AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘You were nothing like Fotini except in the most superficial of ways. And even that physical similarity faded as I yearned for you. Only you. For your bright eyes so fierce and passionate. For the touch of your hand.’
Dazed, Sophie heard the emotion in his voice, felt it in the tremor that ran through his body and in the brush of his hand on her shoulder. But she couldn’t take it in.
‘The night we kissed. Christos! That night I was terrified at how completely you made me lose control. I would have taken you right there in the hallway. I’d never experienced anything like it. I didn’t trust myself not to ravish you. Every argument I’d used to keep my distance disintegrated once I held you in my arms. I had no defence against you. So I behaved brutally to push you away.’
His hand curled round the nape of her neck and pulled her in even closer. ‘It was all I could do to prevent myself taking advantage of you.’
Taking advantage? That was how he’d seen their blaze of mutual passion?
Sophie struggled to loosen his embrace enough to sit back and look into his face. It was sombre, eyes dark with turbulent emotions.
‘You insulted me, made me feel like a cheap tart, just because you didn’t trust your libido?’
He winced as her words burst out. ‘I couldn’t trust myself to protect you any longer.’
‘Protect me?’ Her voice rose with outrage at the memory of her pain.
‘And were you protecting me when you used me then shoved me aside later like something shameful? Were you protecting me when you accused me of planning an abortion? When you wanted me as a convenience in your bed?’
‘You are right,’ he said in a voice deep with shame. ‘I am a man without honour. I have treated you appallingly.’
He drew in a tremendous breath and met her gaze. The emptiness, the ingrained despair she saw there, chilled her to the bone.
‘I couldn’t believe what I felt for you,’ he said. ‘It was beyond my experience and I reacted badly. I didn’t want to believe what I felt. Tried to pretend I didn’t believe in love.’
Love!
Was this some cruel joke?
‘It was only after you rejected me yesterday, after I began to realise how much I’d hurt you and how much I needed you, that I began to understand.’
Sophie stared at his stern, commanding features, into his lost eyes, and felt her icy outrage disintegrate. He was hurting so badly. And she knew with absolute certainty that pain was not new to him. It was etched with the strength of years.
‘Tell me about Fotini,’ she whispered, realising at last that the past was the key to so much. She needed to understand what had happened to make Costas so distrustful.
He hesitated and she read the reluctance in his expression, the tight control.
‘She was beautiful, spoiled, full of life,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It was a marriage of convenience, not love. I wanted a wife and she was pleased to accept me.’
His lips curved in a mirthless smile. ‘There are some women who see me as a catch.’
Sophie ignored his last statement and shook her head, amazed at such a cold-blooded approach to choosing a life partner. Apparently her grandfather hadn’t been alone in his belief that marriage and love had nothing to do with each other.
‘It seemed enough at the time, Sophie,’ Costas murmured. ‘But then I hadn’t met you.’
Dazed, she stared back at him. Her body reverberated with the force of the electric connection that sparked between them when he looked at her like that.
Hope surged within her.
‘Fotini liked being the centre of attention. She was used to parties and fun. To an extravagant lifestyle.’
Sophie watched his brow furrow deep as he remembered. She wanted desperately to ease his hurt.
‘When Eleni was born I thought it would help Fotini to settle into married life, give her a purpose that had been lacking in her life: someone other than herself to care for.’
And what about her husband? She hadn’t cared for him?
Sophie found herself wondering why her cousin had married. Originally she’d assumed it was because Fotini was in love. Costas was sexy, overwhelmingly masculine, the sort of man any woman would want for herself. But he was also mega-wealthy. Now she wondered if that had been a factor in Fotini’s decision to wed.
