Dani Collins - Xenakis's Convenient Bride

His growing beard of stubble scraped her bare shoulder and his breath heated the sensitive skin where her neck met her collarbone. “Shouldn’t you be speeding off to save my life?”

“I’m seriously debating whether it’s worth saving.”

He hitched forward, jamming her buttocks even tighter into the notch of his spread legs.

She took off in a small act of desperation, glad for the muffle of the helmet and the buzz of the motor so she didn’t hear his laugh, even though she felt it.

Honestly.

She sensed him turning his head this way and that as she took the shortcut over the top of the island, through the area with the very best views, between the extravagant mansions that dominated the peak of the hill. Then, as they came down the other side and the road wound toward the coast, the horizon appeared as a stark line between two shades of blue. They descended to where the land fell away in a steep cliff.

On the mountainside above them, stone fences kept sheep in their fields and hopefully off the roads. She kept her speed down just in case. The scent of blossoms in the lemon groves filled the morning air and she couldn’t help relax as the cool breeze stroked over her skin.

His thumbs moved on her and she grew tense in a different way. Tingles of anticipation raced up her rib cage, longing for his touch to rise and soothe, cup her aching breasts and draw her back into him more fully.

How did she even know what that would feel like enough to want it? Her sexuality had been flash frozen before it had had time to properly bloom. She didn’t want to want a man’s touch. It was self-destructive madness.

Descending the hairpin turns rocked her against him, driving her mad. She had come this way because it was quicker, but she usually avoided this route into the port town. It wasn’t the once-daily ferry traffic and swarm of fresh tourists that bothered her. This part of the island actually had the best beaches and the better shopping. Ophelia begged to come here and there were a handful of really great restaurants.

Unfortunately, this route took her directly past a kafenion where local men sat and watched the world go by. Her father was often among them and she braced herself as they approached, refusing to look, keeping her nose pointed forward as she passed.

Not that he would acknowledge her, especially with a man behind her. He would ignore her completely, exactly as she would ignore him. She just preferred not to set herself up for that blaze of layered pain.

They hit the melee of the village streets and she was glad they had the scooter. It allowed her to zigzag around traffic snarls and down narrow alleys, coming in the back way to the clinic where she parked next to staff cars.

“Who is Ophelia?” he asked as they dismounted.

“How—?” She followed his nod at the helmet she’d hung off the handlebars. “I forgot that was there.” She rubbed the small, faded words she’d written across the back of her helmet shortly after Takis had bought the scooter. Ophelia, stop that.

Calli was only nine years older than the girl and didn’t have any siblings. In a lot of ways, Ophelia felt like a little sister to her. In others, Calli’s feelings went much deeper, more maternal. She adored the girl and was going to miss her terribly, even though Ophelia could be a complete brat at times.

“She’s Takis’s daughter. I look after her. Takis travels a lot, but she just turned fourteen and has convinced him to send her to boarding school. She’s with her grandparents, shopping for everything she’ll need. She outgrew this island long ago.”

Takis hadn’t wanted to see it. Losing his wife had jaded him. He wanted to keep his daughter sheltered as long as possible. Unfortunately, that had meant the girl had chafed and acted out—for Calli, thanks very much.

He was finally allowing the girl to spread her wings, though, which loosened the complex grip of gratitude and genuine love that had kept Calli here, raising a child who needed her while yearning to find her own.

“So you’re a nanny.” He said it like he didn’t believe it.

“Hmm? Oh. Yes. Nanny, housekeeper, party planner. Whatever Takis needs me to be.” She started toward the clinic. “Barring what you suggested earlier.”

“Good.” He moved quicker than her, catching at the door to hold it for her, filling her vision with his contoured chest lightly sprinkled with fine black hair, his skin burnished bronze, his nipples dark brown. “I’m glad you’re single.”

“I intend to stay that way.” Her voice husked despite her attempt to sound haughty.

“Even better.”

A pained fist clenched behind her breastbone. Vacation. Playboy. She flipped her hair as she passed him. “I should have given you one of Takis’s old shirts. I’ll buy you something from the shop across the road. After I make arrangements to pay your bill.”

* * *

Stavros walked outside, pocketing a course of precautionary antibiotics, rolling his eyes at the primitive concoction he’d been given. He might have pointed out the far more effective class that had recently passed approval if he hadn’t already been skating so close to revealing his identity.

As he had wrapped his injury, he had realized he couldn’t use the global health insurance that covered Steve Michaels, heir to a multinational pharmaceutical corporation. Using his Greek surname for the admission form had been another gamble. The nurse, a woman approaching retirement, had eyed him, saying she had attended school with a local woman who had married a Stavros Xenakis. Any relation?

He had ducked raking over the past. It promised to be a lot worse than this dull ache in his shin. Besides, Antonio had managed to get through two weeks without blowing his cover. Stavros’s ego refused to fail where his friend had succeeded.

He spotted Calli standing in the shade near the Vespa. As he approached, her gaze took an admiring sweep over his still-naked torso, betraying that her disdain for him was an act even as she shook out a T-shirt and offered it to him with an expression on her face like an offended matron’s.

The shirt was imprinted with a subtle design of the Greek flag in stripes of white against the blue of the shirt, which was something he might have chosen for himself if he wore T-shirts with logos.

“I expected ‘Greece’ is the word.”

“I almost got the one that said ‘Made on Mount Olympus,’ but, you know, why state the obvious?”

“Careful, Calli. That sounds like you find me attractive.” He shrugged on the shirt, telling himself it was his competitive nature that made him provoke her. Pursue her. She was a nanny, for God’s sake. One who was snobbishly turning down the pool boy. That made her an amusing distraction, not someone worth obsessing about.

“Keep telling yourself that.” She turned to reach for her helmet.

“You are telling me.” He caught her arm, waiting for her gaze to flash up to his. “Every time you look at me.” He demonstrated by taking her other arm and gently pressing her elbows back, giving her plenty of opportunity to recoil, but she didn’t, not even when her breasts nudged his chest.

She caught her breath and set tense fingers on the sides of his rib cage, even notched her chin in a signal of defiance, but she didn’t tell him to stop. A fine quiver made her lashes tremble. Her pulse fluttered in her throat and she searched his gaze for his intention, but she wasn’t afraid. She was excited.

She was daring him.

This was why he was obsessing. A primitive, powerful hunger rose in him, answering the siren song she was singing.

“I know the signs of desire in a woman.” He looked down at where her nipples were hard beneath the soft cups of her bra. He wanted to bite at them through the fabric. “They’re painted all over you. Just as I’m sure you felt me hard against your ass the entire ride down here. We react to each other. Why fight it?”