a second.
‘I’ve ordered some food for us. You didn’t eat anything while I was around,’ Atreus remarked.
‘I’ll get changed,’ Lindy muttered, heading for the second bedroom with alacrity.
In the en suite bathroom, she stripped where she stood and used the hotel toiletries to wash her hair and freshen up in the shower. It was wonderful to rinse away the smell of smoke that seemed to have impregnated her skin and everything she wore. Clean again, she dried her hair with the dryer provided, using her fingers and then fetched her clothes from the holdall. She donned a long green skirt and a cream T-shirt, and left her legs and feet bare because she couldn’t face struggling into tights or shoes. She grimaced at her reflection in the mirror, for her glossy dark brown hair had fallen into the natural waves she disliked and she was convinced that her face was as pink as a freshly scrubbed lobster.
A trolley of food now stood beside the table and chairs in the reception room next door. Atreus was waiting for her and, like her, he had opted for informality. His black hair was damp and swept back from his lean, darkly handsome features. He was wearing black designer jeans and an open-necked shirt. As she appeared he studied her for a long moment and then slowly smiled.
And that smile on his wide, sensual mouth lit Lindy up inside like the blazing fire that had devoured a good third of Chantry House. It left little room for anything but instant reaction on all fronts. Her face was hot, and she sat down because she felt dizzy. Eyes screened by her lashes, she surveyed him, from his straight brows and dark deepset eyes to his newly shaven jawline, no longer defined by a blue-black shadow of stubble. There was something about the exact arrangement of his arrestingly beautiful features that drew her more than mere good-looks, she acknowledged in a daze. He magnetised her, exuding an irresistible pull of energy that overwhelmed her usual common sense. Sexual attraction had never hit her so hard.
Lindy accepted a couple of snacks and nibbled at them without much appetite while Atreus talked about the meetings he already had lined up for the morning. Even the sound of his voice set up a responsive vibration in her backbone. When she met his eyes she felt as if the ground had vanished and she was in mid-air, in the act of falling from a great height. It was terrifying and exhilarating and, because such excessive sensations were previously unknown to her, she decided that feeling that way around him was wrong and dangerous.
Indeed, as soon as an opportunity offered itself Lindy rose to her feet and smoothed damp palms down over her skirt. ‘I’m very tired. I think I’ll turn in now. Thanks for supper…and the shower was very welcome,’ she added with a warm smile.
And just like that she was gone.
Atreus studied the closed door of her bedroom in amazement and wondered when he had last run into a brick wall put up by a woman flatly refusing to acknowledge or respond to his signals. Never. He was torn between amusement and frustration.
Lindy leant briefly up against the back of the door and tried to be proud of her self-restraint. She had resisted him, the most beautiful sexually compelling male she had ever met. She was still stunned that he had found her attractive. Or had it simply been a matter of her being the only woman available for a little dalliance after a stressful day? Was that her putting herself down again? Whatever, she had no doubt that he had had every intention of their ending what remained of the night in the same bed.
That would have been a very foolish move on her part, she told herself ruefully. The idea of a one-night stand with a man she hardly knew filled her with distaste. On the other hand, a little voice she didn’t recognise murmured inside her head, he might well have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Or was that wishful thinking? She was ashamed of the way her mind was working. She had never planned to be a virgin at her age; it was just something that had happened when a serious relationship failed to transpire. Atreus was pretty much the first man to seriously attract her since those first heady days in Ben’s radius. Of course she was curious about sex, but that was not an excuse to conduct an experiment. If she had been embarrassed when he’d seen her naked in the river, how would she feel meeting him in future if she had shared a bed with him?
With a shudder of reaction at that mortifying thought, Lindy embraced her cautious, sensible self and climbed into bed naked, enjoying the cool feel of the sheets against her bare skin. She had never been so tired in her life, but she still felt very jumpy and found it hard to relax—even though her limbs felt like lead weights on the comfortable mattress. She set her mobile phone alarm to rouse her at eight and mentally counted sheep. Within minutes she was sliding into a deep sleep. Her dreams, however, were very far from being soothing. Too many disturbing memories had been unleashed by the fire, and all her rigorous attempts to suppress those upsetting images while she was still awake had failed to lay them to rest.
‘Lindy…wake up!’ She fought through the barriers of sleep and realised that her shoulder was being shaken.
She sat up with a start, her eyes flying open not on the scary scene which had been unfolding behind her lowered eyelids but on a lamplit and momentarily unfamiliar room. Bewildered, and very distressed by what she had recalled, she only then processed the reality that she was shaking and sobbing.
‘You were dreaming. You’re awake now,’ Atreus asserted, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Bare-chested, he had clearly only paused to pull on his jeans before coming in.
As Atreus entered her field of vision Lindy belatedly acknowledged his presence and stiffened in alarm. ‘Did I wake you up?’
‘You were screaming at the top of your voice. That must have been some bad dream,’ Atreus responded, his attention roaming to the ripe swell of her full breasts which were only just covered by the sheet and resolutely shifting upward again.
A violent shudder rippled through Lindy. ‘Because it wasn’t a dream,’ she shared, on the back of another heaving sob. ‘When I was f-four years old, I was in a house fire.’
Atreus tensed, frowning while he watched the tears drip off her chin and listening to her sniff. She was really crying, and not in a cute way either, for her nose had turned pink and her eyelids were swollen. But there was something extraordinarily touching about her genuine distress, and he closed an arm round her in an abrupt and almost clumsy movement.
It was one of those very rare occasions in life when Atreus felt out of his depth. Being supportive didn’t come naturally to him. He had grown up in a family famed for its reserve and formality. He had been taught to avoid emotion like the plague and he had no close ties with his surviving relatives. He had never had a serious relationship with a woman, and had always walked away when an affair threatened to become complicated.
The warmth of his arm was comforting. Lindy struggled to control the sobs and the tempest of emotion still rising inside her. ‘Afterwards, my mum told me that my dad must’ve fallen asleep with a cigarette in his hand and the sofa caught fire. He’d been drinking—my mum was in hospital. I woke up and there was smoke coming under the door and a funny smell,’ she related shakily.
Atreus swore half under his breath in Greek. ‘And yet you went into a burning house to save a cat tonight?’ he breathed, in wrathful incredulity.
Lindy’s mind was still firmly lodged in past events. ‘I tried to go downstairs but I could see something was in flames at the foot. I was terrified, so I started screaming for Dad.’ Her voice cut off, and she twisted and buried her face in the warm living flesh of Atreus’s bronzed shoulder. ‘For a moment I saw him, but until tonight I didn’t remember that I had actually seen him. He was trying to come to me but the fire got him!’ she sobbed brokenly.
Atreus was appalled. A dark frown stamping his features, he wrapped his other arm round her shuddering body and held her close. He was thinking about the selfless way she had rushed to the fire at Chantry House and helped out in every way she could. Not by a word or even a gesture had she hinted at what that intervention must have cost her emotionally. ‘You’re a very brave woman, mali mou.’
‘I’m just ordinary.’ Lindy snatched in a sustaining breath and choked back another sob, fighting with all her might to get a grip on her flailing emotions.