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‘Don’t pity me, Lucy Proctor. I don’t need anyone’s pity.’
The fierce pride on his face nearly made Lucy weep. She shook her head and managed to pull her hand back, cradling it with her other one. He saw the movement and sighed deeply, raking his hair with barely concealed anger.
Lucy looked away for a long moment. The rest of the evening was coming back—what had happened just before she’d gone to the bathroom, and then the words she’d heard. What was wrong with her? Sitting here mooning over a man who quite patently needed no one and was biding his time with her until he flitted to the next woman.
She started hesitantly, ‘I didn’t mean to…I was just passing and heard her…’
‘How did you know it wasn’t me hitting her?’ came the sardonically amused question.
Lucy turned around, a fierce expression on her face. ‘Because I know you would never do anything like that.’
His belly clenched. It was harder not to touch her than to touch her and risk that emotion rising again, so Ari reached out and tugged a resisting Lucy onto his lap. He felt an unusual peace steal over him. He buried his head in her neck and after a moment felt her relax, her curves softening into him with delicious inevitability.
But then he felt her tense again, and he looked up and said with a growl, ‘Stop it. Relax, Lucy, mou.’
She was biting her lip and avoiding his eye. He turned her jaw so that she had to face him, and she said, almost defiantly, ‘I saw you with that woman. I won’t…won’t be some substitute. If you’d prefer to be with her, then please…just go back.’
The thought of going back to that house made Ari shudder. He’d known it would be a mistake to go at all, and hated the fact that he had done so. Hated the fact that after all these years there was still a tiny sliver of yearning left for something he’d never experienced. Harmony. Even as that thought materialised in his head he blocked it ruthlessly, focused on the woman on his lap, reducing his world to the here and now.
He shook his head, amazed that Lucy could have seen him and Pia together and not have known that he’d all but itched to go back across the room to her. Then he remembered the moment before Helen had come into the room and asked to speak to him. Lucy had been with Anatolios, looking at him and laughing gaily. Anatolios had been practically sitting in her lap.
Dark anger surged. ‘From what I saw of you and my brother, you looked very cosy also…Are you sure it’s not you who wants to go back to him?’
Lucy couldn’t help the shudder of disgust run through her as she said quickly, ‘No. I was just—we were just…talking.’
The relief that surged through Ari made him feel weak. He pressed a kiss to Lucy’s bare shoulder and she shivered again, but this time he recognised desire and it was heady.
‘Then, please believe me, I too have no desire to go back to that house. Pia Kyriapoulos is a woman who is looking for her next wealthy protector. She thinks I could be it, but this evening I told her in no uncertain terms that I have no interest in signing up for the job. And anyway…’ Ari brought Lucy’s hand between them to his lap, where she could feel the stirrings of his growing arousal. ‘She doesn’t have this effect on me.’
Ari felt Lucy’s fingers flutter over him and held back a low groan as his arousal soared. In that second he had a flash of an idea. Without stopping to consider what he was doing, he said, ‘When we get back to the hotel, pack some things for the weekend. We’re getting out of Athens…’
When Lucy woke the next morning she knew immediately that she was alone in the strange bed, but she was too deliciously lethargic and sated to worry about it. She heard nothing except beautiful stillness and the gentle lapping of water nearby.
They had travelled here, to this island, which Ari had told her was called Paros, by helicopter last night. It had all been a little overwhelming to Lucy. When they’d arrived Ari had driven them in a Jeep to this place, which Lucy hadn’t been able to make out in the dark.
Now, without opening her eyes yet, as if superstitious for a moment that it might disappear, Lucy knew that there were doors open nearby. She could feel the warm breeze, could smell the tang of the sea and feel the bright sunlight.
Finally she opened her eyes. They took a second to adjust, and then as if in a dream she got up, blindly threw on a T-shirt and walked to the open French doors and the tiny balcony. She simply could not take in the beauty of her surroundings for a moment. The balcony seemed to
be perched right over the Aegean Sea, which stretched out in glittering blue before her, other islands visible as shapes in the hazy distance under a clear cerulean sky.
The modest house was whitewashed and all but clinging onto the rocky coast, nestling alongside equally bright houses either side. Lucy frowned slightly. She’d seen Ari’s portfolio of extensive properties around the world, and knew he had a luxurious villa on Santorini, but she’d never seen pictures of this house. She looked around. Admittedly, it was more humble than anything she might have expected of him. And all the more intriguing.
She heard a sound behind her and turned to see Ari, shouldering his way in through the door with arms full of supplies. Her breath snagged at remembering how he’d stripped her bare last night and taken her to heaven and back on the modest double bed. He was wearing long shorts and a faded T-shirt, and looked impossibly young and handsome at that moment—a million miles from the proud, successful, arrogant billionaire.
He pressed a lingering kiss to her mouth and proceeded to spread out a veritable feast of a breakfast on an ancient wrought-iron table. Bread, jams, fruit…Then he disappeared, presumably to the tiny kitchen downstairs, and came back with steaming fragrant coffee in two cups.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ he asked lightly as they sat down and Lucy still hadn’t said a word.
She shook her head and tried to communicate with him what she was thinking, feeling. She made a half-gesture around them, encompassing the view. ‘It’s so beautiful…I can’t even begin to describe…’ She looked at him then. His face was shuttered, dark glasses shielding his eyes. ‘This property isn’t listed with your other ones…’
Ari’s jaw clenched. He looked out towards the glittering Aegean. When he’d made the decision to come here he hadn’t stopped to consider Lucy’s reaction to the basic nature of the house. He knew very few women who wouldn’t have turned up their noses and shuddered disdainfully. A ridiculous feeling of disappointment ran through him and he drawled, ‘You’d prefer to be on Santorini? The villa there certainly is…larger.’
Shock coursed through Lucy. ‘No! That’s not what I meant at all. I’d much prefer to be here…’ She hated that he’d jumped to that conclusion. ‘I just mentioned it because I hadn’t seen it. That’s all.’
Ari flicked her a glance. ‘It’s not listed because I’ve deliberately kept it private. It was my mother’s house—where she grew up.’
‘Oh.’ There didn’t seem to be anything more to say, and Lucy could feel a wall spring up between them. Clearly he wasn’t going to elaborate. It seemed important to make him believe so she leaned across and took his hand. ‘Ari, I’m glad you brought me here. Really.’
