Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: May 2018 Books 1 - 4 - Эбби Грин, Люси Монро, Люси Монро - Страница 17
ОглавлениеHE BROKE THE KISS, nuzzling against the apex of her neck and shoulder again, inhaling as if taking in the very essence of her through her scent. “That is right, pethi mou, show me how perfectly we fit.”
She let her head fall against his, her face warm, her body suffused with heat and a wholly inappropriate sense of well-being. “You are very bad for my self-control, Andreas.”
“You said I was suddenly affectionate.” His words sounded like secrets whispered quietly in the back of the luxury car.
“Yes.”
“I could not touch you and maintain the friendship line.” It sounded like a painful admission.
And yet... “No, that can’t be right.” He’d dismissed her from his bed so easily.
“I promise you.”
Confusion filled her. Andreas did not lie. Not to get what he wanted, not to seduce. Not to convince. And his promises? He never broke them. There was also no denying the evidence as she managed to let go of his shirt, one of her hands brushing a rock-hard erection as it dropped into his lap.
“You are still needing.”
“It can wait.”
Oh, how many times had he said that very thing six years ago? He turned self-denial into a fine art and the springboard for her ecstasy as well as his own ultimate and very loud, energetic satisfaction. Andreas was apex sexual alpha.
Primal man.
“You are winding me up,” she accused with little heat.
His smile was too damn sexy. “Only in the best way.”
A tap on the door window alerted her that they were at their destination. She had no idea how many minutes the car had been stopped.
Kayla groaned. “How long has he been standing out there?”
Andreas shrugged.
She pulled away and looked around her. The privacy darkening shield was closed between the chauffeur and the back, the tinted windows preventing any curious New Yorkers from witnessing her and Andreas’s heavy make-out session.
“I can’t believe we just did that.” Only, really, she could.
Andreas lifted one brow. “It was inevitable.”
“Because I dressed too sexily today, according to you?” she demanded, not liking that excuse.
He shook his head. “Because from the moment I thought I might lose you, the need to reclaim you in a very primal way has been paramount.”
There was that word again. “You just admitted to being more Neanderthal than modern man.”
“Did I?” He asked, sounding more amused than offended.
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Maybe I’m just more Greek than either of us ever realized.”
“Or, you know, just a throwback.”
“You enjoyed it.”
“The driver is waiting,” she reminded him, instead of answering.
His very predatory smile said he knew the truth. And really, after climaxing from, well...making out, what could she have said? No, I didn’t? Kayla didn’t lie.
Not outright.
Omission? That was something else entirely. She’d never told him she loved him and she never would. It would be the fastest ticket to getting Andreas Kostas to walk out of her life. And really, no matter what she told herself in the midst of fury and pain, that was not what she wanted.
“Are you going to open the door?” she prompted.
How could laughter sound both so darn appealing and diabolical at the same time?
* * *
The Brooklyn Bridge was even more impressive up close than from afar. No question, but watching Kayla fall in love with another piece of history was even more satisfying than seeing it for himself.
Andreas marveled that it had taken him so long to come up with his current solution to both their issues. He was not usually a dense man.
His only excuse was that he got tunnel vision when he had a goal in sight. She was a friend, he’d been blind to other options, so focused on the final steps of proving to his father and the rest of the Georgas clan that Andreas could succeed without them. He’d not realized how well that goal fit with the only other long-term one that mattered. That of keeping Kayla Jones in his life.
She pulled her phone out and smiled, typing something with her fingers, taking a picture of the bridge, typing something else and then sliding it back into her pocket.
“This is just so amazing. The ingenuity of design, the aesthetics.” Her deeply appreciative sigh warmed him, though he was still irritated she was texting someone else on their date.
“Do you want me to get a picture of you here?” he asked, his tone even.
See him not even mention the texting.
She looked around, biting her lip, clearly torn. “It’s so busy.”
“We’ll wait as long as it takes to get a good shot.”
Her smile was worth his promise and the patience he’d promised.
“I want another one in the middle of the bridge, okay?” she asked when they were done.
“Sure.”
Her phone buzzed as he handed it over. She looked down, a small tilt of her lips saying she liked whatever she saw on the screen. She typed something again.
Andreas felt a frown forming. Whom was she talking to? He didn’t ask, striving manfully to respect boundaries.
She should appreciate his restraint.
They started their walk across the bridge, needing to stop every few feet for another perfect picture of the view, or the structure, and more than once she wanted him to allow her to take his photo too. She also continued texting with someone.
They reached midway and she wanted another photo, this time with him. “You take it. You have longer reach, you’ll get more of the bridge in.”
He grabbed her phone, sliding his finger over the pattern that would unlock it. It was still open to the text app from her last message.
She was chatting with that damn actor. Who else would have the screen name OnBroadway?
Another man might have clicked out of the app. But Andreas’s respect for boundaries only went so far. It was not as if she had never read his texts before and vice versa. If she didn’t want him reading her messages, she should have shut the app before handing him her phone.
Andreas scrolled up to scan the discussion.
OnBroadway: My sister showed me a steamy pic.
Codergirl: Your sis needs to mind her own biz.
OnBroadway: Looks like you and the boss man are friends again.
Andreas smiled to himself. And then some. The ride in the back of the private cab had gone even better than he had anticipated when he’d closed the privacy screen. But then the passion between them had always been incendiary. It had taken every ounce of Andreas’s self-control not to demand the driver take them to the hotel, instead of getting out at the bridge.
Codergirl: I guess we never stopped.
Well, at least she admitted their relationship wasn’t something that could simply stop at the click of her fingers.
OnBroadway: That’s so sweet.
Andreas grunted.
Codergirl: Don’t mock.
OnBroadway: My sister’s mad at you.
Codergirl: Andreas isn’t happy with you either.
OnBroadway: Maybe we should all get together for a meal while you’re in town.
“No way in hell!”
Andreas would share a table with the man who had designs on Kayla the day he changed his name back to Georgas and gave his wealth away to his cousins.
Kayla grabbed his wrist of the hand with her phone in it. “What are you doing? Are you reading my texts?”
“We are not going on a double date with Jacob and his sister.” He gave Kayla a look to let her know he was serious about this. “I have no interest in the woman and you have none in the brother.”
“Are you sure, Andreas? I’m pretty certain she would tick all of Genevieve’s boxes for you.”
“I told you, Genevieve and her boxes are no longer an issue for me.”
“I see.”
“And you aren’t interested in that Broadway actor.” He needed to hear her confirm that. It shouldn’t be too hard for her to do, not after what they’d done in the car.
“I’m not, am I?” she asked, her tone teasing, her expression assessing.
“You are not.” He was nothing but serious.
The little tease laughed.
He felt his temper rise and opened his mouth to remind her just who she had been showing interest in, in the not-so-distant past, but her expression shifted, went thoughtful and soft.
She placed her fingertip on his lips. “No, Andreas, I’m not interested in Jacob.”
“I knew you were not.” That was not relief he felt, more likely heartburn from something they’d eaten at lunch.
They wouldn’t be eating at that restaurant again, no matter how beautiful the view.
“Are you going to take our selfie now?”
He put his arm around her shoulder, pulling her body tight into his and did just that. He kept his arm around her after.
* * *
Kayla followed Andreas down the steps off the bridge, still reeling from what had happened earlier. His touchy-feely, all-possessive boyfriend-like behavior as they walked across the Manhattan-to-Brooklyn landmark hadn’t helped her sense of unreality either.
The texts from a near stranger, who felt like a new friend, seemed like her only link to planet Earth.
“Where to now?”
“You assume I have a plan?”
“You always have a plan.”
“We’re going to DUMBO.”
“Like the elephant?” Andreas was not a cartoon-movie guy.
He made a scoffing sound. “Like Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass. There’s shopping.” He said it like he knew that would be a selling point with her.
Of course, he was right. Even when she didn’t buy anything, she loved to window-shop. “But it’s the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“I did not name the neighborhood.”
She laughed, delighted by the tinge of annoyance in his voice, even as his hand held tightly to her own.
DUMBO turned out to be an amazing district with old converted brick warehouses now filled with living space, shops and restaurants. Some of the streets were cobbled, old freight-train tracks interspersed amid the stones.
They were browsing in a bookshop, Andreas lost in the DIY section, his guilty pleasure. He read them like Kayla read romance novels, with intense fascination and no hope of experiencing the culmination of what was between the pages.
Andreas Kostas was too busy conquering the world to build his own coffee table out of pallets, much less enjoy having such a thing in his living room. Kayla didn’t foresee herself ever getting her happily-ever-after with the man of her dreams either.
Her phone buzzed with another text.
OnBroadway: You never answered my last text.
Codergirl: Andreas wasn’t keen.
More like no way, no how, but she figured Jacob would get the subtext. He’d met Andreas, after all.
OnBroadway: He wouldn’t be.
Codergirl: He wants to work on our friendship.
OnBroadway: Looks like he’s working on more than friendship.
Kayla sighed and sat down in one of the chairs provided for book browsers before replying.
Codergirl: He doesn’t know what he wants.
Except she was pretty sure Andreas wanted sex. Hot, extremely satisfying sex.
It took a few seconds longer than she expected for the next reply.
OnBroadway: I think he does. Do you?
Now it was Kayla’s turn to stop and think. Did she know what she wanted? In broad strokes, sure. She wanted security for her place at KJ Software; she wanted Andreas in her life. She could admit that.
But could she afford to want him? Specifically, sex with him.
Her phone buzzed. Another text.
OnBroadway: That silence? Maybe that’s your answer.
Codergirl: ?
OnBroadway: Those words you can’t make yourself say.
Codergirl: You’re kind of smart.
OnBroadway: Just kind of?
Codergirl: Egotistical.
OnBroadway: Hey, my ego’s taken a big enough hit because of a certain beautiful geek.
Codergirl: I’m sorry.
OnBroadway: Don’t be. We’re going to be good friends.
She smiled. She kind of thought they were already on their way there.
Codergirl: Andreas won’t like that.
OnBroadway: Even better.
Codergirl: You’re a troublemaker.
OnBroadway: I can be.
She let out a small laugh, only a little embarrassed when she realized someone might have heard. She looked around and realized Andreas was watching her, his expression brooding.
Her phone buzzed with another text and she looked at it.
OnBroadway: Just don’t make the same mistake I did.
Codergirl: What’s that?
OnBroadway: Being afraid to take a chance on a friend.
People said that emails and texts didn’t convey emotions, but there was a wealth of feeling behind Jacob’s last string of words.
Codergirl: What happened?
OnBroadway: I lost my friend and the chance at more.
“More texts from Jacob?” Andreas asked, his voice surprisingly mild, considering the tightness around his eyes and the tension filling his posture as he stood towering over her chair.
“Yes, give me a second.” She wasn’t leaving her new friend hanging after that kind of admission.
Codergirl: I’m sorry. You’re a good guy.
OnBroadway: I have my career.
It wasn’t enough, though, or Jacob wouldn’t have advised her to go for Andreas. Kayla understood loneliness.
“Tell Jacob hello, but it’s not safe to text and walk.”
Meaning they were going to be walking again very soon.
She looked up at Andreas. “Are you bored, boss?”
His jaw went rigid. “Not your boss. We have more sightseeing to do.”
“You are being rude.”
“In what way?” He leaned against the wall by her chair, and he might have looked relaxed but for the jaw hewn from granite, crossed arms and muscles bunched with tension.
She waved her phone at him. “I am in the middle of a conversation.”
“During our date,” Andreas bit out.
What? They were on a date? How had she not realized that?
He was talking again before she could get her whirling mind to formulate an answer. “Do you see me talking on my cell? Have I sent a single text?”
“No.”
“Because my attention is entirely on you.”
Wow. Okay. This day was so not what she thought it had been. Nothing had been unexpected. He’d planned it as a date and all the sensuality had been part of it.
“I thought you were busy looking at DIY.”
He shrugged. “I get that. I also get that you are not the one invested in repairing ties that you frayed.”
But Andreas was. He might not love her, but Andreas cared more about their relationship than any other one in his life.
That mattered to Kayla. A lot.
“We were having kind of an intense conversation. Let me just tell Jacob goodbye.”
Andreas nodded, his expression closed. He stepped away to give her privacy.
Codergirl: Off to see more sights. TTYL.
She felt a strange relief and a thrill of happiness when Andreas took her hand as they left the bookstore. He seemed to have a destination in mind, using his hold on her hand to guide her along.
For her part, she was just happy to take in all the color and texture. Tourists mixed with native New Yorkers, people moving quickly with a clear destination in mind, others stopping every couple of feet to take pictures. It was a magical mishmash of humanity.
“You are people watching again.”
“I like it.”
“Considering how much time you spend on computers, some might find your fascination with our species odd.”
Just because she was cautious about the friends she made and the time she spent with them in no way meant people were not endlessly fascinating to her. How they interacted with each other. The way their bodies often said things differently than what they said with their mouths.
Yes, she found computers a lot easier to decode, but that didn’t mean she was giving up on trying to decode her fellow human beings. “There’s plenty to find odd about me, Andreas. I spent years of my childhood mute and still managed to skip grades.”
He squeezed her hand, understanding wrapping around her, though no words were exchanged. Andreas was the only person she’d ever told about her past, and he’d never once made her feel like a freak because of it.
“You responded to the abandonment of your mother by shutting the world out. It was natural that refusing to speak was part of that for you. You trusted no one with your words.”
He’d gotten that, when none of her social workers had. Her first foster mom had, though, and she’d been the one to draw Kayla out of her silent isolation. Only to send her back into it with the woman’s death from breast cancer several years later.
“It’s not the normal way to react to trauma. To just stop talking.”
“You know how I feel about normal, Kayla.”
Kayla grinned. “According to you, normal is boring.”
“I refuse to allow anyone else to tell me what normal for my life is supposed to be. My father tried to tell me normal was a family with parents after my mother died, but what was normal about forcing me to live amid the very people who believed my mother was so beneath them, they never even spoke her name?”
“Weren’t any of them worth getting to know?” Kayla asked.
She’d never questioned him before on his wholesale rejection of the Georgas clan, but she could not imagine it. She had no family. Not a single distant cousin to call her own. He had so many and rejected them all.
“I do not know. I refused to let anyone close enough to find out.”
“And you don’t regret that? Not even a little bit?”
“Why would I?” he asked with negligent arrogance.
“Andreas, don’t you realize what I would give to have a single person I could call family?” She shook her head and then looked up at him. He was facing ahead, watching where they were walking. His expression hard to read in profile. “Someone I knew I could rely on to just be there?”
“You can’t always rely on family. You know that.”
“My mom, your mom’s family...they aren’t all there is. Families are there for each other. Just because we haven’t lived it, doesn’t mean we haven’t seen it. Just look at how Bradley’s family is. They are all so close. Look at Jacob’s sister, she’s mad at me because I ditched our date. Family.”
“You think I could have had that with a Georgas cousin?” Andreas’s voice was filled with mocking doubt.
But she wasn’t going to back down just because he got a little snippy. “You don’t know you couldn’t. You don’t know your dad wouldn’t have given you something more than you let him.”
She knew that right there might be pushing him too far, but she’d thought for a long time the biggest problem between Andreas and his father was that they were too much alike. Both as stubborn as each other. Both arrogant. Both sure they knew what was right.
And for a time in Andreas’s life, Barnabas Georgas had the power to impose his will on his son. Without a true father-son relationship to temper that imposition, all it did was make Andreas despise the man more than he already did for the way Barnabas had treated Melia Kostas.
No attempts to make things better were going to work because Barnabas Kostas had irreparably damaged his bond with his son from the very beginning.
Andreas stopped in front of a glass building they’d seen from the boat on their harbor tour.
He turned to face her, no problem seeing how he was feeling now.
An expression of stunned disbelief tinged with anger covered his face. “Are you kidding me? That asshole did nothing but what he wanted and only for the benefit of his own consequence.”
“He was spoiled. Used to getting his own way. I doubt he knew any other tactic but the one he took with you.”
“His loss.”
“One I bet he feels to this day.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
She sighed. “I don’t know, okay? But it’s possible. Maybe there was more going on than you realized. He went about it all wrong, but maybe he didn’t know how to deal with a son who hated his guts before they ever met.”
“I had reason.”
“I know you did.” Barnabas Georgas had given Melia Kostas money for an abortion and to leave Greece.
She’d been ostracized by her family when she would only do one of those things, rejected by the man she’d loved, but she’d kept her son and raised him to the best of her abilities. And from all accounts, Melia had been an amazing mom.
“But circumstances change. People change. They learn to regret choices they made.”
She’d often wondered if her mom had ever regretted abandoning her. She’d always assumed the answer was no. After all, in order to contact Kayla, all she’d had to do was go through social services.
“What is going on here, Kayla?” Andreas asked. “Why are you saying these things?”
“I’m talking to you like a friend.”
“We’ve been friends for eight years. You’ve never said anything like this to me before.”
“I’ve never felt like I could.”
“Why now?”
“I’m not holding back anymore.” Besides, if his animosity for his family was enough to drive him into hiring someone like Genevieve, then it wasn’t healthy for Andreas to hold on to that grief so tight.
He might not see it that way, but Kayla wanted her friend happy, not trapped in a life where everything he did was to prove himself to a family he claimed to despise.
Andreas was silent for several seconds, but then his lips tilted up in a half smile, the expression in his gorgeous green eyes still solemn. “I like you being honest with me. It will take some getting used to, this no-holds-barred approach to you sharing your opinions with me, though.”
“I’ve always been honest with you.”
“But perhaps not so forthright.”
She couldn’t deny that she’d held back a lot. Her love, for one.
He turned toward the building, tugging on her hand. “Are you ready?”
“For what?” But then her eyes registered what was inside the glass enclosure.
A vintage carousel. Beautifully hand-painted horses on brass poles in all the traditional colors covered the circular platform, their livery done in jeweled tones, the artistry both garish and magnificent.
“You want to go on a merry-go-round?” she asked, disbelief washing over her even as she was wholly charmed.
He grinned. “Who doesn’t want to ride a carousel?”
She looked around them, making a production of examining his back.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for evidence of the pod-person replacement.”
“I am not a killjoy.”
“You are Andreas Kostas, synonymous with driven, focused and determined. I was positive amusement-park rides weren’t even in your vocabulary.”
“As you pointed out, we are on vacation.”
“I am on vacation...” Her voice trailed off for a second, Kayla searching for what to say. “You are... I’m not sure what you are doing here.”
“I thought I’d made myself very clear. I’m here until you come home, hence we are both on vacation.” The impatient, never-stands-in-a-line Andreas Kostas got in line with Kayla and waited his turn to pay for their tickets.
“So, we are going to ride a carousel.” Because that made so much sense. Oh, and by the way, they were on a date. That was apparently part of this now-joint vacation too.
Was Kayla losing her mind, or had Andreas gone around the bend?
“Exactly.” He sure didn’t sound crazy, just very determined.
But determined to do what?
Kayla was shocked at how inexpensive the tickets were, in the city where even the McDonald’s coffee cost more than it did back home. Delighted by the gorgeous paint job on the horse Andreas helped her climb onto, she was unsurprised when he stood beside her, rather than taking his own horse. In a way, his refusal to actually ride the merry-go-round helped her feel less disconnected from reality.
He stood close, an arm around her, one strong hand curled over the glistening black mane of her horse. His other hand rested on her thigh. Her body’s instant reaction to his nearness, to the sensation of being surrounded by him, overwhelmed her senses.
She could barely hear the music piping through the loudspeakers over the pounding of her heart in her ears. Her skin felt too tight for her body, the need she’d thought sated in the car was suddenly roaring through her again. Her olfactory glands inundated with his scent, that special spicy musk that had only ever meant one thing to her. Andreas Kostas.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Kay-love?” he asked, his thumb rubbing a light pattern against her thigh that was driving her to distraction.
“Yes.”
He chuckled. “Oh, now, that sounds promising.” He leaned down, nuzzling her ear. “I love the smell of your hair.”
“It’s the coconut oil in my smoothing product.”
“It’s you.”
The carousel started to slow and Andreas whispered, “You were wrong about something you said earlier.”
“What?”
“You said you don’t have a single person you can count on, no matter what. You do, Kayla. You have had for eight years. You have me.” With that soul-destroying statement, he stepped back.
