Cathy Williams - Constantinou's Mistress

by Constantinou's Mistress (lit)

‘Well, let’s just say that there’s no need for you to put your arm over my shoulders.’

  ‘But what would our guests think if I ignored you at a time like this? When we’ve just been through a poten­tially very dangerous situation?’

  So that was it. What would the illustrious guests say? They were under the illusion that she and Nick were a blissfully married couple and how could he possibly dis­abuse them of that notion? The arm on her shoulders felt like a dead weight, something she should shrug off before she collapsed beneath it, but they were still sur­rounded by people; the show had to go on.

  ‘Presumably, though, Gracie and Edie can now return to their original rooms...’ Lucy volunteered tentatively.

  Her heart took a further dive when he replied, without hesitation, ‘Oh, I should think so. I’ll instruct one of the staff to return their belongings to their rooms and to have your room cleaned and prepared...’

  ‘Right. In that case I’ll transfer my stuff as soon as possible.’

  ‘Transfer your stuff? What are you talking about? You are staying with me from now on.’

  ‘Staying with you?’

  ‘Naturally. You didn’t think that I could possibly be satisfied with just one night, did you? Are you?’

  ‘Well...’ Lucy faltered, daring to raise her eyes to his, and he smiled down at her.

  ‘Well? Would you be satisfied with one night? Admit it, you would not. You still want me just as I still want you. In fact, I would like to take you right now, if it was at all conceivable that we could slip away and find our­selves a private corner somewhere on this island. I would like to spread a towel on the sand and make love to you with the sound of the sea only feet away and the sun washing down over our naked bodies...’

  He had never meant anything more in his entire life.

  He had vaguely believed at one point that sleeping with her would somehow get her out of his system, but once was not going to be enough.

  All there was left to do was settle the small matter of Robert.

  And when we return to England? she wanted to ask. Would his wanting still be as seductively powerful as it was here, a thousand miles away from reality? She had seen first hand how short his attention span was when it came to women, women with many more physical assets than she possessed. The plain truth was that he wanted for a short period of time and then, mysteriously, the wanting turned to boredom and indifference.

  Because he had never recovered from his wife. No one could ever compete with a memory, least of all her, a woman in whom he had had not the slightest interest until now.

  If she continued to sleep with him it would only be a matter of time before she saw his indifference reflected in his eyes, and when that happened not only would she be dismissed but her job would be on the line as well. He certainly wouldn’t want to work alongside an ex-bed partner.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea if we continue with this...’

  This was not what Nick had expected to hear. Her softly spoken words hit him like a physical blow in the gut and his hand tightened fractionally on her shoulder.

  He wasn’t going to let her get away. He couldn’t. He forced himself to smile politely at some of the guests who were glancing across in their direction. In a minute they would have to move across to where plans were being made to help out. Their expensive guests appeared to be launching themselves into the spirit of charity work with admirable enthusiasm, including the high-level company directors who had previously been clamouring to escape the island in case they missed a few of their precious meetings. They could not physically leave the island just yet, and their energies needed to be directed into something, and helping out appeared to be filling the void.

  They would need steering, though, and for that he and Lucy would have to be at hand. Good intentions and some spare time would not necessarily do the trick.

  ‘We need to go and see what’s happening with this lot,’ he said grimly, releasing her from his hold only so that he could look down at her with darkly flaring intent stamped in his eyes. ‘But do not consider this conver­sation finished.’

  ‘Because it won’t be finished until you get your own way’

  ‘How well you know me, my darling.’

  Which meant what? Lucy wondered feverishly as the better part of the day was spent with her hands to the deck, preparing containers of food for the islanders who seemed to have suffered most, dispatching those few staff who were not outside already clearing debris to help deliver, making sure that the guests didn’t overdo things.

  She barely saw Nick. He himself was wrapped up in his assessment of damage and communicating with var­ious transport services to establish when they could be reconnected to the mainland. Boats would be available the following day, but the light aircraft that normally ferried the hotel guests not for another three days at the earliest.

  By six in the evening a fair amount had been accom­plished. She had sent the guests away to relax and freshen up, though not before polishing their haloes with a few well-chosen words of praise for their efforts, and she herself was fully prepared to have an hour to herself—during which she would dredge up all the neces­sary common sense she could put her hands on, anything that would stop her from committing the ultimate folly of prolonging the tenuous relationship she had allowed Nick to instigate.

  The last thing she was prepared for was to emerge from the shower with nothing but a towel wrapped around her, the bedroom door safely locked, only to find the French doors thrown open and Nick waiting outside for her, lounging against the doorframe, arms folded.

  ‘I thought you might have locked the bedroom door,’ he said lazily, ‘which is why I took the precaution of making sure that I took the key to the French doors with me earlier on.’

  Lucy was frozen to the spot.

  ‘That’s... that’s...’

  ‘Sly? Cunning? Underhand? All three, I admit.’

  ‘I can’t talk to you with a towel around me.’

  ‘Why not?’ He stepped forward and she held her ground, even though with every step closer that he took she could feel her carefully prepared high-principled, sensible speeches begin to unravel at the seams. ‘Do you need to climb into a business suit to give you the strength you need to tell me that you don’t want us to carry on?’

  ‘I didn’t bring any business suits,’ Lucy said pedan­tically, while her heart continued to pound against her ribs and her eyes were drawn like magnets to his riveting face.

  By the time he was standing in front of her, she could hardly breathe. He traced her skin along the top of the towel she was desperately clutching to her and she felt her breasts tingle in response.

  ‘You want me and I want you. What could be sim­pler?’ His eyes were hooded as he followed the feathery path his finger was making.

  ‘Casual flings aren’t my style, Nick.’

  ‘That’s not the song you were singing last night.’

  ‘Last night I was—’

  ‘Taking what you wanted and loving every minute of it. Life is too short for us to walk away from what gives us pleasure.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ she muttered unsteadily, and then gasped as his hand slipped beneath the parting in the towel and found one aching breast.

  ‘Doesn’t that feel good, Lucy? I know it does. Your nipple is hard.’ This was hardly the subtle approach he had planned, but, God, he couldn’t resist her. His voice was thick and shaky. He slipped his other hand beneath the towel, which dropped to the ground, exposing her in all her naked glory, and he groaned. ‘For God’s sake, Lucy, don’t go for safety.’ He dropped one hand to cup the soft mound between her legs and kept his hand there, exerting just the merest pressure.

  The last of her coherent thoughts flitted out of her head and she raised her face to wordlessly offer her lips to his.

  Robert was safety, and she had already decided that she could not possibly be with him.

  Nor would she remain with this man, but to take these passing mo
ments would be worth the heartache. He was right. To hell with safety.

  ‘You’ll finish with Robert when we get back to England,’ he ordered softly and she groaned.

  ‘I’ll finish with him.’

  A few days, a few weeks; maybe she could hold on to him for a few months. It was a gamble she was now prepared to take.

  CHAPTER NINE

  LUCY stared out of the kitchen window of her flat with her face cupped in her hands and a cup of tea, not a sip taken, resting on the small table next to her elbow.

  It was raining. Not the hard, hot, pelting rain that she had seen six weeks ago when they had been caught up in the hurricane, but a typically English rain. Cold, fine, steady and never-ending.

  Her flat bore all the tell-tale signs of a place that was rarely lived in. Three times a week, against Nick’s wishes, she made sure to sleep in it.

  ‘Let it go,’ he had urged her more than once. ‘It’s a dump and it’s inconvenient. Move in with me.’

  She had weathered his anger and refused, even though the temptation to wake up each and every morning next to the man she deeply loved was as tempting as a long drink of water to someone dying of thirst.

  The fact was that, realistic as she was, she was all too aware that the passion that still fired him up, and had them making wild, unrestrained love in the most inap­propriate of places, was as transitory as a cloud in a summer sky. She had lasted the course far longer than any of the other women he had dated since his wife had died, but love was still a word that had never crossed his lips. Not once. Not even when his big body shud­dered above hers, and in the throes of physical fulfilment he murmured words of wanting and needing.

  She sighed and wondered what the hell he was going to say to the little bit of news she had for him.

  He would be coming to collect her in half an hour and they were going to have lunch at a pub just outside London. Followed by the cinema for a romantic comedy for which he had expressed less than zero enthusiasm but which, he had informed her with a magnanimous, teasing smile, he would endure because she wanted to see it.

  How easy it would be to read all the wrong signals into little gestures like that. How easy to think that per­haps, without even realising it, he really did love her—­because would he put her interests ahead of his if he didn’t? Would he have suggested that she move in with him if he didn’t? Would he laugh at some of the things she said if he didn’t? Would she turn in her chair at work to find him staring at her with that brooding, lazy expression that always made a shiver of suppressed ex­citement race down her spine?

  But if he loved her he would have told her. Of that she was certain. He would also have been more forth­coming about himself because love was all about sharing and exchanging the information that mattered.

  Oh, yes, he would talk to her about everything under the under the sun. Everything except his wife and their life to­gether. The one time she had tried to raise the subject she had seen the shutters snap down over his eyes and just as easily he had changed it, leaving her in no doubt that any discussion in that area was not authorised and would not be tolerated.

  And so what was going to happen now?

  She idly began to sip the tea, wrapping both her hands around the mug, waiting for the knock on the door that would announce his arrival. He had had a key cut for the front door for himself, arrogantly telling her that he was a possessive man, and instead of being annoyed at such a Victorian concept she had blushed and felt a thrill of pleasure.

  The knock came just as she was finishing her tea, and even though she was expecting him Lucy still felt her nerves jump at the prospect of telling him what she had to say.

  She had dressed for the weather. Olive-green corduroy trousers and a clinging roll-neck long-sleeved T-shirt, over which she wore a cream and brown jumper that was cropped to the waist.

  She had even noticed how subtly her dressing had begun to change. She still dressed sensibly, but far more fashionably, and twice on a Saturday they had gone shopping together, with Nick channelling her towards items of clothing that she would never have thought to­ wear, grumbling all the way that she should allow him to take her to upmarket designer shops so that they could do some proper shopping for her, instead of trawling the cheaper shops where she insisted on going.

  ‘Snob,’ she had teased him, and he had had the grace to redden, even’ though he’d denied it vigorously, in­forming her that she would be severely punished for thinking such an uncharitable thought. It had been an­other brilliant day. Her punishment had been to be made love to with such leisurely skill that she could still burn thinking about it two weeks later.

  ‘I thought you would never open the door,’ Nick growled, moving into the room to circle her in his arms. ‘I spent all day thinking about you, you witch.’ He kissed her mouth, taking his time, and then feathered her neck with little caresses. ‘And why on earth have you dressed in the thickest jumper you could lay your hands on?’

  ‘Because it’s cold?’

  ‘But won’t it make it impossible for me to do anything with you in the back row of the cinema?’

  Lucy laughed, distracted from her sombre frame of mind for a few minutes.

  He, too, had dressed for the weather, and the dark colours made him appear even more rakish and devil­ishly good-looking than ever. Brute that he was, the tan he had acquired weeks previously had still not faded, while her trace of golden colouring was already a thing of the past.

  ‘Only teenagers fumble with one another in back rows of cinemas,’ she pointed out, pulling him into the room so that she could look at him fully, drink him in with her eyes.

  ‘You make me feel like a teenager.’ He had never felt so damned alive in his life before. Their night of passion on the island, which had had its dubious roots in his own burning curiosity, had not fizzled out into nothing, as he had half expected it to do. He had not grown bored and tired of her. Just the opposite. She was in his head all the time. It wouldn’t last, of course, but for the mo­ment she was as bewitching now as she had been from the very first.

  ‘Is that good or bad?’ She laughed, stooping to get her bag from the sofa, guiltily aware that the speech she had planned to make as soon as he walked through the door was already slipping away through lack of will­power.

  ‘How hungry are you?’

  ‘What?’ He had a peculiar habit of jumping from one topic to another, without any link between the two. It was a characteristic that she was becoming accustomed to, although now and again he could still catch her sleeping.

  ‘Hungry. Are you very hungry? This pub I have in mind is at least forty-five minutes’ drive away, and that is not counting on any heavy traffic. Then another forty-­five minutes to make it back to central London if we are to catch the movie in time.’

  ‘I take it you have an alternative suggestion,’ she said drily. Later, she thought. We’ll talk later; we won’t spoil this glorious Sunday, not yet...

  ‘Well, by my calculations, if we eliminate the country pub...’

  ‘But what about the best fish and chips I could ever hope to taste?’

  ‘As I was saying, we eliminate the country pub and go to somewhere a little closer to the cinema, we then save ourselves at least an hour and a half, giving us more than ample time to...’

  ‘To...?’ The smouldering intent in his eyes left her in no doubt as to what he had in mind, but she allowed the excitement to build. At the back of her mind lurked the inevitable talk that they would have to have before the day was over, but, like a coward, she allowed herself to be swayed by him.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked, pushing up her jumper, only to find the further restraint of her long­-sleeved T-shirt. It took him only seconds to tug it out of the waistband of her trousers and then his hands were on her breasts. ‘Mmm. No bra. You make a very good learner.’ He caressed her bare breasts until every pore in her body was tingling.

  How could she resist? How could she shut herself off sufficiently
to give her brain time to function and her mouth the opportunity to say the things that needed to be said?

  Making love with him was a taste of heaven. It was shamefully easy to postpone unpleasantness, even for someone like her, someone who had never seen the ben­efits of trying to avoid the unavoidable, however grue­some it might be.

  As it turned out, they made it to the cinema with only minutes to spare, by which time Lucy could barely con­centrate on the light-hearted comedy. Her mind was busy catching up for lost time and she sat, huddled down in her seat, frowning and thinking, absent-mindedly linking Nick’s fingers through hers.

  And as soon as they walked out into the cinema foyer she turned to him and said flatly that they had to talk.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘No, not here. It’s...it’s too public.’

  ‘It was a joke.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ She chewed nervously on her lower lip and looked at him. Lord, but he was beautiful. She was aware of the way other women looked at him, their eyes flicking sideways, running up and down the length of his body appreciatively. She wondered whether she had done that herself when he had been married, and even afterwards, when he had still been out of reach.

  ‘What is the matter?’ he asked, frowning.

  ‘We just need...to talk. Perhaps we could go...’

  ‘Back to my apartment?’

  ‘No!’ Not his apartment, and not her flat either. Nowhere where the temptation to touch him might get in the way of what she had to do.

  ‘Yours, then.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I’m running out of suggestions here. It’s too late and too cold to find an isolated bench in a park somewhere.’

  ‘The office!’

  Nick looked at her as though she had suddenly taken leave of her senses. ‘You want to go to the office? Now? On a Sunday evening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He shrugged and wondered what the hell could be so important that it had to be discussed in the office of all places. Perhaps she was going to talk to him about com­mitment, about settling down, and he wondered what he would say if she did.