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And I thought she’d run up credit-card debts and didn’t want to let her father know…
Anger at his own presumption stabbed at him. More than anger. For a moment his gaze came back to Sophie, who was still attending to her father, holding his hand, chatting to him tenderly, even though it was clear that Edward Granton found it painfully effortful to respond. They were absorbed in each other. Nikos let them be, and instead returned his attention to the nurse.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said, and headed back to the garden entrance to the clinic.
His business at the reception desk did not take long, and then he went out to the forecourt, where his car was waiting for him. He got in and went on waiting, busying himself with his laptop and some documents to pass the time, though his mind was seething with emotion that made concentrating on something as tedious as business all but impossible.
It was well over an hour before Sophie emerged from the clinic, looking drawn and pale. Nikos intercepted her immediately, allowing her no chance to do anything other than be steered peremptorily into the car.
She attempted to remonstrate. ‘Nikos—what are you doing? I don’t want—’
He cut her short. ‘I need to talk to you.’
Her face closed. ‘Well, I don’t need to talk to you,’ she retaliated, pulling away as far as possible along the wide back seat of the spacious interior of the car, with its glass panelling to keep occupants private from the driver.
She was bristling with hostility, he could see, and rounded on him like a cornered animal.
‘What is this, Nikos? What the hell are you following me for? What’s it to do with you what I do with my life?’
He looked at her. A long, level look. ‘You ask me that?’
It was all he said, but it was all he needed to say. For a moment their eyes locked, and in them was an infinity of memory.
‘Nikos—’ Her breath was a sigh, her mouth warm and soft and so, so generous beneath his. He could not resist kissing her. Could not resist folding her against him, feeling the swell of her tender breasts against him, the slender curve of her body wrapped in his arms. Feel, too, the response of his body to her closeness…
He sought to draw away. This was impossible! A torment beyond enduring! Already he had gone far, far further than he’d intended. But, again, he’d been unable to resist. They had been out for the evening, a charity dinner-dance, and she was looking so beautiful he’d thought he would never be able to take his eyes from her. And when he had driven her home she had persuaded him—fool that he was, and tempted beyond reason!—to come in for coffee. And here, now, on the plush sofa in the low-lit drawing room of her father’s house, he had taken her in his arms, unable to resist…
But resist he must! She had already artlessly let slip that her father was away on business, and Nikos knew that he had flown up to Edinburgh that day to see if another source of rescue package for his company could be put together, even at this late hour. And so it was dangerous beyond all things for him to be here, alone in the house with her. But he was on fire for her! And despite all his resolutions that he must not do what every cell in his body was urging him to do, still he did not leave—did not get to his feet, remind her that his flight to Athens was early the next morning, that he must get back to his hotel.
She was clinging to him, her mouth open to his, her fingers winding into his hair, sliding around the column of his waist, and he could recognise, with the experience of his years, that she was becoming as aroused as he was. And it was madness to let it happen! Madness!
And yet insanity possessed him—overtook him. He let her draw him to his feet, let her take his hand, her eyes glowing, ardent, let her lead him from the room, ascend the stairs to her bedroom. He tried—he truly tried to resist as she embraced him again.
‘Sophie—I mustn’t—I must go—’
But she was oblivious, feverish with mounting desire, as beyond reason as he was—he could tell. And he gloried in it, rejoiced in it—that she should be as ardent, as inflamed for him as he was for her. But one of them had to stay sane…surely one of them must?
‘Nikos—oh, Nikos!’ Her very voice enticed him, entreated him! ‘Don’t go—please, don’t go—please—’
How could he resist? How? When she was pleading for the very thing he wanted more than anything else in the world?
So he let insanity possess him.
And then afterwards he paid the price. A price he had never thought he would have to pay.
She was lying in his arms, her body curled against his, her hair like a silken scarf around him, her hectic heart rate slowing now, as was his, as he lay consumed by wonder, murmuring endearments to her, tender and loving, possessed by such emotion as he had not known existed. She was everything that he had dreamed of! He could not regret what had happened! How could he? It had been a voyage to a paradise he had never known before—a destination that he knew now, with absolute certainty, would be his home for ever.
