Kate Hewitt - Greek Affairs - To Take A Bride

As soon as she was feeling fit enough she was getting out of here, she vowed fiercely. And he could take his lousy revenge-ridden proposition and his philandering self and offer them to some other woman—a woman who was probably as overused as him!

‘Here,’ a stiff voice prompted.

Peeling her heavy eyes open, Louisa discovered Andreas standing over her like some dark entity.

‘What?’ she mumbled aggressively.

Nothing flickered on his hard mask of a face as he held a glass out towards her. ‘To help the dehydration,’ he said.

Sending the liquid in the glass a dubious look, Louisa pulled herself up and took it from him.

‘And this …’ His open palm showed her a small pill. ‘Antihistamine to help cool your blood and take the sting out of your sunburn,’ he explained in the retracted tone of someone in no mood to take another argument.

‘I’m not sure if I should be taking …’

‘I checked with a doctor friend in Athens,’ he inserted. ‘The antihistamine might make you drowsy but it will not be harmful in any other way.’

He meant to a baby if there was one, though he was being very careful not to use the word now. Clearly, she’d shaken him up when she’d spat all of that out about his other women, so now he was playing it cold and stiff.

‘Thanks,’ she muttered and grudgingly took the pill from him then swallowed it down with the drink.

The drink tasted a bit odd but wasn’t too unpleasant. Handing the glass back to him, she sank down on the pillows, rolling carefully onto her side so she wasn’t facing him, then tugged the covers up over her burning shoulders and shut her eyes.

He did not move. Tension began to zip around them. Louisa had a feeling he was still standing there because he had something he wanted to say.

Well, she did not want to hear it.

‘Go away,’ she husked, desperately wanting to shiver and shake and put in a few miserable groans but refusing to let herself give in to the need while he stood there.

First she heard his heavy sigh, then the sound of his footsteps taking him back to the door, and absurdly she wanted to burst into tears.

What she did was drop like a stone into a deep slumber.

When next she awoke she was aware of something cool being smoothed into one of her arms. She opened her eyes to find Andreas sitting beside her on the bed, his dark eyes hooded and his mouth very grim.

‘Stay calm,’ he said as she made to stiffen. ‘I am not about to ravish you. I am merely applying a lotion to your burns.'

The effect was so wonderfully soothing that she didn’t want to do anything but lie there and let him continue. ‘You seem to be prepared for anything,’ she said drowsily.

‘Mm,’ was all he replied. But it was a very sexy mm, the kind of deep-bodied mm that vibrated up from his chest then across her senses and made her move restlessly between the sheets.

‘Be still.’

He was holding her arm out and was working the cooling lotion into her skin with all the gentleness of a masseuse. Eyes half-shut and still heavy with sleep, she watched him for a little while, unbelievably relaxed and unbelievably contented to just study him while he twisted her arm this way and that. She didn’t even mind when he reached the really hot spot on her shoulder though she was wearing no bra and was aware that the covers were slipping lower the higher up he worked.

A grateful sigh eased from her as the lotion began to neutralise the heat. ‘You’ll get it on the bedding,’ she thought she’d better point out when he finally allowed her arm to settle on the bed.

‘I would rather ruin the bedding than watch your skin peel off.’ He reached across her to pick up the other arm. ‘I thought you had learned to be more careful with your fair skin years ago.'

‘I used a sun-block before I left the hotel,’ she defended. ‘I just lost track of the time I’d been out, that’s all.'

He glanced up as she looked at him. Their eyes locked and her breathing stilled as a fine electric current began to pass between the two of them. It was sexual, they both knew that. Just as they both knew that if they did not break eye contact this was going to shift to a different all-consuming level.

He broke the eye contact first, his long lashes folding downwards as he twisted his body so he could begin work on her other arm. And because the antihistamine was making her feel like this, she told herself, she closed her eyes and just lay unmoving as he continued smoothing lotion into her until the sexual tug faded and without her knowing it she sank back into a relaxed sleep.

Leaving Andreas to grimace at the nagging sexual tug he was suffering from, which had no intention of relaxing its grip on him. He completed his task by gritting his teeth together before gently easing the cover down a little so he could smooth lotion into the slope of her breasts, where the skin was pink but not hot, he was relieved to discover.

After that he paused for a moment to study her sleeping face with her soft, slightly parted mouth and her dusky eyelashes resting against the delicate bones in her cheeks. Her face had escaped the sun’s heat by some miracle but just in case, and with infinite care, he smoothed the lotion into her forehead and her small, straight nose.

When he reached her chin his fingers lingered. Then he grimaced again and bent down to press a kiss to that sleep-softened. too tempting mouth. It quivered as she sighed. He frowned as he straightened and wished the hell he knew what was going to happen next.

Maybe Louisa was right and you couldn’t get five years back. Maybe he was crazy to want to try. They had baggage now.

Too much baggage?

Standing up, he walked into the bathroom to wash the lotion from his hands while he pondered that question.

No answer arrived like a bolt of lightning. No wise whisper of advice arrived from the gods. Walking back into the bedroom, he found that she’d moved while he’d been out of the room, her arms flung up on the pillows and her breasts now fully exposed.

Small, high, firm and tightly peaked by tempting pink rosebuds. And the answer to his question came right there. Not from the gods, not from his own head but from her perfectly shaped and very tempting breasts.

This woman, those breasts, that mouth, the fine-boned, slender body and long legs hidden beneath the sheets—all of this belonged to him.

Fight him as she no doubt would, she was going nowhere, he determined.

The next time Louisa awoke it was to the muffled sounds of voices. Sitting up, she pushed her tangled hair back from her face then took a few moments to look around the room while her foggy brain tried to sort out the events of a day that had brought her finally to this bed.

Then the door handle rattled and with a lurch she snatched at the cover and pulled it firmly beneath her arms. A second later and her brother appeared in the doorway—carrying her bags.

‘Well, talk about luxury.’ Jamie grinned at her. ‘Have you seen this place? When it’s finished it’s going to be the best house on the island!'

Louisa blinked. ‘Wh-what are you doing with my bags?’

‘Andreas said you were too ill to pack them yourself,’ he explained.

Two things hit Louisa at once. One that Jamie was very relaxed about her being here. The other that he seemed to think it was perfectly natural to find her occupying her estranged husband’s bed!

‘Andreas does not have the right to make that decision,’ she said crossly. ‘And since when did you become bosom pals with him?'

Jamie gave a shrug, his long frame hunching slightly as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and the grin disappeared from his face. ‘He told me what the parents did.'