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A message she hadn’t been able to read—wouldn’t read.
She shook her head, clearing the memory. What did it matter anyway? Nikos was out of her life as swiftly as he’d come into it and she wasn’t going to be seeing him again. That melting goodnight kiss was what she’d remember of him—the final icing on the amuse-bouche that had been the evening she’d spent with him.
And in the meantime she had a loaf of bread to butter.
* * *
Nikos was running. Running fast. But not fast enough. He upped the speed on the treadmill, his feet pounding more rapidly as his pace picked up. But he still could not outrun the memory in his head.
The memory of his kiss with Mel.
It kept replaying in his head...the feel of her mouth, soft and sensuous beneath his, that taste of heady sweetness in her lips...and it was still doing so now, back in Athens, over a week later. He was still remembering the words he had not spoken—the words he’d come so close, so very, very close to murmuring to her...
Don’t let the evening end now—come back with me—come back and stay the night with me...
But, as they’d drawn apart, as he’d finally relinquished her mouth, her soft, slender body still half embraced by his, she’d gazed up at him with that helpless, dazed expression in her beautiful eyes and the words had died on his lips. That wordless, unspoken message that had flowed between them had been silenced.
He knew why.
To have invited her to stay the night with him would not have been fair to her. He did not know her well enough to risk it—after such intimacy she might expect of him what he could not, would not give. He could not offer her anything other than a brief, fleeting romance.
Oh, he was no Lothario, getting a malign pleasure out of rejecting women after they’d fallen for him. He would far rather they didn’t fall for him. Far rather they shared his terms of engagement. His short-term view.
Because the best relationships were short-term ones. He had ample personal evidence of that. His jaw tightened. And ample evidence that those who did not adhere to that view ended up in a mess. A mess that had fallout for others, as well.
Like children.
He knew only too well, with bitterly earned self-knowledge, that was why he did not risk long-term relationships. Because they could become a trap—a trap to be sprung, confining people in relationships that became prisons. Prisons they were incapable of leaving.
His expression darkened. That was what had happened to his parents. Locked in a destructive relationship that neither of them would or could relinquish. A macabre, vicious dance he’d had to watch as a boy. Still had to watch whenever he spent time with them and saw them gouging at each other like two wounded, snarling animals trapped in the same locked enclosure.
Why the hell they hadn’t divorced years ago he could never fathom. Whenever he’d challenged either of them as to why they’d stuck together they’d both turned to him and said, ‘But it was for your sake we stayed together. So you would have a stable home. There’s nothing worse than a child growing up in a broken home.’
He gave a choke of bitter laughter now. If that had been their reasoning, he wasn’t grateful for it. He’d headed for university in the USA with relief, then found his own apartment once he’d graduated and come back to take his place at the family bank.
He was still trying to avoid their recriminations about each other. He left them to it. Heard them out, but did not really listen. Got back to his own life as quickly as he could. Took up with women who would never be like his mother, would never turn him into a man like his father. Women who understood, right from the off, that while he spent time with them he would be devoted to them—but when that time ended he’d simply move on. When it came to the goodbye kiss, goodbye was what it meant.
Would Mel have understood that?
That was what he did not know—had not risked asking that night in London. Which was why he had to put that evening behind him, that kiss behind him—why he had to stop remembering it.
But that was what seemed so impossible, however hard he tried.
The treadmill slowed, coming to the end of its programme, and he stepped off, heading for the weights. But even as he pumped his muscles he could still feel the memory of Mel in his arms, feel the sensual power of that amazing kiss. It haunted him wherever he went, whatever he did.
Back at work, he made yet another determined effort to move on. Keeping busy must surely help. His diary for today was full, and tomorrow morning he was flying to Geneva. Then he was scheduled for Frankfurt, and after that there was some banking conference somewhere he was due to speak at. Where was it being held? Somewhere long-haul, he thought. New York? Atlanta? Toronto? Was that it?
