Greek Affairs: To Take a Bride: The Markonos Bride / The Greek Tycoon's Reluctant Bride / Greek Doctor, Cinderella Bride

That twisted her head around. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she prompted indignantly.

‘If you are pregnant,’ he enlightened, ‘we could have a paternity question to deal with. Very messy.'

‘And who have you slept with in the last month?’ she flicked back.

He frowned. ‘My recent sex life could not become a problem.'

‘If you were as careless with her as you were with me it could be! Now, there’s an interesting concept,’ Louisa laughed through her shimmering anger. ‘Two of your sexual partners pregnant at the same time … What will you do in your quest to have no child of yours born out of wedlock, Andreas? Dump the wife and marry the mistress?'

‘We were discussing your relationship with Landreau.’ He frowned. ‘Jamie said the guy wants to marry you.'

‘Well, lucky me,’ she mocked, thinking—you wretch, Jamie! ‘So which do I choose; the useless husband or the fabulous lover?'

Long fingers flexed on the steering wheel at her very measured insult aimed at his sexual prowess. ‘I am being serious.'

‘Well, I am seriously not going to be pregnant,’ Louisa flashed. ‘And if I am unlucky enough to find out that I have conceived a baby I will not play the role of your unworthy wife again!'

‘Tell our son that.’

The pained gasp she released hurt her throat and brought his face swinging round to flick a hard crushing look. Angry did not cover it, uncompromising ruthlessness did.

‘Tell Nikos that you are not prepared to sacrifice everything for his brother or sister in the same way that you did for him.'

‘Now who’s talking about him as if he’s still with us?’ Louisa pushed out chokily. ‘And you should be ashamed of yourself for saying any of that at all!'

Breathing gone thickly haywire now, she turned her face away again, vibrating inside with hurt. Another silence stung between them like killer bees on the rampage. They’d almost reached the far end of the island when he swung the car off the road to dip down a track through a thicket of trees.

They came to a stop in a dusty clearing. The engine died. The mood between them was thick. Louisa was fighting the lumps of tears lodged in her throat. Andreas climbed out of the car and came round to her side. When he opened the door for her she just remained sitting there refusing to look at him, refusing to move. The arm that lanced across her to unfasten her seat belt brushed against her cheek and sent her head jolting backwards. The air hissed from between his clenched teeth in response because it was so clear that her reaction had been one of revulsion.

‘I want to go back,’ she insisted.

‘Tough,’ he roughed out, hard fingers closing around her wrist like a manacle so he could use it as a lever to haul her out of the car.

The fact that a slender white leg appeared through the sliding gap in her skirt again did not improve his temper at all. She saw his face darken, saw the muscle-flexing clench of his gleaming white teeth. In its own way it was fascinating to watch him lose control of his temper like this. Like the old Andreas. Like the hotly jealous and possessive younger man who’d spent six weeks keeping her well away from his lusty Greek friends.

‘You’re hurting my wrist,’ she protested.

Squared chin jutting, he turned and began pulling her towards a wide, squat building she had not noticed as they’d driven up. He did not loosen his grip.

‘And bullies are not in the least bit attractive,’ she added tightly.

‘Shut up.’ He came to a stop in front of a blue-painted door.

The building looked new, Louisa saw, trying hard to curb her curiosity as he twisted a key in the lock. The land surrounding the house was still half a building site and there was a mini-digger resting idle over by the trees.

It was all she had time to notice before she was being pulled inside. Only after he’d slammed the door firmly shut behind her did he release her wrist, then he strode off through a wide archway and down some steps, leaving her standing there staring at the angry set of his wide shoulders that shouted Arrogant Greek Male so loudly she wanted to throw something at him!

But she didn’t have anything to throw and anyway she would not lower herself to his bullish level, she told herself as she rubbed at her wrist while glancing around. She discovered she was standing in a spacious hallway with rooms leading off from either side of the arch. The sense of newness was all around her in the smell of drying plaster and freshly applied paint on the walls and the clear fact that furniture of any description was scarce.

It struck her that she could just turn and open the door and walk away now that he’d left her standing here, and she even twisted in that direction, only to change her mind when she remembered it was at least a four-mile walk back to the hotel and it was hot out there and deliciously cool in here.

Anyway, curiosity was getting the better of her. What was this place?

With no intention of trailing in Andreas’s footsteps to ask him, Louisa struck out in another direction, opening doors along the lobby and peering inside. Most of them seemed to be bedrooms. Some of them were furnished and others were completely bare. After she’d checked all the doors she stepped up to the central archway and found herself looking down on a huge white space with wall-to-wall windows at one end framing what looked from here like a fabulous ocean view. A couple of big sofas still wrapped in plastic occupied the centre of the floor and what looked like a large flat-screen television covered in bubble-wrap was fixed to one wall.

The whole place had an unfinished, unlived-in echo about it, she thought as she walked down the three shallow steps which took her into the room itself, the main sounds she could hear coming from beyond another archway cut into a side-wall.

It was a kitchen, she discovered as she stepped into the opening, a huge, glossy white kitchen with a wooden table standing in the middle of its white-tiled floor. It was all very new, very modern, with another wall of glass Andreas was in the process of sliding open to let in the breeze coming off the ocean.

He had removed his jacket and tossed it onto the table. Unwanted butterflies attacked low in her stomach as she slid her eyes over the pale blue shirting covering his long torso, then his narrow hips and legs, which seemed to have gained in length and pure, potent power with the jacket gone.

‘What is this place?’ she finally gave in and asked him.

‘Mine.’ He said it with a low, rasping economy that told her his mood had not improved at all.

So much for curiosity, she thought with a grimace, spied a huge fridge opposite and was drawn to it by a sudden raging thirst. Tugging open the doors, she discovered it had been stocked full with just about everything to tempt anyone’s appetite. Ignoring the sudden hungry snap her stomach sent her, she selected a bottle of chilled water and unscrewed the cap as she elbowed the fridge doors shut.

Too thirsty to wait to hunt down a glass, she tipped back her head and drank greedily straight from the bottle. When she finally felt quenched enough to lower the bottle again, her blue eyes widened then stilled when she found that Andreas had turned and was staring through heavily hooded, glinting dark eyes at her extended throat.

Her heart gave a thump and a trickle of cool water lodged in her throat. She had to cough to clear it. The choky little sound brought his gaze up to lock onto the dews of water still clinging to her lips. Her very flesh began to tingle with that tight sting of overwhelming intimacy that came with the deeply bedded knowledge of everything about each other, which exposed what they were thinking or feeling even if neither wished to be so transparent. In this case Louisa would not have been in the least bit surprised if he’d leapt on her like a big hungry cat.

Because they’d always had this … gift for making the air between them pulse with sexual awareness. It had happened at the ferry terminal. It had happened on the hill. It had happened twice already today when he’d watched her wrap-around skirt slide apart. Andreas had looked at her exposed thigh and the heat of his desire to reach down and stroke her exposed flesh had struck right at the very centre of her sexual heart. Now here it was happening again as he stared at her water-dewed lips.

She licked the dew away with a flick of her tongue. The heavy black curves of his eyelashes flickered and the sizzling sting arrowed itself in a three-pronged attack on the tips of her breasts and between her thighs.

‘Thirsty,’ she said jerkily in the hope that speech would banish the unwanted sensation.

It didn’t.

‘How long had you been at the chapel before I arrived there?’ he demanded huskily.

The husky tone didn’t do much for her comfort either. ‘I can’t see that it matters.’ She shrugged the question away while wishing to hell that he didn’t look as good as he did.

‘It matters if you have been foolish enough to let yourself become dehydrated.'

He was right, she was forced to acknowledge with a frown. She had desperately needed the water but now that its deliciously cooling effect had reached her stomach she was beginning to feel ever so slightly queasy, and the skin on her arms and her shoulders felt tight and hot, which told her she had spent way too long in the sun.

‘Such husbandly concern,’ she mocked, lifting the bottle up so she could read the label, just in case she’d accidentally drunk something more lethal that water, ‘but it’s absolutely wasted on me, Andreas, when I don’t answer to you any more.'

‘If I gathered you up and stretched you out on that table you would answer to me,’ he growled out. ‘So stop trying to pretend you don’t give a damn about me when you know you still light up like a blowtorch whenever you look at me or I look at you.'

Stung by the horrible truth in that, ‘Maybe I light up the same for any man,’ Louisa retaliated. ‘I mean, think of all those years I’ve had to manage without you around to light my torch!'

Taking him on in the mood he was in was pretty stupid, Louisa recognised the moment he took his hands out of his pockets and she saw the darkening look hardening his face.

‘Well, that brings us neatly back to Max Landreau,’ he said and began moving towards her, coming in so close it was all she could do not to take a defensive step back. But that would give him an edge she refused to let him have, so she held her ground even though that ground felt oddly shaky beneath her feet.

‘I’m not going to talk to you about Max,’ she declared stubbornly, then frowned when she realised that a lot of things felt rather shaky right now, including her voice.