that she was the one who was affected by all this—and that Dimitri was simply taking some kind of faintly amused pleasure in it all. As if it were some kind of new spectator sport. As if it didn’t matter—and why should it? She should be flattered that he remembered her at all.
Her smile felt more practised now; she was getting quite good at this. ‘Well, like I said—this was just a brief call to welcome you. I hope you’ll all be very happy here,’ she said.
He heard the assumption in the word ‘all’, but he let it go. This was going to be interesting, he thought. Very interesting. ‘I’m sure we will,’ he answered, with a smooth, practised smile of his own. His eyes lingered briefly on the swell of her breasts, outlined like two soft peaches by a pale blue silk shirt which matched her eyes. ‘It’s a very beautiful place.’
It had been a long time since a man had looked at her that way and she felt the slow, heavy pulsing of awareness—as if her body had been in a deep, deep sleep and just one glittering black stare had managed to stir it into life again. She had to get away before he realised that, unless, of course, he already had.
‘I really must go,’ she said.
‘Thank you for the wine,’ he said softly. ‘Maybe some time…when you’re not so busy working…you might come round and have a drink with us?’
‘Maybe,’ she said brightly, but they both knew that she was lying.
MOLLY let herself into her house, trying to tell herself not to overreact. It was something that was nothing—just something which occurred time and time again. And that the only reason this had never happened before was because they lived in different worlds.
She had come face to face with a man she’d once been in love with, that was all—though a more cynical person might simply describe it as teenager lust and infatuation. Her Greek-island lover had materi-alised with his family in the house next door to hers, and it was nothing more than an incredible coincidence.
And not so terrible, surely?
But the thought of just going upstairs and carrying on with her research notes was about as attractive as the idea of putting on a bikini to sunbathe in the back garden, wondering if everything she did now would be visible to Dimitri’s eyes. And telling herself that, even if it was, she shouldn’t care. These things happened in a grown-up world and she was going to have to face it.
Just as she was going to have to face his wife—and though the thought of that had no earthly right to hurt her, it did.
She went through the motions of normality. She met a friend for a drink and then went to see a film. And spent a night waking over and over, to find that the bright red numbers on her digital clock had only moved on by a few minutes.
She showered and dressed and made coffee, and when the doorbell rang she bit her lip, telling herself that it was only the postman, but she knew it was not the postman. Call it sixth sense or call it feminine intuition, but she knew exactly who would be standing on her doorstep.
And he was.
She opened the door and stared into the black, enigmatic eyes.
‘Dimitri,’ she offered warily.
‘Molly,’ he mimicked, mocking her wary tone. ‘I am disturbing you?’
He couldn’t do anything but disturb her, but she shook her head. ‘Not really.’
‘You aren’t working?’ He raised his eyebrows.
‘Not at the moment, no.’ She answered the question in his eyes. ‘I write,’ she explained.
‘Novels?’
She shook her head. ‘Travel books, and articles, actually, but that’s really beside the point. Look, Dimitri—I don’t know what it is you want—I’m just a little surprised to see you here.’
His eyes mocked her. ‘But you knew I would come.’
Yes. She had known that. ‘Was there something particular you wanted?’
‘Don’t you think we need to talk?’
‘To say what?’
‘Oh, come on, Molly,’ he chided softly. ‘There’s more than a little unfinished business between us, ne? Do you think we can just ignore the past, as though it never happened? Pass each other by in the street, like polite strangers?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because life doesn’t work like that.’
‘No.’ She wondered if his wife knew he was here, but that was his business, not hers. And he was right—there was unfinished business. Things that had never been said that maybe should be, especially if she was going to be bumping into him all over the place. ‘I guess you’d better come in, then.’ Her voice sounded cool as she said it, but inside she felt anything but.
‘Thank you,’ he murmured.
He hadn’t expected it to be so easy, though maybe he should have done if he had stopped to think about it. For hadn’t it always been too deliciously easy with her? Such a seamless seduction it had been with Molly, and hadn’t there been some perverse, chauvinistic streak in him which wished she had put up more of a fight?
He observed the polite, glacial smile—thinking that there was a coolness about her now, which might suggest something else. That she didn’t give a damn whether she spoke to him or not. Or that there was another man in her life—for surely someone as beautiful as Molly would not be alone? Another man whom she adored as once she had said she adored him.
He stepped inside, and the pert, high thrust of her buttocks hit some powerful button in his memory. He felt a pulse begin to throb deep and strong within his groin and his body felt as though it had betrayed him. She moved with a confident assurance, and something about this new, older Molly set his loins melting in a way which both frustrated and infuriated him.
He had known her one long, hot summer on Pondiki—a summer of thoughtless passion. She had driven him and every other hot-blooded man on the island insane with desire that summer. Those tiny little cotton dresses she had worn when she had been working. Or outrageous scraps of material only just covering her body on the beach. Or naked as could be, with just the darkened circles of her nipples and the faint fuzz of hair at her thighs—the only things breaking up the smoothness of that bare, pale flesh.
He had triumphed in the joy of knowing that only he had seen her undressed and uninhibited like that, but in that he had been wrong. And he had been a fool, he thought bitterly. Even now, the memory still had the power to anger him—but then it had been the first and the last time he had been betrayed by a woman.
She turned to face him, determined to present the image of the slick, urban professional, even if inside she felt like the impressionable teenager she had once been. Yesterday, she had reacted gauchely, but yesterday she had had a reason to do so. Yesterday his appearance had been like a bolt out of the blue. Today there was no excuse. ‘I was just having some coffee—would you like some?’
He
