Six Greek Heroes. Cathy Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ right up until the week before his sister’s party. Hope had an honest and open nature and it would be wildly out of character for her to have engaged in long-term serious deception. He found it much easier to believe that she had simply succumbed to temptation that evening. He was also highly suspicious of the fact that the male involved was closely related to her best friend. After all, before he had even met Vanessa, Andreas had guessed that the woman was hostile to his relationship with Hope. Had Ben Campbell been encouraged to target Hope with his attentions? Had Campbell pretended to be a friend to win Hope’s trust and wear down her defences? In short, had Hope been set up to fall?

      ‘In here…’ Hope pushed open the door of her bedroom and hoped it wasn’t in too much of a mess. Why had Andreas come to see her? Even the most vague and far-fetched possibility that Andreas might want her back reduced her mental agility to zero. Her tummy filled with fluttering butterflies of nervous tension.

      Andreas studied his surroundings with eyes so keenly intent and precise that after ten seconds he could have accurately enumerated every visible item right down to the tiny corner of the chocolate wrapper protruding from a drawer. His tension dropped several degrees and his vigilance relaxed as he appreciated that there was nothing in the room that suggested even occasional male occupation. In fact the bed was clearly only occupied by one person. One person with a fondness for cuddly toys. He could not credit that any male would willingly share space with the shabby pink rabbit that had survived Hope’s childhood.

      As Hope stepped away from the door the disturbingly familiar scent of her herbal shampoo flared his nostrils. Her pale silky blonde hair shimmered across her shoulders like a fall of satin. His every physical sense suddenly on full alert, he studied her. Her fabulous hourglass curves looked more pronounced than ever but he assumed his memory was playing tricks on him. Of recent he had been surrounded by some very thin women, he reminded himself absently, while he fought the treacherous buzz of his powerful sexual arousal. Such comparisons could only make Hope seem more luscious in contour. Regardless, the bountiful swell of her generous breasts below her pink T-shirt was nothing short of spectacular. His even white teeth gritted.

      ‘Would you like to sit down?’ she asked nervously, bending down to scoop a pile of magazines off a chair. Her top rode up a few inches at the back to reveal a slender strip of pale creamy skin.

      ‘No…’ His drawl was thickened by his Greek accent and his hands clenched into defensive fists. He wanted to touch that smooth, tantalising stretch of naked flesh in view. In fact he wanted to do a whole hell of a lot more than just touch Hope. After weeks of enduring a worryingly uninterested libido, he was rampant. He wanted to drag her down on the bed, rip off her clothes and have sex with her. Hot and deep and fast, out of control…mind-blowing as it was only with her.

      Rigid with the force of the appetite he was containing and the temptation he was resisting with every aggressive fibre of his body, Andreas backed away until she was out of his natural reach. In an effort to control the biting heat of his unsated hunger, he focused on the magazines she had pushed onto the carpet. Evidently she was still obsessively reading interiors magazines. Publications stuffed with photos of period country dwellings groaning with oak beams and crammed with anachronistic kitchens and bathrooms. She was mad about houses. Her nest-building instincts would have terrified a weaker man. Andreas had contrived quite happily to ignore them. But now a taunting, infuriating voice was coming out of nowhere inside his head and asking him why he hadn’t given her that fantasy and bought her a country house. Had he given her the opportunity to wallow in chintz and walled gardens, he was willing to bet that she would still have been with him.

      ‘Coffee…?’ Hope mumbled, her mouth running dry at the high-wire tension in the atmosphere. She could not take her eyes from his extravagantly handsome features.

      A tinge of dark colour highlighting his striking high cheekbones, Andreas lowered thick black lashes over his brilliant eyes. ‘I won’t be here that long.’

      ‘Are you sure? I’d like you to stay,’ she heard herself say without any forethought or pride whatsoever. ‘A while…’ she added jerkily, hoping it made her sound a bit less desperate.

      His lashes lifted, revealing his sizzling golden gaze. A combination of sexual desire and fierce resentment held him fast. If he dragged her down on the bed, would she say no? She had never, ever said no to him. Like an executioner letting the guillotine blade fall, he clamped down on that dangerous train of thought.

      ‘I just want to know how you’re doing…’ Hope flinched, thinking of the blonde in that newspaper photo with all her bones on display. She breathed in hurriedly, afraid that he might already have noticed that her stomach was not as flat as it had been. Once comfort eating had kindly bestowed its largesse in less noticeable amounts on her hips and her breasts, but now visible surplus flesh was creeping onto her middle section as well.

      ‘I’ve only one reason for being here. I couldn’t get in touch any other way,’ Andreas asserted with chilling cool, his beautiful mouth compressed with impatience, his defiant libido willed into subjection. ‘What happened to your mobile phone?’

      ‘It broke,’ she confided.

      ‘The number here is ex-directory,’ he pointed out.

      ‘Why did you want to get in touch with me?’ Her nerves could no longer stand the suspense of waiting.

      ‘Your brother has left several messages for you on the phone at the apartment. I believe he’s visiting London next week. When he couldn’t raise you on your mobile phone, he got worried.’

      ‘Jonathan? Oh…’ The colour in Hope’s cheeks evaporated as severe disappointment claimed her. She felt very foolish and rather humiliated. Andreas had had the most pedestrian of reasons for coming to see her and his visit had no personal dimension whatsoever. But she could not have foreseen the likelihood of her brother suddenly trying to get in touch with her. As a rule she only heard from Jonathan with a card at Christmas and a catch-up phone call after New Year. If Jonathan were visiting London, he would be on a business trip, she thought dully.

      ‘Make sure that you call him. That line has now been disconnected.’

      Her brow indented. ‘But why?’

      ‘The apartment is for sale.’

      That news hit her like a slap in the face. It made everything so dreadfully final. The apartment had been her home for two years. For her, it was still a place full of happy memories. Only now was she forced to acknowledge that she had still cherished secret hopes of returning to live there. She tried and failed to find consolation in the evident fact that at least he wasn’t moving some other woman in.

      ‘Don’t you still need it?’ she prompted tightly.

      In silence, Andreas lifted and dropped a broad shoulder in continental dismissal of the topic.

      Her turquoise eyes lifted and she noticed the way his gaze was welded to her mouth. Her lips tingled, felt dry. As the tip of her tongue snaked out to provide moisture his golden eyes smouldered and he reached for her in a sudden movement that stripped the breath from her lungs with a startled gasp.

      ‘A-Andreas…?’ she stammered, feverishly conscious of the lean, strong hands clamped to her wrists and the scant few inches separating their bodies.

      ‘Don’t make yourself cheap trying to turn me on,’ Andreas delivered with derisive bite, setting her back from him in a mortifying gesture of rejection and releasing her from his hold.

      Hope reeled back in shock from that icy rebuff. Somehow, heaven knew how, the distance between СКАЧАТЬ