CHAPTER EIGHT

AS ALEXIUS switched on the lights, Rosie whirled round in shock, pale blue silk clinging to her lithe body. ‘You couldn’t sleep either?’

‘No.’ Alexius studied her as she opened the doors of the giant double refrigerator to pull out cold meat, which she ate where she stood. ‘I gather you’re hungry.’

Rosie went red and nodded because her mouth was full. It gave her a most gratuitous opportunity to appraise the full impact of Alexius’s raw sexuality, his lean powerful physique sheathed in a pair of worn tight jeans and nothing else. Bare-chested, all that golden skin and rippling muscle on display, he took her breath away and desire swelled deep down inside her. He was badly in need of a shave, for dark stubble covered his lower jaw, framing his beautifully sensual mouth. As if she could sate her sensual response to him with food, she hurriedly helped herself to some cheese.

‘Didn’t you get a meal earlier?’ he enquired politely.

Feeling the blush begin as far down as her chest, Rosie winced and nodded.

‘Maybe it’s being pregnant,’ Alexius suggested lazily, scanning her glowing face framed by her moonlight-pale fall of hair with a growing hunger of his own that had nothing to do with his stomach. He ached for her in the most painful of ways and it brought out primal instincts he hadn’t known he possessed.

‘Maybe the baby likes protein.’

‘Why were you talking to yourself?’

Rosie closed the doors of the refrigerator. ‘Just thoughts I was having … I couldn’t sleep …’

Like an agile cat, Alexius shifted soundlessly a couple of steps closer. ‘Thoughts about me?’

Rosie settled scornful green eyes on him. ‘Why on earth would I be thinking about you?’

‘Why would I be thinking about you?’ Alexius traded, very much in unfamiliar territory because he had never before discussed feelings or thoughts with a woman.

‘I’m stressing you out?’ Rosie suggested teasingly, trying to kick her brain back into gear, trying not to let her gaze linger on him the way it wanted, needed to as if being away from Alexius even for just a few hours left her with a deficit she had to meet.

‘Thee mou … you’re so beautiful, moli mou.’

Rosie almost laughed out loud but then she saw his eyes and realised that he meant it, truly believed it at that moment and gratification blossomed inside her. For a long, timeless moment they exchanged a look and her heart began to thump really fast in her chest. A hand closed round her wrist and exerted a gentle tug to draw her closer. Brain, she shouted inside her head, heart rate rocketing like an express train, brain, get back here right this minute. His hands closed around her waist as he lifted her to him and their mouths clashed with the frantic, feverish longing that powered them both. She tasted him and she couldn’t get enough of that taste. You weren’t going to do this, her brain reminded her at that point. Shut up, she told it, fingers delving into luxuriant black hair as she strained against him, her body in an electrifying state of anticipation that she couldn’t quell. She kept on kissing him as the ache between her thighs built and thrummed through her like a storm warning.

‘I’ve never stopped wanting you since that night,’ Alexius growled, thrusting back the door into the hall and heading for the stairs.

‘Was that a complaint?’ Rosie asked through swollen lips, thrilled that he had gone on wanting her in spite of his failure to call and the subsequent bombshell of her pregnancy, but all the while knowing that there were other more important things she should be thinking about.

‘No. You make me feel alive for the first time in years,’ Alexius fired back, taking the stairs two at a time with her cradled securely in his arms like a captive. ‘I like it, but I don’t like it when I can’t touch you.’

The admission jerked a tripwire in Rosie’s brain. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this …’

‘We haven’t done anything yet,’ Alexius reminded her darkly.

Her hand lifted to trace the frustrated curve of his sensually full mouth while her eyes connected with the hungry urgency of his. The desire, she realised, was a two-way street and the knowledge strengthened her: she was not the only one suffering withdrawal symptoms, feeling weak in the hold of fighting off those unwelcome promptings. She couldn’t be near him without wanting to touch him and perfectly understood his frustration at not being able to touch her. He kissed her again, his tongue delving with erotic skill, and the world spun dizzily around her. He dropped her down on a mercifully well-sprung bed in a lamplit room even larger than her own and straight away, separated from that big powerful body of his and the devastating allure of him, she remembered what she had wanted to ask him about.

‘Who’s Adrianna?’

Engaged in unzipping his jeans, Alexius glanced at her with a frown of surprise. ‘Someone I slept with months ago.’

‘Not a serious relationship, then?’ Rosie pried helplessly.

‘I don’t do serious.’

Rosie knew that strategy very well, had enjoyed several first dates with men who couldn’t relax until they had assured her of the same thing. It had amused her that a man could feel the need to warn her off before either of them even got to know each other, but for some reason it did not amuse her when the same phrase fell so smoothly from Alexius’s lips. ‘So, why were the journalists asking about her, then?’ Rosie persisted doggedly.

‘Adrianna gave several interviews to magazines implying that there was more between us than a brief affair. That happens a lot to me with women,’ Alexius admitted, coming down on the bed beside her like a naked bronzed god, or at least a massively aroused naked bronzed god.

‘Aren’t you the popular one? My goodness, it’s no wonder you have an ego the size of the sun!’ Rosie quipped.

Alexius laughed, the tension in his features roused by her questions vanishing. He didn’t always know where he was with her and that was another first for him with a woman. ‘Have I?’

‘Totally,’ Rosie whispered, lying back on his big bed and feeling remarkably like a seductress. It was the way he was looking at her, those light eyes glittering against his brown skin and eating her up as though she were an amazingly desirable creature and she liked the feeling.

‘It doesn’t impress you, though, does it?’

‘No, but I was impressed when you ran up the stairs carrying me,’ Rosie told him truthfully, allowing a hand to settle on a broad bronzed shoulder, exulting in the heat and strength of him.

‘You don’t weigh any more than a child.’

Her sultry mouth down curved. ‘I’m going to get fatter and heavier soon.’

‘There’ll simply be more of you to enjoy, moraki mou,’ Alexius husked, reaching down for the hem of her nightdress to pull it up and over her head.

‘Oh!’ Taken by surprise, Rosie crossed her arms over herself. ‘Did you plan this when you brought me here?’

Again, Alexius laughed but he picked his words with care. ‘Let’s say that I entertained the hope that we would get together again.’

Unimpressed, Rosie shook her head. ‘I know you—you planned it this way.’

In answer, Alexius shot her a brilliant smile of one-upmanship and crushed her mouth slowly beneath his. Something low in her pelvis clenched, making her hips shift up to him. He uncrossed her hands and directed his lips lower to caress the delicate swell of her breasts and torment the hotly engorged buds that were screamingly sensitive to his attention. As he employed his mouth and his tongue and even his teeth to tease the tender peaks, Rosie writhed, the simmering heat at the heart of her developing a more desperate edge of need. He absorbed her responses with keen interest, spreading her out on the bed to feast his eyes on, forestalling her every attempt to conceal her body from him.

‘I’ve waited a long time for this,’ he protested raggedly, running an admiring forefinger down between her breasts to the pale tangle of curls below, brushing her thighs apart while she held her breath, smoothing over the soft skin of her inner thigh to explore the warm wet invitation of her lush opening. ‘And you were definitely worth waiting for, moraki mou.’

Trembling, Rosie rested back, scarcely believing what she was allowing, finally acknowledging that she wanted to be with him so much that she didn’t care about the terms or the absence of promises. He circled the little pearl of nerve endings that controlled her response and reaction jackknifed through her in an unquenchable surge of charged pleasure. It went on and on and her hips wriggled, her taut nipples abraded by contact with his hair-roughened torso. He sank a finger deep into her and she gasped, her neck arching, slender muscles straining up to the climax she sensed gathering.

‘You don’t get to come unless I’m inside you,’ Alexius spelt out roughly, eyes bright with intensity, already positioning her for his entrance. ‘And I’m on a knife edge trying to wait.’

The edge of his desperation racked up her arousal even more. He was almost vibrating with eagerness against her, the muscles in his powerful arms bunched with effort, his jaw line hard as a rock.

‘Don’t wait,’ she told him between gritted teeth, her head rolling restively across the pillow, her body keyed to a frustrating high of expectation.

He filled her to the hilt in one swift motion that stole the breath from her lungs in a gasp. Excitement assailed her as she felt herself stretch to accommodate his size.

‘Am I hurting you?’ he husked, throwing his handsome head back, black hair wildly tousled by her fingers as he hitched her legs round his waist.

‘No, that was a wince of pure pleasure,’ she gasped as he sank even deeper into her.

‘You’re so tight,’ he grated with satisfaction, withdrawing almost completely from her body only to thrust back into her tender sheath again, sending goose bumps and tiny hairs prickling all over her skin along with deliriously satisfying sensation. He twisted his hips, changed his angle, and the momentum gathered like a great wave of heat surging through her as he began to thrust into her. The pace quickened. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could only feel the rampant masculine force of his primal rhythm and the spasms of excitement sent glorious little tremors rippling through her that grew into a blaze of exhilaration that left her moaning and sobbing at the ecstasy of climax. Delight and more delight followed in the melting waves of sheer pleasure that engulfed her. Finally surrendering control, he shuddered above her, his breathing harsh, but the look of appreciation stamped on his face as he gazed down at her was sufficient to tilt her heart inside her.

At her first attempt to move away, Alexius held fast to her, their bodies hot and slippery with sweat and still joined. Finally, he flung himself back against the pillows and arranged her on top of him, arms still holding her close as he kissed her brow, pushed her hair off her face and studied her closely. ‘Already I’m thinking about the next time.’ He groaned the admission in despair. ‘That’s what you do to me and it was even more amazing than I remembered, moraki mou.’

‘Was it? I fell asleep that time.’

Alexius sat up and scrambled off the bed, still holding her. ‘Not tonight,’ he warned, striding into the bathroom to set her down in the shower and pummel the controls to deluge them both with warm reviving water. ‘Tonight I want you over and over and over again.’

‘Why?’ Rosie asked him baldly.

‘Because I’m fed up with wanting you and not having you,’ he growled.

Still quivering with sensual aftershocks, Rosie leant against him, sated and momentarily weak. ‘I’m here now.’

‘And not going anywhere away from me,’ Alexius specified with a shot of possessiveness in his veins that lit up warning signs in his shrewd brain, for he had not the slightest idea why, apart from the obvious, it seemed so crucial to keep her close. ‘Not for the foreseeable future.’

‘You’re so bossy sometimes.’ Rosie sighed, tingling as he soaped her with shower gel, big hands smoothing slowly and teasingly over her sensitised breasts and down over her still-flat stomach. Before long the exquisite sensitivity engendered by the first bout of their lovemaking awakened every nerve ending to fresh life. She felt his bold shaft hard and full of promise against her and made not the smallest objection when he tipped up her face and hungrily crushed her mouth under his again before he toppled her dripping wet back on the bed, ignoring her laughing protests to cover her body with his again. And if the first time had been wild and exciting the second was slow and deep and almost indescribably satisfying, her body still pulsing with satiation in the aftermath.

Alexius gazed down at her with veiled eyes that silvered with sudden annoyance. She had led him a dance and he didn’t like that. Although he had no idea what went on inside her head and had never wanted to know what went on inside a woman’s head, his ignorance continually inflamed him when he was with her. And right then, holding her close, his libido mercifully eased by the best sex he had ever had, her small face dreamy and dazed by the same compulsive release, anger suddenly rose uppermost and drove tension through his every muscle. On what grounds had she found him wanting? No woman had ever judged Alexius wanting in any field.

‘So I’m good enough to sleep with but not good enough to marry?’ he murmured in a lazily provocative but succinct undertone.

Rosie blinked, yanked back with a vengeance from the soothing relaxation of mind-blowing sex. ‘It’s not that simple,’ she mumbled, playing for time, needing her brain to waken from catatonic mode, for being with Alexius seemed to wipe out rational thinking processes.

‘It’s exactly that simple,’ Alexius grated in harsh disagreement.

Picking up on the derisive edge to his accented drawl, Rosie stiffened and, with difficulty because he was so much larger and heavier, pushed him away, no longer easy with the intimacy of lying naked with entwined limbs. She sat up, then grimaced. ‘You’ve already admitted that you don’t do serious and marriage is a very serious commitment.’

‘It would be different with you. You’re having my child,’ he pointed out and, without warning, he pressed a hand to her narrow shoulder to push her flat against the pillows again and he splayed a big hand across her stomach. ‘That’s my baby in there.’

Disconcerted by both the gesture and the anger that smouldered in his stunning silver gaze, Rosie wriggled right off the bed and snatched up her nightdress and shimmied into it with frantic hands. ‘That doesn’t mean you own me.’

‘It damn well does!’ Alexius suddenly roared at her in rebuttal. ‘If you think I’m likely to stand by and watch now while you get involved with another man, you’ve picked the wrong guy!’

Although she was intimidated by his fury, Rosie lifted her chin and gave him a freezing look. ‘It might be your baby but my body is my own and if you had any idea at all of how ordinary people live—which you don’t—you would appreciate that my chances of meeting another man have been seriously damaged by the simple fact that I’m pregnant!’

‘Why should that matter to you? You’re my woman. Get used to the fact!’ Alexius grated, outraged that she could talk about her chances of meeting another man while still warm from his body, even more enraged that she could even think along such lines.

‘I’m not your woman. I’m not any man’s woman,’ Rosie declared. ‘And I’m not hitching my wagon to yours just because you’ve got a private jet and loads of money! That’s not my dream—that’s not what I want out of life!’

‘What the hell do you want from me?’ Alexius shot back at her with sizzling incomprehension.

‘Feelings, you blockhead!’ Rosie thundered back at him with incredulity that he had still not got that message. ‘It’s not enough that you’d be a great provider and fantastic in bed!’

Alexius vaulted off the bed. ‘You think I’m going to fall in love with you like some infatuated teenager?’ he derided in an all-encompassing rage, driven by exasperation and the belief that she wanted him to provide some fairy-tale solution that he couldn’t hope to achieve.

‘That’s right—mock my dreams!’ Rosie hissed, her face red as fire. ‘But it doesn’t have to be love, just caring, unselfishness, kindness—’

‘Haven’t I been caring? Haven’t I been kind?’ Alexius bit out, furious that she was making him defensive.

Rosie thought of his behaviour since she had given him her news and had to acknowledge that he had demonstrated both attributes but she still thought there ought to be more. ‘You don’t even want our baby.’

‘I want you,’ Alexius fired back bluntly. ‘And I’m starting to think of the baby as a person attached to you. Isn’t that enough to start with?’

That he still wanted her, regardless of the baggage she brought with her, meant a great deal to Rosie and she couldn’t deny it, but deep down inside her something still said no to the notion of marrying a man who didn’t love her, who, whether he would admit it or not, still imagined that his enormous wealth should be sufficient inducement to overcome all other objections.

‘I appreciate that you’re offering a good deal,’ she muttered in an effort she barely understood to placate him, but they had been so close there for a couple of hours and she couldn’t bear to feel shut out again. ‘Especially to someone like me from a poor background.’

The tension screaming from his stance ebbed and his eyes veiled. ‘That doesn’t come into the equation. You’re one of the kindest and most considerate people I’ve ever met.’

‘That doesn’t say much for the people you know.’

‘You’re not interested in my money. You don’t try to take advantage of me and I like being with you. Believe me, those facts matter more,’ Alexius delivered curtly. ‘But I don’t have the emotional capacity to give you love. I’ve never been in love in my life.’

‘Never?’ Rosie was shocked.

‘It’s always been sex for me, nothing more complex,’ Alexius acknowledged grudgingly. ‘And I like sex more with you than with anyone else.’

Rosie resisted a sudden staggering urge to weep. ‘I suppose that’s something,’ she said shakily, astonished by his claim but strangely touched as well. Indeed, Alexius ignited a whole host of conflicting emotions inside her.

‘It’s more than something on my terms, moraki mou,’ Alexius shot back on her.

‘That’s our most fundamental difference,’ Rosie responded ruefully. ‘Sex is more important to you, lower on the scale for me. But great sex doesn’t mean we’d have a great marriage.’

Condemned for the one bond she was willing to admit that they shared, Alexius felt like punching a wall and instead seethed with silent aggravation. No woman had ever infuriated him so much and it galled him that he felt lost in the dialogue, didn’t automatically know the right answers, the perfect angle to take to emerge supreme. He gritted his even teeth and said nothing at all. Rosie unfroze from her self-justifying stance and closed the distance between them. She linked her hands round his neck with difficulty and stretched up to press a kiss to the corner of his unsmiling mouth. ‘I don’t want to argue with you.’

‘But you are.’

Rosie ran a frankly manipulative hand down over his bronzed, hair-roughened torso, revelling in the heat and muscularity of his strong physique, and pressed as close as she dared to mutter shamefacedly, because she knew she was taking the easy way out, ‘Let’s go back to bed …’

Relief assailed Alexius. Lust he understood in the same way that he understood that he needed air to breathe. It was honest and offered no room for misunderstandings. He carried her small hand lower.

‘Remember asking me for directions?’ he remarked not quite steadily, startled at the speed with which his erection returned at the first shy brush of her fingers. He was accustomed to everything but ignorance in the bedroom. A long line of very experienced eager-to-please sophisticates had given him high expectations of his lovers, but nothing had ever excited him as much as Rosie’s hesitant overture at that moment. And that was in spite of the fact that he knew exactly what she was doing in smoothing over the discomfiture roused by the conversation he should never have started.

Rosie skimmed tentative fingers down his hard, thick shaft and shed the turmoil of thoughts torturing her. What was right? What was wrong? Did it really matter as long as she was happy?

And happiness was humming through Rosie when she opened her eyes the following morning: Alexius was there, mere inches away, and his presence soothed her. His lean, hard-boned face was softer in slumber, his outrageously long black lashes almost hitting his exotic cheekbones. So good-looking, so vital, so full of mystery. She wanted to get under his skin, grasp why he was so reserved, learn if he was hiding anything, sort him out like a challenging jigsaw puzzle. But then he fascinated her and after the night of unashamed passion they had shared she didn’t think her response to him was likely to change any time soon. She ached but it was a pleasurable ache of passion shared and rejoiced in. He was amazing in bed, would probably be highly insulted if he ever found out that for her the best part was being held afterwards, feeling so physically close and valued, her heart lifting when he smiled or laughed.

It scared her that he could already have so much power over her. She hadn’t consciously made the choice to give that power to him, yet somehow he had taken it, stealing her heart the first chance he got. She had fallen for him so easily but he was never going to love her back: that was very clear. When she thought of the many female options he must always have available, she knew it would be banging her head up against a brick wall to hope for more. She was a novelty to Alexius Stavroulakis, she decided uneasily, an ordinary working woman who had been a virgin. Of course she was different from his previous lovers, but for how long would her novelty value exercise this amount of pulling power over him? If she wasn’t careful she could easily slip into the trap of just wanting to make Alexius happy. She could hardly have failed to have noticed that happiness when he laughed or smiled always seemed to take him by surprise.

They had a long, leisurely breakfast on the verandah overlooking the beach—a long strip of almost-white sand washed by the murmuring surf below a crystalline-blue clear sky. The amazing view was worthy of the equally amazing house, which he had shown her over before they ate. It was big but still stuck in the time band in which it had been built as if nobody had ever stayed there long enough to bother updating or personalising it, and she had looked in vain for family photos.

‘We weren’t that kind of family,’ Alexius had commented wryly.

‘But it must have been terrific fun living here when you were a kid with the beach right on the doorstep.’

Alexius had said nothing and the silence had been uncomfortable.

Curiosity had thrummed through Rosie. ‘You didn’t have much fun as a kid, did you?’

‘No,’ he had finally conceded. ‘But I was very well educated and looked after,’ he had asserted, lest she receive some image of neglect from his words. ‘Let’s go for a walk …’

The walk on the beach killed that topic of conversation, which she rather thought had been his objective. Rosie was strolling dreamily through the cooling surf when Alexius got a phone call on his mobile. He spoke in Greek and smiled before leaning back against a rock to continue the call while extending a hand to Rosie to draw her back to him and pull her under his arm. It was that sort of gesture that gave her hope that he did care, maybe more than he knew, for he definitely liked to stay in physical contact even outside the bedroom door. She buried her nose in his shirtfront, loving the sun-warmed already-familiar smell of his clothing and his body, the reassuring thump of his heartbeat below her cheek and the very fact that he was simply holding her. It wasn’t sex, after all, she reasoned—he didn’t have to hold her. After what seemed like a fairly lengthy chat, Alexius came off the phone again.

‘Your grandfather is flying in to see you this afternoon,’ he told her.

Rosie was torn between pleasure and concern. ‘Why?’

‘Obviously to mend fences with you!’ Alexius groaned. ‘You’re his granddaughter. That means a lot to a man with his family history.’

‘I don’t want him leaning on me to marry you again,’ Rosie confided uneasily. ‘So, I hope that’s not why he’s coming here.’

‘I’ve withdrawn the offer,’ Alexius told her without skipping a beat. ‘You’re right. Why should we get married? We’re having amazing sex. I’m content with that.’

Rosie discovered that she was far from predictable because, instead of relaxing now that the source of that pressure had gone, she was torn between wanting to scream and wanting to slap him. He’d withdrawn his marriage proposal? He was content? Well, she blasted well wasn’t! Had he changed his mind because she had fallen into bed with him again? It was a mortifying suspicion. Just then she felt as if she was lost in an emotional no-man’s-land, wanting and needing him and yet reluctant to admit to either sentiment and fearful of the likely outcome to such vulnerability.

* * *

Socrates Seferis was seated in a wicker chair on the verandah enjoying coffee and tiny pastries when Rosie came downstairs to join him, freshly garbed in linen trousers and a bright blue tee. Her smile was hesitant. ‘I’m so pleased you wanted to see me again,’ she admitted frankly.

‘You and Alexius are adults. I shouldn’t have interfered and sitting on the sidelines like this …’ the older man smiled widely ‘… is proving very interesting.’

Rosie poured a cold drink from the tray on the table. ‘How … interesting?’

‘My godson has never brought a woman here before. This island is his bolthole. He is very protective of his privacy.’

‘I’m not surprised. I saw how the press behaved around him at the airport. Not a fun experience.’ Rosie winced at the recollection but she wanted to smile at the information her grandfather had just given her. It was good to know that she was not one more in a long line of female lovers brought to Alexius’s childhood home. ‘Have you been here before?’

‘Only once. His parents’ funeral,’ Socrates volunteered wryly. ‘They are interred in the private cemetery here.’

Her interest caught, Rosie leant forward. ‘You knew them? What were they like?’

‘I never moved in their elite social circle, consequently I can really only speak as an observer,’ the older man confessed. ‘I went to school with Alexius’s grandfather and that was my connection to his family and why I was asked to be Alexius’s godfather. His parents were both very rich and very young. They were also only children whose families pushed them together and their marriage was more or less a business merger. Once their families were satisfied by the production of a son and heir—Alexius—his parents lived separate lives. There was no divorce but there was no true marriage either.’

Rosie nodded. ‘That’s sad.’

‘But rather more sad for their son,’ Socrates countered ruefully. ‘I think his mother lacked the maternal instinct. Alexius was raised by the domestic staff and at the age of eight his parents placed him in an English boarding school.’

‘Eight years old? That’s very young to be sent so far from home, but no wonder he speaks such good English,’ Rosie mused, riveted by what she was learning. ‘He never mentions his childhood.’

‘Let me tell you a story,’ Socrates urged, sprawling comfortably back in his padded wicker chair. ‘Once I was in London on a business trip when I suddenly remembered that it was my godson’s tenth birthday. I’m an impulsive man and since I hadn’t seen the boy in quite a while I decided to buy him a gift and pay him a surprise visit at the school. When I arrived I was taken aside by his housemaster, who confided that the school was very concerned by the boy’s lack of contact with family and home. He never heard from his parents at all and they didn’t bother to visit even if they were in the UK. Summers he spent here on the island but as a rule neither parent was present, only the staff, who catered to his every whim. Alexius never learned what a normal family household was like because he never had that experience.’

Rosie was pale, imagining how lonely he must have been as a child, given everything necessary for his comfort and amusement but deprived entirely of parental love, interest and attention. ‘That must have been very wounding for him.’

Socrates elevated a bushy greying brow. ‘He’ll never admit that, but once I knew that he had no visitors at school I made it my business to see him whenever I was in London. He had plenty of friends, of course, and often visited their homes.’

Rosie sank into a reflective mood, grasping that she finally had the key to her lover’s essential detachment. Just like her he had been betrayed and excluded by the people who should have loved him and wanted to keep him close as a child. Great wealth might have shielded him from the early deprivations she had experienced, but, regardless, his mistreatment had been no less real than her own.

‘Would you like to come and stay with me in my home in Athens?’ her grandfather asked her baldly without the smallest warning. ‘You’d be very welcome.’

Rosie reddened and shifted in her seat, mortified by her reluctance, for she could now see that the older man was a warm-hearted person, willing to move past his own views of her current pregnant and unwed condition purely to build a family relationship with her. ‘I … er—’

‘Don’t want to leave Alexius,’ he slotted in, a glint of amusement in his dark eyes. ‘So, you are a couple?’

‘Right now … I’d like to spend more time with him,’ Rosie admitted in a rush, her colour higher than ever at being put on the spot to quantify something she couldn’t even begin to describe.

‘My invitation remains open. I would love to have you as a guest and I’d like to hold a party to introduce you to my friends and relatives,’ Socrates declared with enthusiasm. ‘But that can wait.’

‘I’m grateful that you understand,’ Rosie responded guiltily, for hadn’t she originally agreed to come to Greece to get to know her grandfather? When had she allowed Alexius to become the sole focus of her happiness and her dreams?

Socrates Seferis shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t understand why you won’t marry him … feeling as you so obviously do about him,’ he confided equably. ‘But you’re old enough to know your own business best.’

After that slightly awkward exchange, Socrates told her about his problems with his own family and she admired his honesty and respected his wry admission that he had spoiled and indulged his children in an attempt to compensate them for the death of their mother. He moved on to discuss the fact that he had asked Alexius to get to know her and Rosie then told her grandfather about his godson’s deception, which the older man found surprisingly funny.

Alexius strolled lithely out to join them and mention that dinner would soon be served. Clad in an open shirt with every sleek muscular line of his body defined by cropped denim jeans, he took her breath away. She was amused to see Bas stumbling along in his wake, little tail wagging like a metronome as soon as he saw Rosie. She lifted the little dog onto her knee and introduced him to her grandfather.

‘He followed me into my bedroom and started chewing one of my shoes,’ Alexius delivered grimly, choosing not to admit that he had been relieved that his ankle was not the target again.

‘He does have bad habits. He wasn’t very well trained when he was a puppy,’ Rosie explained.

‘You spoil him. He’s an animal, not a human being.’

‘Well, I’m sorry about the shoe but I’m not putting him outside in a kennel!’ Rosie told him squarely.

Socrates watched the exchange as if he were in the front seat viewing an enthralling show and, catching him in the act, Rosie flushed with self-consciousness, wondering if she and Alexius looked as ill suited from the outside as she felt they had to be. Never mind his wretched money and pedigreed background, she thought painfully, he was so damned clever while she was always aware that she had to study long and hard to pass exams.

After dinner the two men chatted with an ease that relieved her fear that their confrontation on the day of her arrival had caused lasting damage to their relationship. The helicopter arrived to collect her grandfather and convey him home. She walked back indoors by Alexius’s side, suddenly shy again, tied in knots by the potential pitfalls of a relationship that had no boundaries or definition.

‘Did Socrates ask you to go home with him?’ Alexius asked darkly, scrutinising the shuttered look of her delicate profile with suspicion while noting the faint sunburn that had already turned her cheekbones pink, and lingering on the lush pout of her soft mouth.

Rosie lifted her head, pale hair falling back from her brow, her eyes evasive. ‘Yes.’

Alexius tensed. ‘And what did you say?’

‘Not just yet.’ Rosie swallowed, feeling like a shameless hussy for admitting that so openly, for obviously she had no reason to stay other than to share his bed.

His wide sensual mouth narrowed thoughtfully. ‘That’s good.’

‘However, I do intend to take him up on the invite soon,’ Rosie continued doggedly, keen to let him know that he was not saddled with her as a house guest in an open-ended arrangement. ‘I’m sure you’ll be jetting off somewhere soon to work.’

Alexius had come to a halt, his face taut, his eyes shielded. ‘I’m planning to take some time off. How soon is soon?’ he queried.

‘A … week?’ Rosie tested the concept on him uncertainly. ‘I don’t feel I can put my grandfather off much longer than that. After all, I did come to Greece to spend time with him and here I am staying with you.’

Alexius ran a teasing forefinger below her full lower lip that made her tingle, and she glanced up into his mesmerising eyes, liquid heat spiralling between her slender thighs. ‘A week isn’t long enough for what I want, moraki mou.’

‘This … us,’ she specified unevenly, ‘isn’t going anywhere.’

Alexius scooped her up in his arms, ignoring Bas, who was bouncing round their legs and barking at the move. ‘Right now, we’re going to bed.’

Sex, his first port of call, his main means of self-expression, she thought despairingly even as the wild excitement of his hungry mouth on hers and his arms crushing her to him leapt like a burning flame to her every pulse point. Sex, shorn of emotion, was the lowest possible denominator. But did that matter if she wanted to be with him more than anything else in the world? She shrugged off her doubts and insecurity, and reminded herself that she had turned down a marriage that would have tied him to her whether he liked it or not. She didn’t want to become the wife he felt duty bound to marry because she was carrying his child. Eventually, he would come to resent her for such a sacrifice. No, what little they had now was still more honest and true than a second-rate marriage would have been, she told herself urgently, for one truth she had divined: Alexius Stavroulakis was constitutionally incapable of accepting anything second-rate.