Читать книгу Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 49

THE advantage to the cheap and cheerful pizza place lay in its size. It was vast and, at eight thirty on a Saturday evening, brimming with families.

Nick hadn’t intended to end up there. In fact, for the better part of the week he had told himself that he had more important things to do than to waste time on one highly infuriating woman. If, he piously concluded, she wanted to hurl herself into the party scene, then she could damn well live with the consequences, and consequences there most certainly would be. If she paraded her body with a type like movie producer Ted, then she might just as well have Available stamped across her forehead in large neon lettering.

Especially with this Ted character, about whom he had managed to source some information. The man had been in and out of rehab like a yo-yo, which was not exactly a notable event in the world he lived in, but Nick could not think of Rose seriously dating a guy like that. In fact, he had discovered that he couldn’t think of her seriously dating any guy without feeling ferociously possessive.

Possessive over a woman.

The notion, when it first trickled into his head, was so unbelievable that it bordered on amusing. He had never been a possessive man, had never been jealous, had prided himself on his controlled approach to relationships.

Six days down the line, there was nothing amusing about it. He thought of the man’s oily hands stripping Rose of her skimpy black dress, unhooking her bra, feasting his eyes on her big, beautiful breasts and felt sick.

He should never have allowed what they had to finish. That was the problem. Things that ended prematurely became unattainable objects of desire simply because basic need hadn’t been sated. He had thought himself in control of what they had and only now realised that what they had had been controlling him.

But still. Going to the pizza place had not been an option. He had just somehow found himself driving over there well before she and her date were due to arrive, found himself taking the quietest and least noticeable table at the very far corner of the room where he was half shielded by an oversized plastic plant in drastic need of dusting. He found himself doing all this and it was almost as if his head had no say in the matter.

The pizza he ordered for himself as he waited was surprisingly good. The wine slightly less so, but nevertheless drinkable.

By eight-thirty, when neither Rose nor her date had yet arrived, he was smugly contemplating the very satisfying theory that Ted the movie producer had stood her up. He imagined her sitting bleakly in her sitting room, wondering whether or not to text, knowing that this was the first nail in the coffin of her new lifestyle.

She might even, he thought with a kick of real pleasure, be glumly admitting to herself that he, Nick, had been right after all to warn her off the man.

This was such a pleasing fantasy that he almost missed them. Feeling a little ridiculous because of his cloak-and-dagger tactics, Nick watched them through the fronds of the plastic plant, watched them taken through to a table uncomfortably sandwiched between two families with exuberant kids.

She had steered away from wearing anything revealing, but, instead of finding this acceptable, he darkly decided that she looked even sexier in her short grey skirt, her too-short grey skirt and neatly tailored blouse. She could almost have been going out to work except for the two top buttons of her shirt, which were undone. Nick was pretty sure that if he noticed that little detail, then so did Ted the reformed producer. He couldn’t actually see the man’s face because Ted had his back to him, but it was easy to imagine those beady little eyes flicking rapaciously over her body while he tried to work out the fastest way of getting her into bed.

Nick tensed and he finished his glass of wine and signalled the waitress over so that he could order something else. Coffee and dessert, because now he was condemned to remain where he was or risk being seen on the way out.

Not that he had plans to leave until they did. He sat back and folded his hands on his stomach and watched.

Rose, sitting on the opposite side of the room, was glumly regretting the impulse that had led her to this place.

She had reacted to Nick’s horrible, patronising attitude towards her a week ago by fabricating a non-existent date with a man who had been flattering and pleasant enough for a couple of hours but several thousand light years away from someone she would ever have considered going out with.

In fact, there had been no need for her to telephone Ted at all, but she had been prompted into doing so for all the wrong reasons. Hurt at seeing Nick with another woman, anger that he should dare tell her how to live her life having done such a comprehensive job of ruining it, and a stubborn feeling that if he warned her against Ted, then she would damn well go out with him because the last thing she needed was Nick Papaeliou’s misguided good intentions.

She had been tormented by the thought that he and his leggy redhead had probably chuckled at the silly little woman in the short black dress who was clueless to the ways of the world. That, as much as anything else, had driven her to pick the phone up and dial one of the several numbers Ted had left with her.

She had said she would be going to Angelo’s Pizza Emporium with Ted Splice and she would go to Angelo’s Pizza Emporium with him if only to prove a point to herself. That she was a free woman, liberated from the chains of fear that had kept her anchored all her life. Nick, she had decided as she had got dressed earlier, making sure to wear clothes that wouldn’t give Ted the wrong impression, might well turn out to be just the first in a long line of many.

She had been tempted to telephone Lily on the other side of the world and inform her of this new departure, a whole brand-new set of moral codes, but Lily had failed to show the appropriate disgust at Nick’s high-handed behaviour at the party and had just laughed when accused of not coming to her rescue. She had departed for America still clinging to the belief that everything was going to be fine, just wait and see.

Now, sitting in the pizza emporium, which was truly an emporium and one that seemed unnaturally full of rowdy children, Rose was in danger, not of dodging Ted’s wandering hands, but of nodding off through boredom.

Ted was not only very, very fond of the sound of his own voice and enchanted with all the funny stories he had up his sleeve, but he had also confided, on the way over in the taxi, lowering his voice, as if the cab driver could care less, that his inclinations were not entirely of the straight variety.

Of course, he adored women, but…

Rose had nodded and resigned herself to an evening of listening to Ted’s anecdotes and looking at her watch.

At least the place was big so that they could manage to avoid a falsely intimate setting, and once or twice, as she nibbled at her pizza and salad, she actually found herself laughing at some of the wild things he had to say.

Apparently he found her cool and refreshing because she was such a good listener.

‘If you were a guy,’ he paid the highest compliment, ‘then I’d be wining and dining you and inviting you back to my place to…’

‘Look at your etchings?’

Which brought them right back to square one, the main subject for the evening, Ted himself, and his trials and tribulations as an artist before he had discovered his true calling behind the lens of a camera.

It was a little after ten by the time Ted asked for the bill.

‘Been a bit of a waste for you, hasn’t it?’ he said sheepishly. ‘I should have let you know…told you where my preferences lay…’

Rose laughed and impulsively reached across the table and held both his hands in hers. ‘I just don’t understand why you don’t come out of the closet. It’s the twenty-first century, after all, and you work in a world where it’s pretty much the norm, anyway.’

‘Oh, it’s my mum, babe. Don’t think she’d be too hip to the idea and, well…she’s getting on a bit…Gotta play the respect card, man, gotta play the respect card.’

‘Well, if this helps at all, I was playing a part that night as well.’

‘You mean…’

‘Oh, no! Not that.’ Rose threw back her head and laughed, then she leaned forward and whispered confidentially, ‘I’m actually a closet introvert. But last Saturday, I dressed to impress and played the part.’

‘Well, now we know each other’s wicked secrets, I think we’re going to be friends for life.’

It was turning out to be an okay evening after all, Rose considered as they stood up, and when he slipped his arm around her waist she was quite happy to nestle against him and not at all offended when they parted company on the pavement outside, after promising that they would meet up again, maybe in a couple of months time, because Ted’s schedule was ‘like hectic, man’.

She washed her face, kicked off the high shoes and changed into her very un-wild gear of grey track-suit jogging bottoms and a sloppy tee shirt with a faded picture of Minnie Mouse on the front.

Heartbreak had, at least, had one good side effect. Her eating habits had changed. She had lost her appetite and it had conveniently failed to return so as she sat down to finish what remained of the evening in front of a bowl of carrot sticks and some low-fat dip she rested safe in the knowledge that the pizza was not going to be accompanied by a great slab of comfort-eating chocolate.

It took her fifteen minutes of surfing the channels before she landed on one that was watchable.

It would pass the rest of the evening, she supposed. No point heading up to bed because she knew that she would be unable to sleep. It had been the same for ages. She would close her eyes, will herself to think of something mundane, like what Annie at work had done with the reports she had laboriously redone three days ago, or what would be the next stage in her programming to update the Accounts Receivables department, and then she would think of him.

He sprang into her head like sweet temptation and forbidden fruit wrapped up in one agonisingly dangerous package. And he would always be laughing at her. Mostly, he would be laughing at her while rolling around in the bed with the redhead.

She was sipping some of the green tea with lemon that she had made to drink with her carrots and dip when the doorbell rang. She consulted her watch and frowned—nearly eleven-thirty on a Saturday evening.

Much as she had ended up enjoying her evening out with Ted, she hoped it wasn’t him. She was certain that she would see him again because, as she wryly acknowledged, he enjoyed talking and in the field in which he worked so did nearly everyone else, she suspected, so a good listener was a valuable find. He had also shared a major confidence with her and that, in itself, would be a strong bond between them. All very nice, but she was looking forward to an hour or so of mindless television, drifting in and out of thoughts of Nick.

She tried to wipe the disgruntled expression from her face as she went to open the front door. She was pretty much prepared to give Ted one cup of coffee, but really nothing else. His urge to confide would have to wait for a more convenient hour.

But when she pulled open the door, it wasn’t Ted hovering on her doorstep. It was Nick. Rose was so startled that she remained speechless for a few heart-stopping seconds. It seemed that he made a habit of appearing on her doorstep and sending her into a state of paralysing confusion.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded coldly. ‘You can’t keep just turning up on my doorstep, Nick.’

‘Are you going to invite me in?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I have better things to do than talk to you.’

‘Aren’t you dressed in the wrong clothes for the better things you have in mind?’ Wrong approach. This wasn’t how things were meant to develop, not that he knew quite how things were meant to develop. He had just known, when he had seen them walking out of the restaurant, wrapped around each other like a couple on the way to the altar, that he had to do something. He couldn’t just turn his back and walk away because he would be haunted by her for the rest of his life and that was a consequence he had no intention of accepting. He needed to get her out of his system and he wasn’t going to achieve that by antagonising her.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Rose informed him, her voice cooling by several degrees. ‘And I don’t like your attitude.’

‘I apologise.’

‘What?’

‘I apologise. I can see your point of view. I show up here, uninvited and unannounced, without so much as a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates…’

Rose felt the colour crawl into her skin. She didn’t know what was going on but there was a lazy warmth in his eyes that made her shiver with a horrible excitement, which she tried valiantly to slap down.

‘What’s going on, Nick? Why would you bring me flowers or chocolate?’

‘Let me in, Rose. Give me a chance to explain.’ It was an effort keeping his voice smooth and even and controlled because his only thought was that Ted the reformed producer was lurking somewhere inside her house, probably in her bedroom. True, women on the threshold of a rampant affair didn’t usually deck themselves out in track suit bottoms and what looked like an ancient tee shirt from when she was a kid, but who was he to tell? The woman was a law unto herself.

Poor, hapless Ted wouldn’t have known what he was letting himself in for when he decided to make a play for her. He would have been expecting a sexy version of the bimbos who littered the movie world. Rose must have come as a nasty surprise. Nick was tempted to smirk at the thought, but he contained himself and did his utmost to look penitent.

Rose, conversely, was looking back at him with deep, unhidden suspicion.

‘It’s late.’

‘I know and I’m sorry about that.’

‘Stop apologising, Nick. It doesn’t suit you.’

Nick shot her a winning smile. ‘You’re right. It doesn’t. Let me come in?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ She swung open the door and he walked past her into the hallway and then turned around so that he could subject her to another of those sexy smiles that made her head spin.

‘Go and sit in the lounge and I’ll bring you some coffee,’ she said, just to get rid of him while she gathered her composure in privacy somewhere.

Flowers? Chocolate? She had no idea what he was playing at, but it had sent her into a tailspin. Even as she bustled around in the small kitchen, making him his mug of coffee, she was acutely aware of him sitting in her lounge, just a matter of a few metres away. Whatever he was up to, she thought firmly, she was having none of it. She reminded herself that he had a girlfriend. A bright, sparkling, picture-perfect model with limited vocabulary. Just the kind of woman he was inevitably drawn to, never mind his brief diversion with her. And anyway, she was a free and liberated young woman now, no longer hiding behind routine and safety to protect her from the big, bad world.

She found him obediently sitting where she had told him to sit, doing nothing more offensive than flicking through one of the computer magazines she liked to read occasionally, just to make sure that she was keeping in touch with the latest technology. He closed it as soon as she entered the room and handed him the coffee.

‘Interesting reading material,’ he commented. Well, at least the rehabilitated producer was not on the premises. Either that or he didn’t mind going into hiding for an indefinite period of time.

‘Why have you come?’

‘How did your date go?’

‘As you can see, I’m sitting here in one piece so your fears about Ted were misplaced.’ And little do you know by how much, Rose thought wryly. ‘Is that why you came? Your over-developed sense of duty kicking in again? Compelled to make sure that I wasn’t cruelly taken advantage of and left sobbing somewhere on my own?’

‘No.’

Rose felt confused once again. ‘Then why?’

‘I…I’m not very good at admitting things like this, but I didn’t like seeing you with other men last week at that party.’

She held onto her common sense as tightly as she could and remembered the vital truth, which was that this man was not interested in a proper relationship with her or anyone else for that matter. Which brought her neatly to the redhead.

‘I’m surprised you even noticed me, Nick. Wasn’t your attention on your date?’

‘You know it wasn’t,’ Nick said huskily.

‘You mean you brought a woman to Lily’s party when you weren’t even interested in her?’

‘So it would appear.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I thought she might be able to make me forget that I’m still attracted to you. It didn’t work.’ Nick rested his mug on the table in front of him and strolled over to the sofa where Rose was curled at one end with her feet tucked under her. ‘Because I am—still attracted to you. Believe me, I don’t want to be, but I can’t help myself.’ He decided he would keep the little mortifying fact that he had spent the evening spying on her to himself. Confession might be good for the soul but total cleansing was downright stupidity.

‘Have you missed me?’ he asked roughly.

‘I…This is mad…’

‘Have you? I’ve been going crazy thinking about you, Rose. Ever since last weekend, I’ve been going even crazier thinking about you and another man.’ He took her hand in his, stroked her palm with his finger and then, devastatingly, kissed the soft, tender flesh.

It was like being burnt and Rose gasped and half closed her eyes.

This was all wrong. Playing the field was one thing when it was a journey of discovery. Playing the field with this man was no journey of discovery. She had discovered way too much on this particular journey.

But when he was leaning over her like this…telling her all this stuff…opening up and whispering how much he had missed her…

She let him scoop her legs onto his lap, knowing that she should be pulling away. The redhead, he was telling her now, had barely impacted on him. In fact he hadn’t contacted her since the party and hadn’t slept with her. She didn’t turn him on. Not as she, Rose, did. Music to her ears.

‘I’ve dreamt about your body, Rose…your ripe, sexy body. I’ve dreamt about your breasts…’

In response to that, Rose felt her breasts harden, disobeying all the strict rules she was laying down in her head about sticking to her guns.

‘Will you let me touch them?’

‘No,’ she said weakly.

‘Things didn’t end between us, Rose, and you know it as well as I do.’

‘It wouldn’t work, Nick.’

‘Sex between us can’t fail to work.’

‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’

She tried to wriggle her legs into a more dignified position, a position more in keeping with a woman in control of her own mind and body. However, her legs had turned to jelly. Worse, they were obeying someone else’s commands, and when he ran his hand lightly along her inner thigh they fell apart, willing slaves to whatever he wanted to do.

‘You tell me that you’re breaking away from the shackles that kept you locked up…’ His voice was low and seductive and his hands were now doing even more inappropriate things, slipping under the elasticated waistband of her jogging bottoms, easing them lower so that he could caress her stomach. ‘Break away with me, Rose.’

‘You should go.’

‘If you said it like you meant it, then I would.’ His hand left her stomach to explore upwards now, until he was cupping her breast. No bra. This was his very own wet dream. ‘But you don’t want me to…’ He touched the tip of her nipple, which was hard, and felt her sharp release of breath. ‘You want me to do this…Do you want me to do more? Do you want me to suck those big, rosy nipples?’ He flicked up the baggy tee shirt and this time it was his turn to inhale as he saw the vision that had been playing in his head ever since they had last made love.

‘No…yes…no…I don’t know…’

He did know. He recalled how much she loved him playing with her breasts and he began to suckle one of the rosy circles, loving the taste of her and hungry for more, like a starving man suddenly sitting at a banquet. As he sucked and pulled her nipple into his mouth his tongue flicked and darted over the sensitised tip, sending her into wild throes of abandon.

Somehow their bodies moved in harmony with one another, until she was sitting up, with her head flung back and Nick positioned kneeling between her legs so that he could lavish all his attention on her breasts.

He licked his way down and pulled down the jogging bottoms along with her underwear in one smooth, swift movement.

With his fingers, he parted the delicate folds of her and inserted his tongue, wriggling it towards the honeyed sweetness of the little bud that throbbed and begged for satisfaction.

And Rose accordingly groaned and lifted her hips off the sofa, tensing every muscle in her body as his questing tongue flicked and teased and his mouth tasted every inch of her most private parts.

She reached down to try and push him away and reclaim some of her will-power, and felt her fingers curl in his dark hair, urging him to bring her to completion right here, right now.

But Nick needed more than that and he couldn’t wait. He was barely aware of taking off his clothes until he was standing in front of her, big and proud. Rose opened her eyes drowsily and smiled before reaching out and taking his throbbing member in her hand, where she proceeded to give it the same attention that he had given her.

Yes, she had missed this too. Missed him and missed touching him, missed the way her hands and mouth could turn this impressive, powerful man to putty.

By the time he drove into her, they were both so close to coming that it just took a few deep, urgent thrusts to send them tipping over the edge.

Rose recovered to the dull, depressing knowledge that she had made the same mistake. She had allowed her body to do what it wanted to while her brain trailed along somewhere far behind, raising its weedy objections.

The sofa felt cramped and uncomfortable. ‘I need to go and get cleaned up,’ she said, and Nick, catching onto the tone of her voice and hearing the shutters begin to slide into place, turned to her and frowned.

‘You’re not regretting what we just did, are you?’

‘We’re back to square one, Nick.’

‘We need one another.’ She was making to stand up and he yanked her back down so that she fell onto his lap where he could easily keep her prisoner. ‘You didn’t hear what I said, Rose. I missed you. I missed you from the minute we parted company at the airport and I haven’t stopped.’

‘Which is why you felt the need to replace me.’

‘I told you, I thought I needed distraction. I was wrong. I need you. I need this. And so do you. You can say whatever you want, Rose, but your sweet, sexy body tells another story.’

‘It tells a different story. I want you, and, yes, I was weak, but I want more than just sex.’

‘Then come live with me.’ Nick uttered the words, but they failed to evoke the horror he might have expected. He had never lived with a woman in his life before, but right now it didn’t seem such an outlandish proposition.

To Rose, his proposal, noble though it was, especially for a man like him, was a halfway measure driven by lust. Love would have demanded a proposal of quite a different nature. Nick wanted her, but he also wanted to keep his options open. Boredom, for him, was lurking just around the corner and he was canny enough to realise that dumping a wife was completely different from dumping a live-in lover.

And, Lord, it was tempting. Tempting to think of having this bliss, but the inevitable rider of ‘for however long it lasted’ was too much of a threat to her peace of mind.

‘No.’

‘What do you mean no?’ Nick looked at her in stunned surprise. He wasn’t even aware of her standing up and sticking on her clothes. ‘What do you mean no? Have you any idea what sort of a leap a commitment like that takes for a man like me? To have a woman share my space?’

‘And I appreciate it…’

‘But you really want marriage.’ He was incredulous. He had just offered her something beyond the reach of every other woman he had ever known and she wanted more.

‘I really do.’ Rose took a deep breath and decided that there was no point playing any more games. She sat on the side of the sofa and looked at him carefully. ‘You told me that you never wanted to carry on wanting me. Well, Nick…’ she shot him a rueful smile ‘…I never wanted to fall in love with you, but I did. That’s why I want to marry you. You tell me that we’re sexually compatible. I tell you that we’re compatible in far more ways than that. I tell you that we have what it takes. So…will you marry me?’ Rose could actually feel the hammering of her heart. If someone had asked her to do a bungee jump off the Clifton Suspension Bridge, she couldn’t have felt more terrified than she did at this very moment, but what was the use trying to keep the truth to herself any longer? Pride and dignity was all well and good, but if she walked away without telling him how she really felt it would haunt her for the rest of her life. She would always wonder what if, and ‘what if’s were too closely related to ‘if only’s for her liking.

Nick looked at her, aghast.

Love? Marriage? He couldn’t contemplate it. Freedom of movement was so deeply ingrained in him that the thought of relinquishing it was unthinkable.

And, anyway, since when did women do the proposing?

He felt a surge of anger that she just hadn’t been able to accept his already extreme sacrifice of moving in with him.

‘Don’t worry answering,’ Rose said neutrally. She stood up and walked towards the door. ‘Your answer’s written on your face.’ Now, she couldn’t look at him, so instead she stared out into the hallway, hearing him get dressed and then feeling him move towards her.

‘I’m not the marrying type of man. You always knew that, Rose. Why couldn’t you have just accepted the parameters and appreciated the fact that I asked you to live with me? It’s as good as…’

Rose took a deep breath and looked at him. She had her arms folded and she could feel her fingernails pressing painfully into her forearms. If they weren’t she was sure that she would be shaking like a leaf. ‘Because,’ she said calmly, and where that dreadful calm came from she had no idea, ‘marriage is all about commitment. Real commitment. Not just the “yes, let’s stay together while the going’s good” variety.’

‘My commitment’s always been to my work,’ Nick told her baldly. ‘You’re the closest I have ever come to sharing myself with another human being, but marriage…’

‘Just one step too far?’ Rose laughed mirthlessly and walked towards the front door.

There was a flat, cold feeling inside her, but, strangely, she was still glad that she had said what she had said, given it her best shot, so to speak. She didn’t think he would be back now. In his mind, he would have opened a Pandora’s box and, having slammed the lid back shut, he would never make the mistake of reopening it.

‘We could have had fun.’ His voice was cold and accusatory.

Rose shrugged and opened the door. ‘Have a good life, Nick.’

She didn’t watch him leave. Instead she closed the door quietly and leaned against it. She could hear the deep revving of his car as he pulled away from the kerb and then the sound of the engine was replaced by silence and she made her way up the stairs, into the bathroom, so that she could have a shower.

When she lay in bed, she replayed in her head this last night spent together. Before, even in the aftermath of Borneo and thinking that things were finally over for good, there had been, she realised now, an element of hope and a certain restless dissatisfaction. Now, there was closure. It made her neither happy nor unhappy. She just felt dead inside.

Life would carry on and it did. On the surface, Rose functioned as she always had. Competent and reliable at work, sociable enough with her circle of friends.

Breaking out of the mould was well and truly abandoned. The only surprise was her sister’s reaction. Lily was disproportionately upset at the turn of events and that touched Rose.

‘You’ll get over it, Lily,’ she laughed wryly down the phone. ‘And so will I. In a year’s time, we’ll both see this as just another experience in the great adventure that is life.’ She couldn’t stand the thought that the damage done was irreparable. Surely not. Broken hearts mended, didn’t they? Every magazine assured her of that.

But six weeks down the road, and Rose still found it hard to find a way through the dense fog of misery. She felt like a robot, going through the motions while underneath everything wilted and shrivelled away and died.

She had no idea what Nick was doing and she avoided buying any tabloids just in case she was tempted to open up those scurrilous gossip pages where she might see a picture of him cavorting with another redhead, mark two. Mark one might have been a distraction, but mark two would certainly have been the truly-narrow-escape replacement.

In the midst of this never-ending battle with her torn emotions and the sheer effort needed to carry on going to work, socialising with friends and pretending that all was well in the world of Rose Taylor, the dawning realisation that something else was very wrong took a little while to filter through.

When it did, the fragile glue that was binding her daily life together dissolved like wax in a flame and the truly sickening question reared its ugly head.

What on earth was she to do now?