The Best Man's Guarded Heart. Katrina Cudmore
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a mental shake. She had enough on her plate with the wedding flowers. Getting distracted by this Greek god standing in front of her was definitely not a good idea.
He gestured to her chair. ‘Please—take a seat. I think we should discuss your stay on Kasas.’
Puzzled, she sat back down and wished once again that she had worn a longer dress as her hem rode up the length of her legs. When she glanced up, Andreas was sitting opposite her, his eyes trained on her bare legs. When their eyes met she saw a hint of appreciation. But then he inhaled a deep breath and moved forward to lean his elbows on his thighs, the wool of his trousers stretching over hard muscle.
‘I had intended taking you to Kasas tonight—’
She could not help but interrupt as relief flooded her veins. ‘That would be fantastic. The flowers and all the other supplies are being delivered early tomorrow morning, and I need to be there to—’
His hand slashed down through the air to halt her interruption with his own. ‘Yes, but considering that you’ve never been to Greece before why don’t I arrange for the wedding planner to organise the flowers? You can spend the next few days travelling. Kasas is isolated. It would be much more enjoyable for you to explore Greece instead. As I’m returning to the island for the rest of the week, you are welcome to use my apartment and the services of my chauffeur here in Athens.’
Her mouth dropped open. Was he being serious?
‘But I’m the florist for the wedding.’ Through her confusion a horrible thought occurred. ‘Christos did tell you that I would be arriving early to create all the floral arrangements, didn’t he? This has been planned for weeks.’
‘He may have mentioned it…amongst all the chaos of the other wedding plans. I hadn’t appreciated that you would be staying for so long.’
Heat flared even more brightly on her cheeks. He clearly wasn’t keen on her staying on the island. And he obviously had no idea or appreciation for the work and skill involved in flower design.
Memories of her father’s sneering comments about her making a living by ‘playing with flowers’ had her saying in the politest voice she could muster, ‘I appreciate your offer, but tomorrow morning I have over a thousand flowers being delivered to the island. It’s essential that I’m there to coordinate their arrival. I take my job very seriously, Mr Petrakis. That’s why I’ve spent the past month planning the designs, sourcing the flowers and organising support florists from nearby islands. I’m not going to walk away from my commitments now to go on holiday.’
His jaw tightened and he fixed her with an intense stare. ‘My island is secluded. There is only my villa. No shops or bars to entertain you.’
She could not help but give a light laugh. ‘I’m not here for shopping or the nightlife.’
‘I’m concerned that you will be bored in the evenings, when the wedding planner and her team have left the island. Apart from my married housekeeper and a gardener, who live in a separate villa, there will be no other people around.’
His eyes, filled with a masculine heat, held hers and a surge of tense energy passed between them.
He came a little closer and in a low growl added, ‘It will only be you and me.’
For a crazy moment something primal, something beyond comprehension, crackled in the air between them. Heat flared in every cell of her body. Her breath caught as a wave of longing…of desire…rippled through her.
His eyes grew darker as he held her stare, and a slash of heat appeared on his cheeks.
He looked away abruptly, his jaw tightening as he cleared his throat. ‘I’ll be working late each evening, so I won’t be available to entertain you.’
Grace blinked. And blinked again. She felt dizzy with the desire to move towards him, to inhabit his space, to inhale his scent, to feel the heat of his body. What was happening to her?
For the past month she had been so excited about this trip—at the prospect of finally establishing her name as a florist, of finding her freedom. And now her bubble of happiness had truly burst.
Should she take up his offer? The prospect of spending nights alone with him in the seclusion of his island with virtually no one else around was daunting. A strange tug of war of deep attraction and irritation was raging between them…and she wanted to run away from it. And, after years of dealing with her father’s unforgiving attitude, did she honestly want to spend time with a man who would be happier if she wasn’t there?
But this wedding was about celebrating Sofia and Christos’s love. She wasn’t going to let Andreas Petrakis stand in the way of her making sure they had the perfect flowers to represent that love and commitment. There was no way he was stopping her from creating Sofia’s bouquet—which she intended to do by weaving all her love for her best friend into the design. And she had to remember the importance of this wedding in establishing her career.
So she gave him a brief smile and tried to inject a brusque, no-argument tone to her voice. ‘Thank you, but I’m perfectly fine with my own company. I’m here to ensure that the flowers are spectacular on the wedding day, so I’ll be extremely busy and certainly won’t get in your way. And please don’t worry about me missing out. I plan on touring Greece once the wedding is over.’
With that she stood, lifted her weekend bag up and grabbed her heavy pull-along suitcase.
‘Now, if it’s okay with you, I would like to leave.’
Grace was standing at the edge of the clifftop path that led from the helipad down to Andreas’s villa, her weekend bag at her feet. As he neared her the helicopter lifted off to return to Athens, and her hands rushed down to capture the billowing material of her dress as it rose up to expose even more inches of her legs—legs that he had spent the past hour trying not to stare at.
They weren’t the longest legs he had ever seen, but there was something about those toned but full thighs and cute dimpled knees that had him fantasising about her in incredibly inappropriate ways. Even as he had stared out into the night sky as they had been flown here images of his fingers trailing along the smooth creamy skin of her thighs had plagued him.
They had barely spoken on the journey, and her quietness surprised him. At the airport she had seemed such an overexcited chatterbox. Had his welcome been too brusque? After all, it wasn’t her fault that earlier that night at a charity gala ball in the Hotel Grande Bretagne he had been only too aware of the other guests’ deliberate avoidance of discussing Christos’s upcoming wedding with him. And then Christos had rung to explain that the chief bridesmaid had missed her flight. Asked would he mind rescuing her.
Why on earth had he agreed to host the wedding in the first place? It was getting more complicated by the day…and bringing back humiliating memories he had spent the past two years burying.
Yes, he had vaguely agreed to Grace Chapman’s early arrival, but he hadn’t expected her to be so elated about the wedding or so distractingly beautiful. Her excitement had brought home just how much he hated the prospect of this wedding. And, unbelievably, this was her first time abroad on her own. He didn’t have time to babysit her—not with the serious issues complicating the construction of his new resort on the Cayman Islands. He urgently needed to resolve them to stop further haemorrhaging of the project’s finances. Having her on the island was a headache he didn’t need right now.
Unfortunately she had other ideas.
‘This view is absolutely stunning.’
She didn’t turn to him when she spoke, but continued to gaze towards the lights of Naxos in the distance. The sky was a never-ending celestial ocean of stars. Beneath them, far below the cliff-face, the Aegean Sea crashed onto the shore.
She gave a light shiver and rubbed her hands against her bare arms. A silver bracelet jangled at her wrist. He instinctively