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CHAPTER ONE
SHE’DONLYRECENTLYSHOWERED, but already another bead of sweat was sliding down between Mia’s breasts.
If only it weren’t so unbearablyhot.
Fanning her hand in front of her face, she peered out of the window. The sky was heavy. Thick grey clouds were tinged with a sickly sulphuric yellow and she could hear the ominous growl of thunder in the distance. Definitely not the sort of weather you associated with an English spring day.
Sometimes she thought about Greece. The scent of lemon blossom and pine. Golden sun and the sea and sky so blue. But she never thought about it for long because why would you do something which actively caused you heartache?
A sudden knock on the door made her jump because she wasn’t expecting anyone and that was deliberate. She kept her tiny one-room home as a haven—sometimes it even felt like an escape. Her job was sociable enough, but outside work and her animal volunteering she kept herself to herself. She knew people thought she was a loner. A bit of a frump, even. Let them. She did what she did because that was how she coped—with her life, with the past, and with the memories which stubbornly refused to leave the edges of her mind.
The knock sounded again and although it was tempting to ignore it, her conscience wouldn’t let her. It might be an emergency involving one of the other hotel staff and she—sensible and reliable Mia, in her newly promoted position—would know exactly how to deal with it.
But her smile froze as she pulled open the door and saw who was standing there, dominating every atom of the space which surrounded him just as he’d always done, his powerful frame making the institutional background of the staff corridor look even more unexciting than usual.
His expensive grey suit did nothing to disguise the strength of the muscular body which rippled beneath. His face was all hard, slashing lines and high cheekbones. His skin had the burnished hue of deep gold, while his eyes gleamed like polished jet. It was easy to understand why people used to say he resembled an ancient Greek god, because he did.
Her husband.
How strange it was to acknowledge those words—because he was her husband in name only. Well, not even that—not any more—for she always used her maiden name. She wanted nothing of his.
Theodoros Aeton.
The man she had loved so badly, until he had betrayed her and smashed her heart into tiny little pieces.
Clutching the doorhandle, she felt a wave of dizziness wash over her. And she felt other things, too. Unwanted emotions which had started bubbling up inside her, like random ingredients dropped into a witch’s cauldron. Hurt and anger and resentment. And desire, of course. Always desire. She wasn’t naïve enough to denythat.
It was a face she hadn’t seen in six years. Not since the evening of their wedding when her world had imploded. She’d been wearing a slippery white gown, which had done her abundant curves no favours—but she had bowed to her mother’s superior knowledge about all things fashionable.
Mia remembered the frilly blue garter and the white silk stockings which had been digging uncomfortably into her thighs, but she hadn’t cared about the discomfort. She had just been eager for the moment when Theo would slowly remove them with his teeth, as he had promised he would do in a throaty murmur just the night before. Along with all the other things he had promised, too. In retrospect, his words had been nothing but manipulative, but at the time she had lapped them up like a thirsty kitten—naïve and oh, so gullible.
She wanted to shut the door on him, but that would be the behaviour of someone cowardly and immature. And she wasn’t either of these things. Not any more. She’d grown up. She was making her own way in the world, without any help or assistance from anyone. Certainly not from Theo Aeton.
Even so, she wished she weren’t wearing an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt which could have done with an iron. She wished she were ten pounds lighter. She wished all kinds of things, but since none of them were likely to materialise in the next few minutes, it was better she got this over and done with. And wasn’t the reality that she’d been expecting some kind of contact from Theo for a long time, even if she hadn’t allowed herself to think about it? Some sort of closure. A request for a long-overdue divorce most probably, in order to allow him to move on. And if the thought of that produced a twist of pain thenmore fool her.
His name sprang from her lips, sounding unfamiliar, yet somehow shockingly familiar. ‘Theo!’
‘Mia,’ he responded, his husky Greek accent sliding over the syllables, which had the unfortunate effect of making her think about his tongue.
She tried to pull her incoherent thoughts into some sort of order but that was a big ask, when she couldn’t seem to dislodge the memory of that tongue inside her mouth and on her neck and... With a supreme effort, she pulled herself together. ‘Well, well, well. This is a surprise,’ she said brightly. ‘I must say you were the last person I expected to see when I knocked off work earlier today.’
‘But here I am,’ he prompted softly.
‘Yes, here you are,’ she echoed, her heart pounding wildly.
She peered at him more closely and suddenly she could see the change in him. He looked different. Almost...dangerous. His ravishingly handsome features seemed to have been coated in a layer of dark ice, which had the effect of making him seem cool. Formidable. Evencruel...
‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ His voice was mocking. ‘Or are you so blown away by seeing me again that you can’t think straight?’
Irritated by his totally accurate assessment of her mood, Mia glared before opening the door a little wider, reluctance written in her every gesture. ‘That’s not how I would have described it, Theo, but since you’ve come all this way, I suppose you’d better come in.’
But quickly, she moved as far away as she could, not wanting to be close to him.
And you’re a liar.You want to be close to him. You want him to pull you against that hard body and kiss all the breath out of your lungs. You want to remember how it feels to be in his arms. To remember how he made you feel as ifthiswas the reason you were put here on this earth.
Stop it, she urged herself fiercely as she regarded him with a veneer of polite curiosity. ‘Why didn’t you give me some sort of warning you were coming, Theo? Why just turn up out of the blue?’
Shutting the door behind him, Theodoros Aeton took a moment before he answered, and not just because he was a man who always chose his words carefully. He was grappling with an uncharacteristic feeling of confusion. A sense of being taken off-guard because—infuriatingly—his reaction to her had taken him by surprise. He had expected to feel nothing when he saw her again. He hadwantedto feel nothing—because a man who allowed himself to feel ran the risk of making himself vulnerable and hadn’t he done that once before—with her?
