DEAR READER LETTER

By Sharon Kendrick

Dear Reader,

One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.

There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.

I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”

So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?

I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.

Love,

Sharon xxx

Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.

SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

Praise for Sharon Kendrick
from Romantic Times:

About Getting Even:

“Sharon Kendrick bursts with strong sexual chemistry to enhance an unforgettable premise, engaging scenes and substantive characters.”

About Seduced by the Boss:

“Sharon Kendrick pens a highly charged story with volatile characters and an interesting twist on a fan-favorite plot.”

About Kiss and Tell:

“Sharon Kendrick delivers a powerful story of revenge with a gripping premise, vibrant characters and a strong conflict….”

They’re the men who have everything—except a bride…

Wealth, power, charm—

what else could a handsome tycoon need? In THE GREEK TYCOONS miniseries you have already met some gorgeous Greek multimillionaires who are in need of wives.

Now it’s the turn of popular Presents® author Sharon Kendrick, with her unforgettable and passionate romance The Greek’s Secret Passion

This tycoon has met his match, and he’s decided he has to have her…whatever that takes!

The Greek’s Secret Passion

Sharon Kendrick

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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For the man with the commanding presence.

He knows who he is.

CONTENTS

Cover

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

A MAN’S voice flowed over the air like warm, sweet honey and something about its lazy caress had Molly putting her pen down and staring blankly at the open window.

‘Nato, Zoe,’ said the voice again. ‘Maressi!’

A Greek voice. Unmistakably. Soft and sexy and deep.

Little sizzles of awareness pricked at her skin until Molly deliberately sent them packing. Having a Greek lover a lifetime ago didn’t mean you had to have an attack of the vapours every time you heard one of his compatriots speak, surely? The pang she felt was instinctive but only momentary, and she picked up her pen again.

Then she heard the voice again, only this time it was laughing and this time she froze.

For a laugh was something unique, wasn’t it? Voices changed and some voices mimicked others you had heard—but a laugh. Oh, no. A laugh was different and this one took her right back to a place which was out of bounds.

She walked over to the window with a heart which was beating far too fast for the sight of something which would surely mock her and tell her that she was being a sentimental fool.

But the rich ebony hair of the man who hoisted a case out of the car with such ease did little to reassure her that her thoughts had been of the mad, ridiculous variety. Yet what had she been expecting—that the owner of the voice would be blond? Because if the man was Greek—as he surely was—then, of course he would have coal dark hair and olive skin and the kind of strength which few men she encountered these days seemed to have.

He slammed the car door shut, and, almost as if he sensed he was being watched, he began to lift his head towards the house and Molly hastily withdrew from the window. What kind of impression would that create? A stereotype of the nosy neighbour busy twitching behind a curtain to see just what kind of family the latest house-let would yield.

But a vague sense of disquiet kept her heart racing as she heard the front door of the adjoining house close, and when she went to pick up her pen again she noticed that her fingers were trembling.

Forget it, she told herself. Or put your mind at rest.

Later, she decided as she began to make notes—she would do just that.

Dimitri put the bag down in the hall as his daughter began exclaiming about the high ceilings, the huge windows and the view from the back onto a dream of an English garden. He smiled. ‘It is a good house, yes?’

‘Oh, it’s a wonderful house, Papa!’

‘You want to go and choose your room?’

Zoe pulled a mock-shocked face. ‘Any room I like?’

Dimitri flashed her an indulgent smile, which briefly softened the hard, stark lines of his dark face. ‘Any room you like,’ he agreed equably, glancing idly through a pile of mail which had been left stacked on the table in the hall. Mostly bills and circulars—and one large and expensive white envelope addressed, ‘To the New Residents!’

His lips curved and he put the whole stack down, unopened, then spent an hour unpacking—shifting silk and linen into various cupboards and drawers with the kind of automatic efficiency which evolved after frequent trips abroad. He had just set up his computer on a desk in the room he intended to use as an office, when the front door bell rang, and he frowned.

None of his business contacts would come here. He had a couple of friends in the city, but he had planned to give them a call once he was settled. Which left, he guessed, a neighbour—for who else could it be, other than someone from one of the adjoining houses, who must have seen them arrive?

He sincerely hoped that this was not the first in a long deputation of well-wishers—though maybe that was wishful thinking on his part. Nothing came without a cost and he had deliberately chosen the house in a residential area, mainly for Zoe’s sake. Neighbours promised an element of security and safety and normality which you didn’t get in hotels—but the downside to neighbours was a tendency to intrude, to try to get close.

And Dimitri Nicharos didn’t allow anyone to get close.

He went downstairs and opened the door with a cool smile, preparing to say hello and goodbye in quick succession. But the smile died on his lips and something unknown and forgotten stirred into life as he stared at the tall blonde woman who was standing on his doorstep, a bottle of wine held in her hand and an incredulous expression on her face which made her look as if she had seen some terrible ghost.

It took a moment or two for it to dawn on him just exactly what—or who—it was he was seeing and, when it did, he felt the same kind of incredulity which had made the woman’s luscious lips part into a disbelieving ‘O’, but he kept his own face calm and impassive. He needed time to think, to assimilate the facts, and he would not be seen to react. He had learned that. He never let anyone know what he was thinking, for knowledge was power, and he liked to hold the balance to favour him.

He stared at her. ‘Hello,’ he said softly, as if he was talking to a complete stranger. But she was, wasn’t she? And maybe she always had been.

Molly stared back, her breathing rapid and shallow. It was like suddenly finding yourself on the top of a mountain, without realising that you had been climbing. She felt faint. From shock. From disbelief. And just from the sheer overriding awareness that, yes, this was Dimitri. Her fantasy on hearing the rich, deep laugh had not been fantasy at all. A man from the past—the man from her past—was here, and exuding that same lethal brand of sexual charisma which had once so ensnared her. It was ensnaring her now, for all she could do was to greedily drink in the sight of him, like a woman who had been starved of men all her life.

His skin was glowing and golden, with eyes dark as olives, framed by lashes thick as pine forests. He had filled out, of course—but not in the way that so many men in their mid-thirties had. There was no paunch hanging over the edge of his belt, nor any fleshy folds of skin around his chin denoting an indolent lifestyle with not enough attention paid to exercise. No, Dimitri was sheer, honed muscle, the pale linen trousers and cool silk shirt emphasising every hard sinew of his body.

True, the black hair was less unruly than before and there was a touch of silver at the temples, but the mouth was exactly as she remembered it—and, boy, did she remember it—a cushioned, sensual mouth which looked as though it had been designed purely for a woman’s pleasure.

But the eyes. Oh, the eyes. There was the difference, the one big, tell-tale difference. Once they had shone at her with, not love, no—though she had prayed for that—but with a fierce, possessive affection.

Today these eyes were as coldly glittering as jet. They gave nothing away, and expected nothing in return.

She drew a deep breath from dry lungs which felt as though they had been scorched from within. ‘Dimitri?’ she managed. ‘Is it really you?’

Dimitri raised his eyebrows in question, enjoying her discomfiture, almost as much as he was enjoying looking at her. But then he always had. Women like Molly Garcia were rare. Physical perfection—or as close to it as you would find in one lifetime. An irresistible combination of hair that was moon-pale and streaked with sunshine—and eyes so icy-blue that they should have been cold, yet he had seen them hotter than hot and on fire with need and desire.

Deliberately taking his time to answer a question which was as unnecessary as it was pointless, he let his eyes drift slowly over her body. And what a body. Still. Even though that body had inevitably changed during the journey from teenager to woman. Back then she had been as slender as a young lemon sapling, so slender that sometimes he had feared she might break when he made love to her—but now she bore the firm curves of a fruit-bearing tree. Her hips were still slender, but her breasts were rich and ripe and lush and Dimitri had to work hard at appearing impassive, only just succeeding in keeping the studied look of indifference on his face. His body he had less control over.

‘Perhaps I have acquired an identical twin brother?’ he mocked. ‘What do you think?’

Part of her had been hoping that it was all some kind of mistake, even while the other part had prayed for it not to be so, but any lingering doubt fled just as soon as he began to speak, with that heady mixture of deep, honeyed emphasis she remembered all too well.

She could do one of two things. She could stand there, gaping at him like a fish which had suddenly been starved of water, or she could be herself—the bright, successful and independent woman she had become.

She smiled, even though her mouth felt as though she were stretching a coat-hanger through a jar of glue. ‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed, with just the right amount of amused surprise. ‘I can’t believe it!’

‘I can hardly believe it myself,’ he murmured, thinking that this was fevered fantasy brought to life. His eyes strayed to her fingers. No wedding band. Did that mean that she was free? Available? ‘It’s been a long time.’

Too long, and yet not long enough—for surely time should have gone some way towards protecting her from his sensual impact. So why had time failed her? Why did she find herself feeling overwhelmed with weakness when confronted with the sight of her former Greek lover? She sucked in a dry breath as memories of him pressing her naked body against the soft sand washed over her.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she demanded.

‘I am staying here.’

‘Why?’

But before he could reply, she heard the sound of a voice speaking in Greek. A woman’s voice. And reality shot home. Of course he had a woman with him. Probably children, too. Large houses in this part of London were let to families, and he had doubtless brought his with him.

It was no more than she had expected, so why did it hurt so much?

And then she stared in a kind of disbelieving daze as the most beautiful creature she had ever seen came loping down the stairs towards them.

Glossy black hair cascaded down over high, pert breasts—her jeans and T-shirt showing off a slim, boyish figure and emphasising legs which seemed to go on and on forever. Her face was a perfect opal, with deep-set black eyes which dominated it and a luscious, smiling mouth.

And Molly’s determination not to appear fazed almost failed her as the woman grew closer—why, she looked almost young enough to be…Her forced smile faded from her lips. Had he become one of those men who paraded a female on his arm who was young enough to be his daughter?

‘Papa?’

She was his daughter.

Molly found herself doing rapid sums inside her head while Dimitri answered the girl in Greek. She looked seventeen—maybe eighteen—but that would mean…that would mean…She shook her head. She didn’t understand. For that would mean that Dimitri had had a daughter when he had known her. And surely that was not possible? Or had she been so wrong about so many things?

Suddenly, she felt faint, wishing that she could just disappear, but how could she? Instead she stood there like some dumb fool with a bottle of wine in her hand, the last of her youthful dreams shattering as the teenager approached them.

Rather reluctantly, Dimitri spoke. He had been rather enjoying the play of emotions across her lovely face, which Molly had desperately been trying to hide. This was indeed a unique situation, and the novelty factor of that for a man like Dimitri was almost as enjoyable as the sight of Molly Garcia looking so helpless.

‘Zoe!’ He smiled. ‘We have a visitor.’ And the black eyes were turned to Molly in mocking question. Over to you, the look seemed to say, unhelpfully.

Speaking was proving even more difficult than it had been before. ‘I live next door,’ said Molly quickly. ‘I, er—I saw you arrive, and I thought I would bring you this…to welcome you. Welcome,’ she finished. She held up the bottle with a grimace, but the girl smiled widely and took it from Molly, casting an admonishing little look at her father.

‘How very kind of you,’ she said, in softly accented English. ‘Please—you will come in?’

Like hell she would! ‘No, no, honestly—’

‘Oh, do. Please,’ said Dimitri, in a silky voice. ‘I insist.’

She met his eyes and saw the mischief and mockery there. How dared he? Didn’t he have a single ounce of perception? Didn’t he realise that she might actually find it difficult to meet his wife? Though why should he, when she stopped to think about it? Maybe this unusual situation was not so unusual for a man like Dimitri. How many other women were there like her, dotted around the place—never quite able to forget his sweet, sensual skills?

And she noticed that he hadn’t introduced her. Did that mean he had forgotten her name? Nor had he told his daughter that they had once known each other—though maybe that wasn’t so surprising, either. For what would he say?

Molly and I were lovers.

Put like that, it sounded nothing, but it had been something—it had. Or had she just been fooling herself all these years that her first love had been special and had just ended badly? And just how old was his daughter? Even if she was younger than she looked that still meant that he must have fathered her just after Molly had left the tiny island….

She couldn’t think straight.

And maybe that was why she felt as if setting foot inside the door would be on a par with entering the lion’s den. Some memories were best left untouched. Parts of the past were cherished, and maybe they only stayed that way if you didn’t let the present intrude on them.

She shook her head, mocking him back with a meaningless smile of her own. ‘It is very kind of you, but I’m afraid that I have work to do.’

He glanced at the expensive gold timepiece on his hair-roughened wrist. ‘At four o’clock?’ he questioned mildly. ‘You work shifts?’

Did he still think she was a waitress, then? ‘I work from home,’ she explained, then wished she hadn’t, for a dark gleam of interest lightened the black eyes and suddenly she felt vulnerable.

‘Please,’ said the girl, and held her hand out. ‘You must think us very rude. I am Zoe Nicharos—and this is my father, Dimitri.’

‘Molly,’ she said back, for what choice did she have? ‘Molly Garcia.’ She shook Zoe’s hand and let it go, but then Dimitri reached out and, with an odd kind of smile, took her fingers and clasped them inside the palm of his hand.

Outwardly, it was nothing more than a casual handshake but she could feel the latent strength in him and her skin stirred with a kind of startled recognition, as if this was what a man’s touch should be like.

‘Hello, Molly,’ he murmured. ‘I’m Dimitri.’

Just the way he said it made her stomach melt, despite him, despite everything and she wondered if he could feel the sudden acceleration of her heart. She tried to prise her fingers away, but he wouldn’t let her, not until she had met his amused black gaze full-on, and she realised that she was the one who was affected by all this—and that Dimitri was simply taking some kind of faintly amused pleasure in it all. As if it were some kind of new spectator sport. As if it didn’t matter—and why should it? She should be flattered that he remembered her at all.

Her smile felt more practised now; she was getting quite good at this. ‘Well, like I said—this was just a brief call to welcome you. I hope you’ll all be very happy here,’ she said.

He heard the assumption in the word ‘all’, but he let it go. This was going to be interesting, he thought. Very interesting. ‘I’m sure we will,’ he answered, with a smooth, practised smile of his own. His eyes lingered briefly on the swell of her breasts, outlined like two soft peaches by a pale blue silk shirt which matched her eyes. ‘It’s a very beautiful place.’

It had been a long time since a man had looked at her that way and she felt the slow, heavy pulsing of awareness—as if her body had been in a deep, deep sleep and just one glittering black stare had managed to stir it into life again. She had to get away before he realised that, unless, of course, he already had.

‘I really must go,’ she said.

‘Thank you for the wine,’ he said softly. ‘Maybe some time…when you’re not so busy working…you might come round and have a drink with us?’

‘Maybe,’ she said brightly, but they both knew that she was lying.

CHAPTER TWO

MOLLY let herself into her house, trying to tell herself not to overreact. It was something that was nothing—just something which occurred time and time again. And that the only reason this had never happened before was because they lived in different worlds.

She had come face to face with a man she’d once been in love with, that was all—though a more cynical person might simply describe it as teenager lust and infatuation. Her Greek-island lover had materi-alised with his family in the house next door to hers, and it was nothing more than an incredible coincidence.

And not so terrible, surely?

But the thought of just going upstairs and carrying on with her research notes was about as attractive as the idea of putting on a bikini to sunbathe in the back garden, wondering if everything she did now would be visible to Dimitri’s eyes. And telling herself that, even if it was, she shouldn’t care. These things happened in a grown-up world and she was going to have to face it.

Just as she was going to have to face his wife—and though the thought of that had no earthly right to hurt her, it did.

She went through the motions of normality. She met a friend for a drink and then went to see a film. And spent a night waking over and over, to find that the bright red numbers on her digital clock had only moved on by a few minutes.

She showered and dressed and made coffee, and when the doorbell rang she bit her lip, telling herself that it was only the postman, but she knew it was not the postman. Call it sixth sense or call it feminine intuition, but she knew exactly who would be standing on her doorstep.

And he was.

She opened the door and stared into the black, enigmatic eyes.

‘Dimitri,’ she offered warily.

‘Molly,’ he mimicked, mocking her wary tone. ‘I am disturbing you?’

He couldn’t do anything but disturb her, but she shook her head. ‘Not really.’

‘You aren’t working?’ He raised his eyebrows.

‘Not at the moment, no.’ She answered the question in his eyes. ‘I write,’ she explained.

‘Novels?’

She shook her head. ‘Travel books, and articles, actually, but that’s really beside the point. Look, Dimitri—I don’t know what it is you want—I’m just a little surprised to see you here.’

His eyes mocked her. ‘But you knew I would come.’

Yes. She had known that. ‘Was there something particular you wanted?’

‘Don’t you think we need to talk?’

‘To say what?’

‘Oh, come on, Molly,’ he chided softly. ‘There’s more than a little unfinished business between us, ne? Do you think we can just ignore the past, as though it never happened? Pass each other by in the street, like polite strangers?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because life doesn’t work like that.’

‘No.’ She wondered if his wife knew he was here, but that was his business, not hers. And he was right—there was unfinished business. Things that had never been said that maybe should be, especially if she was going to be bumping into him all over the place. ‘I guess you’d better come in, then.’ Her voice sounded cool as she said it, but inside she felt anything but.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured.

He hadn’t expected it to be so easy, though maybe he should have done if he had stopped to think about it. For hadn’t it always been too deliciously easy with her? Such a seamless seduction it had been with Molly, and hadn’t there been some perverse, chauvinistic streak in him which wished she had put up more of a fight?

He observed the polite, glacial smile—thinking that there was a coolness about her now, which might suggest something else. That she didn’t give a damn whether she spoke to him or not. Or that there was another man in her life—for surely someone as beautiful as Molly would not be alone? Another man whom she adored as once she had said she adored him.

He stepped inside, and the pert, high thrust of her buttocks hit some powerful button in his memory. He felt a pulse begin to throb deep and strong within his groin and his body felt as though it had betrayed him. She moved with a confident assurance, and something about this new, older Molly set his loins melting in a way which both frustrated and infuriated him.

He had known her one long, hot summer on Pondiki—a summer of thoughtless passion. She had driven him and every other hot-blooded man on the island insane with desire that summer. Those tiny little cotton dresses she had worn when she had been working. Or outrageous scraps of material only just covering her body on the beach. Or naked as could be, with just the darkened circles of her nipples and the faint fuzz of hair at her thighs—the only things breaking up the smoothness of that bare, pale flesh.

He had triumphed in the joy of knowing that only he had seen her undressed and uninhibited like that, but in that he had been wrong. And he had been a fool, he thought bitterly. Even now, the memory still had the power to anger him—but then it had been the first and the last time he had been betrayed by a woman.

She turned to face him, determined to present the image of the slick, urban professional, even if inside she felt like the impressionable teenager she had once been. Yesterday, she had reacted gauchely, but yesterday she had had a reason to do so. Yesterday his appearance had been like a bolt out of the blue. Today there was no excuse. ‘I was just having some coffee—would you like some?’

He smiled. How times had changed. She used to practically rip the clothes from his body when she saw him. Who would have thought that one day she would be offering him coffee in a chilly, distant way he would never have associated with Molly? ‘Why not?’

She felt like a stranger in her own home as he followed her into the kitchen and sat down on one of the high stools at the breakfast bar, but then Dimitri dominated his surroundings like some blazing star. He always had.

‘Do you still take it black?’

He gave a careless smile. ‘Ah. You remember?’

Molly’s hand was shaking slightly as she poured their coffee, automatically handing him a cup of the strong brew, unsugared and untouched by milk, and he took it from her, a mocking look in his black eyes.

Oh, yes, she remembered all right. Strange that you could learn your tables and French verbs by heart for years at school and some of them would stubbornly refuse to reappear and yet you could remember almost everything about a man with whom you had enjoyed a brief, passionate affair. So was the memory selective—or just cruel?

‘Don’t read too much into it, Dimitri! Everyone in Greece takes their coffee that way!’ she countered as she reached for a mug.

But he wondered what else she remembered. The feel of his flesh enfolding hers, the sheer power as he had driven into her, over and over again? Was she remembering that now? As he was. She had left him dazed—in a way that no woman before nor since had ever quite done—and where once he had revelled in that fact, it had afterwards come to haunt him.

She pushed the coffee towards him, hating herself for thinking that his silken skin was close enough to touch. For a long time she had yearned to have him this close again, and now that he was she felt…Briefly, Molly closed her eyes. She was scared, and she wasn’t quite sure why. ‘Here.’

‘Thanks.’ But he ignored the coffee and instead let his gaze drift over her.

She wore a short denim skirt and a white T-shirt which had flowers splashed across the breasts. Her feet were bare and her toenails painted a shiny cherry-pink, and he felt his mouth dry with automatic desire. Some women knew how to press a man’s buttons just by existing—and Molly Garcia was one of them.

‘You’re staring,’ she said quietly.

‘Yes. I imagine that most men do.’

‘Not in quite such a blatant way.’

‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘But I am Greek, and we are not ashamed to show our appreciation of beautiful things.’

She remembered that, too, and how much it had appealed to her at the time. And it wasn’t just where women were concerned—it was the same with good food, a cooing baby, or a spectacular sunset—Greek men were open about showing their pleasure in the good things in life.

With an effort, he tore his eyes away from the diversions of her body, forcing his attention on the high-ceilinged room instead. ‘And this is a beautiful house.’

‘Yes, it is.’ She forced herself to concentrate. ‘But you aren’t here to talk about my house.’ And neither was he here to stare at her in a way that reminded her all too vividly of how close they had once been.

‘No.’ He was scanning the room for signs of male habitation, but there was none. None that he could see. ‘You’re married?’

‘I was. Not any more. I’m divorced.’

‘Ah.’ A jerk of triumph knifed its way through him. ‘There is a lot of it about.’

The way he said it made her feel guilty—or had that been his intention? She knew his views on divorce. The break-up of families. He had condemned the easy-come, easy-go way of life which had been so alien to his own. She knew what his next question would be before he asked it.

‘Children?’

‘No.’ Molly stirred her coffee unnecessarily, then lifted her eyes to his. So far he had been the one asking all the questions, but she had a few of her own. ‘Do you have any more—apart from Zoe?’

He shook his head. ‘Just Zoe.’

‘And your wife? Won’t she think it a little strange that you’ve come here this morning? Are you planning to tell her about us?’

‘What “us” was that, Molly?’ he retorted softly. ‘What is there to tell? That we were lovers, until someone better came along?’

Someone better? As if anyone could be better than Dimitri!

‘Someone else to lose yourself in and to vent that remarkable, newly discovered sexual hunger on?’ he continued, quietly yet remorselessly. He remembered the sight of the man’s bare chest. Of Molly’s unbuttoned dress. Of the way that the man’s hand had rested with possession over the swell of her hip, and the image had the blinding power to take him right back. To recall how he had wanted to smash his fist into something. ‘Was he a good lover, Molly? As good as me?’

Even now, the sense of injustice was powerful enough to hurt her. To be wrongly judged struck at the very heart of her. And stung as she was by the need to defend herself, everything else dissolved into insignificance—for wasn’t he now giving her the opportunity to tell him what he had refused to hear at the time? The truth?

‘You don’t really, honestly think that I had sex with James that night?’

‘James,’ he mimicked cruelly. ‘Ah! I did not know his name. James.’ The black eyes glittered. ‘It was, of course, simply a little craziness on my part, was it not, agape mou—that when I find my girlfriend in bed with another man, to assume that they had been having sex? Whatever could have given me that idea? Don’t forget, Molly—I knew what you were like. I knew how much you loved it—I have never known a woman who fell so completely and utterly in love with sex the way you did.’

What use would it serve now to qualify his accusation with the plaintive little cry that it had been him she had loved? And that had been what had made it so mind-blowingly and uniquely special. Sex with Dimitri had seemed as easy and as necessary as breathing. She could no more have been intimate with another man at that time than she could have grown wings and flown

‘Had you tired of me?’ he demanded. ‘Was that why you took the American into your arms and into your bed? Had you taken your fill of me, Molly—eager to try out your newly acquired skills with someone different?’

But she was still filled with the burning need to separate truth from falsehood. ‘I never touched him, Dimitri,’ she whispered. ‘Nor he me—not in the way you are thinking.’

He remembered the abandoned posture of her sprawled, bare legs. It had been the first time in his life that he had experienced real jealousy, and its potency had unsettled him. ‘What way am I supposed to think? He was asleep on the bed next to you!’

‘It wasn’t like that!’

‘Ochi?’ He gave a slow, cruel smile. ‘Then how was it? I am so interested to hear.’

‘He was comforting me.’

‘Comforting you?’ He laughed. ‘Lucky man indeed—to offer comfort in such a way! I must begin to offer comfort to beautiful women—how very noble it will make me feel!’

And suddenly Molly had had enough. He was in her house and this was her territory and yet she was allowing him to dominate in the way that came so naturally to him. Throwing accusations at her and here she was, weakly trying to defend herself—when didn’t she have a few accusations of her own?

‘Actually, yes, he was comforting me,’ she said. She looked him straight in the face. ‘Because I had just found out about Malantha, you see.’

He stilled then, became so still that an outside observer might have wondered if he breathed at all. Only the ebony glitter from the narrowed eyes showed that he did.

‘What about Malantha?’ he questioned softly.

‘That she was the girl you were promised to! I discovered that I had been nothing but a light, summer diversion, one in just a long line of willing lovers! I saw you both together, you see, Dimitri. I discovered that night what everyone else on the island knew—that Malantha was always the girl you were intended to marry—and, yes, I was upset. Very upset,’ she finished, though the word sounded tame when she said it now.

Upset? At the time it had felt as though her heart had been torn from her body and ripped apart, with the edges left raw and jagged and gaping. First love and first heartbreak—and didn’t they say that the cut of first love was the deepest cut of all?

Everyone had told her that the pain would fade and eventually heal, and heal it had. It had just left a faint but indelible scar along the way.

She lifted her head and stared at him, her eyes bright and searching. ‘What happened to Malantha, by the way?’ she asked.

There was a pause, a pause that seemed to go on for ever and ever.

‘I married her.’

The world shifted out of focus, and when it shifted back in again it looked different. It was what she had half known and half expected and yet not what she wanted to hear. For hadn’t there been a foolish part of her that longed for him to tell her that she had been mistaken? That he had not been promised to Malantha at all. Or that he had, but had changed his mind along the way.

In a way it made things worse, and yet in a funny kind of way it made things better. So she had not been wrong. Those nights when she had lain awake wondering if she had ruined everything by jumping to a stupid conclusion had been wasted nights. Her instincts had been right all along.

She sucked in a dry, painful breath. ‘Then hadn’t you better be getting back to her?’ she questioned coldly. ‘In the circumstances, I doubt whether she would approve of you sitting in my kitchen, drinking my coffee—do you, Dimitri?’

‘My wife is dead,’ he said baldly.

There was a moment of terrible, stunned silence and Molly was rocked by emotions so basic and conflicting that for several long seconds she could not speak.

Dead? She looked at him blankly, seeking and finding the sombre affirmation in his eyes. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘W…when?’ she asked ineffectually.

‘When Zoe was a baby.’

‘Oh, God, Dimitri—that’s awful.’

He shook his head. He didn’t want her sympathy. It was mistimed and irrelevant now. He wanted her, he realised. He always had and he still did. To lose himself in the soft white folds of her body. To feel that tumble of blonde hair swaying like silk against his chest. Desire could strike at any time, and this could not be a more inappropriate one, but that didn’t stop him feeling its slow, stealthy course through his veins, like some unstoppable drug.

‘It was a long time ago. It is past.’

For a moment, all that could be heard was the ticking of the clock.

‘How old is Zoe now?’ she asked suddenly.

The black eyes narrowed. ‘Fifteen.’

This time the sums were easier. ‘So you married Malantha soon after I had left?’ But she didn’t need an answer to that. ‘Of course you did.’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘Just tell me one thing, Dimitri—were you sleeping with her at the same time you were sleeping with me?’

His eyes iced over and his mouth curved with distaste. If anything could demonstrate their fundamental differences, then that one question had managed it with blinding simplicity. ‘Of course not. Malantha was brought up to be a virgin on her wedding night.’

It was meant to wound, and it did—but it was the truth, and who was she to argue with that?

She wanted to tell him to drink his coffee and go, and yet wasn’t there some irrational side of her that wanted the very opposite? To take him into her arms as if the intervening years simply hadn’t happened—and, in the process, to exorcise him and his sensual influence once and for all.

‘So now what?’ she questioned, amazed at how steady her voice sounded. ‘You haven’t even told me why you’re here, or how long you’re staying. Or even how you ended up living so close?’

Her eyes were questioning and he gave a soft laugh. ‘You think I tracked you down? Found where you were living and moved into the house next door?’

As he said it she realised how preposterous the idea was. ‘So it’s just a terrible coincidence?’

Terrible? Right at that moment, it didn’t seem so terrible. The woman who had always been able to take him straight to heaven and back was living in the house next door. Thoughtfully, Dimitri stroked the pad of his thumb against the warm circumference of the coffee-cup. If fate had provided such a breathtaking opportunity for a taste of former pleasures, then who was he to refuse such an opportunity?

He stared at her, wondering if there really was such a thing as coincidence? Now that he came to think about it, hadn’t she once described Hampstead to him, telling him how beautiful it was and painting a picture of the heath and all its glories? Had that description planted a seed in his subconscious mind, so that, when he had been choosing where to stay in London, he had instinctively plumped for the leafy green area which seemed so far from the centre of a city it was so close to? Had he subconsciously willed fate to step in—and had it not done just that?

‘I am here for a few weeks,’ he said slowly. ‘Zoe is going to an English summer school and I wanted to accompany her.’

Her mind ticked over; she was getting quite good at mental arithmetic. A few weeks. It wasn’t a lifetime. Surely it wouldn’t take too much planning for both of them to be able to keep out of the other’s way for that long. As long as they were agreed.

‘So what are we going to do?’

‘Do? What do you suggest?’ More as a diversionary tactic, he picked up his coffee and sipped it, black eyes challenging her through the thin cloud of steam which rose up like clouds. He wondered what she would say if he told her exactly what he would like to do at that precise moment, and how she would react. Would she open her mouth to his if he pulled her into his arms and began to kiss her? He saw the inky dilation of her pupils and once again he felt the powerful pull of desire. Because nothing was more seductive than mutual desire, particularly if one of the parties was doing their utmost to suppress it. ‘We are neighbours, Molly,’ he said softly. ‘And we must behave as neighbours do.’

‘You mean…’ she swallowed ‘…avoid each other wherever possible?’

‘Is that how English neighbours behave?’ he mocked. He shook his head and smiled. ‘On the contrary,’ he said, and the gravel-deep voice sounded as sweet as honey as he rose to his feet, managing to make the high-ceilinged kitchen look like a doll’s house with his tall, dominating figure. ‘We will say good morning and talk about the weather whenever we meet!’

‘Ha, ha, ha,’ she said automatically.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘But we are both grown up now, ne? I have been married and you have been married. What is it that you say—about a lot of water?’

‘Has flowed under the bridge,’ she filled in automatically, and remembering how she had helped him with his English was curiously more poignant than anything else. She slid her legs down off the stool and wished she hadn’t. She was a tall woman, but Dimitri managed to make her feel like a tiny little thing; and her skirt was suddenly feeling as though it had shrunk in the wash.

‘Gallons of the stuff!’ she joked, thinking that soon this would be over. It had to be. He would see sense and realise that they couldn’t possibly ever be friends, and they certainly couldn’t be anything else, either. Not now.

He smiled then, but it was an odd, grown-up smile that Molly didn’t recognise and it threatened her more than a smile ever should.

‘So I will come to your party,’ he stated softly.

She stared at him. ‘My p-party? What are you talking about?’

‘You are having a party, Molly.’

Had he turned into a mind-reader? Were there balloons and boxes of champagne glasses lying around the place, giving him clues? Feeling half mad and disorientated, Molly looked round the kitchen. No. ‘How the hell did you know that?’

She wasn’t thinking straight, or clearly—and there was usually only one reason why a woman acted in such a distracted way, he noted with a warm sense of triumph. ‘You sent me an invitation, remember? “To The New Residents!”’ he quoted drily.

Of course she had. She had posted them all the way down the road; she always did. Her heart had begun to thunder and she wasn’t such a self-deluding fool as to deny that part of the reason was excitement. But it would be madness if he came. Sheer and utter madness.

‘I sent an invitation to all my neighbours,’ she said wildly. ‘Because it’ll probably be noisy, and late.’

‘Well, then.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘You want to pacify your neighbours, of which I am one? Then pacify me, Molly.’

‘Dimitri,’ she appealed, steeling herself against the sensual undercurrent in his tone, wondering if that had been deliberate or just part of the whole irresistible package he presented. ‘You can’t seriously want to come?’

‘Oh, but I can,’ he demurred. ‘It will be good for me to mix a little while I’m here, don’t you think? And besides—’ he gave a slow, curving smile ‘—I like parties.’

She bet he liked them!

‘Well, of course I can’t uninvite you now,’ she observed slowly. She raised her face to his with a defiant tilt to her chin, in a gesture which told him quite clearly that she could cope with his presence. She certainly wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of being barred! ‘So if you insist on coming, then I guess I can’t stop you.’

When she lifted her face like that, she was almost begging to be kissed and the desire to do so almost took his breath away. What would she do if he kissed her? he wondered. ‘You could stop me if you wanted to,’ he taunted softly. ‘You just don’t want to. Do you, Molly?’

Not if she was going to show him that she didn’t really care one way or the other. ‘Oh, it’ll be interesting to see your predatory instincts at work with my friends,’ she said sweetly. She made a great pantomime of looking at her watch. ‘Now I really do have things to do—shall I show you out?’

Without waiting for an answer, she marched out of the kitchen towards the hall, and, reluctantly, Dimitri began to follow her. He was being dismissed! It was behaviour that he simply would not have tolerated from another woman and he felt the dull, hot ache of frustration as she opened the door. Then allowed himself to think of the tantalising inevitability of what was going to happen between them.

He glittered her a smile.

The kiss could wait.

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