Desire gnawed at her, raw and merciless. She felt herself melting, as she had when he’d kissed her on the hotel roof. Heat swirled through her blood. Pooled hot and heavy in the pit of her stomach. Sprang moist as dew in the secret folds of her femininity.
Stop being such a gentleman! she almost begged aloud. Stop holding back!
She was ravenous for him. Wanted him to touch her all over. Wished he’d lower her dress from her shoulders, raise its hem to her waist. Slide his hand inside her underwear. Cup the fullness of her breasts in his palms. Discover the tight buds of her nipples, the hot, tingling flesh between her legs.
More, she wanted to touch him. Run the tips of her fingers down his chest and past the flat planes of his belly. Stray lower into forbidden territory and explore the aroused shape of him. Test its smooth, naked weight in her hand. He would be big and powerful, just like the attraction flaring between them. He would be like no other man she’d ever met. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name.
Her realizing the direction of her thoughts was the only thing that prevented her from acting on her impulses.
Horrified at how close she’d come to embarrassing herself, she pulled away, shocked to the core.
What was wrong with her, that she was behaving like a…a floozy and practically throwing herself at a stranger? Had she been bitten by some exotic foreign bug and contracted brain fever? Admittedly she wasn’t a complete innocent where sex was concerned. She’d lost her virginity at twenty-two to Paul Johnson, her then-fiancé, who’d eventually changed his mind about marrying her when he’d realized it meant taking on her mother, too. But she’d never been “easy,” never cheapened herself with loose behavior.
Of course, some people might say she hadn’t had much choice in the matter because, after Paul broke things off and she went back to the island for good, her social life had pretty much hit rock bottom, especially when it came to dating. The limited number of eligible men she’d met there weren’t interested in a woman forever preoccupied with the doings of a sixty-year-old child.
But this was Athens, Greece, and incredible, beautiful Mikos Christopoulos had kissed her twice, and in doing so had awakened all the pent-up female needs and yearnings she’d suppressed for over five years, and set them free with a vengeance.
It had nothing to do with attraction, although Mikos surely was the most attractive man to walk the earth. It had to do with hunger; with the basic need to be acknowledged as a woman who amounted to more than a daughter and caregiver. But for her to give in to it like this? Never!
“Oh, my…!” she gasped, putting more distance between him and her, and sitting on her hands to keep them from wandering where they most definitely didn’t belong. “I think that’s enough for now.”
He didn’t attempt to dissuade her. If anything, he seemed almost relieved that she’d called a halt to things. “I’ll drink to that,” he said, reaching for the bottle and topping up their champagne.
Bewildered by the mixed messages he was sending—so hot for her one minute, yet able to cool his ardor so effectively the next—she gestured at the luxurious appointments of the limousine. “This isn’t exactly how I expected the evening to end, when I came to the party tonight.”
“Exactly what did you expect, Gina?”
“Why, that I’d go back to my hotel as soon as I’d gathered enough information.”
“Information?”
“For my magazine article.”
“Ah, yes, the magazine article,” he echoed suavely.
Too suavely.
“Yes,” she said, brought up short by the veiled cynicism she detected in his voice. “Don’t you believe me?”
“Is there any reason I shouldn’t?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” she lied, taking umbrage at his answering her question with one of his own. “But you sound awfully suspicious suddenly.”
“Do I?” He flicked a glance her way, then turned his attention to the bubbles rising in his glass as if they were the most fascinating things he’d ever come across.
“Yes,” she said again, and when he made no attempt to deny the fact, continued, “Are you?”
He deliberated at length before replying, “Let me put it this way. I’m not a man easily swayed by a beautiful face or an alluring body. It takes more than that to capture my interest. But I’m so strongly drawn to you that I’m at a loss to know how to deal with it.”
“You don’t strike me as the type to be at a loss about anything or anyone.”
“Normally I’m not. But I’d be lying if I said I find this situation normal. In truth, I consider it to be quite extraordinary.”
“And you don’t like not being in charge.”
“No, I don’t,” he said. “I am, as you say in your part of the world, a control freak. It’s what makes me so good at my job.”
“Which is what, exactly? You told me you work for Mr. Tyros, but you never said what it is you do.”
“I’m in management. An executive vice president, in fact.”
Which told her precisely nothing. Well, I didn’t think you were a janitor! she almost retorted, struck by the sense that he’d edited his answer very carefully.
Realistically she supposed it wasn’t surprising. Likely no employee of a high-powered tycoon like Angelo Tyros, was at liberty to share top-level information with an outsider, and she only had to remember his imperious commandeering of the limousine to recognize that Mikos was very top-level indeed. “Do you like your job?” she asked him instead.
The interior car lights were dim, but not enough to hide the grimace that passed over his face. “Not always,” he admitted. “But then, who does? Take you, for instance. Are you entirely happy with what you do every day?”
She turned and looked out of the window, her reasons for coming to Greece suddenly back in the forefront of her mind where they rightly belonged.
Ms. Hudson…Gina, this is very awkward, but I’m quite sure I left my earrings on the dresser before we went out this morning, and they’re not there now….
Gina, is that you? I just caught your mother down on the beach, waist-deep in the water…in November, Gina…!
Seen Maeve? Not since this morning, Gina, no. When did you realize she was missing…?
How did one rate a labor of love, she wondered, leaning her forehead against the cool glass. She hated what had happened to her mother. Hated the slow slipping away of the woman who’d once been the mainstay of her life. So, to answer his question, no, she wasn’t happy with what she had to do every day. But not for the reasons he might think.
Turning to face him again, she said, “Some days are better than others. I guess that’s true of every job.”
“Tell me about that.”
“What?”
“Your job. You said you live on one of the Gulf Islands.”
“That’s right.”
“Isn’t that rather inconvenient? If my memory serves correctly, they lie quite some distance from the mainland. I’d have thought that rather limiting for a writer interested in covering the international social set.”
“Many people commute from the islands to Vancouver. I can make it by seaplane in twenty minutes, if I need to.”
“But what made a young woman like you decide to live at home again?”
“How do you know I live at home?”
“You told me so, when we were dancing.”
Oh dear! She’d have