The Greek's Secret Passion

‘To say what?’

‘Oh, come on, Molly,’ he chided softly. ‘There’s more than a little unfinished business between us, ne? Do you think we can just ignore the past, as though it never happened? Pass each other by in the street, like polite strangers?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because life doesn’t work like that.’

‘No.’ She wondered if his wife knew he was here, but that was his business, not hers. And he was right—there was unfinished business. Things that had never been said that maybe should be, especially if she was going to be bumping into him all over the place. ‘I guess you’d better come in, then.’ Her voice sounded cool as she said it, but inside she felt anything but.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured.

He hadn’t expected it to be so easy, though maybe he should have done if he had stopped to think about it. For hadn’t it always been too deliciously easy with her? Such a seamless seduction it had been with Molly, and hadn’t there been some perverse, chauvinistic streak in him which wished she had put up more of a fight?

He observed the polite, glacial smile—thinking that there was a coolness about her now, which might suggest something else. That she didn’t give a damn whether she spoke to him or not. Or that there was another man in her life—for surely someone as beautiful as Molly would not be alone? Another man whom she adored as once she had said she adored him.

He stepped inside, and the pert, high thrust of her buttocks hit some powerful button in his memory. He felt a pulse begin to throb deep and strong within his groin and his body felt as though it had betrayed him. She moved with a confident assurance, and something about this new, older Molly set his loins melting in a way which both frustrated and infuriated him.

He had known her one long, hot summer on Pondiki—a summer of thoughtless passion. She had driven him and every other hot-blooded man on the island insane with desire that summer. Those tiny little cotton dresses she had worn when she had been working. Or outrageous scraps of material only just covering her body on the beach. Or naked as could be, with just the darkened circles of her nipples and the faint fuzz of hair at her thighs—the only things breaking up the smoothness of that bare, pale flesh.

He had triumphed in the joy of knowing that only he had seen her undressed and uninhibited like that, but in that he had been wrong. And he had been a fool, he thought bitterly. Even now, the memory still had the power to anger him—but then it had been the first and the last time he had been betrayed by a woman.

She turned to face him, determined to present the image of the slick, urban professional, even if inside she felt like the impressionable teenager she had once been. Yesterday, she had reacted gauchely, but yesterday she had had a reason to do so. Yesterday his appearance had been like a bolt out of the blue. Today there was no excuse. ‘I was just having some coffee—would you like some?’

He smiled. How times had changed. She used to practically rip the clothes from his body when she saw him. Who would have thought that one day she would be offering him coffee in a chilly, distant way he would never have associated with Molly? ‘Why not?’

She felt like a stranger in her own home as he followed her into the kitchen and sat down on one of the high stools at the breakfast bar, but then Dimitri dominated his surroundings like some blazing star. He always had.

‘Do you still take it black?’

He gave a careless smile. ‘Ah. You remember?’

Molly’s hand was shaking slightly as she poured their coffee, automatically handing him a cup of the strong brew, unsugared and untouched by milk, and he took it from her, a mocking look in his black eyes.

Oh, yes, she remembered all right. Strange that you could learn your tables and French verbs by heart for years at school and some of them would stubbornly refuse to reappear and yet you could remember almost everything about a man with whom you had enjoyed a brief, passionate affair. So was the memory selective—or just cruel?

‘Don’t read too much into it, Dimitri! Everyone in Greece takes their coffee that way!’ she countered as she reached for a mug.

But he wondered what else she remembered. The feel of his flesh enfolding hers, the sheer power as he had driven into her, over and over again? Was she remembering that now? As he was. She had left him dazed—in a way that no woman before nor since had ever quite done—and where once he had revelled in that fact, it had afterwards come to haunt him.

She pushed the coffee towards him, hating herself for thinking that his silken skin was close enough to touch. For a long time she had yearned to have him this close again, and now that he was she felt…Briefly, Molly closed her eyes. She was scared, and she wasn’t quite sure why. ‘Here.’

‘Thanks.’ But he ignored the coffee and instead let his gaze drift over her.

She wore a short denim skirt and a white T-shirt which had flowers splashed across the breasts. Her feet were bare and her toenails painted a shiny cherry-pink, and he felt his mouth dry with automatic desire. Some women knew how to press a man’s buttons just by existing—and Molly Garcia was one of them.

‘You’re staring,’ she said quietly.

‘Yes. I imagine that most men do.’

‘Not in quite such a blatant way.’

‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘But I am Greek, and we are not ashamed to show our appreciation of beautiful things.’

She remembered that, too, and how much it had appealed to her at the time. And it wasn’t just where women were concerned—it was the same with good food, a cooing baby, or a spectacular sunset—Greek men were open about showing their pleasure in the good things in life.

With an effort, he tore his eyes away from the diversions of her body, forcing his attention on the high-ceilinged room instead. ‘And this is a beautiful house.’

‘Yes, it is.’ She forced herself to concentrate. ‘But you aren’t here to talk about my house.’ And neither was he here to stare at her in a way that reminded her all too vividly of how close they had once been.

‘No.’ He was scanning the room for signs of male habitation, but there was none. None that he could see. ‘You’re married?’

‘I was. Not any more. I’m divorced.’

‘Ah.’ A jerk of triumph knifed its way through him. ‘There is a lot of it about.’

The way he said it made her feel guilty—or had that been his intention? She knew his views on divorce. The break-up of families. He had condemned the easy-come, easy-go way of life which had been so alien to his own. She knew what his next question would be before he asked it.

‘Children?’

‘No.’ Molly stirred her coffee unnecessarily, then lifted her eyes to his. So far he had been the one asking all the questions, but she had a few of her own. ‘Do you have any more—apart from Zoe?’

He shook his head. ‘Just Zoe.’

‘And your wife? Won’t she think it a little strange that you’ve come here this morning? Are you planning to tell her about us?’

‘What “us” was that, Molly?’ he retorted softly. ‘What is there to tell? That we were lovers, until someone better came along?’

Someone better? As if anyone could be better than Dimitri!

‘Someone else to lose yourself in and to vent that remarkable, newly discovered sexual hunger on?’ he continued, quietly yet remorselessly. He remembered the sight of the man’s bare chest. Of Molly’s unbuttoned dress. Of the way that the man’s hand had rested with possession over the swell of her hip, and the image had the blinding power to take him right back. To recall how he had wanted to smash his fist into something. ‘Was he a good lover, Molly? As good as me?’

Even now, the sense of injustice was powerful enough to hurt her. To be wrongly judged struck at the very heart of her. And stung as she was by the need to defend herself, everything else dissolved into insignificance—for wasn’t he now giving her the opportunity to tell him what he had refused to hear at the time? The truth?

‘You don’t really, honestly think that I had sex with James that night?’

‘James,’ he mimicked cruelly. ‘Ah! I did not know his name. James.’ The black eyes glittered. ‘It was, of course, simply a little craziness on my part, was it not, agape mou—that when I find my girlfriend in bed with another man, to assume that they had been having sex? Whatever could have given me that idea? Don’t forget, Molly—I knew what you were like. I knew how much you loved it—I have never known a woman who fell so completely and utterly in love with sex the way you did.’

What use would it serve now to qualify his accusation with the plaintive little cry that it had been him she had loved? And that had been what had made it so mind-blowingly and uniquely special. Sex with Dimitri had seemed as easy and as necessary as breathing. She could no more have been intimate with another man at that time than she could have grown wings and flown

‘Had you tired of me?’ he demanded. ‘Was that why you took the American into your arms and into your bed? Had you taken your fill of me, Molly—eager to try out your newly acquired skills with someone different?’

But she was still filled with the burning need to separate truth from falsehood. ‘I never touched him, Dimitri,’ she whispered. ‘Nor he me—not in the way you are thinking.’

He remembered the abandoned posture of her sprawled, bare legs. It had been the first time in his life that he had experienced real jealousy, and its potency had unsettled him. ‘What way am I supposed to think? He was asleep on the bed next to you!’

‘It wasn’t like that!’

‘Ochi?’ He gave a slow, cruel smile. ‘Then how was it? I am so interested to hear.’