by Penny Jordan
Quickly she pulled her thoughts back to reality.
‘But you said you’d be gone for a month.’
‘Yes.’ His voice was terse and tense as though he was having to fight for self-control.
She focused fully on him, shocked by the realisation that he had lost weight, his skin taut over his cheekbones, the normal sharp intensity of his eyes softened and blurred as though he was under considerable emotional strain.
‘I couldn’t stay away any longer.’ The words seemed to be dragged from him as though they were a bitter acknowledgement of some kind of failure.
For a moment she couldn’t make any response, too aware of his own tension to be able to react, and then she realised what he was saying and there was joy as well as compassion in her voice as she guessed softly, ‘You missed Robbie.’
‘Robbie?’ He stared at her and then told her on a groan, ‘Yes, yes, I missed Robbie, but not one tenth as much as I missed you. Oh, God, Sarah, I shouldn’t be saying this to you, shouldn’t be laying this burden on you, after all the other burdens I’ve already laid on you, but coming in here, seeing you lying there…remembering how it felt to hold you in my arms, to touch your body, to feel it responding to mine…
‘After Angela I swore I’d never let a woman get close to me again; that I’d never put myself in the position of being emotionally vulnerable; that sex was something I’d rather live without than take the risk of admitting into my life, either as a physical appetite that needed appeasing or as part of a package that carried the added dangers of emotional and mental bonding with someone who might one day change her mind and walk out on me, and I thought I’d succeeded. I certainly told myself that I was happier without a woman in my life than I had been married to someone I neither loved nor respected, even if I had once believed I loved her.
‘And then I met you. From the first moment I saw you sitting there under the willow with Robbie…my son…the two of you staring at me with dislike and fear in your eyes, I knew that all I’d told myself, all the rules I’d made for myself, meant nothing.
‘Even then the temptation to just take hold of you and go on holding you was so intense…I’d never experienced anything like it. I’d never wanted to experience anything like it. I told myself it was just a freak of emotional responsiveness to the problems I was having with Robbie, but I knew in my heart I was just searching desperately for something I could use to stave off the truth. I knew then that what I felt for you was a whole world away from the immature choice I’d made for Robbie’s mother.
‘Long before the second time Robbie went missing I’d stopped trying to fool myself. I knew that I loved you, and that I would love you for the rest of my life. I hated myself for that weakness, and sometimes I hated you as well for causing it. I can’t ask for your forgiveness for what I did…those memories are too precious to me. Just to be able to hold you…to touch you…I swear I never intended things to get so out of control. I never intended to do anything more than just hold you, but once you were in my arms…’ He gave a deep shudder, and Sarah, who had been listening to him in disbelieving silence, felt a shivering sensual response convulse her own body, a heated erotic awareness of him, aroused by what he was saying and what she was remembering, but she fought it down, telling herself that she must be imagining what he was saying to her; that she must be hallucinating.
‘I went away for Robbie’s sake, inventing urgent business that did not exist, because I knew if I stayed I’d go out of my mind with wanting you, but once I was away from you things weren’t any better. I thought about you night and day, ached for you, longed for you…woke up at night with my body on fire from my dreams of you, and my arms aching to hold you.’ He stopped abruptly.
‘I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. I never intended to tell you. I’d got it all planned. I was going to come back and tell you that I wanted you to leave; that I thought Robbie was becoming too attached to you.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘I didn’t even have the guts to tell you the truth and so I was going to use Robbie as an excuse, even though I know how much he loves and needs you.
‘I heard him telling you that he wishes you were his mother. God, he can’t wish that more than I wish it. I wish you were his mother, my wife, my lover, my woman. I wish I could stop remembering the way you opened your arms to me when I needed you, the way you gave yourself to me so selflessly, so tenderly. Sarah…’
The anguished way he said her name made her eyes sting with tears.
She was halfway towards him when he said it again, this time with sharply terse rejection that made her stop to focus on his taut face.
‘No, don’t come any closer,’ he begged her rawly. ‘If you do…’
It gave her all the courage she needed, ignoring her fear, her self-consciousness, holding firmly on to what she had heard him saying. She walked determinedly towards him, asking shakily, ‘If I do, you’ll what, Gray?’
She was close enough to him now for her breath to brush his mouth, for her senses to pick up on the rapid thud of his heartbeat, the stormy emotional arousal darkening his eyes, the warm male scent of him that made her nerve-endings quiver.
‘I’ll…’ He stopped, groaning her name as she looked at his mouth, refusing to hide any longer how she felt about him. In the split-second it took for her to lift her gaze from his mouth to his eyes her own mouth started to tremble and so did her body.
His arms were wrapped around her, his mouth devouring hers, his kiss so possessively rough that it almost hurt, but she welcomed the slight pain because it reinforced the reality of what was happening. This was no practised seductive kiss; this was the kiss of a man held in the grip of such a deep and strong emotion that he was beyond the limits of his own self-control, and she gave herself up to it, welcoming the harshly guttural sounds he made in his throat and the pressure of his hands as they swept over her body, moulding and caressing it as though he could hardly believe that she was actually real.
When his hands touched her breasts they both trembled. The ache inside her body made her cling dizzily to him, returning the words of love he was muttering into her ear and against her skin, letting the joy building up inside her have its head so that she was euphoric with the intensity of learning that he loved her.
‘I want you. I want you so much,’ Gray was telling her hoarsely as he cupped her face and kissed her. ‘But not yet, not until I’ve convinced you that I love you…not until you’ve told me that you forgive me for treating you so badly…not until you convince me that this isn’t all a dream and that I’m going to wake up and find myself miles away and with my arms empty. You do love me, don’t you, Sarah? This isn’t just because you feel sorry for me? I know how tender and compassionate you are, how you hate to see anyone hurting.’
‘I love you.’
Her voice shook a little as she made the admission, but her apprehension turned to tremulous excitement and awareness when he started to kiss her, her body responding joyously to his touch, to its knowledge of his love and desire.
Wrapped in one another’s arms, neither of them heard the study door open, until Robbie demanded curiously, ‘Daddy, why are you kissing Sarah?’
‘Why? Because she’s going to marry me and be your mummy, that’s why. At least, I hope she’s going to marry me,’ Gray murmured seriously as he held her slightly away from him and looked down into her eyes.
There was just enough insecurity, just enough tormenting self-doubt and fear in his eyes to remind her of Robbie at his most vulnerable. Closing the gap between them, she bent down and took hold of Robbie’s hand with one of her own, her voice soft with love as she assured him, ‘I’d love to marry you, Gray. There is one condition, though.’
She felt the tension grip him, and knew what he must be thinking. Robbie’s mother had once imposed conditions on him, but Robbie’s mother was a ghost she intended to banish completely from their lives.
‘What condition?’ he demanded harshly.
Against his mouth, i
gnoring the tension she could feel in his body, she whispered, ‘I don’t want Robbie to be an only child. I want you, I want your love and I want your children, Gray.’
‘The first two you’ve already got, and as for the third…I agree with you, Robbie needs brothers and sisters. However, right now what Robbie needs more than anything else is to be securely tucked up in his own bed, fast asleep.’
The look he was giving her made her blush and laugh, but she didn’t argue when Gray picked Robbie up in his arms and headed for the door with him. Soon she would be the one Gray was holding in his arms…soon he would be holding her, touching her, loving her. He had paused by the door and she saw from the look he gave her that he knew what was going through her mind and that he shared her need and her love.
Over Robbie’s head he mouthed silently to her, ‘I love you,’ and then, as though unable to stop himself, still carrying Robbie, he came back to her, kissing her gently on the lips and then more lingeringly until Robbie protested sleepily that he was getting squashed.
‘Soon. I’ll be back soon,’ he promised her as he carried Robbie towards the door.
* * * * *
Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Sharon Kendrick’s next book,
THE GREEK’S BOUGHT BRIDE
When Tamsyn loses her innocence to Xan, she doesn’t expect to see him again—until he proposes a marriage of convenience. Xan is dangerously addictive… If Tamsyn isn’t careful, she could lose herself to him—for good…
Keep reading to get a glimpse of
THE GREEK’S BOUGHT BRIDE
CHAPTER ONE
HE RECOGNISED HER straight away, though it took him a moment to remember why. Xan Constantinides gazed at the tiny redhead whose thick curls were tumbling over her shoulders and a flicker of something between desire and anger whispered across his skin. But he welcomed the distraction—however temporary—which allowed him to forget the promise he had made so long ago Was it the wedding of one of his oldest friends which had pushed the unavoidable into prominence, or just the march of time itself? Because it was easy to believe that nothing would change. You acted as if the fast days weren’t spinning into years. And then suddenly there it was—the future—and with it all those expectations…
A marriage he had agreed to.
A destiny he had always been determined to honour.
But there was no point in thinking about it now, not with a packed weekend lying ahead of him. Friendship and a valuable business partnership dictated he must attend the wedding of his friend the Sheikh, even though he usually avoided such events like the plague.
Xan returned his attention to the redhead. She was sitting on her own in the small terminal of the private airfield, waiting to board the luxury flight, the fiery disarray of her hair marking her out from the other women. Her clothes marked her out too and not simply because they were a far cry from the skimpy little cocktail dress she’d been wearing last time he’d seen her—an outfit which had sent his imagination soaring into overdrive, as it had obviously been intended to do.
Xan slanted her an assessing glance. Today there was no tight black satin Basque or skyscraper heels, nor fishnet stocking which had encased the most delicious pair of legs he had ever seen. No. She had taken the word casual and elevated it to a whole new level. Along with a pair of tennis shoes, she was wearing cut-off jeans which displayed her pale, freckled ankles and a plain green T-shirt which echoed the cat-like magnificence of her emerald eyes.
It was the eyes he remembered most. And the slender figure which had failed to fill out the curved dimensions of her skimpy uniform, unlike her over-endowed waitress colleagues who had been bursting out of theirs. And the way she had spilt the Old-Fashioned cocktail all over the table as she bent to serve him. The dripping concoction had caught his trouser leg—icy liquid spreading slowly over his thigh. He remembered flinching and the woman he’d been with snatching up her napkin to blot at it with attentive concern, even though he’d been in the middle of telling her that her that their relationship was over.
Xan’s lips flattened. The redheaded waitress had straightened up and mouthed an apology but the defiant glint in her green eyes had suggested the sentiment wasn’t genuine. For a moment he had found himself wondering if it had been a gesture of deliberate clumsiness on her part—but surely nobody would be that stupid?
Would they?
And now here she was in the most unexpected of places—waiting to board a luxury flight to the wedding of Sheikh Kulal Al Diya to the unknown Englishwoman, Hannah Wilson. Idly, Xan switched his cellphone to airplane mode as the redhead began to scrabble around inside an oversized bag which looked as if it had seen better days. Was she also a guest at the glittering royal marriage? His lips curved with something like contempt. Hardly. She was much more likely to have been hired to work at what was being described as the most glitzy wedding the desert region had seen for a decade. And in a country which demanded the most modest of dress codes, it was unlikely that she would be showing as much of her body as last time.
Pity.
Sliding the phone into his pocket, he allowed himself the faintest smile as she glanced up to notice him staring at her and a spark of something powerful passed between them. A full-blooded spark of sexual desire which fizzled almost tangibly in the air. Her magnificent eyes widened with disbelief. He saw the automatic thrust of her nipples against the thin T-shirt and his groin tightened in response.
Sometimes, Xan thought, with a frisson of anticipation, sometimes fate handed you something you hadn’t even realised you wanted.
* * *
It was him.
It was definitely him.
What were the chances?
Somehow Tamsyn managed to stop her jaw from dropping—but only just. She’d been expecting the great and the good to be gathered together here at this small airport, ready to board the royal flight which would whisk them to Zahristan, but she hadn’t really been paying attention to the other guests as they were all being guided into the small departure lounge. She’d only just got her head around the incredible fact that her sister Hannah was about to marry a desert king and would soon become a real-life queen. And even though Hannah was pregnant with the Sheikh’s baby and such an unlikely union made sense on so many levels, Tamsyn hadn’t quite managed to contain her disgust at the proposed nuptials. Because in her opinion, the man her sister was marrying was arrogant and domineering—and it seemed he chose his friends on the same basis.
She stole another sneaky look at the Greek billionaire who was lolling against a sofa on the other side of the small terminal, his exquisitely cut suit doing nothing to disguise the magnificence of his muscular body. Xan Constantinides. An unforgettable name for an unforgettable man. But would he remember her?
Tamsyn offered up a silent prayer. Please don’t let him remember her.
After all, it was months and months ago and only the briefest of encounters. She bit the inside of her lip. Oh, why had she decided to send out a message of sisterly solitude to the woman the tycoon had been in the process of dumping in the swish bar where she’d been working? At least until her employment had come to a swift but wholly predictable termination…
She’d noticed Xan Constantinides from the moment he’d walked into the twinkly cocktail bar. To be fair, everyone had noticed him—he was that kind of man. Charismatic and radiating power, he seemed oblivious to the stir of interest his appearance had created. Ellie, one of the other waitresses and Tamsyn’s best friend, had confided that he was a mega-rich property tycoon who had recently been voted Greece’s most eligible bachelor.
But Tamsyn hadn’t really been listening to the breathless account of his bank balance or his record of bedding beautiful women before callously disposing of them. His physical presence made his wealth seem almost insignificant and she surprised herself by staring at him for longer than was strictly professional, because she wasn’t usually the sort of cocktail waitress who ogled the better looking male customers.
And there had never been a customer quite as good looking as this one. She remembered blinking as she registered a physique which suggested he could easily go several rounds in the boxing ring and emerge looking as if he’d done nothing more strenuous than get out of bed. When you teamed a body like that with sinfully dark hair, dark-fringed eyes the colour of cobalt and a pair of lips which were both sensual and cruel—you ended up with a man who exuded a particular type of danger. And Tamsyn had always been very sensitive to danger. It was a quality which had hovered in the background during her troubled childhood like an invisible cosh—just waiting to bang you over the head if you weren’t careful. Which was why she avoided it like the plague.
She remembered feeling slightly wobbly on her high-heeled shoes as she’d walked over to where the Greek tycoon had been sitting with the most beautiful blonde Tamsyn had ever seen, when she heard the woman give an unmistakable sniff.
‘Please, Xan,’ she was saying softly, her voice trembling. ‘Don’t do this. You must know how much I love you.’
‘But I don’t do love. I told you that right from the start,’ he’d drawled unequivocally. ‘I explained what my terms were. I said I wouldn’t change my mind and I haven’t. Why do women refuse to accept what is staring them in the face?’
Tamsyn found interchange infuriating. Terms? He was talking as if he was discussing some kind of business deal, rather than a relationship—as if his lovely companion was an object rather than a person. All she could think was that a woman didn’t just come out and tell a man they loved them, not without a certain degree of encouragement. Her irritation had intensified while she’d waited for the barman to mix two Old-fashioned cocktails and when she’d returned she had noticed Xan Constantinides watching her. She wasn’t sure which had annoyed her more—the fact that he was regarding her with the lazy assessment of someone who’d just been shown a shiny car and was deciding whether or not he’d like to give it a spin—or the fact that her body had responded to that arrogant scrutiny in ways which she didn’t like.
