* * *
Carrie was awake for a long time before she dared move. She was pretty sure she had the huge bed to herself. The heat that had enveloped her throughout the night had gone.
Eventually she plucked up the courage to slowly roll over and confirm what her instincts were telling her.
Andreas had left the room.
She stared at the indentation on his pillow and was horrified to find tears filling her eyes.
Quickly she averted her gaze to the ceiling and breathed raggedly through her mouth, a hand on her chest, blinking frantically as she fought the tears back.
What had she done?
Oh, dear God, what had she done?
She had slept with him. Not once, but three times.
She had become someone new in his arms. She’d felt like a beautiful butterfly that had emerged from its cocoon for the very first time and found its wings.
Andreas had taken her to paradise but now, with the early morning light streaming through the shutters, paradise seemed as distant as the moon. Now she wanted to find her old cocoon and crawl back inside it.
What was the protocol for dealing with this? Was there a protocol lovers kept to when seeing each other for the first time after making love?
Lovers?
Heat suffused her everywhere and she covered her face with both hands, fighting back the sobs desperate to break out.
She didn’t want to be Andreas’s lover. She didn’t want to be anything to him, not his fake fiancée, not his fake wife, not anything...
The door opened.
As quick as lightning, she turned back onto her side and squeezed her eyes shut.
If she pretended to be asleep maybe he would leave her alone.
Footsteps padded over the floor tiles. New scents filled the room. Coffee. Fresh bread.
She heard another door slide open and cool air filled the room.
A minute later the bed dipped. A hand brushed against her hair.
She couldn’t stop her shoulders moving in reflex at his touch.
Holding her breath as tightly as she held the sheets around her, she rolled onto her back.
Andreas was sitting on the edge of the bed wearing nothing but a pair of jeans.
His eyes were on her, a wariness underlying the intensity of his stare. ‘Good morning,’ he said quietly.
She managed the semblance of a smile but couldn’t get her throat, echoing with the vibrations of her hammering heart, to move enough to speak.
‘I’ve got breakfast for us,’ he said after an impossibly long period of silence between them during which they did nothing but stare at each other. ‘It’s on the balcony.’
She hadn’t known this room had a balcony.
She didn’t even know what room they were in. It certainly wasn’t the one she’d been given.
‘Give me a minute to get changed and I’ll join you out there,’ she whispered.
His eyes narrowed slightly before he nodded and got to his feet.
She watched him step out onto the balcony, sliding the glass door shut behind him. Only when he was out of her eyeline did she slide out of the bed and snatch her discarded clothes from the floor. She found the en-suite and locked the door behind her.
Barely twelve hours ago she had felt not a modicum of shyness in showing her naked body to him. He had kissed and touched every single part of her and she had thrilled at the sensual pleasure of it, a pleasure she had never imagined; seductive and addictive.
She had been drunk with it all. Drunk on Andreas.
Now she wished for nothing but to hide back in her protective cocoon and forget it had happened.
Throwing her clothes on, she splashed her face with water and smoothed her hair as best she could with her fingers, trying not to look too hard at her reflection in the mirror so she couldn’t see the bruised look of her lips or the glow on her skin that had never been there before.
Andreas was eating a Greek breakfast pastry when she joined him on the balcony.
‘Coffee?’ he asked amiably.
‘Yes please.’ She sat opposite him and looked at the huge spread laid out between them. ‘Did you do all this?’
‘Of course not. I called the chefs in and got them to make it.’ The mockingly outraged face he pulled as he said this, that How dare you even suggest I soil my hands by preparing my own food? expression, tickled her and she found herself fighting back a grin.
But then she met his eye and the smile formed of its own accord. Not a full grin, but her lips loosened enough to curve a touch.
His features relaxed to see it. He pushed her cup of coffee to her then leaned back. ‘Eat something. You must be starving.’
That reminded her of their missed dinner. And his roses...
‘What’s wrong?’ Andreas asked, seeing her brow suddenly furrow.
‘Those poor roses. I never...’ She dropped her gaze from his and snatched a bread roll, opening it with her fingers.
He knew exactly what had caused her face to look as if she’d been dipped in tomato juice and his loins twitched to remember lifting her onto the worktop, the roses abandoned, and all that had followed.
And what had followed had been one of the best nights of his life. Maybe the best. He couldn’t think of a better one.
‘The housekeeper has revived them,’ he assured her, remembering the way Carrie had rubbed her nose against the petals when she’d taken them from him.
She’d rubbed her nose over his stomach in the exact same way...
The twitch in his loins turned into a throb, the memory of her nails digging into his back as she’d orgasmed strong enough that he could feel the indentations on his skin as fresh as if she were making them still.
‘That’s good,’ she said, nodding a little too vigorously. She stretched for the jar of honey with a hand that trembled and said in a voice so low he had to strain to hear her, fresh colour smothering her entire face, ‘Does she know I, err, we, slept in the wrong room?’
‘It doesn’t matter, matia mou.’
‘She needs to know.’ She struggled to remove the lid. ‘When we’re gone someone else will stay here. The sheets...’
‘Carrie.’
She stopped talking and reluctantly met his gaze, eyes shining with what looked suspiciously like unshed tears, her chin wobbling.
She’d been a virgin.
Until twelve hours ago she had reached the age of twenty-six untouched.
He could not shake that thought from his mind.
‘Let me open that for you,’ he said gently, nodding at the honey jar clasped so tightly in her hand.
She pushed it across the table to him, her shoulders slumping.
He twisted the lid off and pushed it back to her, resisting the urge to force her to take it from his hand.
She had been a virgin.
She had never made love before.
She had never faced a man the morning after before.
The vulnerability he had seen in her when he’d given her the flowers was even more starkly apparent now and it tugged at his heart to see it and with it came a compression in his chest, an overwhelming punch of emotion he couldn’t begin to comprehend but which set alarm bells ringing inside him, a warning that he was steering into dangerous territory and it was time to back away.
‘There is no wrong or right room here because the villa is mine,’ he said in as even a tone as he could manage.
She darted a little glance of gratitude at him before dipping a teaspoon into the honey jar. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I signed the paperwork for it yesterday. That’s where I went after I dropped you here, to meet with the previous owner.’
‘You bought it? But why?’
He shrugged. ‘I was looking for a villa to rent for the week. I didn’t see anything I liked so I looked at villas for sale and this was available.’
‘You bought a villa on a whim? Without even looking at it?’ She spread the honey on her roll.
‘I saw the pictures. I know the island pretty well—I’ve had an eye on buying something here for a while. I knew it was in a good location with plenty of privacy. Why not?’
‘You already have a holiday home.’
‘This will not be a holiday home for me, not like my property in the Seychelles. I can work from here. Agon is a prosperous, independent country with a growing economy. It has many residents looking to invest their cash. It is close enough to fly or speedboat to Athens. It has staff familiar with the house and I get to speak my native tongue for a change. It ticks all the boxes and best of all it has year-round sunshine.’
‘Why do you run your business from London?’ she asked. ‘You clearly hate the city.’
‘I don’t hate it. In the summertime it is beautiful but the rest of the year it is so grey and dreary. I grew up with the sun on my back. But to answer your question, London was never my first choice to run my business from. When I was younger I wanted to live in America. That’s why I went to university there. I had many ideas in my head about what America was like and assumed it had year-round sunshine like my home in Gaios.’ He grinned, remembering his youthful naivety and lack of geography skills.
Her lips twitched with humour as she took a bite of her honey-slathered roll.
The tension in her frame was loosening.
‘The winters in Massachusetts came as quite a shock, I can tell you,’ he continued. ‘When I graduated from MIT I was offered a job with an investment firm in Manhattan who were offering an obscene amount of money for a graduate. As you know, that’s when my parents were on their knees, financially speaking, so I took the job, worked hard and built many contacts so I could strike out on my own, and tried not to freeze to death in the dire winters. When I started Samaras Fund Management, my intention had been to build the American side up then set up European headquarters in Athens. London and the other European capitals would have been subsidiaries. I’d reached the point where I was earning serious money, my parents were in reasonable health and settled in their new home...’
‘Did you buy it for them?’ she interrupted, eyes alive with curiosity.
‘As soon as I could afford it. They didn’t want to stay in Gaios any more, which I could not blame them for after the way they had been treated by the people there, so I brought them a house on Paros. We all thought the worst of what life could throw at us was over and then my sister and brother-in-law died.’
Carrie sucked a breath in.
Andreas said it so matter-of-factly that if she hadn’t seen the flash of pain in his eyes she could believe his sister’s death had meant nothing to him.
‘It was carbon monoxide poisoning, wasn’t it?’ she asked softly.
He nodded, his jaw clenching. ‘They were on holiday celebrating their wedding anniversary. The apartment they were staying in had a faulty boiler.’
She remembered reading the inquest report and wanting to cry for Natalia, their orphaned daughter, a girl Carrie had welcomed into her home and loved fiercely. Violet hadn’t been the only one hurt when Natalia stopped staying at their home. Carrie had missed her too, missed the sunshine the girl had brought to their home.
In the year before the expulsion it had been rare for Violet to be at home without Natalia. Had that been why Carrie had failed to see how badly off the rails Violet was falling, because Natalia’s cheerfulness and sweet nature had masked it?
But hadn’t Carrie herself noticed the sunniness in her demeanour wilting those last few months before Violet’s expulsion? A strain in both girls’ eyes she had put down to teenage hormones.
Natalia had been so comfortable in their home. She would make herself drinks if she was thirsty, help herself to cereal if hungry...
Natalia would never have dropped Violet like a stone if something major hadn’t occurred. If she’d wanted to keep seeing Violet she would have done; not even a strict uncle could have kept her from making contact if that had been what she wanted.
But she hadn’t wanted to contact Violet because Andreas had been speaking the truth.
Violet had tried to seduce him, had punched Natalia in the face and blamed Andreas for her expulsion in revenge and, Carrie deduced, her mind ticking frantically, ice plunging into her veins, because she hadn’t wanted to admit to the one person in the world who loved her that she had bought the drugs herself, and admit what she was becoming. An addict.
Violet had lied to save face and for misplaced revenge against the man who’d rejected her advances. Her vengeance was misplaced because the man she’d truly wanted to get back at, namely the vile specimen who had taken her virginity on her sixteenth birthday, had become unreachable. In Violet’s mind at that moment, Andreas had been interchangeable with James; two rich, handsome men of a similar age. The expulsion, her desperate, wanton behaviour in the months leading to her expulsion...
Caught in her reckless heartache, Violet had managed to discredit herself without even trying. No one in their right mind would believe her story about the fabulously rich, media-friendly James Thomas grooming and seducing her. No one other than her big sister.
The ice in her veins had moved like freezing sludge to her brain.
Carrie had never followed a story without some initial proof. Violet had produced plenty of proof against James; blurry photos on her phone taken slyly when he hadn’t been looking and screenshot messages—he’d been clever enough to insist on using apps where messages deleted themselves after being read but not clever enough to guess a lovestruck teenager would still find a way to save them.
There had been no proof against Andreas. Not a shred.
Carrie had gone after him on nothing but her damaged sister’s word and that word had been a lie.
‘Carrie?’
She blinked and looked into the eyes of the man she had tried to ruin.
‘Are you okay? You are very pale.’
How could he even bear to look at her, never mind with concern?
She could still feel his touch on her skin, his kisses on her lips. He had made love to her as if she were the only woman in the world.
He should hate her.
He probably did hate her.
She hated herself.
What she had done...
Her chest had tightened so much it hurt to draw breath.
She needed to speak to Violet, she thought, as fresh panic clawed at her chest. There was still the chance Carrie might be wrong. She couldn’t condemn her sister without giving her the chance to defend herself.
‘I’m fine,’ she managed to say. ‘I was just thinking of Natalia.’
And I was thinking that you are not the monster I’ve been telling myself you are for the past three years.
This conversation they were having...
Andreas had started it to calm her down.
He knew she’d been a virgin. He’d known it the moment he entered her. He could have chosen to embarrass her about it and demand to know why she, a seemingly confident twenty-six-year-old woman, had spent her adult life as a singleton.
Instead he had given her a way to face being with him without making her burn with humiliation.
‘Did you move to London for her?’ she added.
He gave her another narrow-eyed unconvinced look before nodding. ‘My sister used to read all those wizarding books to her. Natalia thought all boarding schools were like that and asked if she could go.’ He smiled though his eyes saddened at the memory. ‘I could afford it so I offered to pay the fees for any school my sister thought suitable. They chose London. I bought Tanya and Georgios a house close to the school so Natalia could spend weekends with them. When they died I moved to London and kept Natalia at her school. I couldn’t put her through any more disruption.’
So he had uprooted his own life instead and moved to a city he didn’t particularly like with a climate he hated.
‘Is that what you meant when you said you’d spent fifteen years waiting for your freedom and that another six months wouldn’t make any d
ifference? Because you’d had to make your parents your priority and then your niece?’
‘Natalia is at university, my parents are happy and settled and have all the home help they need... Now I want to spend as many of my days as I can where the sun shines and live my life as I please.’ The wolfish grin she’d once so hated but now tugged at her heart curved on his lips, the gleam returning to his eyes. ‘And if delaying my freedom for another six months means I get to see your beautiful face every day then it will make the delay a little sweeter.’
She swallowed. ‘How can it be sweet when I tried to destroy you?’
‘Because living with me is the price you have to pay to put it right. When it is over we will be even.’
‘And last night?’ The question was out before she could take it back.
He gazed into her eyes a long time before answering. ‘Last night was nothing to do with you putting things right. I make no apologies for desiring you and you should make no apologies for desiring me. Attraction is bound by no rational thought. I have wanted you from the minute you stepped into my office and my bedroom door will always be open to you. If you enter is up to you.’
The meaning in his eyes was clear.
Andreas would make no further move on her.
If their marriage was to be more than a piece of paper she would have to be the one to instigate it.
It was a thought that should make her feel safe but didn’t. Not in the least.
One thing Carrie did know for certain, required no proof or corroborating evidence for, was that with Andreas her feelings were like kindling.
One touch and she turned into fire.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ANDREAS’S NEWEST STAFF were true professionals. He’d taken Carrie out shopping in an exclusive enclave in Agon’s capital, where an arcade of designer boutiques and chic cafés resided, tiny compared to London and Paris’s exclusive areas but with staff who could smile without looking as if their bottoms were being sucked out of their cheeks and who treated their clientele as if it were a pleasure to serve rather than a chore.
When they’d returned to his newest acquisition late afternoon he’d found the garden transformed exactly as he’d asked before they’d left and the scent of charcoal filling the air.
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