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Stripping off her bikini, she hurled it into a corner of the spacious, traditionally furnished bedroom she wasusing and padded to the en suite bathroom to stand under the shower, sluicing away every last trace of the sun- cream, as if his fingerprints still lingered in the oily substance. She hoped that their children, when they arrived, would look like her—grey-eyed blondes—with not one trace of their father's dark, cruel beauty. They would be her children, not his! Hers! She would make them so, and that would be the final irony. She hated him at this moment, she really did, she didn't want to give him one damned thing—not even children that resembled him in the slightest!
Cleo heard the maid arrive in time to prepare the evening meal, bringing the fresh fish, fruit and vegetables she bought in the village each day.
Edgy, she put aside the book she'd been trying to read and walked from the terrace through the arched doorway that led to her room, pushing the silvery tumble of silky hair back from her face.
Jude was late. It only ever took the middle-aged Greek woman an hour to make their meal, sometimes less. So where was Jude?
Catching sight of the frown-line between her huge grey-eyes, she turned away from the revealing mirror reflection. She couldn't actually be worried about him, could she? A few hours earlier she hadn't cared if she never saw him again!
But she was calmer now and knew she had overreacted. He had made her want him. So? He was her husband, wasn't he? That she was fastidious and had always believed she would have to love a man before she could be sexually aroused was something she had taken for granted. But he had aroused her, revealing a depth of sexuality she hadn't known she possessed.
She was learning things about her character that alarmed her, but that didn't mean she had to go over the top.
And she was learning things about Jude, too. That he was male enough, arrogant enough, to need to lay claim to his ownership, to let her know that he could make her want him whenever he felt like doing so.
Restless now—where was the man?—she riffled through the few garments she'd brought with her and eventually selected a silky amethyst calf-length dress and laid it on the bed, then paced back to the terrace to stare out along the deserted beach.
Since they had been here they had always met on the terrace at this time in the evening. Usually they had spent the daytime hours at separate ends of the island, because he seemed no more anxious for her undiluted company than she was for his. But they always began their evenings here, having a drink or two before dinner, making light, impersonal conversation. And now his absence
was making her nervous.
But that in itself was nothing new. He had been making her nervous ever since he had agreed to marry her! And it had grown progressively worse, aggravated by the way he'd said not a word about Robert Fenton's presence in his home, about what he might have overheard when he'd walked in and found them together. This afternoon's episode on the beach had been the final straw!
She paced the terrace, her feet making rapid patterns of sound on the terracotta tiles, the edges of her lacy robe fluttering in a soundless echo of her own agitation as she thought back to the days—now seeming totally unreal—when she had confidently believed herself to be the only person Jude Mescal couldn't make nervous!
And then he was there, in the archway leading from her room, his body relaxed, like the mean and magnificent cat she had always thought he resembled.He was already dressed for dinner, his narrow black trousers and formal white lightweight jacket fitting him to perfection, making him look suave yet deadly.
'Good book?' His eyes drifted to her discarded novel as he walked, soft-footed, to where she had been sitting earlier, placing the two dry martinis he had brought with him on the low marble-topped table, and Cleo shook with anger, shrugging aside his question with a tight shrug of her shoulders.
It was no use his asking her if the book was a good one; she couldn't remember a word of the few she had read. Mostly she hadn't been reading at all, just sitting here, wondering why he was late, when he would come home.
And all the time he had been here, showering, changing, fixing drinks, not bothering to let her know he was in the house. Dammit, she'd actually been worried about the insouciant swine because the last time she'd seen him he'd been swimming out to sea as if the hounds of hell were following him! The man was intolerable!
And she didn't know why he had this power to make her angry because, as his PA, she had always been able to handle him. And he had gained the terrace by coming through her room. He hadn't set foot inside it before now, and that, coming after what had happened this afternoon, made the palms of her hands go slippery with sweat.
Mentally shaking herself for her own foolishness, for the inner agitation she would have to learn to come to terms with, she took the drink he had fixed for her, carrying it over to the stone balustrading of the terrace and staring blindly out to sea.
If she joined him at the table she would have to look at him. She didn't want to meet those clever eyes because she knew she would be able to see in them the mind pictures of the way she must have looked this afternoon when she'd abandoned her practically naked body to the exploration of his hands.
'Cleo—' Her name on his lips sounded, suddenly, quite unbearably intimate, and she reluctantly made a half-turn towards him, hoping he wouldn't notice the way the hand that held her drink was shaking. 'Come and sit down, I want to talk to you.'
'What about?' A rapid but ostentatious glance at her wristwatch. 'It's time I went to change.' So cool her voice, the small half-smile she angled at nothing in particular. She should be winning Oscars! The last thing she needed right now was to have to sit with him and listen to whatever it was he had to say. The memory of the way she'd felt when his hands had stroked and teased her willing body was still much too close.
'You look fantastic as you are.' A slow drift of long azure eyes over her flushed face, the filmy gown, the length of bare, tanned leg, said it all: sexual interest but overlaid with slight amusement because, after all, he'd seen it all before, and more. He'd touched, and could have taken her had he been so inclined. He hadn't, neither then nor now, it seemed, and for Cleo the sexual embarrassment which the drift of his knowing eyes had engendered became the deeper misery of sheer humiliation as he consulted his own watch. It was as if he had taken stock and mentally dismissed her.
'You've got over half an hour before we need go in to eat.' His mouth tilted with heavy irony. 'Do I have to beg for five minutes of my wife's time?'
'I'm sorry.' Flustered, Cleo sat. Put that way, she could hardly refuse, and she sipped her drink, waiting, and he said,
'I think we should consider buying a house in the country. Somewhere close enough to use at weekends. It would be particularly useful after the children arrive.'
His eyes slid over her, making her skin burn. 'What do you think?'
That it was a pity he had to keep harping on about children! That was what she thought! But she could hardly tell him as much. Holding her glass by the stem, twisting it, she stared into the swirling contents unable to meet those knowing, faintly amused eyes.
There's time for that,' she answered stiffly, 'After all--' she made a concession to his mention of all those children she would be expected to bear '—I expect to continue with my job for some time to come. I enjoy it.'
She couldn't imagine him as a family man, making swings in apple trees, playing football or snakes and ladders in front of a log fire while she busied herself darning endless tiny socks in between baking and preserving in some farmhouse-type kitchen. And how many children did he expect her to have, for goodness' sake? And would she be expected to start producing them right away? One litter after another, like a rabbit? Her throat tightened with what she recognised as incipient hysteria, and if she hadn't been so busy trying to control that disgraceful and, up until becoming entangled with him, alien state, she might have taken his ambiguous reply as fair warning.
