered her a plate of canapés and refreshed her wine glass. ‘I’ve never thought about it, but I expect so…’
‘A wife and a mistress within walking distance…’ Katie veiled her gaze, his gorgeous image imprinted on her senses like a brand. She was tempted to quip that she was sure that he would behave no better were he to marry purely out of a sense of duty. She wanted so badly to ask him about Ianthe, but resisted the urge as he had made it plain that that was a conversational no-go area. That exclusion hurt, reminding her when she did not need reminding that she had no proper status in his world.
Alexandros settled down beside her with the predatory grace of movement that had always attracted her attention. She made herself look away while he asked her about the twins and the flight. As she talked, her nervous tension ebbed and she relaxed, basking in the dappled sunshine piercing the leaves above her. The heat had stolen her appetite, and she felt a little light-headed from the wine.
‘It’s so beautiful here—but I suppose you take it for granted because you were born to all this ‘
‘But I wasn’t born to it,’ Alexandros murmured flatly. ‘My grandparents took me in when I was six years old, and adopted me two years later.’
Thunderstruck by that admission, Katie stared at him.
‘My parents weren’t married. I was the result of a one-night stand,’ Alexandros extended wryly. ‘My mother was a flight attendant on the family jet at the time. She got into drugs when I was a toddler, and died when I was five. I was in foster care when my grandfather, Pelias, learned of my existence.’
Katie was aghast at what she was hearing. ‘Didn’t your father do anything?’
Alexandros shrugged. ‘He never acknowledged me or helped my mother. He was a waste of space. My grandparents spent their lives clearing up after him. He died in a skiing accident when I was ten.’
‘I’m sorry…’ Her eyes were stinging with tears. She felt so guilty for the false assumptions she had made about his privileged beginnings. Her heart was wrenched by the reality that in his earliest years he had been denied the love and security that every young child deserved.
Alexandros watched her fighting back her tears in silent wonderment at the depth of her sympathy for the child he had long since left behind. He had found her weeping over a children’s cartoon fairytale once, and had been fascinated by the tender-hearted emotionalism that went hand in hand with her hot temper. Fascinated—and then appalled—he acknowledged, swiftly burying the memory again. ‘I survived,’ he said lightly. ‘You look delectable in that dress, pedhi mou.’
That change of subject and mood totally threw Katie off balance. She blinked. Belatedly aware of Alexandros’s gleaming golden appraisal with every fibre in her slender body, she felt her face warm and her heart-rate speed up. Her fingers tightened round her glass, as if it was a lifebelt and she was in danger of drowning. ‘I think I’d like another drink…’
Alexandros removed the goblet from her grasp. ‘Sorry—when you haven’t eaten much, two glasses is your limit.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Katie gasped.
‘Three glasses make you giggle and crack chicken-crossing-the-road jokes,’ Alexandros reminded her without hesitation. ‘Four make you wiggle your booty and get on my lap. And that much encouragement could be dangerous.’
That mocking recollection of her behaviour at a certain lunch back in Ireland made Katie flush to her hair-roots. Her defences were blown wide open by that mortifying reminder. ‘I really acted the idiot!’
Laughing softly, Alexandros ran a light fingertip along her collarbone in a soothing gesture. ‘You always go for the bait. I was only teasing you.’
Casual and brief though his touch had been, it left Katie phenomenally short of breath. ‘I wasn’t used to drinking wine.’
‘I thought you were very natural and sexy. But I suppose I shouldn’t be telling you that now.’
Starved of such compliments, Katie was hanging on his every word, disbelieving what he was saying but still revelling in it. The entire dialogue had suddenly taken on the tantalising tones of the forbidden, and she tried hard not to succumb to that lure. ‘No, you shouldn’t…isn’t there someone else in your life?’
‘There would’ve been, but I wanted you more,’ Alexandros admitted without hesitation.
In the act of admiring the stunning symmetry of his lean bronzed features, her green eyes collided with the smouldering gold of his. Framed by black spiky lashes, his gaze was a potent weapon. Her heart was already beating so rapidly that she was scared she might be on the brink of a panic attack, and his honesty touched something deep inside her.
Alexandros had almost stopped breathing as well, and the discovery shook him. Almost as quickly, however, the fierce surge of sexual arousal took precedence over the soul-searching that was anathema to him. With unhurried cool and single-minded purpose he laced his fingers into the tumbling mass of ringlets trailing over one slight shoulder and tilted her face up to his.
‘I want to kiss you, the spinis mou,’ he told her huskily.
Say no, a little voice urged inside her head. Say no. She was rigid with tension and yet astonishingly aware of the tingling sensitivity of her breasts, the warm sense of melted honey pooling in the pit of her stomach. She felt insanely alive and reckless at one and the same time.
‘One kiss,’ Alexandros murmured, soft and low, his earthy appraisal full of masculine power and energy.
Katie trembled, knowing it would not stop at one kiss, knowing she would want it to go further. She hated herself, but his aura of sizzling sensuality held her tighter than any chains and tormented her with her weakness. ‘But we—’
‘Burn for one other.’ Alexandros bent his darkly handsome head slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. Even then he did not do what she expected. Tugging her head back, his hand firm in her coppery mane of hair, he let his firm sensuous mouth forge a delicate trail across her collarbone, skim up the length of her satin-smooth throat and nip at the tender skin below one small ear.
