‘Why not?’
She felt like a stranger in her own home as he followed her into the kitchen and sat down on one of the high stools at the breakfast bar, but then Dimitri dominated his surroundings like some blazing star. He always had.
‘Do you still take it black?’
He gave a careless smile. ‘Ah. You remember?’
Molly’s hand was shaking slightly as she poured their coffee, automatically handing him a cup of the strong brew, unsugared and untouched by milk, and he took it from her, a mocking look in his black eyes.
Oh, yes, she remembered all right. Strange that you could learn your tables and French verbs by heart for years at school and some of them would stubbornly refuse to reappear and yet you could remember almost everything about a man with whom you had enjoyed a brief, passionate affair. So was the memory selective—or just cruel?
‘Don’t read too much into it, Dimitri! Everyone in Greece takes their coffee that way!’ she countered as she reached for a mug.
But he wondered what else she remembered. The feel of his flesh enfolding hers, the sheer power as he had driven into her, over and over again? Was she remembering that now? As he was. She had left him dazed—in a way that no woman before nor since had ever quite done—and where once he had revelled in that fact, it had afterwards come to haunt him.
She pushed the coffee towards him, hating herself for thinking that his silken skin was close enough to touch. For a long time she had yearned to have him this close again, and now that he was she felt…Briefly, Molly closed her eyes. She was scared, and she wasn’t quite sure why. ‘Here.’
‘Thanks.’ But he ignored the coffee and instead let his gaze drift over her.
She wore a short denim skirt and a white T-shirt which had flowers splashed across the breasts. Her feet were bare and her toenails painted a shiny cherry-pink, and he felt his mouth dry with automatic desire. Some women knew how to press a man’s buttons just by existing—and Molly Garcia was one of them.
‘You’re staring,’ she said quietly.
‘Yes. I imagine that most men do.’
‘Not in quite such a blatant way.’
‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘But I am Greek, and we are not ashamed to show our appreciation of beautiful things.’
She remembered that, too, and how much it had appealed to her at the time. And it wasn’t just where women were concerned—it was the same with good food, a cooing baby, or a spectacular sunset—Greek men were open about showing their pleasure in the good things in life.
With an effort, he tore his eyes away from the diversions of her body, forcing his attention on the high-ceilinged room instead. ‘And this is a beautiful house.’
‘Yes, it is.’ She forced herself to concentrate. ‘But you aren’t here to talk about my house.’ And neither was he here to stare at her in a way that reminded her all too vividly of how close they had once been.
‘No.’ He was scanning the room for signs of male habitation, but there was none. None that he could see. ‘You’re married?’
‘I was. Not any more. I’m divorced.’
‘Ah.’ A jerk of triumph knifed its way through him. ‘There is a lot of it about.’
The way he said it made her feel guilty—or had that been his intention? She knew his views on divorce. The break-up of families. He had condemned the easy-come, easy-go way of life which had been so alien to his own. She knew what his next question would be before he asked it.
‘Children?’
‘No.’ Molly stirred her coffee unnecessarily, then lifted her eyes to his. So far he had been the one asking all the questions, but she had a few of her own. ‘Do you have any more—apart from Zoe?’
He shook his head. ‘Just Zoe.’
‘And your wife? Won’t she think it a little strange that you’ve come here this morning? Are you planning to tell her about us?’
‘What “us” was that, Molly?’ he retorted softly. ‘What is there to tell? That we were lovers, until someone better came along?’
Someone better? As if anyone could be better than Dimitri!
‘Someone else to lose yourself in and to vent that remarkable, newly discovered sexual hunger on?’ he continued, quietly yet remorselessly. He remembered the sight of the man’s bare chest. Of Molly’s unbuttoned dress. Of the way that the man’s hand had rested with possession over the swell of her hip, and the image had the blinding power to take him right back. To recall how he had wanted to smash his fist into something. ‘Was he a good lover, Molly? As good as me?’
Even now, the sense of injustice was powerful enough to hurt her. To be wrongly judged struck at the very heart of her. And stung as she was by the need to defend herself, everything else dissolved into insignificance—for wasn’t he now giving her the opportunity to tell him what he had refused to hear at the time? The truth?
‘You don’t really, honestly think that I had sex with James that night?’
‘James,’ he mimicked cruelly. ‘Ah! I did not know his name. James.’ The black eyes glittered. ‘It was, of course, simply a little craziness on my part, was it not, agape mou—that when I find my girlfriend in bed with another man, to assume that they had been having sex? Whatever could have given me that idea? Don’t forget, Molly—I knew what you were like. I knew how much you loved it—I have never known a woman who fell so completely and utterly in love with sex the way you did.’
What use would it serve now to qualify his accusation with the plaintive little cry that it had been him she had loved? And that had been what had made it so mind-blowingly and uniquely special. Sex with Dimitri had seemed as easy and as necessary as breathing. She could no more have been intimate with another man at that time than she could have grown wings and flown
‘Had you tired of me?’ he demanded. ‘Was that why you took the American into your arms and into your bed? Had you taken your fill of me, Molly—eager to try out your newly acquired skills with someone different?’
But she was still filled with the burning need to separate truth from falsehood. ‘I never touched him, Dimitri,’ she whispered. ‘Nor he me—not in the way you are thinking.’
He remembered the abandoned posture of her sprawled, bare legs. It had been the first time in his life that he had experienced real jealousy, and its potency had unsettled him. ‘What way am I supposed to think? He was asleep on the bed next to you!’
‘It wasn’t like that!’
‘Ochi?’ He gave a slow, cruel smile. ‘Then how was it? I am so interested to hear.’
‘He was comforting me.’
‘Comforting you?’ He laughed. ‘Lucky man indeed—to offer comfort in such a way! I must begin to offer comfort to beautiful women—how very noble it will make me feel!’
And suddenly Molly had had enough. He was in her house and this was her territory and yet
