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Well, for starters, it seemed he wasn’t willing to let go of her hand. Every subtle effort to withdraw it had been thwarted all the way through saying goodbye to the household staff, including a tearful Despina, and reboarding the helicopter.
This new state of play also, it seemed, included staring broodingly at her as they were transported back to the yacht. Thankfully, she managed to extricate herself from his sizzling grasp and take a full breath for the first time once she alighted.
Then she threw herself into busy mode. Her fingers flew over her phone as she read and replied to emails and text messages.
Sensing his gaze once more on her, she looked up to find him watching her.
‘Do you want something to eat? I’m sure something can be organised for you?’ she asked, to hide the fluttering in her belly.
A smile cracked his lips. ‘You seem determined to fatten me up. For what purpose? Do I need fattening up?’
‘I... What?’ Stumbling, she made the mistake of eyeing him from head to toe again. Which of course triggered that knowing smile that made her want to kick herself. ‘No, of course not...unless you...’ She shook her head. ‘I know it’s a Greek thing to always have refreshments available.’
‘Indeed, but one still gets bored with an endless flow ofmezeafter a while. Be assured that when I’m hungry, you’ll be the first to know,eros mou.’
Her stomach jumped at the endearment. She’d been in Greece long enough to learn a few of them.Eros mouheld much more earthy connotations.
Love. Lust. Intimacy.
Things a honeymooning husband in love wouldn’t hesitate to shower his wife with. Her fingers curled over her phone as her body reacted to it. Skin grew hot and taut. Nipples hardened and strained against satin. And between her thighs... God, had she ever felt such urgent need?
While she’d found the man she’d married compelling, his chilling demeanour and indifference had restrained the unwanted bites of awareness she’d experienced at those first meetings. And even when she’d unwillingly accepted how handsome and utterly captivating Zeph Diamandis was, she’d managed to curb any wayward yearning before it’d developed into something neither of them wanted.
This new version of Zeph...mesmerised her. He made herburnwith awareness. His proximity wrecked easy havoc on her senses while her heart raced with...hunger.
She tried to breathe calmly through it, to not show in any way howaffectedshe was.
Because it seemed Zeph was determined to wring reaction after reaction from her. And she couldn’t let that happen.
She pounced on her phone when it pinged with a message, then breathed a sigh of relief when she read it. ‘The stylists are on their way. They should be here in about fifteen minutes.’
His lips twitched with a touch of mild disinterest, then he draped one muscled arm over the back of his seat. ‘Fifteen minutes gives us enough time.’
Her senses jumped and scrambled helter-skelter once more. ‘Time for what?’ she all but screeched.
His amusement intensified. ‘Time to tell me more about the intricacies of my company,’ he replied coolly.
Oh. She swallowed. Not what she’d expected. But she still needed to be delicate. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Let’s start with structure. Then you can tell me how Callahan Shipping—which I’m assuming is your family company?—came to be involved.’
Choosing her words carefully, she gave a PR version of what she knew about his company. Then took a breath and added, ‘There was a threat of Callahan Shipping being disposed of in the deal you made with Avalon.’
‘Unless it was on the verge of bankruptcy or woefully mismanaged, you could’ve walked away with something, no?’
She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t as big as Diamandis obviously, but I didn’t want that.’
‘Why not?’
Old feelings of inadequacy and bitterness rumbled through her, wounds she’d never quite been able to fully heal. But she had spent a considerable part of her life suppressing it, it was fairly customary to slap more bandages over it, numb it beneath layers of suppressed emotion. So she could focus on answering him again without arousing the sharp spikes of his suspicion the way she’d come close to doing. And the best way she knew how to achieve that was to concentrate on herself.
On the parts Zeph didn’t know about her. And if that made her pathetic in his eyes... She shrugged mentally and ploughed on.
‘I spent my whole life trying to prove to my father that I was as capable as the son he never had. I wasn’t about to step aside and let everything I’d worked for be tossed away.’
Another gleam in his eyes, perhaps even a hint of that pride she’d spotted earlier lit through the midnight-blue depths. Sparking something far too close to pleasure inside her. ‘So you fought for what you wanted.’
‘Yes.’
