but right now, standing here rubbing shampoo into his hair, thoughts of any man being intimate with his wife was threatening to eat him alive.
By the time Louisa stepped back into the hall, the black leather bag had disappeared and the door was firmly shut. Fingering the ends of her wet hair, she hovered for a moment. She wanted to get her hair-dryer, but if Andreas was still there she had no wish to walk in on yet another round of arguments.
In the end she took herself down the steps and into the kitchen. No matter how much liquid Andreas had been pouring into her throughout the afternoon she was still thirsty—and hungry too. Putting the kettle to boil so she could make herself some fresh coffee, she raided the fridge and came out with enough food to make herself a sandwich. By the time she’d done that the coffee was ready, pouring herself a cupful, she even began to relax a little as she took the cup and her sandwich over to the table and was about to sit down when her attention was drawn to the plate-glass window standing invitingly open to the soft golden blush of the late afternoon.
It was just too irresistible. Taking her prepared snack with her she walked outside so she could take a proper look at the view. The house was situated in its own small cove, with the sinking sun now hanging above a glass-smooth ocean. Picking her way carefully over what was still mostly a building site, she made her way to the edge of the shingle beach then paused to glance around.
She did not recognise the spot, though she couldn’t understand why she didn’t when, on her first trip to the island, Andreas had made it his business to take her to every secluded beach there was, even those that could only be reached by the sea. Glancing back at the house, she saw that it nestled gently into a thicket of tall pine trees. It was much bigger when viewed from this position, she realised, its modern frontage a series of plate-glass windows set at different angles to gain the most from the ocean view. One of which must belong to the bedroom she’d been sleeping in, though she’d barely noticed it had a window, she’d been feeling so ill.
Turning around again, she spotted a low, flat projection of rock sticking out of the ground and went to sit down on it to sip at her coffee and eat her sandwich.
The cicadas were busy, the air filled with the scent of olives and pine and the sea. Tucked into a corner of the beach beneath a tree was the bright red jet-ski Jamie had mentioned and—
‘So what do you think?’
The sound of his deep voice from behind her stiffened her shoulders out of their nicely relaxed droop. ‘Am I supposed to have an opinion?'
He had not built this for them after all—which then fed her the question, who had he built it for? Not liking where that thought was taking her, she took a sip of her drink.
‘If you are genuinely not interested,’ he drawled easily, ‘then by all means continue to be a grouch.'
Then he caught her thoroughly unawares when he came to sit down on the rock behind her, spreading his long legs either side of hers. Warm, tanned, hair-roughened thighs appeared in her vision. For a wildly staggered heartbeat she thought he’d come out here wearing nothing until she caught sight of the edges of a pair of cargo shorts and the short sleeves of a pale blue T-shirt moulding his muscled upper arms as he reached round her to place an ice bucket by her feet, containing an opened bottle of champagne.
The clean, tangy scent of him blocked out the scent of olive and pine and she pulled in a deep breath and arched her spine in an effort to place a distance between the two of them.
‘If the house was one of our new cruise ships we would be breaking the champagne bottle on her hull,’ he said lightly. ‘Since it is a house and not a ship, I thought we would drink the champagne instead.'
Next thing he’d looped his hands beneath her arms and produced two champagne flutes.
‘Get rid of the plate and the coffee cup and take these from me,’ he instructed.
One part of her wanted to get up and walk away from him but another part was still stinging from being called a grouch.
‘This is so romantic.’ She restricted herself to a touch of acid as she gave in and took the glasses.
He ignored her and said, ‘Hold them upright if you don’t want champagne on your skirt.'
Tilting the flutes into an upright position, Louisa watched as he poured champagne until it fizzed and frothed. ‘I don’t think I should be drinking this on an empty stomach.’ She’d barely touched her sandwich.
‘A few sips won’t make you fall flat on your face.’
You can, though, she thought bleakly.
Taking one of the glasses from her, he chinked it against the other one. ‘To us and our new home,’ he said and lifted the glass to his mouth and drank.
Louisa didn’t drink—not to an us that just was not going to happen or the our new home bit. ‘How is it that I don’t remember this spot?’ She diverted the subject.
‘The land has belonged to me since my grandmother died,’ he informed her. ‘But the trees used to come to the edge of the shingle until last winter when a storm brought a lot of them down.'
‘Making the perfect clearing on which to build a house. Lucky you.'
‘Am I not?’ was the very dry reply which came back. ‘I suppose you are now thinking that I called up the storm so that I could clear the land.'
‘I wouldn’t put it past you,’ she said, remembering the law prohibiting building on Aristos unless it was to replace old with new.
‘There used to be an old shed where the house stands but—'
‘It blew down in the storm too.’
‘You have become a terrible cynic, Louisa,’ he chided. ‘And here I am, mistakenly thinking that you would find this particular spot so romantic …'
It hit her then, just where it was they were sitting. A stinging sensation shot down the length of her spine and snatched at her breath. ‘It isn’t …’ she whispered.
‘We anchored offshore and swam in,’ he confirmed. ‘I found an old blanket in the hut and we stretched out on the beach in the sun to … dry out.'
Louisa saw it all in vivid Technicolor. Her, lying there in her little pink bikini. Andreas, in his creamy shorts that had such a sexy habit of riding too low on his hips. He’d been teasing her about something—she couldn’t remember what—then the teasing had stopped abruptly when he’d rolled over her and suddenly captured her mouth.
She moved restlessly, not wanting to remember the deep, drugging kisses that had grown more and more intimate, or the soft gasps of their fevered breathing as the whole thing had sunk them both beyond the point of pulling back. She could even feel the pebbles digging into her when she’d finally allowed him the one intimacy she had been holding back from him, hear the roughness of his voice groaning, ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ and her own helpless whisper, ‘You could never hurt me,’ then the full, burning heat of his first powerful thrust.
The muscles around her sex curled then throbbed and tightened, jolting her like a wayward dart to her feet. Behind her she could feel Andreas’s surprised stillness. In front of her the sun was setting like a great ball of flaming heat and her heart was pounding, she
