Sleeping With A Stranger. Anne Mather
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again. ‘Will you stay for lunch?’
‘Oh, I don’t—’ Milos was beginning when Helen herself appeared from around the side of the villa, and Sam rose eagerly to his feet.
‘Well, here she is,’ he exclaimed, reverting at once to English. He went to meet his daughter with evident pleasure. ‘We thought you weren’t up yet.’
‘Did you?’
Helen had a smile for her father, but then her eyes moved beyond him to where Milos and Maya were standing together. Her lips tightened, as if she’d attributed that misapprehension jointly to both of them, and Milos felt his own instinctive rejection of her assumption.
Struggling to remember why he was here, he managed a polite, ‘ Kalimera ,’ separating himself from his cousin almost involuntarily. ‘How are you?’
Helen took a visible breath. ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she said, the slim hand she used to check the upswept ponytail at the back of her head revealing a nervousness she was trying hard not to show.
But Milos noticed. Noticed, too, that in a sleeveless top and navy shorts she looked younger, less on edge. The sun had already touched her skin with a rosy glow, and, although he suspected the hectic colour in her cheeks owed more to her mood than the climate, it suited her.
‘ Kala ,’ he said now. ‘Good.’
‘Milos wondered how you were settling in.’
Once again Sam chose to move the conversation on, and Milos saw the way she responded to this news. It was hardly flattering.
‘Really?’ she said, as if she didn’t believe him, and Maya clicked her tongue.
‘Greek men are sometimes too considerate for their own good,’ she remarked pointedly, and Helen gave her stepmother a studied look.
‘Do you think so?’ she remarked casually, and Milos realised she’d already got Maya’s measure.
‘I think so?’ said Maya shortly, and although Milos had sympathised with Helen’s attitude her words caught him on the raw. Dammit, they’d been lovers. She was acting as if they were total strangers.
‘Have you been for a walk?’ asked Sam, not allowing the hostility between the two women to deter him, and Helen turned back to her father with another warm smile.
‘I was just in the garden,’ she said. ‘There are so many exotic flowers here and Melissa was showing me the fountain.’
‘Melissa’s with you?’ Sam looked back the way she’d come. ‘Where is she?’
‘Poking her nose where it is not wanted, I expect,’ murmured Maya, barely audibly, but Helen’s ears were sharp.
‘I think we’re all guilty of that at times, don’t you?’ she countered, before turning back to her father. ‘She’ll be along presently. She’s discovered a litter of kittens behind a water barrel and she’s absolutely entranced.’
‘Ugh!’ Maya shuddered. ‘Well, I hope she does not attempt to bring any of them into the villa.’
‘She won’t,’ said Sam impatiently, but he looked to his daughter for confirmation.
‘I hope not,’ she agreed, but Milos saw the way her lips twitched in sudden amusement at the thought.
Her lower lip was fuller than her upper one, and Milos knew an almost feral urge to brush his thumb across its plump contours. Relaxed, as it was now, her mouth was incredibly soft and sexy, and with amazement he found how easy it was to recall how sensuous it had felt beneath his…
Skata!
‘I think perhaps I ought to be going,’ he said abruptly, and both Sam and Maya showed their surprise.
‘But you haven’t had coffee,’ protested Sam at once, walking to the villa door and summoning the maidservant. ‘Coffee for my guests, Sofia,’ he ordered when she appeared, and Milos was obliged to accept that he couldn’t walk out now.
‘Look, I have to go back to the mill for a while,’ his host continued, ‘but Helen will look after you, won’t you, my dear?’ And, without giving her a chance to reply, ‘Come along, Maya. I have something I want to discuss with you.’
In a matter of minutes, they were alone, but Helen made no attempt to sit down. A pregnant silence, broken only by the clicking of the cicadas, enveloped them until Sofia appeared again with the requested refreshments.
She set the tray on the table and then departed again and Milos decided he had been ignored long enough.
‘Do you want coffee?’ he asked, and Helen, who had been standing some distance away from him, staring at the view, gave him a careless glance over her shoulder.
‘No, thanks.’
Milos’s jaw tightened, but he was determined not to give her any reason to walk out on him. ‘As you wish,’ he said, strolling across the paved terrace towards her. ‘It will give us more time to get to know one another again.’
Helen’s expression was not encouraging. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you just get in your very expensive car and go away? I won’t tell my father if you don’t.’
Milos suppressed the angry response that rose to his lips. ‘Why would I do that?’ he inquired instead. ‘Your father would like us to be friends.’
Helen snorted. ‘My father doesn’t know you as I do.’
‘I’ll give you that.’ Milos refused to be provoked. ‘I’m not in the habit of sleeping with members of my own sex.’
‘You surprise me.’ She was deliberately insolent. ‘From what I’ve read, men like you are more than willing to try every—ouch!’
She didn’t get the chance to finish what she was saying. She had just stepped beyond the point of no return and Milos’s hand shot out and gripped the soft flesh of her arm just above her elbow. He jerked her towards him with little care for her sensibilities, enjoying the brief sense of power it gave him.
‘What is it with you?’ he demanded, anger thickening his voice. ‘We both know that what happened between us all those years ago wasn’t exactly unexpected. And what was it, after all?’ he added as a disturbing drift of her flowery fragrance invaded his nostrils, briefly making him forget what he’d been going to say. ‘We had sex. Pretty good sex, as I recall, but so what? It’s what men and women do when they’re attracted to one another.’
‘Women from your background,’ she retorted, not prepared to give in even though he was sure he must be hurting her. He was hurting himself, for God’s sake, but in an entirely different way. ‘I’m not like you.’
‘Oh, but you are,’ he countered harshly. ‘Whatever that—youth you married was like, when we were together you didn’t care who I was.’
‘That was because I didn’t know who you were,’ she exclaimed. ‘And don’t—don’t speak about Richard. He—he was a decent man.’
‘That’s not what your daughter says,’ Milos taunted recklessly. ‘As far as I can gather, he definitely had faults of his own. Why did you marry him, Helen? Did you really love him? Or was it just to stop your mother from finding out what a promiscuous creature you’d turned out to be?’
‘You bastard!’
She wanted to strike him then. For a heart-stopping moment, she stared at him, and although the hostility between them was palpable there were other, less-identifiable emotions swirling in the violet depths of her eyes. She tried to jerk back, but she didn’t make it, and the raging heat of her body against his sent the blood rushing to his groin.
‘Did you really believe we could be indifferent to each other?’ he asked thickly, aware of a violent desire to kiss her, to pull the quivering curve of her thighs even closer