One Kiss in... London: A Shameful Consequence / Ruthless Tycoon, Innocent Wife / Falling for her Convenient Husband. Carol MarinelliЧитать онлайн книгу.
Eliades was, to Connie, perfect.
It was she who was flawed.
SHE looked much the same to Nico when he poured real coffee from the pot and offered her one, but Connie, sitting on the sofa holding Leo, shook her head. She seemed unable to meet his eyes.
‘Did you sleep well?’ Nico asked.
‘Wonderfully,’ Connie said, taking great interest in her middle toenail, embarrassed by her own Nicodriven dreams. ‘You?’
‘Not so good.’
Nico was more concerned with the change in himself to notice any in Constantine, how he’d almost lost last night, at least where women were concerned, a very level head.
Last night, watching her eat, hearing her laugh, well, as she’d headed to bed, in an unguarded moment Nico knew he had flirted. It came as second nature to him, he consoled himself, with any beautiful woman … but there must be none of that, Nico firmly decided as the strained conversation went on. They hadn’t sorted out the consequences of their first night together yet. It was not time think about moving on to their next.
‘Did Leo’s crying wake you?’
‘A bit.’
It had.
It had been hell getting to sleep, sensing her in the next room and, like a punishment for the depravity of his own thoughts, every time he finally drifted off to sleep, the baby would wake him, and he would hear the murmur of her voice. He tried not to picture what she was wearing, if anything, tried not to go in there as he heard her settle the babe, tried to ignore the creak of her bed as she climbed back in it.
He had not considered at first that it might be a problem—his mind had been focussed on other things, the news he might have a son, the appalling conditions she was living in, but now they were away from all that, now that she was here in his house, in the next bedroom, suddenly he was remembering all too often, the bliss of their one night.
‘I’m going to work.’
‘Oh.’ She tried to stifle the disappointment in her voice at his abruptness. He didn’t look dressed for work—he hadn’t shaved, he was wearing black jeans and a T-shirt and looked, Connie had thought, rather more casual than usual. There was nothing casual about her thoughts, though. He was sulky and dark and brooding and how she would kill for that smile, or more, for a kiss of those sullen lips.
‘When will you be back?’ And she could have bitten her tongue off, because it sounded as if she was interested, as if it mattered when he returned.
‘Not sure.’
He did not answer to anyone, did not account for his movements—he had built his life around freedom. As he saw the seaplane land by the jetty to collect him he drained his coffee and stood to go then let out a mild curse.
‘What?’
‘I forgot.’
His mind hadn’t particularly been on washing that morning in the shower and he raced in and grabbed the deodorant. He forgot again that life was different when she was near.
He walked out and lifted his shirt to spray the deodorant, a simple movement that millions did each day, but he forgot how aware he was of her and now how aware she was of him. There was the strangest charge to the air as he exposed his stomach, just the flick of her eyes downwards to the olive skin and the black snake of hair, and because he had sprayed one side he had to spray the other, had to pretend he wasn’t hard, had to pretend she had not seen.
Had to walk out without tasting her.
It was a relief that he was gone. The room came back into focus and it looked the same as it had before. There was the kitchen and the coffee pot, too, and there was Leo still in her arms, but how nearly he hadn’t been. How badly she had wanted to put him in his crib and return to the room, to follow on with whatever had been about to take place.
‘So, shoot me.’ She smiled to Leo, who gave her a gummy one back. ‘I fancy your father—it’s hardly the crime of the century.’ She heard the door open, jumped as she turned around, and standing there was Nico, and she knew he couldn’t have heard her, was positive he hadn’t, but she blushed to her roots any way.
‘Actually …’ He did not look at her as he walked to his bedroom, pulled out his case and started to pack some things. ‘Something came up.’ He had decided it at the stone arch, had made his decision and had turned around. ‘I’m going to be away for a few days. There are things I need to attend to on the mainland.’
He did not wait for her response, did not look or say goodbye to Leo. Instead, he walked out of the door, and headed to the jetty, and she would see, because he was quite sure that she was watching, that not once did he turn around—for he dared not to love them.
IT WAS a week of thinking, of lying by the pool and trying to come to a decision as to how she could tell him, and how that moment might present. Every evening she sat doing the jigsaw, her eyes scanning the horizon for a glimpse of his seaplane, but Nico didn’t come home and now Leo was sleeping through, the nights were so long, and she wished, perhaps more than she should, that he would call now and then.
And though he didn’t call, though certainly she missed him, it was also a week of healing, too.
With no Nico around, she was brave enough to pull on the red bikini and the sun felt familiar on her body as she walked outside. The same sun that lit the globe, except here in Xanos it shone as it should. The shadows fell as they always had as she walked across the stone and the sultry, humid scent it delivered to the garden as it warmed it was one she had grown up with. The ocean, too, sounded as it should when she closed her eyes and lay there. She enjoyed chatting with Despina, who desperately missed her niece; and even though they spoke on the phone weekly, it wasn’t the same, Despina said, as having her there.
‘She’ll be back,’ Connie offered, but saw the worry lines in Despina’s kind face deepen.
‘To what?’ She gestured to the opulent view, the hotel and the huge houses. ‘The locals cannot afford to live here—there will be nothing for her to come to soon. And once the houses are torn down …’ she gave a worried shrug ‘ … I won’t be here, either.’
‘Torn down?’
‘That is what Nico said when he hired us. He is having plans drawn up.’ She gave a weary smile. ‘For now we have a job and somewhere to live. Who knows? When it is done, maybe he will keep us on, though we like our little house.’ She smiled properly now when she looked down at Leo, who was lying on a rug in the shade, and then she stood. ‘I’d better get on.’
Bloated when she’d arrived from poor diet and exhaustion, now that Connie slept at night and ate the fruits of Xanos, her body rewarded her with its return. The sun’s rays were not just warming, but shining light on past hurts, till she could see more clearly and, though she would never let herself be treated like that again, she could understand now why Stavros had behaved as he had.
And there was a call to be made.
To the man who would have been her husband. After, she wept in relief that the conversation had been amicable, pleasant even—she had not realised till then that, despite the way he had treated her, she had been scared for him, could see that he had been as trapped as her. But Stavros was happy now, grateful for what had happened even, for he was on the mainland, living the life he had been born to.
A small plane on the horizon had Connie’s heart leap. As it landed by the jetty, she considered putting on her blouse to cover herself, but she needn’t worry as the passenger that stepped out certainly wasn’t Nico.
Blond,