Cathy Williams - Six Greek Heroes

‘One small problem…I don’t smoke,’ he murmured.

‘Oh…I can help there,’ Hope recalled, hurriedly digging into her handbag and producing a cheap plastic lighter. ‘I don’t smoke either but I thought my future employer might and I didn’t want to seem disapproving.’

As he waited for her to complete that rather intriguing explanation Andreas glanced up and registered in surprise that she was very far from being the least attractive woman he had ever met. In the dim interior, her pale blonde hair, now loose and falling almost to her shoulders, glowed like silver against the black upraised collar of his coat. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. She was smiling at him and when she smiled, her whole face lit up. Lost in the depths of his coat, she looked startlingly appealing.

‘Here…’ Hope extended the lighter.

‘Efharisto…’ Andreas thanked her gravely, mentally querying her unexpected pull for him. She was blonde and rather short and he went for tall, leggy brunettes.

‘Parakalo…you’re welcome,’ Hope responded with a weak grin, striving to move her feet to instil a little feeling back into her toes. ‘So, you’re Greek?’

‘Yes.’ Protecting the minuscule blaze of wood shavings from the wind whistling through the cracks in the wall, Andreas fed the fire. She was virtually naked below his coat. It was that knowledge that was making her appear appealing to him, he told himself in exasperation. He resisted a foolish urge to look at her again. Why would he even want to look at her again?

‘I love Greece…well, I’ve only been there once but it was really beautiful.’ When her companion failed to grab that conversational opener, Hope added, ‘You’re used to lighting fires, aren’t you?’

‘No, as it happens,’ Andreas remarked, dry as dust. ‘But I don’t need to be the equivalent of a rocket scientist to create a blaze.’

Hope reddened. ‘I’m talking too much.’

Andreas told himself that he was glad that she had taken the hint. Yet when he looked up and saw the stoic look of accepting hurt in her face, he felt as though someone had kicked him hard in the stomach. When had he become so rude and insensitive?

‘No. I’m a man of few words and you’re good company,’ he assured her.

She gave him a huge surprised smile and, blushing like a schoolgirl, she threaded her hands inside the sleeves of his over-large coat and shuffled her feet. ‘Honestly?’

‘Honestly,’ Andreas murmured, taken aback by her response to the mildest of compliments and involuntarily touched.

He coaxed the fire into slow life. She was so cold she was shivering without even being aware of it. As the fire crackled he sprang up to his full height of six feet four and approached her. ‘There’s a hip flask in the left pocket of my coat.’

Hope reached in and lifted it out.

‘Take a drink before you freeze.’

‘I’m not used to it…I couldn’t—’

Andreas groaned out loud. Taking the flask from her, he opened it. ‘Be sensible.’

Hope sipped and then grew bolder. When the alcohol raced like a leaping flame down her throat she choked, coughing and spluttering.

Closing the flask for her, Andreas surveyed her and rueful amusement tilted his wide, sensual mouth. ‘You weren’t joking when you said you weren’t used to it.’

Hope sucked in a jerky breath and wrapped her arms round herself. ‘I didn’t know I could feel this cold,’ she confided in a rush.

Andreas uncrossed her arms, closed lean, strong hands over hers and slowly drew her close. ‘Think of me as a hot blanket,’ he urged.

Her lashes fluttered in confusion. ‘I don’t think I could…’

‘Try. It will be a while before the fire puts out enough heat to defrost you.’

Hope lifted wide eyes as turquoise as the Aegean Sea on a summer day. ‘I suppose…’ she mumbled.

‘Do you wear coloured contact lenses?’ Andreas enquired, black brows pleating because even as he spoke he questioned the inanity of his enquiry.

‘You must be joking… I can’t even afford makeup!’ Hope’s state of nerves was betrayed by the tiny jerk she gave as he eased her into physical connection with his tall, well-built body. All of a sudden her heart felt as if it were jumping inside her chest and she could hardly catch her breath.

‘You have perfect skin…you don’t need it,’ Andreas said thickly, his big, powerful body growing rigid. Even the separation of their clothing could not dull his high-voltage awareness of the tantalising softness of her lush, feminine curves. In spite of his every effort to freeze his own all-too-male reactions, his libido was rocketing into overdrive.

That close he turned her bones to jelly and Hope couldn’t think straight. She looked up and connected with his mesmerising dark golden eyes. A dulled heaviness gripped her lower limbs while a tight, hard knot of agonising tension formed in her pelvis. He lowered his handsome dark head and she guessed what was going to happen before it happened but still couldn’t believe that he would actually do it.

But Andreas confounded her expectations and captured her mouth with hungry urgency. That single kiss devastated her and as it began, it continued, his tongue delving between her readily parted lips to demand greater intimacy. She was defenceless against that wild, sweet tide of sensation, for her body flared into sudden desperate life. The tense knot low in her stomach spiralled into a drugging flare of heat that suffused her entire body with explosive effect. Only the need to breathe conquered that wicked heat and she had to pull her swollen lips free to drag in a great gulp of oxygen.

Andreas gazed down at her with heavily lidded dark eyes and then, abruptly, he yanked his head up and colour delineated his hard cheekbones. ‘Theos mou…I had no intention of…’ His handsome mouth clenched. ‘I should never have touched you. I’m sorry.’

‘Are you married?’ Hope demanded, voicing her worst fear instantaneously and only contriving to drag her hands from him as she finished speaking.

‘No.’

‘Engaged?’ Hope was no longer cold. Her entire body felt as though it were hot as a furnace with embarrassment.

His ebony brows pleated. ‘No.’

‘Then there’s no need to apologise,’ Hope declared half under her breath, scrupulously avoiding his scrutiny while she struggled to get a grip on herself. The way he had made her feel had been a revelation to her and she felt incredibly vulnerable and confused. Her fingers clenched into the cuffs of the coat sleeves to prevent her hands from reaching back to him. She turned away in an awkward semi-circle, so many thoughts and emotions and physical feelings bombarding her that she felt momentarily overwhelmed.

Her first real kiss and he had apologised. It would be terribly uncool to confess that he had thrilled the socks off her and that if he wanted to do it again he was more than welcome. Her face flamed with guilt and bewilderment. For goodness’ sake, where had that shameless thought come from? With hands that trembled she made herself concentrate long enough to pick up and drape her wet clothing over the pile of logs.

‘I’ve upset you,’ Andreas breathed.

Hope whirled round, turquoise eyes bright as precious stones in her flushed heart-shaped face. ‘No… I’m not upset.’

She felt a hundred things but not upset: shocked, bemused and exhilarated by the sheer strength of her response to him. For too many years she had lived in a world empty of any form of excitement. Andreas was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her and so great was her fascination that it hurt to deny herself the pleasure of looking at him.

‘I planned to leave you here alone,’ Andreas drawled flatly, still struggling to get a handle on his own inexplicable behaviour and somewhat stunned by his loss of control.