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She wanted to jump up from the bed and run away. She wanted to tell him it was none of his business and if this was only supposed to be a casual relationship, then he had no right to ask her questions. But he had told her all that stuff about himself and if she kept quiet that would only make him suspicious. Men like him didn’t like having things denied them. He would probably start probing and she would have to stonewall him and then they’d have a terrible row.
And she didn’t want it to end like this.
She chewed on the inside of her mouth. She could explain some things. Just not all of them. That was a compromise of sorts, wasn’t it? ‘You haven’t actually met my sister, have you?’
‘No, but I’ve seen a photo of her.’
‘Then you will have seen for yourself how beautiful she is.’
‘She’s certainly a dramatic dresser.’ He shrugged. ‘If you must know, I don’t think she’s nearly as beautiful as you.’
‘Oh, come on, Leon,’ she said crossly, edging away a fraction. ‘You don’t have to flatter me because we’ve just had sex! We’re non-identical twins and, yes, we’re very similar, but beauty is notoriously difficult to define. A centimetre here and a centimetre there makes all the difference and it’s Pansy who has the biggest eyes and the better figure and she was the one who...’
‘The one who, what?’ he questioned softly as her voice tailed away.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Or maybe it does.’
His voice was compelling. It was binding her to him like the strong silk of a spider’s web. It enveloped her and in that present moment it made her feel safe and protected. Was it that which made her speak almost without thinking? ‘I told you how we spent a lot of our time in the care system—’
‘Sure. Because your mother—’
‘Died,’ she said quickly and now she was keen to talk to him, because surely one frank disclosure would rule out the need for another. ‘We had no other relatives. And back then—it may have changed now—the care system used to employ some pretty dodgy people. The sort of people who might take an unhealthy interest in a pretty little blonde girl. I was always looking out for Pansy and I tried...’
‘You tried to shield her,’ he said, his voice tight with repressed fury. ‘Let me guess. You did everything you could to help conceal her burgeoning sexuality from those bastards.’
Marnie stared at him. ‘How can you even know that?’
‘It’s pretty obvious. I’m also guessing you taught yourself to hide behind concealing clothes and made Pansy do the same—and the moment she was able to take care of herself, she probably rebelled against that. You, on the other hand, kept up the habit.’ He frowned. ‘One thing which has always puzzled me is why you were wearing that uncharacteristically flimsy orange bikini when we met.’
‘Oh, that. My work colleagues in London gave it to me before I flew out to Greece, mainly as a joke.’ She turned her face towards his. ‘If it hadn’t been for that—if I’d been wearing one of my all-concealing swimsuits—do you think you’d still have taken me out on your motorbike and then to dinner?’
‘Truthfully?’ He shrugged. ‘I have no idea. I certainly wasn’t impervious to the very obvious visual stimulus of your barely clothed body, but there was also a powerful spark between us which went beyond the merely physical, Marnie.’ There was a pause. ‘There still is,’ he concluded silkily.
Marnie pursed her lips together, trying to keep her reaction hidden. She wanted to thank him for saying that, which probably said a lot about her lack of self-esteem. But the trouble was that his murmured words gave her hope—and false hope could have painful consequences. Sexual chemistry was nothing special. It was fleeting and transient. Everyone knew that—and woe betide the person who thought otherwise.
‘I’m going for a shower,’ she said, sliding out of bed before he could try to change her mind, and it wasn’t until she was standing beneath the steaming jets that she realised she was shaking.
She closed her eyes as hot water rained down on her face. Leon had asked all the right questions—or maybe they were the wrong questions—because she had ended up revealing more about herself than she ever did. More than she was comfortable with. And confidences were like standing at the top of a slippery slope. Once she’d told him one thing, he would want to hear more. And still more. Her sleazy beginnings were fascinating to other people—she remembered that much from school, when someone had found out about their mother. She remembered the row which had resulted after she and Pansy had been taunted and how the school had asked for them to be removed, because they really couldn’t have little girls fighting like that. And yet another set of foster parents had explained to the authorities that they wouldn’t be adopting the twin girls, with the faces of angels.
There was a reason why she had always felt as if she were on the outside, looking in—and why she would always stay that way. Because she was. People like her were scarred by their experiences and sometimes those scars were too deep to ever heal properly. She had never felt ‘normal’ and probably never would. She had always accepted that, until she had met Leon. He had made her want to step out of her comfort zone. He had made her want things which had never even been on her radar before and that was so dangerous.
She went back into the bedroom to get dressed, relieved he was nowhere to be seen, and as she pulled on some of her new lingerie she knew she couldn’t carry on like this, no matter how much she liked Leon Kanonidou.
Liked?
She almost laughed out loud. Who was she trying to kid?
‘Liked’ was a lacklustre description of her feelings for him. Lately Leon had been dominating her thoughts like an addiction, and whenever she saw him it was as if an invisible fist had reached inside her chest and squeezed her heart very hard. She’d never felt love before but that didn’t mean she was immune to it or its power. Did it? And if that was the case it was only going to get worse. If she allowed her feelings free rein they could easily overwhelm her, and then who would she be? Just another foolish woman sobbing into her pillow because she’d fallen into the trap of thinking a man might change.
Leon had told her from the start what he didn’t want and she had gone along with that. And surely if he got any inkling that she’d started to want more, he would move to end it anyway.
She sucked in a deep breath.
She would go to the wedding, as planned. She would provide him with the support she suspected he needed, and afterwards...
She pulled on some pale cotton jeans.
