But even when the beautician had gone, even when she stood more groomed and poised than she could ever have imagined, still there was work to be done!
Her shaking hands lit candles, hoping the dimmed lighting would hide her blush, hoping that Zarios wouldn’t roll his eyes at her pathetic attempt at romance and seduction.
She placed a hand low on her stomach for reassurance—they had made a baby; there was at least one very good reason for trying to make this work.
Except as the minutes turned into hours, as the candles hissed their farewell and drowned in molten wax, Emma felt more angry than foolish. It had never entered her head that he mightn’t come. Over and over he had reiterated how important this night was, but as the hands of the clock crept towards 8:00 p.m., Emma realised that Zarios’s idea of important differed widely from hers.
She was tempted not to answer the phone when it rang.
‘My flight was delayed.’
‘I checked on the Internet.’ Emma refused to be lied to. ‘You landed over an hour ago.’
‘We did,’ Zarios agreed. ‘And then unfortunately not one but two passengers chose to be taken ill, in their wisdom, and the plane was quarantined until a medical officer could verify that the cases wasn’t related.’
‘Oh!’
‘Was that a sorry?’ Zarios asked.
‘No,’ Emma said tartly. ‘That was a “you could at least have rung!”’
‘I was on another call, trying to appease Tania, the charity’s president…’ He grimaced into the phone. ‘For the first time in my life I have a genuine reason for being late, and no one believes me.’
‘That’s what an appalling reputation does, I’m afraid.’
He smiled at her tartness. ‘Can I ask a favour?’
‘No.’
‘Can you go ahead without me? I will get changed at the airport as soon as my bags come through…’
‘You are kidding?’
‘No.’ Zarios winced. ‘There are pre-dinner drinks—Tania said that if you at least can put in an appearance the guests will accept that I am just delayed. I’ll be there in half an hour—forty-five minutes at the most.’ Pulling out his passport in preparation for Customs, Zarios did a very rare thing. ‘Emma, I really am sorry.’ He awaited her martyred sigh, frowning when it never came.
Instead came four little words. Only when they were said did he realise how much he’d longed to hear them.
‘I missed you, Zarios.’
For the first time since puberty Zarios realised he was blushing. He was standing in the middle of a busy airport and blushing at the sound of her voice, worried he’d misheard, and terrified he might have misinterpreted, but prepared to take the plunge all the same.
‘I missed you, too.’ He flashed a very male smile at the Customs officer, to show he wasn’t really that soft, but, hearing her voice again, he realised that he was.
‘Can we talk, Zarios?’
‘Please.’
‘Properly, I mean.’
‘I mean it, too.’
He’d chosen to drive himself to the airport, which with the benefit of hindsight had been stupid. No back of a limousine to dress in. Zarios had to slum it in the first class lounge, cursing like a sailor as he knotted his tie, frantic not that he was late, but to see her.
Every red light chose to greet him. A few Zarios chose to ignore.
Depositing his car, dashing through the foyer, he followed the arrows to the ballroom, consumed with the desire to be beside her. Except everybody wanted a piece of him. Crossing the floor, he felt like a bloody politician as he nodded and waved and stopped to make grating small talk. For now, only from afar could he see her.
She looked stunning. Her hair was blonder, her skin golden, the silver dress she had chosen to wear tonight breathtaking. There was an elusive quality to her that shone even from a distance, and it wasn’t just Zarios who could sense it—like moths to a flame she held her audience, and the sound of her laughter was like music to his ears when he finally came up behind her.
She knew he was there—knew even before she felt the heat from his palm on the small of her back—and such was the delight on her face as she turned to greet him that for the first time in his life Zarios felt as if he were home, felt for the first time the simple pleasure of a loving return.
‘Ah, my errant fiancé.’ Her hand slipped inside his and he held it tightly. ‘Glad you finally made it.’
‘We hardly noticed you weren’t here…’ Even Tania, the president of the charity, appeared mollified by Emma’s charms. ‘Zarios.’ She snapped into business mode. ‘We ought to head over to the Governor.’
God, but he earned his stripes that night.
Chatting, laughing, drinking, eating—and yet all the while just wanting her, wanting the crowd to thin, resisting the urge to just grab her hand and take her up to their suite. But there was some sweet relief. When the endless dinner was over, when his speech had been executed, finally he could relax. Could wrap his arms around her on the dance floor and hold her again.
As they danced, as he held her as he had that first night, he was catapulted back to when it had been just the two of them, when it was about laughter and fun and fancy, being bound together for no other reason than that was where they wanted to be. So many nights he had wanted to call her, to apologise for his harsh words on leaving, to offer his help again—and he would do that, Zarios decided. Just not now. Not in a room where everyone was watching. For now he would just have to make do with the pleasurable option of holding her.
‘If we had met for the first time tonight…’ Zarios stared down at her ‘…if this was our first dance, what would you be thinking?’
‘That I wish the night could go on for ever.’
‘Anything else?’ Zarios asked.
There were so many things she could have said, but in that slice of time there was only one thing she wanted. ‘That I wish you would kiss me.’
That he could make happen.
Life was, Emma realised as his lips met hers, a series of kisses—some that mattered and some that couldn’t be recalled. A mish-mash of hellos and goodbyes, of greeting and farewell, but sometimes, like this time, it was about existing.
This delicious human ritual, the blending of flesh, the sweet poignancy of sharing, was surely the part that mattered the most, which made one human—because only a kiss could truly forgive, and this kiss did that.
One kiss—the sustenance they needed to make it through the night—and then, much, much later, another kiss as they stood in the cool midnight air outside the hotel, waiting for the valet service to retrieve his car.
‘Why aren’t we going up to your room?’ Emma grumbled. All night she had wanted to be alone with him, all night they had been aching to get away, and now that they had, now that their bed awaited, Zarios had moved the carrot.
‘Because I want to take you home.’
As the car purred away from the city, through the hilly Sydney streets, she could never have guessed at his nervousness. Gates parted and the car slid into a garage, and as they stepped out Emma found that she was frowning, unsure as to why Zarios had selected a key and opened a front door.
It was the normality of it, Emma realised as she stepped inside. The normality of a key on a ring and Zarios letting himself in had momentarily dazed her—and never more than now, as she walked through the hall and into the lounge.
Oh, there was no doubt it was a luxurious property—the view alone took care of that, the ocean seeming almost touchable from the clifftop vantage point—but it wasn’t even that that had her breath catching in her throat. It was the telescope set up beside the window, the low comfortable cushions, a book turned pages-down on the coffee table.
Zarios had been right.
This was a home.
‘I don’t get here often enough.’ Zarios was flicking on lights, shrugging off his jacket, and instead of contemptuously tossing it on the floor for someone else to pick up, he actually hu
ng it—if not on a hanger in the wardrobe, at least over the back of a chair.
‘Progress!’ Emma commented.
‘Sorry?’
‘If you keep practising, in a couple of days you might even manage to hang up a towel.’
‘I only have someone come in once a week here—to stock up the fridge and keep the place ready for me. If I don’t put it away myself…’ He actually smiled as it dawned on him she was being sarcastic, and Emma found she was doing the same. Especially when he offered her coffee and actually made it himself.
‘The view’s stunning.’
The moon was waxing, just a couple of nights away from being full, and it lit up the inky water, catching the surf and highlighting it as it crashed to the beach. Zarios had slid open one of the vast windows, the Pacific Ocean was roaring its tune, and Emma realised that she was nervous. For days she’d waited for this moment, but now that it was actually here she wondered how to approach it—almost yearned for the anonymity of a hotel room, for the vagabond existence she had thought was his. Because here amongst his things, here in his home, Emma felt wrong-footed, embarrassed, almost, at her presumption that there was something she could offer him.
If Zarios wanted a family, then surely he would already have had one?
‘Excuse me a moment…’ she said, and she dashed to the bathroom.
There was a run in her very sheer stockings and Emma pulled them off. It was a relief to get out of her Magic Knickers, too, to gulp some water from the tap, and then glance around at his things.
Zarios’s things.
No glass bottles, no matter how fancy, filled from the vats belonging to a hotel, but his things. Cologne and shaving brushes… Funny that a box of cotton buds could make her smile, or thick brown towels and a book by the bath, which must have been dropped in it at one point because the pages were all wrinkled.
She tried to picture the room with baby lotions and nappies and a bath full of toys, but she couldn’t. The heir he seemingly desired was a person in its own right, not a Band Aid to hold two people together.
She wished she could stop the clock, could pause the changes in her body long enough for them to work it out, long enough to establish the couple before the family.
Which was what she wanted to do tonight.
She’d put on weight.
Zarios watched her as she crossed the lounge room. Oh, he knew women too well to comment—knew she wouldn’t believe him even if he insisted that he liked what he saw.
And he did like it.
Her legs were bare now, and still slender, but there was a roundness to her hips that suited her, and her breasts… Zarios found his tongue was on the roof of his mouth as he saw the swell of them, the sheer silver fabric accentuating swollen nipples.
There were so many reasons for her not to walk over to him—they needed to talk, needed to sort things out—except they needed togetherness more. It was as if some invisible thread were pulling her. The memory of his kiss was still alive on her mouth, and if somehow she could capture that, if somehow they could retrieve the closeness they had once shared, surely then they would be in a better position to sort things out?
Always he was beautiful—that was never in question—only tonight he was exquisitely so. His jacket was off, his tie loosened, his jaw dark, his cheekbones savage in the dim light and his dark eyes quietly watching. She wanted to bound up to him like a crazy puppy, or jump on his knee like a purring kitten, but instead she walked over.
‘Come here.’ He made the last few steps easy, caught her wrist and pulled her onto his knee. ‘Come here so I can never let you go again,’ he said. And if it was just about sex, if it was just about lust, why did he hold her for a full moment before kissing her? He pressed his face in her hair, as if her scent was enough, but only for a moment before the tension, the want that had simmered, eternally checked, infinitely controlled, was let loose in one savage motion—the hungry search for each other’s mouth.
Greedy, greedy kisses that at first had nothing to do with pleasing the other, just satisfying one’s hungry self—tasting, licking, sucking and confirming the other was real. His kisses were so potent, yet so desperate as mouths still entwined, he spun her round on his lap so she was straddling him. There was no choice but to hitch up her dress to accommodate his thighs between hers. His fingers grazed the bare flesh of her upper thighs, and she felt his low moan in her mouth as his fingers slid higher.
‘Oh, Emma…’ His hands cupped her bottom. ‘You should have told me…’
A shocked gurgle of laughter filled her throat that he thought she had been walking around all night with no panties—but why spoil it when she was sliding down his zipper, freeing his delicious erection? She felt almost sick with want. His fingers were working her zipper also, his hands creeping in at the sides of her dress, the pad of his thumb working a nipple—till it wasn’t enough, either for her or him. He broke the strap on her dress with mutual consent and then, capturing her breast in his mouth, sucked greedily as she pressed his length against her heat.
He lifted her buttocks the generous inches it would take to accommodate him, his mouth still working her breast, then came the heaven of him entering her. She could see him, sliding deep inside her, and it was the most erotic thing she had ever seen—his endless length teasing her, his hands moving her up and down more slowly than she would have preferred. But even if she was on top, it was Zarios who was in control.
‘All the nights I have wanted you…’
‘I wanted you, too…’
She was giddy with want, fighting his strong hands, wanting to move faster. But he wouldn’t relent, each measured stroke deep inside coveting her, revealing the beauty of gleaming black hair against soft blonde curls. And still, even as she came, still he moved her slowly, wouldn’t let her orgasm abate. He just ground her hips down to meet his, over and over again, till her body imploded, till she screamed out his name, till she was coming again. Only then did he let her move with wild abandon as he pulsed deep inside her, taking her closer to the edge than it was surely safe to do, then pulling her back when she was sure she was lost for ever.
‘I missed you…’ Still his kisses were urgent as he carried her to his bed a mesh of arms and legs, and she lay drunk on a cocktail of sensations. His slow deep kisses breathed life back into her and she kissed him again. It could never be so good with anyone but him. It was as though he could see inside her, could read her as if he was her.
‘Can we make it?’ Black eyes stared down at her. ‘Could you forget the hurt, forget the past…?’
‘Can you?’
‘Yes.’
Oh, but it was too simple an answer—and her resolve to establish them before she brought in the rest of world faded with the caress of his eyes.
‘Zarios, when I accepted the loan I thought there would be no problem. I mean…’ Her mouth was impossibly dry. She was scared to trust him with her brother’s secret, but scared not to. Scared not just because of the debt that would go unpaid, but scared for the future—because Jake was hurtling head-first into a pit of no return. Her parents were gone, and when her brother didn’t pay her back their relationship would be gone, too. ‘I wasn’t honest with you when I asked for the loan…’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He shooed it away. But for Emma it did matter.
‘It does…’
‘It’s money…’ he kissed her mouth ‘…of which I have plenty. Forget about it.’
His mouth was toying with hers, numbing her panic, and when he kissed her like this she could kiss him for ever—because here in his bed, here in his arms, it was about so much more than a debt unpaid.
‘I need your help.’
‘You have it.’ His tongue slid into her lips. ‘Tomorrow we will sort out whatever trouble you are in. But tonight…’
Tonight was theirs. Tonight was about making love over and over, about lying in his arms afterwards and glimpsing a future she’d never dared to. A cot in the corner, their
baby in bed beside them…
Sweet dreams were her visitors that night.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
COULD they make it?
Walking in the surf, wearing one of his shirts and a rolled-up pair of his shorts, feeling the whip of water on her ankles, the salty spray on her face, her body deliciously tender from his attention, Emma relished the time alone as she tried to sensibly ask the question.
Yes!
Despite the damning evidence to the contrary, despite the appalling reputation that preceded him, somehow she knew he was better than that. That it wasn’t a baby that would be holding them together when she summoned the strength to tell him—instead it was the love they’d shared last night that would bind them.
Climbing onto soft sandstone rocks, she hugged her knees as she gazed out, watched the early-morning swimmers race in the ocean pool, and shivered at the very thought. Yet there was no sight more beautiful than Coogee in the morning. Surfers waiting patiently in the distance for the wave that would carry them to the shore, lone joggers getting their fix of nature before they headed to their offices and computers.
All this she could have.
All this their child could have.
She could almost picture it—a child as blonde as herself or as dark as Zarios, laughing, running…
And Emma stilled.
Only her eyes moved—scanning, processing the colourful scene before her and trying to condense it into a grainy snapshot.
The same snapshot she had seen at Rocco’s.
Of the slice of time when Zarios had been happy.
Craning her neck, she stared up at his windows, pondered the demons that haunted him, this most difficult and complicated man.
And vowed that together they’d face them.
The raised voices that greeted her as she pushed open the front door had her hesitating. The thick throaty sobs of a woman crying had every one of her hackles up. Miranda, perhaps—or another ex-lover come to plead for a second chance? All these thoughts whirred through her mind as she walked through the hallway.
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