Читать книгу Mistress: Taming the Playboy - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 13

LAURA awoke to that confusing sensation of being in a strange room and not realising quite where she was—until she saw the stripes of bright sunlight shafting in through the bottom of the shutters and felt unaccustomed warm air wafting her body. She was in Greece—on the Karantinos island—and all night long she’d dreamt of Constantine, remembering the coldness in his voice when she’d tried to ask him about his mother, his dismissing her and her questions with a crisp arrogance clearly intended to drive home her reduced status in his household.

Some time during the night she must have kicked off the crisp cotton sheet, and now she was lying sprawled and exposed in a little nightdress which had ridden up over her hips during her very restless sleep. Which was surprising, given how tired she’d been following a delicious supper eaten with Demetra and her son in the cosy informality of the large kitchen.

Afterwards she and Alex had gone for a walk around the vast estate, with Demetra’s son, Stavros, acting as their guide. The young Greek student had pointed out all the bright constellations in the night sky and Alex had had the time of his life as a brand-new world of astronomy had opened up for him.

And then Laura sat bolt upright in bed. Alex! She hadn’t heard a peep out of him all night—when she’d tucked him and Blue Bear up in bed he’d barely been able to murmur goodnight before he was out for the count. What if he’d had nightmares? Got up and gone looking for her? Or wanted a drink and found himself lost in this vast and unknown house?

Grabbing her matching wrap, she hurried from her room and burst into Alex’s room—to find it completely empty. ‘Alex!’ she gasped.

‘He’s outside,’ came a voice from behind her, and she whirled around to find Constantine standing in the doorway of the room—an unfathomable look on his face as he studied her.

Aware that her hair was unbrushed and her eyes still full of sleep, Laura blinked. ‘Outside where?’

‘By the pool—with Demetra’s son.’

‘You mean you left my son—’

‘Our son,’ he corrected.

‘With someone who’s virtually a stranger—by a swimming pool when he can’t even swim that well!’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake—do you really think I would have placed him in any danger? I’ve known Stavros all his life, and he swims like an eel!’ he snapped. ‘I’ve been with them all morning, and apparently you all had dinner together last night. They’ve been getting along famously. If you hadn’t overslept you could have seen that for yourself.’ His expression darkened. ‘What I want to know is why he can’t damned well swim in the first place?’

‘Because …’ ‘Because what, Laura?’ he queried archly.

‘Because—’ Oh, what was the point in hiding anything from him? ‘Well, the lessons were expensive …’ Her voice tailed away as she realised he was looking at her in disbelief.

‘Expensive?’ he repeated incredulously.

She thought he sounded as if he were trying out a new and unknown word. But how could he understand what it was like to have to make every penny count when he had spent a life with an abundance of wealth?

‘He has football coaching at the weekends instead,’ she justified. ‘And I couldn’t afford everything.’

‘So here we have my son, the pauper,’ he said bitterly. ‘A Karantinos heir living on the breadline!’

Laura swallowed, suddenly realising how exhausted he looked—as if he hadn’t had a wink of sleep all night. His black eyes were hooded and tired, and the dark shadow at his jaw suggested that he might not yet have shaved. The expensively dressed Greek billionaire was a world away from this barefoot and elemental-looking man in faded jeans and T-shirt who stood in front of her.

It seemed all too disturbingly intimate and familiar—a glimpse of the old Constantine—and Laura shrank back, suddenly and dangerously aware of his proximity and the fact that while he was fully dressed she was wearing very little. Nothing but a very short wrap over an equally short nightdress that barely came to the middle of her bare thigh. And from the sudden tightening of his features the realisation had begun to dawn on him at precisely the same moment.

Without another word, Laura turned and walked out of the room and back along the corridor to her own—but to her horror and shameful excitement, she realised that Constantine was right behind her.

‘No,’ she whispered ineffectively, as he shut the door behind him and she felt his warm breath on her neck.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said grimly, turning her round as if she were a mannequin in a store window. ‘You should not walk around the house half-naked if you don’t want this particular outcome—nor make big eyes at me and allow your body to tremble with such obvious hunger whenever you come near me.’

Afterwards, she’d try to tell herself that she had done everything to resist him—but that would be a complete lie. She did nothing. Nothing but stare up at him, her parched lips parting with unashamed yearning, a tiny little whimper of desire escaping from them as he moved closer still. And then it was too late. His kiss was like dynamite, his touch the fire which made it combust—and Laura went up in flames.

‘ Oh,’ she moaned, clawing at his shoulders as he caught her by the waist and brought her up hard against the aroused cradle of his desire, so that she could feel the shockingly unfamiliar hard ridge of him pressing up against her through his jeans.

With an uncharacteristic disregard for foreplay, he slid up her nightdress and this time found her bare and ready for him, giving a little groan of delight as he tangled his fingers in her hair and then greedily delved inside her honeyed moistness as she gasped out her fevered response. He closed his eyes helplessly as she swayed against him, her hips moving with sudden instinct against his fingers.

Laura clung to him, her love-starved body hungry for his kiss and for everything else she knew he could give her. His fingers were moving purposefully between her legs now, and he was driving his mouth down on hers in a kiss which quite literally took her breath away—a kiss she never wanted to end.

And then she felt a change taking place in her body; the rhythm of his fingers was changing pace—quickening against her blossoming heat. She felt the wild beat of her heart—the momentary lull before she tumbled over—her body spasming helplessly against his hand, his kiss silencing her little gasps of fulfilment as she slumped weakly against him until the last of her orgasm died away.

‘Constantine,’ she breathed eventually, her cheeks flushed and her heart beating fast. ‘Oh, Constantine.’

‘I want you,’ he whispered fiercely into her ear. He guided her hand to lie over the achingly hard ridge in his jeans. ‘Feel how much I want you.’

And she wanted him, too. But it was broad daylight in the middle of the morning, and she had responsibilities which were far more urgent that the siren call of her body. ‘N-Not now …’The words stumbled out of her mouth. ‘A-And not here. We can’t. You know we can’t.’

Through the dark, erotic mists of his desire came her unsteady voice of reason. At first he tried to ignore it—but something at its very heart made Constantine still and pull his lips away from hers, to stare down into the flushed confusion of her face, the tumbled gold of her unbrushed hair.

His heart was thundering so powerfully he could barely think, let alone speak. ‘You think that it is right to deny me pleasure now that you have taken your own? Is that right?’

Dumbly, she shook her head.

Fuelled by a savage wave of frustration, he felt the slow flare of anger begin to burn. ‘You think you can keep tantalising me and that I will be like a tame puppy who will just keep trotting behind you and taking whatever it is that you dish out to me? Letting you turn me down, time and time again—so that I can’t sleep at night for thinking about your pale, curved body? Taking me so far with your sweet, soft promise and then acting outraged? Is that what men usually let you do, Laura?’

She was too busy catching her breath to rise to the taunt.

‘Have you become a tease, Laura?’ he persisted.

Her lips were trembling, ‘No. No.’

‘Just a woman who promises so much, who lets a man touch her so intimately and then freezes up? If that isn’t your definition of a tease, then I’d like to know what is.’

Frustratedly, she shook her head—knowing that he spoke nothing but the truth. She was acting like a naïve little virgin around him, when they both knew she was anything but. The kind of woman who would let a man only go so far … Was that because she thought that her continued resistance to full-on sex might make him respect her? When just one look at the contemptuous mask of his features proved that respect was the very last thing he was feeling?

And what of her own desires? Hadn’t she been living like a nun for the past eight years? Though it had not felt like denial because no one had moved her to passion. But Constantine had. Constantine still did. It was all there for the taking if only she could accept that it would just be no-strings sex.

‘I’m not saying I don’t want you—how could I when I’ve just proved the very opposite?’ she whispered. ‘Just not now and not here—when Alex might come back from the pool and start looking for me.’

His unyielding expression did not alter. ‘So, when?’

Laura could have wept. How matter-of-fact he sounded. It had taken a lot for her to say that, and yet it was as if the significance of her declaration was irrelevant and all he wanted was to pin her down to a time and a place. Her breath came out in a shuddering sigh, but she knew that she couldn’t back out of it now, even if she wanted to.

‘Come to me tonight,’ she whispered. ‘Late. When the house is quiet and when I know for sure that Alex is asleep.’

He felt the urgent leap of anticipation at his groin and he stared deep into the storm clouds of her eyes. Taking her slender waist between his hands, he bent his head to graze his lips over hers, feeling her tremble as he did so. Had she learnt somewhere along the way that a woman’s most effective weapon was resistance? Was that why she had applied it so effectively, making him desire her with a power which set his blood on fire for her?

And yet with Laura it did not feel like a game she was playing with him in an attempt to ensnare him. This felt real—as if she was fighting herself as well as fighting him.

‘I shall spend the whole day thinking about it, agape mou,’ he murmured. ‘Imagining you naked in my arms. Pinned beneath my body as I drive into you over and over again. Yes, I will come to you tonight.’ He smiled as he brushed an indolent finger over her trembling lips. ‘Now, hurry up and get dressed before I change my mind about waiting.’

With a mounting feeling of disbelief, Laura watched as he left the room, hugging her flimsy little wrap closer to her still flushed and trembling body.

She felt calmer after she’d showered and dressed and pulled on the floral pinafore Demetra had given her to wear. Not the most flattering garment in the world—but that wasn’t supposed to be its function, was it?

She stared at her rather drab image in the mirror. It was stupid to feel ashamed of waitressing when it was a job she had done with pride and efficiency during many periods of her adult life. But this felt different, and maybe that was because it was. She was going to have to wait on the father of her child and pretend that he meant nothing to her.

Shutting the door quietly behind her, Laura went outside to find Alex splashing around with Stavros in the shallow end of an enormous swimming pool.

‘Mum!’ he yelled. ‘Look! Stavros is teaching me breaststroke!’

Laura smiled as the seal-dark wet head of the student emerged from the water. ‘Thank you, Stavros.’

The student grinned as he gestured for Alex to come forward. ‘I like to teach, and he shows promise. Young children learn quickly. Come, Alex, show your mama what you can do.’

Alex doggy-paddled over to the edge of the pool and stared up at her, and Laura’s heart turned over as she saw the look of pure joy on his little face. ‘Don’t get tired, will you, darling?’ she said.

‘Mum!’

‘Did you have breakfast?’

‘Yes, I had it with Constantine.’ Alex grinned. ‘We had yoghurt—with honey! And Constantine and me went and picked oranges from the tree and then we squeezed them!’

She gazed down at him, thinking how easily her son had slotted into life here—already. And how easily he seemed to be slotting into a relationship with Constantine, too. Why, he must have felt as if he had landed in heaven with all the space and beauty which surrounded him

The dark flicker of fear invaded her heart once more. Fear that Alex might just fall in love with Greece and the powerful man who had fathered him—and might not want to return with her to their grey and penny-pinching life back in England …

‘Lovely, darling,’ she managed to say. ‘Well, I’m supposed to be working, so I’d better go and see what Demetra wants me to do.’

Laura made her way to the kitchen to find Demetra, who seemed to have assumed the role of mother hen. First she insisted that Laura sit outside and eat some bread and honey, and drink some of the thick, strong coffee.

‘You are too thin,’ Demetra commented as she pushed a bowl of bread towards her. ‘A woman needs her strength.’

Tell me about it, thought Laura wryly, as she sliced a peach into gleaming rose-tinged slices. But mental strength was surely just as important as the physical kind—and you couldn’t build that up with bread and honey! But she felt oddly moved by the older woman’s kindness—because it had been so long since someone had fussed over her like this.

And at least working was therapeutic—it was hard to stay troubled when your fingers were busy chopping salads and stuffing vine leaves. Demetra showed her how to make a sweet pastry dish which was soaked in lemon syrup after baking—as well as a pudding studded with nuts and raisins and flavoured with cinnamon and cloves.

Laura leaned back against the range. ‘Where did you learn how to cook like this, Demetra?’

‘Oh, I have cooked all my life,’ answered Demetra simply. ‘First for my husband and then for my living. You see, I was widowed when Stavros was just a baby, and so I came here to work for the Karantinos family. They have been good to me. And Kyrios Constantine is a good man,’ she added fiercely. ‘He used to fish with my husband—and when he died he put Stavros through school and university and made sure the boy wanted for nothing.’

The housekeeper’s words of praise for Constantine preoccupied Laura as she began to lay the table on the terrace, beneath a canopy of leaves. But the last thing she needed was to hear praise lavished on him. She wanted to put him out of her mind—at least until tonight.

‘Do you know, I could stay here all day watching you do that?’ murmured a deep voice from the shadows, and Laura whirled round to find Constantine at the other end of the terrace, his black eyes fixed on her. Clearly fresh from the shower, with tiny droplets of water bejewelling the black hair, he had changed from jeans and T-shirt into dark trousers and a thin silk shirt, and he had shaved, too.

‘How long have you been standing there?’ she accused, her heart beginning to race with a ridiculous excitement.

He began walking towards her, his progress made slow by an exquisitely painful arousal. ‘Long enough to see that delightfully old-fashioned pinafore dress stretched tight over the delectable curve of your bottom,’ he murmured. ‘Making me want to touch it again, quite urgently.’

Laura sent an agonised glance in the direction of the kitchen, even though the rattle of china told her that Demetra was not within earshot. ‘Constantine, don’t. Please. Somebody might hear.’

His black eyes mocked her. ‘Ah, Laura! You see how already we are colluding like lovers—even though we are not yet lovers? For that pleasure I must wait—and I am not a man who is used to waiting.’

‘No, I can believe that,’ she said quietly, holding the tray in front of her as if it were a shield.

He lowered his voice until it was nothing but a silken caress which whispered over her skin. ‘Do you know that I feel as a man in prison must feel, ticking off the seconds and the minutes and the hours?’

Laura swallowed. ‘Constantine—’

‘So that the whole day seems stretched out in front of me like a piece of elastic,’ he continued inexorably. ‘Which is tightening unbearably—tighter and tighter—until the time when it snaps and I can once more feel your lips on mine and your honeyed heat as it welcomes me into your body.’

‘Stop it,’ she whispered as the siren song of desire began a slow pulsing through her veins ‘Please, stop it. Or how will I compose myself in front of the others?’

‘You didn’t think through the potential problems of making such an erotic date with destiny, did you?’ he taunted.

She hadn’t counted on being on such an erotic knife-edge, no. ‘Do you think your father’s going to ask me anything?’

‘If he does, then just answer his questions truthfully,’ he said, his whole mood suddenly sobering. ‘If you think you can manage that.’

‘You’re … making it sound as if you think I’m a liar,’ said Laura unsteadily, trying to read his expression—but it would have been easier to have sought some sort of meaning from a statue.

Constantine shook his head. ‘I haven’t quite decided what you are,’ he said softly. ‘Or just what your agenda is.’

Her heart slammed against her ribcage. ‘Who says I have an agenda?’

‘Women always do—it’s in their genetic make-up.’

‘You’re a cynic, Constantine.’

‘No, agape mou,’ he contradicted softly. ‘I am simply a very rich man who has seen female ambition in its every form. And you—of all women—have the opportunity to try to take me for everything you can get your hands on.’

‘You think that I’d do that?’ she demanded breathlessly.

‘I told you—I haven’t made up my mind yet,’ he returned.

And yet Laura had confounded every one of his expectations of her. Her refusal to marry him and her stubborn insistence on coming here to work instead had left him feeling unsettled. After a lifetime spent dodging matrimonial commitment to some of the world’s most eligible women, he had assumed that this humble waitress would leap at the chance of being a rich man’s wife—yet she had done the very opposite. So was she simply being devious, or principled?

‘Now—if you’ll excuse me—I have some business calls I need to make before lunch.’ His eyes glittered with erotic intent. ‘And roll on midnight, my stormy-eyed little temptress, so that we can at last finish off what we’ve started.’

For a moment after he’d gone Laura stood rooted to the spot—unable to believe how a man could switch so quickly from desire to distrust and then back to desire again. She finished laying the table for lunch, and then went to help Alex get ready.

‘Is Constantine’s daddy very old?’ he wanted to know, as he wriggled into a brand-new T-shirt.

‘I believe so, darling—and he hasn’t been too well recently, so you must be well-behaved.’ Surprisingly, Alex let her attempt to tame his dark waves into shape and, stepping back, her eyes shone with maternal pride as she looked at him. ‘But I know you will.’

The lunch table looked beautiful—with little pots of purple and white flowers dotted everywhere—and Stavros and Alex sat at their places, waiting until Constantine appeared with his father. Laura watched as they made slow progress across the terrace, the old man leaning heavily on a stick.

He’s so old, realised Laura suddenly. Why, he must be in his mid-eighties. Which meant that he … She frowned as she worked out what age he’d have been when Constantine was born. Fifty, at least. Had his wife also been elderly? she wondered. Was that why she’d succumbed to a bout of pneumonia?

Kyrios Karantinos was, as Constantine had said, very frail—but it was easy to see how handsome he must once have been. He had the most amazing bone structure, and Laura found herself wondering with a pang whether Alex would look a little like this when he was an old man. Whether Constantine would.

And whether she would still be around to see it.

The faded eyes looked her up and down as he waved Constantine away and looked at Laura. Was it wrong to play the part of being some kind of waitress in this elderly man’s house? she wondered, as a sudden pang of guilt washed over her. But it wasn’t a part, was it? She was a waitress. This was far more honest than turning up here as Constantine’s new bride, married to a man who seemed to alternate between despising and desiring her—now, that really would have been a living lie. And one that any father would surely veto.

Nervously, Laura smoothed down the front of her pinafore dress. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Kyrios Karantinos,’ she said.

‘My son tells me that you met in England?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And that you persuaded him to let you come and work here for the summer?’

‘That’s right. It seemed a great opportunity to give my son a holiday.’

There was a momentary pause before he gestured towards the curly-haired little boy in his new shorts and T-shirt. ‘And this is your little boy?’

‘Yes, this is Alex.’

The faded eyes were now turned in the direction of the child, and for a moment Laura thought that she saw them narrow. But the moment passed, and slowly he sat down and began asking Alex about his morning. To Laura’s delight and pride her son began to chatter away. He began to tell the old man about his swimming lesson, and she longed to stay and listen, but Constantine was raising his hand to get her attention.

Her cheeks burned as she met the mocking look in his black eyes and registered the arrogant tone in his voice as he clipped out an order for wine. He’s enjoying this, she thought to herself suddenly as she hurried out towards the kitchen. He’s enjoying rubbing in my subservient status.

She tried to tell herself not to be affected by Constantine’s sardonic scorn, but that was easier said than done. When he gestured arrogantly for the bread basket she found herself wanting to hurl its contents at his hateful head. Or to tip the cool yoghurt and cucumber dish of tzatziki all over his lap.

In fact, she was so busy keeping everyone’s glasses filled and bringing out dish after dish that Laura had no real opportunity to take in what was going on—much as she longed to listen to what Alex was saying to his grandfather, or to see whether the old man showed any sign of guessing who the little boy really was. And it felt peculiar to be serving her own son his lunch in the guise of a waitress.

Never had she felt more of an outsider than she did during that seemingly endless meal—it was as if she was an observer, watching a play unfold before her. As if she had no real place anywhere.

And wasn’t there a rather frozen lack of communication between Constantine and his own father? As if the two men tolerated each other rather than loving one another? Is that the kind of role model Constantine is planning to provide for Alex? she wondered, feeling suddenly fearful. That of emotional containment?

But at least Alex himself seemed to have come into his own, blossoming in a way she had never seen him doing before. He was lapping up all the attention, she realised. From Constantine, from his father, and from young Stavros, too. Because he wasn’t used to the company of men. For the first time she could see how limiting his life must be, living with two women in a cramped apartment above a village shop.

And all the time she was aware of Constantine watching the scene too, his shuttered black eyes hidden behind the dark lashes, his gaze drifting to the animated features of the little boy. Had he sat at that very table and chattered away like that when he was Alex’s age? she wondered.

She watched as he began to peel an orange for his son, her gaze drawn inexorably to the strong fingers as they pulled away petal-shaped segments of the peel. Shadows fell from the high-angled slash of his cheekbones and the sensual curve of his lips had relaxed into a half-smile. And then he suddenly looked up, and the ebony spotlight of his gaze swept over her, and she found herself flushing as he raised his glass in her direction.

‘Can you fetch me some more ice for my water?’ he questioned carelessly, and Laura’s colour heightened as she nodded and went off to the kitchen in search of some.

He watched her go. Watched the high, tempting curves of her buttocks thrusting against the dowdy clothes, and once again he felt his heart-rate soar. What was it this plain little creature had which made his body ache like this? he asked himself bitterly. Was it because she was the mother of his child? Or because she was the only virgin he had ever bedded? Perhaps his desire for her was stronger than anything he had ever known simply because she had refused him time and time again. More importantly, would this terrible hunger cease once he had possessed her? His lips curved. Of course it would. As if someone like her could hold his attention for more than one night!

Laura returned, carrying the ice, and bent to put some in his glass, temptingly aware of the tantalising warmth of his body and the faint trace of his musky scent. Was he silently laughing at the image she presented as she served him—and when those black eyes swept over her in insolent assessment what did they see? A too-slight woman serving drinks in an unflattering floral pinafore dress? A mother who had willingly put herself in the role of outcast by waiting at her lover’s table?

Laura wondered if that was all they saw. Perhaps his gaze was perceptive enough to delve beneath the surface and guess at her feelings of apprehension and vulnerability. Was he feeling quietly triumphant as he anticipated the assignation she had so willingly agreed to tonight—and might he use it against her? To do what?

She thought of all the empty promises she had made to herself—that she would not succumb to the overwhelming chemistry which still sizzled between them. That she would protect her heart from pain by not getting close to him in any way.

And then she thought of their midnight assignation, closing her eyes as her body registered an automatic thrill of anticipation—despite the damning quality of the words he had whispered. What had they been? Ah, yes. To finish off what they’d started.

Laura bit her lip as she carried out a dish of almonds to the table. Was there any scenario more potentially heartbreaking than the one which lay ahead of her?