… Y-your cousin?’ She nodded, managing to pull up an image of a beautiful creature with gorgeous dark eyes and a fabulous figure. ‘Why didn’t you say sooner—a-about loving me?'
‘Because I was waiting for you to say it first,’ His mouth twisted into a grimace that he turned into a sigh. ‘It was Lilia you saw me with.'
‘You went to bed with your cousin Lilia?’ The shock and the horror of it almost knocked Louisa off her feet.
‘What do you take me for?’ He tensed up angrily.
‘A drunk?’ she suggested wildly. ‘Y-you went to bed with your cousin Lilia because you were drunk, and you think this kind of confession is good for your soul?'
‘I did not go to bed with her!’ He sighed. ‘Why don’t you just shut up and listen to what I have to say?'
It was all she could do to get her shaky legs to carry her the couple of steps needed to sink down on the nearest chair. Listening at this moment was very much beyond her while she was trying to recall what she had seen that day.
But all that would come to mind was Andreas lying there on that bed, naked from what she could tell by the way the sheet rode low on his hips, while his beautiful companion lay beside him apparently wrapped in what was left of the sheet. She’d had a naked arm curved around his shoulders, and her face had been pushed up close to his sleeping face with the long mane of her glossy black hair tumbling out behind her over the pillow.
‘Lilia rescued me from drowning in a sea of booze and self-pity,’ his deep voice impinged, making her blink into focus on him. He’d moved again and was leaning against the wall now, with his fists shoved out of sight in his trouser pockets, his expression oddly rueful even while it was tense.
‘I came back from trying to see you in England and locked myself away in here with a crate of whisky and no desire to see anyone,’ he went on. ‘I switched off my mobile and unplugged the phone. I hated myself. I hated you. I had sunk so low I was quite content to waste away right here in this apartment, and I would have done it if Lilia had not turned up and bullied the janitor to let her in. She was tough …’
A hard-crusted businesswoman who’d inherited her father’s stake in the Markonos empire and had been determined to hold on to her share of power, Louisa recalled.
‘She found me sprawled on the bed fully clothed and out cold with a bottle of whisky still clutched in my fingers. She shook me awake and generally shouted and bullied me until I agreed to get up and take a shower. I was a mess,’ he admitted. ‘I couldn’t even walk straight, never mind stand upright, so Lilia did it. She all but carried me into the shower then got in there with me—stripped my clothes off and somehow managed to keep me propped against the wall until the freezing cold water started to sober me up. Then she pulled me out of the shower and told me to dry myself and get a shave while she took one of the towels and went back into the bedroom to get out of her wet clothes. I cut myself,’ he recalled, lifting a hand out of his pocket to touch his jaw as if the cut were still there. ‘By the time I put in an appearance in the bedroom she was wearing the towel and had stripped the bed and was smoothing out the clean sheet …'
He stopped speaking for a moment, the hand lowering back into his pocket, then he gave a shake of his head.
‘I still don’t understand why it happened,’ he continued huskily. ‘I mean, you are so fair and Lilia is so dark, but—when she glanced up and smiled at me, that smile reminded me so much of you that I just … fell apart. I sobbed like a baby.’ He roughed out the confession. ‘I cried for you, I cried for myself, I cried for Nikos …’
Unable to just sit there when she could see he was struggling, Louisa got up and went to slide her arms around him. ‘You don’t have to say any more,’ she whispered painfully. ‘I know how you felt,’ because she’d been there, oh, she’d been there …
But Andreas didn’t want to stop. ‘Once I let the floodgates open I could do nothing to close them again. Lilia somehow managed to get me to the bed, though the hell knows how she managed it. Then she lay down beside me and held me. She just held me while the storm raged until eventually we both must have fallen into an exhausted sleep.'
‘I wish I’d had a Lilia,’ Louisa murmured. ‘Instead I got panicked parents who called the doctor and had me taken away.'
‘I wish I had been there to be your Lilia.’ His arms came around her, strong and tense. ‘We could have poured it all out together as it should have been, and the last five years of hell would not have happened.'
His tone had toughened. Louisa looked at him anxiously. ‘Don’t go down the revenge track again,’ she begged.
‘I’m not.’ He shook his head. ‘It might have taken me a few minutes longer than it should, but when you walked out on me at the villa it suddenly hit me that I had been fighting the wrong battles all along. Landreau did not matter, our two meddling families did not matter. Even the fabulous sex we’ve been indulging in did not matter, it was the fact that you could still let me love you like that, believing what you believed you saw here. That was my real victory, though I was in danger of letting it slip through my fingers.’
‘Hence the kidnap.’ Louisa was impressed by his recovery tactics.
He pushed his hand through her hair, his dark eyes remaining sombre as he released a sigh. ‘I don’t care about your other lovers, agape mou,’ he murmured. ‘I did not deserve that you could let me come near you again, so how can I resent them?'
‘Because you’re Greek, with unforgivable double standards?’ Louisa suggested.
He grimaced.
‘Because you’re arrogant and pushy and conceited,’ she added, ‘and can’t tell the difference between the truth and a lie when it’s stabbed at you with the intent to draw blood?'
He frowned.
It was Louisa’s turn to let her soft mouth twist out a grimace. ‘There haven’t been any other men, Andreas—and that includes Max,’ she took pains to impress.
Andreas pulled in a deep breath then let it out again. ‘I definitely did not deserve to hear you say that.'
‘So you’re going to believe me this time?’
He smiled ruefully. ‘Yes, please.’
‘I fell for you when I was seventeen and I haven’t wanted another man since,’ she confided. ‘You were right when you said I’d used my relationship with Max to hide behind. Perhaps I even used it to make—hope to make you come and claim me back, I’m still not quite ready to admit that one to myself.'
‘And I definitely did not deserve to hear you say that,’ Andreas impressed.
Louisa nodded in agreement, her gaze and her attention now fixed on his mouth because it had relaxed at last, looking more like the sexy mouth she so loved to—
‘Especially not when I haven’t finished my own confessions yet.’ that beautiful mouth wryly tagged on.
Louisa didn’t want to hear any more right now, she just wanted to—
‘About my other women.’
‘No.’ Her spine arched as she drew
