can’t be what Anatole is telling me to be. Urging me to be. It’s impossible—just impossible!
Impossible for so many reasons.
Impossible for just one overwhelming reason.
The same reason it’s always been impossible.
Pain constricted her throat as she stared across at him now, where he lay sleeping in her bed.
There can be no future between us now—none. Just as there could be no future for us then.
She felt the breath tight in her lungs and moved to turn away. But as she did so she heard him stir, saw his hand reaching across the bed, his face registering her absence. His eyes sprang open and he saw her standing there. Emotion speared in his face but it was she who spoke first.
‘You have to go! Right now! I can’t have Mrs Hughes realising you spent the night here.’
His expression changed. ‘But I did—and in your arms.’
He was defying her to deny it, his eyes holding hers. He sat up, reaching for her, catching her hand. Resting his hand on her flank, warm through the cool silk. Looking up at her.
‘It’s far too late for pretence,’ he said softly. ‘Didn’t last night prove that to you?’
He drew her to him.
‘Doesn’t this prove it to you?’
His mouth lowered to hers. His kiss was like velvet—the kiss of a man who had taken possession of the woman he desired. She felt honey flow through her, felt her limbs tremble with it.
His eyes poured into hers, rich and lambent. ‘It’s happened, Tia.’ His voice was as intimate, as hushed as if they were the only two people in the world. ‘It’s happened, and there’s no going back now.’
She tried to pull away. Tried to free herself.
‘There has to be!’ she cried. ‘I can’t do what you want, Anatole. I can’t—I can’t!’
I mustn’t! I daren’t! What you are offering me is a temptation beyond my endurance. But I must endure it—I must.
She had endured it before—she must do so again. Must find refuge somehow. Find the strength to keep refusing him. Even now, after she had burned in his arms, in his embrace.
Now more than ever. Now that I know how weak I am...how helpless to resist you. Now that I know how hopelessly vulnerable I am to you. Now that I know the danger that stands before me.
Raggedly, she pulled free of him. ‘I won’t marry you, Anatole,’ she said doggedly, each word tugged from her. ‘I will not. Whatever you say to me—I will not.’
Who was she speaking to? Him or herself? She knew the answer. And she knew what that answer told her—knew the danger it proved her to be in.
Frustration flared in his eyes. ‘Why? I don’t understand? Why, Tia? How can you possibly deny what there is between us?’
She would not reply—could not. All she could do, with a desperate expression on her face, was beg him yet again to go. For an instant longer Anatole just stood there, then abruptly he stood up, seized up his discarded clothes, and disappeared into the en suite bathroom.
Rapidly, Christine got dressed too—pulling on a pair of jeans and a lightweight sweater, roughly brushing out the tangled hair that waved so wantonly around her shoulders, echoing her bee-stung lips in its sensuality...
With a smothered cry she whirled around to see Anatole emerge, wearing his clothes from the night before, but only the shirt and trousers. He looked...she gulped...he looked incredibly, devastatingly sexy. There was no other word for it—no other word to describe the slightly raffish look about him, compounded by the lock of raven hair falling across his forehead, the cuffs of his shirt pushed back casually, the dark shadow along his jawline.
She could not take her eyes from him—could feel her pulse quicken, the blood surging in her, colour flushing across her face, lips parting...
He saw her reaction and smiled. A slow, sensual smile, full of confidence.
‘You see?’
It was all he said. All he needed to say. He walked towards her. Strolled.
She backed away, panic suddenly replacing her betraying reaction to his raw sexuality. ‘No—Anatole, no! I won’t let you do this to me—I won’t!’
She held her hands up as if to ward him off. He halted, his expression changing. When he spoke there was frustration in his voice, and challenge, in equal measure.
‘Tia, you cannot ignore what has happened.’
‘I am not Tia! I am not her any more—and I will never be her again!’
The cry of her own voice, its vehemence, shocked her. It seemed to shock Anatole as well. His eyes narrowed, losing that blatantly sexy half-lidded look with which he’d stared at her before. For a moment he did not speak. Just looked at her pale face, the cheekbones etched so starkly. Saw the tremble in her upheld hands.
‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re not Tia. I’ve accepted that. I’ve accepted that you are Christine Kyrgiakis—Mrs Vasilis Kyrgiakis.’
The use of the description made her start. Made her hear the rest of what he said.
‘The widow of my uncle—the mother of his son—the mother of my cousin.’ He paused again, as if assessing her, the way she was reacting. ‘I have made my case, Christine—’ deliberately he used the name of the woman she was now, the woman she would always be going forward ‘—and I have given you the reasons why we should marry. And I believe I have done it in more than words.’
For a second that look was back in his eye—that heavy, half-lidded look that made her tremble as nothing that he could say could make her tremble, making her limbs turn boneless, her heart catch in mid-beat. Then he held up a hand, as if she had tried to interrupt him.
‘But for now I’ll leave it be. I understand, truly, that you must have time to get used to it. Time to come to terms with it. To see it as being as inevitable as I see it to be.’ He took a breath, his tone changing. ‘But for now the subject is closed. I accept that.’
He turned away, fetching his jacket, so carelessly thrown on a chair last night, and shrugging it on, tugging his cuffs clear and fastening them, then looking across at Christine again.
‘I’ll go now—to preserve the appearances that are, I know, so important to you right now.’ There was no bite in his words, only acknowledgement. ‘But I’ll be back later. We have Nicky to collect—and, no, please don’t tell me not to come with you. He’ll be disappointed if I don’t.’
She nodded in dumb acquiescence. It seemed easier than contesting his assertion. All she wanted—desperately—was for him to be out of here, finally to be able to collapse in a state of mental and emotional exhaustion, her body aching and spent.
She sheared her mind away—no, don’t think, not now. Not ever...
*
