‘Why, of all the—’
But he cut her off with an arrogant shake of his black head. ‘Listen to me, Jade,’ he said quietly. ’You return to England shortly, yes?’
‘In three days,’ something compelled her to tell him.
‘So.’ The hand was still holding her face with gentle strength. ‘We can either play foolish little games with each other. Or…’
‘Or?’
His eyes narrowed; his expression was rueful— as though he was reluctant to complete the sentence.
‘Or we can follow our hearts,’ he said simply.
If anyone else had said it, she would have told them that they were being ridiculously corny, that no one said things like that and meant them, and yet it was the most romantic thing she’d ever en- countered, and Jade felt a warm glow suffuse every pore of her body.
She stared up at him, a lost cause for assertive womanhood. ‘OK,’ she said, giving him a faltering smile as she looked into his eyes. ‘I’ll see you at seven.’
‘Until seven,’ he said, his hand falling from her face as he strode swiftly from the courtyard.
CHAPTER TWO
IN THE five hours until Constantine collected her, Jade experienced just about every mood-swing in the book. What the hell was she playing at? He could be anyone—anyone at all!
What did she know about him?
Absolutely nothing.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. She knew his name and his nationality. Knew instinctively that he had a million times more experience than she had. And she also knew that he was the most devastating man she’d ever set eyes on.
But what was he thinking about her? Was he down in the village even now, boasting to his friends that the English girl had agreed with insulting speed to go out with a man she scarcely knew? Did men respect women who capitulated quite so easily?
Jade sighed. Suddenly, it became very important that he did respect her. I don’t want him thinking I’m like this with everyone, she thought gloomily. But if she tried to tell him that—then wouldn’t it bolster his already appallingly healthy ego?
She sighed again.
She didn’t really have any option but to go. She didn’t know where he lived, so there was no way she could duck out now. She supposed that she could always tell him that she’d changed her mind when he arrived at seven to collect her.
And yet…
Somehow she didn’t see that as a realistic scenario at all. For a start, she wanted to see him, so her words would have the hollow ring of insincerity. And secondly, she couldn’t really see him letting her get away with fobbing him off. She imagined him taking her ruthlessly into his arms, black eyes glimmering like a pirate, to kiss away every single objection she could think of.
Jade shivered as she walked into her bedroom. She would go, but her choice of garment would be crucial. Something demure, something which would definitely not give him the wrong idea…
The only trouble was that the clothes chosen for holidays in baking hot destinations tended to be all the things which weren’t demure. Light, filmy fab- rics. Lots of bare flesh on show. Oh, heck. Jade surveyed the six or so dresses she’d brought with her. She tried them all on, and each one in a differ- ent way made her achingly aware of her own body, unless… she stared at her naked reflec- tion… unless Constantine had done that. Because never before had she been so conscious of the soft swell of her breasts above the slender line of her waist. Breasts which tightened just at the very thought of him. She remembered his comment about pale, pale skin when compared to his, and once again, with a lucidity which was shocking, given her inexperience, Jade closed her eyes and pictured her breasts laid bare. With a dark head bending to take each one in turn, to suckle with delectable sweetness as the dark waves of his hair teased and tickled her flesh…
Jade stared in the spotted mirror in horror, to see her nipples rucking into tight twin peaks, and she drew her hands over them to cover the shock- ingly sensual image with her palms, but even that didn’t help, because she found herself wanting them to be his hands touching her, and she turned away from the mirror, sick with disgust.
But, after she had finally chosen an outfit, she managed to calm down. If she hadn’t trusted him, then she’d never have accepted a date with him. And though he might look all strong and compel- ling charm, she also knew that the Greeks were courteous and charming to visitors. There would never need to be attentions forced… Frankly, she doubted whether he’d had to use an ounce of per- suasion in his life. Which left it up to her to modify the pace.
He was bang on time.
Jade was sitting in the courtyard, reading, when his shadow fell over the pages of her book, and she looked up, unable to keep the smile off her face as she registered his narrow-eyed appreciation of her appearance.
‘Hi,’ she said softly.
‘Hello,’ he echoed. His voice was equally soft, and there was another brief flash of appraisal in his eyes as his gaze swept over her.
She wore a white sleeveless silk T-shirt, together with an ankle-length skirt in layers of white, swirling voile. The starkness of the colour empha- sised the pale golden glow of her skin. At her waist was a soft leather belt of dark green, with an intricately scrolled silver clasp. On her feet were strappy leather sandals in the same green. She had left her hair loose, to fall down her back in a pale waterfall, and at her ears and throat and wrist she wore heavy and intricate silver jewellery.
‘You look wonderful,’ he said quietly.’
She took in the snowy white of his shirt, tucked into dark, tapered trousers. His hair was still damp from the shower, falling into tendrils around his beautifully shaped head. ‘So do you,’ she said honestly.
He looked slightly bemused for a moment, and then he laughed, a deep and rich and glorious sound. ‘Do you know,’ he mused, ‘that’s the first time a woman’s ever said that to me?’
Her cheeks hot, she stared down at her pink- painted toenails, wondering what in the world had made her come out with something like that. His women usually played it cool, obviously, she thought, and a spear of jealousy shot through her. ’I don’t know what came into me—I don’t usually say things like that either,’ she said, her tone more defensive than she’d intended.
But his voice was warm, caressing, forcing her to meet his eyes. ‘Don’t apologise. That’s the magic of the island,’ he said softly. ‘Working her spell on young lovers.’
Oh, lord. He had got the wrong idea. Well, it was about time she put him on the right track. Jade took a deep breath. ‘I think you’re assuming rather a lot, Constantine,’ she said stiffly. ‘I’ve agreed to have dinner with you—that’s all, and I have absol- utely no intention of becoming your lover. And if that’s what you had in mind for the end of the evening, then perhaps you’d better leave right now.’
His eyes darkened, glistened like two fragments of hell’s coal. She saw a muscle begin to work with ominous regularity in the side of the olive cheek, saw his mouth tighten into a hard slash, and then shedid know the meaning of fear, saw suddenly the face of a ruthless man behind the shatteringly handsome mask. All power and strength.
‘Is that what you think?’ he gritted in a low, furious voice. ‘That I am one of these men who expects sex as a form of payment for buying a woman dinner?’
He looked more than angry, she thought, he looked furious, as if she’d deeply offended his code of honour.
‘Of course I don’t!’ she said hurriedly. ‘It’s just—’
‘Just?’
She lifted her shoulders in bewilderment. ‘I didn’t mean to insult you. I don’t know what I meant. When you made that remark about lovers…I didn’t want you to think…’
‘I didn’t,’ he said simply. ‘And as for your con- fusion—do you think I don’t feel it too? Do you think this happens to me every day of the week?’
‘What?’
But he shook his head. ‘Enough. All this talk on an empty stomach. Come. Let’s go and eat.’
She fell into step beside him, giving him her hand when he held his out, walking down the dusty path towards the village, safe within the warmth of his grasp. Sinking into the distance, the giant dinnerplate of a sun flooded them with a rich, crimson light and it felt like being at the centre of some glowing and infernal jewel.
They walked into the village, past the restaurant where she’d seen him yesterday.
He saw the inquisitive rise of her eyebrows. ‘There is little enough privacy in the village,’ he explained. ‘But even less there.’
‘Oh? And why’s that?’
He smiled down at her. ‘My family owns it.’
So—he was in the restaurant business with his family. And he didn’t want her to meet them! Some little English girl he was ashamed to be seen with. She began to pull her hand away, but he wouldn’t let her, instead stopped still on the dusty track and turned her to face him.
‘What’s wrong?’
Peculiarly, it was too important to her to lie about. ‘Of course, if you don’t want me to meet your family—’
‘Agape mou,’ he laughed softly, ‘there is a way that a man can behave with a woman which in Greece would have his family drawing up a wedding list.’
Her heart sounded very loud in her ears. ‘And what way’s that?’
‘Never taking his eyes off her. Not wanting to eat. Not wanting to do anything other than kiss her and make love to her. I’ve seen it happen to other men before; but never to me. The way I intend to behave with you tonight, Jade,’ he finished with quiet emphasis. ‘And I would prefer not to have an audience.’
The darkness was falling and it camouflaged her soft rise in colour, the sharp little intake of breath. It had sounded as if… As if what? As if he was falling in love with her? As she was with him? Oh, stop it, stop it, she thought shakily. ‘But surely,’ she questioned, ‘all the restaurants will be crowded tonight—it’s the height of the season.’
‘Wait and see,’ he promised.
In a dream she walked with him to the outside of the village, to a white building which looked out over the blue and green fragrant hills, the stars be- ginning to glimmer in the indigo velvet of the sky.
A waiter led them to a terrace, where rose- coloured candles burned incandescently on each table against the ever-darkening night. This res- taurant was obviously much more upmarket than the others in the village, thought Jade as Constantine held her chair out for her, because crisp white tablecloths matched the beautifully pleated damask napkins.
There was wine already chilling in the ice-bucket, and Jade accepted a glass, together with the leather- bound menu, her eyes wide with confusion.
‘Where is everyone?’ she whispered. ‘Why are we the only customers?’
He smiled, his teeth showing very white in the olive darkness of his face. ‘Because, as I told you, I wanted privacy.’
‘But how—?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘The proprietor owes me a favour,’ he said implacably, and Jade once again got an overwhelming feeling of a toughness ema- nating from the man who sat opposite her.
She sipped at her drink nervously. ‘You mean- that we’ve got the whole restaurant to ourselves? As a favour to you?’
He gave a little nod. ‘I do.
‘It must have been a very big favour.’ In Jade’s world, people just didn’t do things like that. But this was, after all, Greece. Many parts of it a still very fundamental world, with values light-years away from the superficial mores of life in the highly developed west, or even from life in its capital, Athens. Without knowing why, goosebumps chilled her arms, even though the night air was warm and soft on her skin.
‘Some day I’ll tell you,’ he smiled, and handed her one of the menus.
‘Some day’…?
Did his words imply that they had some sort of future together?
Jade tried very hard to concentrate on the choice of food—grilled fish and meat mainly—and to stop reading things into what he was saying.
Constantine spoke in rapid Greek to the waiter, of which she understood not one word—bar his name, Kris, and moments later they were brought a dish containing the tiny hors-d’oeuvres known as mezes.
‘So—’ He popped a green olive into his mouth
and chewed it. ‘Tell me what such a beautiful woman is doing holidaying on her own?’
Jade looked at him suspiciously, scared that he was making fun of her. ‘Very funny,’ she said.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘What?’
‘I’m not beautiful,’ she told him, her green eyes glittering with a challenge that dared him to lie to her.
He drew his brows together. ‘On the contrary. I’m being deadly serious. You are tall enough to model and you are extremely slender, almost too slender—I can see that I may need to feed you up. But truly, you are beautiful,’ he stated. ‘Quite as- tonishingly so.’
Beautiful? Her? Jade was sensible enough to know her good points and her bad points, but no one had ever called her beautiful before, and in common with others who had had a fragmented childhood her body image was poor. True, she was tall, but she’d always considered herself a bit of a beanpole, and yes, she found it almost impossible to put on weight—which was beneficial in a society so obsessed by thinness. But her mouth was much too wide for conventional beauty, and her narrow slanting eyes did not have the classic wide-eyed appeal which men were said to find attractive. Plus, in England—given the nature of the sexist men she worked with—she tended to sublimate her feminin- ity with her hair scraped back into a sensible plait, and clothes which were designed to be functional but nothing more than that. She supposed that on this holiday she had allowed herself to relax the normal severity with which she dressed. But beautiful? Did he say that to all the girls? she wondered.
However, even this sobering thought couldn’t abate her delight, and Jade found herself smiling at Constantine like an idiot. This was ridiculous- one compliment and she was like putty in his hands!
‘So,’ he continued. ‘Tell me why you’re here on your own?’
‘I needed a break,’ she said honestly.
‘A break from what?’
Jade twirled the stem of her glass round and round between her fingers, watching the conden- sation trickle slowly down the side.
Tricky. She wondered just how much to tell him.
True, Constantine was a Greek, whose family owned a tiny taverna on a small Greek island—he might not even have heard of the Daily View. But what if he had?
After she’d won the Young Journalist compe- tition launched by the Daily View, they had offered her a job as reporter—a job she had accepted with eager gratitude, given the cut-throat world of jour- nalism. Then she’d been proud to tell people that she worked on Britain’s best-selling tabloid news- paper. But that was before she’d discovered what most people actually thought of the Daily View.
They despised it.
Time and time again, when she had explained who she worked for, she had seen an expression of scorn come into the faces of people who viewed tabloid writers as total drunks with no morals. So, in the end, she had stopped telling them. It made for an easier life.
She stared into Constantine’s dark eyes and made her decision. This was one evening out of her lifetime, she reasoned; an evening scented with magic which would soon become nothing more than a distant memory. This was total fantasy, so why taint it with the bitter taste of reality?
She saw that he was waiting for her answer and gave a little shrug. ‘I just wanted a break,’ she said carefully.
‘A break from something in particular?’ he probed. ‘A man perhaps?’
Now he really had got the wrong end of the stick! ’Heavens, no!’ she exclaimed fervently, unaware of the small smile he gave to this. ‘Nothing like that! I meant a break from city life.’
He sipped at his drink and surveyed her curi- ously. ‘You’re very young?’
‘I’m twenty,’ she answered, and then, more ten- tatively, because it su
ddenly seemed terribly im- portant, ‘And you?’
‘Thirty.’ There was a glimmer of a smile. Had he guessed what she’d been thinking? ‘That is a good gap, yes? Ten years?’ He stared across the table at her moonwashed hair, raising his glass to his lips. ’So tell me—what do you think of my island?’
‘You don’t actually happen to own it, do you?’ she joked.
‘You must forgive me yet another possessive Greek statement,’ he said implacably.
‘I love your island,’ she said simply. ‘I’ve never relaxed so much in my life. I’ve spent my whole time being thoroughly lazy, swimming every day’
‘I know.’
She looked into his eyes. ‘How can you know?’
‘Because I’ve watched you. Looking like a mermaid with that yellow hair, those mysterious green eyes, that secretive smile.’
‘You were—watching me?’ she asked, appalled at the way her heart galloped into action.
He nodded. ‘I was your guardian angel. Like today. Didn’t you know?’
Jade shook her head. ‘No.’ Thank heavens she hadn’t gone topless!
‘And do you mind?’
‘I don’t know really. Isn’t it a loss of the privacy you were so keen to preserve this evening?’
He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps. But I couldn’t stay away,’ he said simply, as though this excused everything, then popped another olive into his mouth and smiled. ‘Let’s order.’
Jade was relieved to have something relatively ordinary to do to keep her attention from the lunatic thoughts which were buzzing around her head. For Constantine seemed to possess some powerful quality she’d never encountered in a man before. Something which touched and matched some deep, dark longing inside her, offering her a glimpse of a passionate side to her nature she hadn’t dreamed existed.
And she already suspected—no, she knew, that this—relationship, if you could call it that, threat- ened to get out of control very quickly. And she knew what out of control meant. Shocking though it was, she wanted this arrogant and handsome man she’d only just met to make love to her. She wanted to taste the pleasures that she instinctively knew that only he could offer her. But no one in their right mind would allow such a wish to become reality. After all, what possible future could a London- based journalist have with a restaurant proprietor who lived on a distant Greek island?
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