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‘You like the food?’ he asked now, in some kind of effort to wrench his mind off Sylvie’s physical temptations, angry with himself.
She glanced at him—a flash of blue and green. She nodded and swallowed what she was eating. Her voice was low, husky, when she said, ‘It’s delicious. I’ve never tasted flavours like this before.’
‘The lamb is particularly good.’
He speared a morsel of succulent meat with his fork and held it across the table. When she reached for it with her hand he pulled it back and looked at her. She scowled.
‘Coward,’ Arkim said softly.
Something in him exulted when he saw the fire flash in her eyes as she took the bait and leant across the table to take the piece of meat off his fork and into her mouth.
Her loose tops swayed, giving Arkim an unrestricted view of her lace-clad breasts. Full and perfectly shaped. She moved back before he could make a complete fool of himself by grabbing her and hauling her across the table.
Her cheeks were flaming. And he didn’t think it was from the spices in the lamb. Their mutual chemistry was obvious. So why would she fight it like this?
He leant back on one arm again. She took a sip of champagne and he watched the long, graceful column of her throat work, jealous of even that small movement. She might have passed for eighteen, with her face free of make-up.
Something niggled at him—where was the femme fatale? So far he had to admit that the Sylvie he had here was nothing like the woman who had provoked him beyond measure each time he’d seen her before. Not least when she’d appeared in the church, dressed from head to toe in motorcycle gear. The soft black leather jacket and trousers had moulded to her body in a way that had been indecent—and even more so in a church.
He’d expected her to be a lot more sophisticated, knowing... Giving in to her situation and manipulating him as much as she could. That was how the women he knew operated—ultimately they would follow the path of least resistance and take as much as they could.
That was what had attracted him to Sophie Lewis and made him believe he could marry her—her complete lack of guile or artifice. A rare thing in this world.
And that was as far as the attraction had gone.
Arkim ignored the voice. But he had to acknowledge uncomfortably that if the wedding had gone ahead and he’d married Sophie Lewis he wouldn’t be here now with her sister. And for a sobering and very unpalatable moment Arkim couldn’t regret that fact.
A deeper, darker truth nudged at his consciousness—the very real doubts he’d had himself about the wedding as it had come closer and closer. But he wasn’t a man who spent fruitless time wondering about what might have been. And he didn’t entertain doubts. He made decisions and he dealt in reality, and this was now his reality.
Sylvie was avoiding looking at him and he hated that.
He said, ‘Your eyes... I’ve never seen that before.’
* * *
Sylvie was straining with every muscle she had not to let Arkim see how much he was getting to her, lounging on the other side of the table as he was, like some kind of robed demigod. When she’d leant across the table— provoked into taking that food off his fork—and she’d seen him looking down her top, she’d almost combusted.
Distracted, and very irritated, she said, ‘They’re just eyes, Arkim. Everyone has them. Even you.’
She risked a look and saw that half-smile again. Lord.
‘Yes, but none as unusual as you. Blue and blue-green.’
Sylvie hated the frisson she felt to think of him studying her eyes. ‘My mother had it too. It’s a condition called heterochromia iridum. There’s really nothing that mysterious about it.’
Arkim frowned now. ‘Your mother was French, wasn’t she?’
Sylvie nodded, getting tenser now, thinking of Arkim’s judgmental gaze turning on her deceased mother. Sophie must have mentioned it to him.
‘Yes, from just outside Paris.’
‘And how did your parents meet?’
Sylvie glared at him. ‘You’re telling me you don’t know?’
He
shrugged lightly and asked, ‘Should I?’
