Constantine. She tested the name in her mind; found it the most beautiful name in the whole world, which was really rather appropriate, as the man in front of her was the most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes on.
‘And you?’ He lifted an enquiring eyebrow. ’What is your name?’
‘It’s Jade,’ she said rather breathlessly, as though she’d just stopped running. ‘Jade Meredith.’
‘Jade.’ He nodded his head, thoughtfully. ‘Yes. It suits you,’ he pronounced. ‘Your eyes are the colour of jade.’
And her cheeks were now the colour of rubies, she thought ruefully as she blushed beneath the slow scrutiny of his gaze, revelling in the approbation on his face, and yet despising herself for the way she was behaving. Why not just fall down in rever- ence at his knees and kiss his feet, Jade!
‘No, they’re not,’ she lifted her chin in a defiant little gesture. ‘My eyes are pale green. Jade is darker.’
He shook his head. ‘Sometimes,’ he contra- dicted. ‘The Chinese say that the colour deepens and intensifies as the wearer acquires wisdom. It would be an interesting experiment—to see whether that is true.’ He gave a small almost reluctant smile, like the smile of a man not used to smiling. ‘Shall I buy you jade, Jade Meredith?’ he said softly. ’Jewels of jade for you to wear next to that pale, pale skin? Together we could watch it growing darker day by day.’
His words were so inappropriate considering that they’d only just met. And yet he spoke them with a coolly assured confidence which only renewed the throbbing of blood to her pulse points.
‘My skin isn’t pale,’ she protested. After nearly three weeks in the sun, it had turned a pale golden colour—she was quite proud of it!
‘Most certainly it is,’ he contradicted, in the rich, glowing voice overlaid with its barely discernible yet totally seductive accent. ‘Pale as milk—at least when you compare it with mine.’
And at his words she found her eyes drawn irre- sistibly to the dark olive of his bare chest and shoulders, the strong forearms, and the equally strong thighs. Her mind responded to his suggestion with frightening clarity as she pictured her lying on a bed with him, his dark limbs tangled with hers, strong brown thigh against a thigh as pale as milk… Jade had to close her eyes briefly to blot out the tantalising image, but it didn’t work.
‘Shall we?’ he whispered silkily.
‘Shall we what?’ she echoed huskily, lost in some misty erotic world of her own.
He smiled, and it was a suddenly ruthless smile. The smile, she recognised with an unquestionable certainty, of a man who was used to getting whatever it was he wanted.
‘I was referring to buying the jade,’ he said softly. ’But we should have to go to the mainland to do that, and I don’t want to waste precious hours doing that, not when there are so many more attractive alternatives.’ He smiled. ‘Come, I shall walk you back to your house.’
It was most definitely an order. Jade bristled. ‘That won’t be necessary.’
‘On the contrary,’ he answered smoothly, but there was a steely quality to his voice now. ‘I insist.’
Most annoyingly, she found the arrogant protec- tiveness in his assertion extremely attractive, but a lifetime of paying lip-service to feminism couldn’t be banished overnight! She met his gaze steadily. ’I said no, thank you.’
‘I heard what you said, but it doesn’t change a thing.’
Jade shook her head from side to side in a mixture of amusement and exasperation. ‘Do you always insist on getting your own way?’ she demanded.
He grinned then, the most heartbreakingly gorgeous grin imaginable, and that was her un- doing. ‘I always get my own way,’ he murmured. ’Though not always by insisting. I don’t usually have to,’ he added arrogantly.
That she could imagine! Jade had to try very hard to suppress a smile as she watched while he bent down to retrieve her bag and her towel and tucked them under his arm with an old-fashioned courtesy—which she certainly wasn’t used to. She knew she was fighting a losing battle here, and what was more, she was quickly discovering that it was a battle she didn’t particularly want to fight anyway. ’Then I’ll take you up on your offer of walking me home,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ And she saw from the slight elevation of his eyebrows that he hadn’t missed the sarcastic emphasis.
‘My pleasure.’ His eyes were mocking. Then. ’Those tourists—do not worry about them. They shall not bother you again.’
There was something about the grim, gravelly undertone to his voice which made it sound vaguely threatening. Jade swallowed; she hadn’t thought that men like this existed outside films! ‘Er—you wouldn’t hurt them?’ asked Jade anxiously. ‘They weren’t really doing anything.’
‘Because I arrived.’ His eyes glittered like coals from hell. ‘I saw the way he was looking at you.’ He made a terse exclamation in Greek.
Jade swallowed. Had she been blase about the danger? She saw the hard, formidable lines in the handsome face, saw the ruthless glitter in the black eyes, and she knew a fleeting feeling of sympathy for the two hapless tourists. ‘You won’t—hurt them?’ she whispered again, and was relieved to see a half-smile lift the corner of his mouth.
‘What did you imagine I would do—beat them into pulp?’ he queried softly, and then he gave an amused smile. ‘Do not be concerned, little one. I shall merely speak to them—that will serve as suf- ficient deterrent.’
Feeling as though she’d been caught up in a sudden time warp, Jade stared curiously up at him. ’Do you always over-react like this?’ she quizzed him, forcing her voice to be light.
He shook his head. ‘It is not over-reacting at all.’ Some feral light sparked at the depths of the coal- dark eyes. ‘In Greece, you see,’ he told her, ‘we are protective of our women.’
He made her feel very small and very fragile, not a bit like her rather lanky five feet nine, and Jade couldn’t repress a shiver of excitement. Put like that it sounded so darkly atavistic, so—well, so thrilling, the idea of someone like this black-eyed and powerfully built man actually protecting her. Be- cause hadn’t protection been in very short supply in her life up until now?
The sun beat down on their bare heads as they walked up from the beach to the narrow track which was masquerading as a road. Jade could see the heat shimmering hazily upwards into the endless blue of the sky.
‘Put your hat on,’ he said.
She obediently crammed the battered straw down on her head. ‘Shouldn’t you?’
He gave a little shake of his head. ‘I am used to the sun.’
And hair that thick, that black, thought Jade, would surely protect him from its fierce rays?
Lizards ran swiftly along the sun-baked road, and he named them for her, pointing out tiny scrubby and fragrant plants that she’d never noticed before. His accent was entrancing; it lulled her into a dreamy sense of well-being, and when they arrived at last at the small house she was renting
