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A shake of the head. ‘Do you want me to look for her?’
‘Don’t worry about it. Let me know when she turns up.’
She couldn’t have gone far, he assured himself. He kept just one car here, in an outhouse and for emergency purposes only, and there was only one road off the peninsular. It would be impossible to take his car or his speedboat without someone seeing or hearing.
Pouring his coffee first, he was helping himself to melon and yogurt when he caught a glimpse of a figure walking along the beach in his direction.
The tightness he hadn’t noticed in his chest loosened.
He watched her while he ate as, step by step, she came into clearer focus, the memory of their kiss playing in his mind all over again.
‘Good morning, matia mou,’ he said when she reached the table. ‘Have you eaten?’
She shook her head, her eyes hidden behind the designer shades he’d bought her. They were the only things he could see that she was wearing that he’d provided her with. Today, in temperatures already in the high-twenties and guaranteed to rise much higher, Carrie wore the outfit he’d interviewed her in, her cashmere jumper and grey trousers, which she’d rolled up to lay mid-calf. Her feet were bare.
‘Coffee?’ he asked, reaching for the pot.
There was a tiny hesitation before she nodded and sat down in the seat furthest from him. ‘I didn’t think you knew how to pour coffee.’
‘Now that my minion has been upgraded to fiancée I thought I should reacquaint myself with the simple tasks I have always done for myself. And for the record, I have never expected a proper employee to perform the slavish chores I got you to do. I’m no man-child.’
He poured the coffee, added a splash of milk and one spoonful of sugar, and pushed the cup over to her.
‘Thank you.’ A tiny smile played on her lips. ‘I didn’t realise you’d paid attention to how I take my coffee.’
‘I pay attention to everything, matia mou, especially with you.’
She tilted her head to look up at the sky then gathered her hair together and tied it into a knot without using any kind of device to hold it in place.
‘Feeling hot, are you?’ he asked drily. ‘Maybe you should consider changing into clothing more suited to the weather.’
She took her cup and cradled it in both hands. ‘Now I’m no longer your minion I can wear what I like, and what I like to wear are clothes that don’t expose all my flesh.’
‘Afraid you will drive me wild with desire?’
‘You’re putting words in my mouth,’ she said stiffly.
‘I have managed to keep my hands to myself since we arrived here and you have had plenty of flesh on display.’ As he spoke he helped himself to a fresh bread roll and cut into it. A delicious yeasty aroma was released, a smell almost as good as Carrie’s scent, and he inhaled it greedily. ‘After all, you were the one to kiss me, matia mou. Do you need to cloak yourself to resist me?’
The knuckles holding her cup had turned white. ‘I kissed you to prove a point. It meant nothing to me.’
‘And you proved it very well. If I’d had any doubt that you desire me, your kiss dispelled it.’
‘The fact I walked away proves I felt nothing.’
Digging his knife into a pot, he slathered jam over his roll. ‘It proves that you have mastered the art of walking. For the avoidance of doubt, I am prepared to be used by you whenever you want to prove that you don’t desire me. Any time at all. Day or night.’ Then he bit into his roll.
Carrie fought hands that wanted to shake and put the cup to her mouth to drink her coffee, closing her mind to the vivid images playing in her mind of being in his arms and the hunger of his mouth on hers.
After three hours of sleep she’d woken from dreams already fading into haziness but which her body ached to recapture. Then everything that had passed between them had come back to her in one huge rush, all the words, their kiss…
She’d jumped out of bed, dug her own clothes, which had been laundered by Andreas’s staff, out of the wardrobe and put them on as a form of armour. Then she had escaped to walk on the beach, desperate to exercise the ache deep inside out of her system and clear her mind. It had all been pointless. She could cover herself from head to toe in sackcloth and she would still feel naked before him. She could walk a thousand miles and her stomach would still flip over when she looked into those piercing light brown eyes.
And he seemed to know it.
Putting the cup back on the table, she strove to compose herself, a difficult task when she felt as if she were sitting in a sauna, the heat from the sun and her body’s reaction to merely sitting and talking to Andreas combining together to be almost unendurable. But endure she would. He had the upper hand over her life now but she wouldn’t allow him to have the upper hand over her emotions and feelings too. ‘I don’t need to prove anything to you.’
