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‘I hope I didn’t disturb you,’ he completed, studying her with an intent gaze, because she was an outrageously pretty woman with long, silky corn-gold hair sliding round her shoulders, big blue eyes and a scattering of freckles.
‘No, but you gave me a great video clip,’ she told him with a radiant smile. ‘I was filming the cove and I wasn’t expecting a man to walk into view and do a strip for me.’
‘You filmed me...undressed?’ Raif breathed in shock, because that was not the kind of thing he could afford to have floating about the Internet. Although he had grown up in a very different world, he tried to honour the very conservative mores of his Quristani family as best he could.
‘It’s not as though you were naked!’ Claire declared, picking up on his discomfiture and colouring over the suspicion that he believed that she had done something that she shouldn’t have done. ‘It’s a public beach. People take off their clothes to go swimming. It’s no big deal.’
‘I must ask you out of courtesy to delete it from your camera.’
Claire froze and noted the grim hold he had on his clothes. In a sudden move she pulled out the towel she had used as a pad at her back and extended it to him. ‘Here. You might as well get dressed while we argue.’
‘Thank you. I have no intention of having an argument with you,’ Raif told her smoothly, accepting the towel and walking away to turn his back on her to towel himself dry and dress. He was kind of cautious and almost shy for a guy who looked as though he would be a complete extrovert. His rock-solid confidence and sophistication had been dazzlingly obvious until she’d made the mistake of mentioning the video clip.
Disconcerted by that jarring contrast, Claire shook her head slightly as though to clear it and watched the long golden muscles of his back flex, her face warming again. He was somehow like chocolate when she was on a diet. He had an irresistible allure she had never seen in a man before. One look didn’t cut it. She would keep on looking as long as she could. Instant attraction, she supposed. That was a new experience for her.
He walked back towards her, all lean and long and golden with still damp black hair. He looked amazing. ‘Look, let me buy your phone from you and replace it because I am inconveniencing you,’ he suggested levelly.
‘Let’s not get silly about something so trivial,’ Claire urged in dismay as voices sounded on the path above them.
‘Are you on holiday here?’ he enquired.
‘No. I’ve been living here for a while but I’m planning to return to the UK.’ Her voice trailed off because she wouldn’t be doing that until she had saved up enough for the flight home and had sufficient cash to put towards accommodation. Her decision to stay in Greece with her late mother had left her pretty much penniless but she had no regrets about the sacrifices she had made.
A bunch of local children with a lone adult in tow flooded the beach with whoops and cries and a football. As her companion returned the towel to her with an air of reluctance, Claire gave him an uneasy smile. She stood up, gathering her book, and hesitated before deciding to be honest. ‘There would be no point in deleting that clip from my phone. I’ve already sent it on to a friend. I will, naturally, ask her to ensure that she doesn’t share it with anyone else and I doubt if she will. I’m afraid that’s the best I can offer...oomph!’ She gasped as the football struck her squarely in the solar plexus and knocked her off balance.
She almost contrived to right herself and then she fell, glancing off the rocks below her into the sand, striking one leg painfully on the rough surface.
She was instantly the centre of attention and it was the sort of fuss Claire hated. The adult rushed over to apologise and to ask if she was all right. Her male companion lifted her out of the sand in silence and expressively eyed the blood running from the abrasion on her knee. He addressed the little footballer in a censorious tone as the boy bleated out fervent apologies. He was the son of Claire’s landlord, a nice child, and she was quick to assure him that accidents happened and that she was fine.
‘But you’renot...fine,’ the man beside her pronounced.
‘I’ll survive!’ Claire hissed up at him, intimidated by the sheer height of him now that they were standing level. She was exactly five feet tall and he topped her by more than a foot.
‘You have beenhurt,’ he continued with concern.
And in truth she had been. She had bashed her leg and her hip, and both were aching, while her knee was stinging like mad, but she had no intention of parading either her bruises or her wound. She flung him an upward glance that heavily suggested he stay silent. ‘I’m on my way home anyway,’ she announced brightly in the hope that the crowd of interested onlookers around her would lose interest.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Only a few yards up the hill. You can’t see the house because of the trees. This cove is almost my front garden,’ she joked, wincing as she moved up the beach.
‘I’ll see you back to your home,’ he insisted.
‘It’s not necessary.’
He gave her a look of unapologetic disagreement. Heavens, those tortoiseshell eyes practically talked, she thought in a daze as they both moved up the steep path to the small house behind the trees where her mother had lived for years.
‘Are you in the habit of taking pictures of random strangers taking off their clothes?’
‘Why are you making me sound like some pervert?’ Claire gasped in horror. ‘It’s a public beach. If you’re so precious about your privacy, why did you undress there?’
‘I was thoughtless. I believed I was alone. I was enjoying that sensation. I wasn’t trying to make you feel like a pervert. I was simply trying to understand what made you do such a peculiar thing.’
‘Well, you wandered into the viewing lens, and I saw you, and I sort of stared without thinking about what I was doing...’ Claire snatched in a ragged breath because the hill had a stiff gradient and she was embarrassed. ‘And I thought... I thought—’
‘You thought what?’ he sliced in impatiently, his tension palpable in his wary appraisal. ‘That you recognised me from somewhere?’
Claire stopped dead outside the low-built house. ‘No, why would I have? I thought you were beautiful. No harm in that, is there?’
