A Greek Escape(66)

‘That’s not true!’

‘Isn’t it?’ he shot back. ‘We’re a type. Isn’t that what you said?’

He was standing above her, hands on hips, his legs planted firmly apart. It was such a dominant pose that her gaze faltered beneath his. With heart-quickening dismay she realised she had let it fall to somewhere below his tight lean waist—which was worse.

‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it?’ she said, hurting, feeling her body’s response to his hard virility even as he stood there actively judging her. ‘You lied to me about everything! Every single thing! And when I didn’t like it you used my friends to blackmail me into living with you until…’

‘Until what?’ he pressed, relentless.

‘Until you’d got what you wanted.’

‘And what was that?’ His eyes were shielded by the thick ebony of his lashes and his question was an almost ragged demand.

‘You know very well.’

‘No, I don’t. I’m afraid you’re going to have to spell it out for me.’

‘Until you’d got me to go to bed with you.’ There were flags of pink across her cheekbones, lending some colour to her pale skin beneath the summer-bleached gold of her loose hair. ‘Wasn’t that the whole idea of having me move in with you?’ she said wretchedly. ‘To salvage your pride and your ego? Wasn’t it enough that you made a complete fool out of me without robbing me of my dignity and my self-respect as well?’

‘Is that what I did?’ His eyes as they met hers held some dark, unfathomable emotion. ‘I really didn’t realise that in making love with me you were sacrificing all that.’

The raw note in his voice had her searching his face with painful intensity, but his features were shuttered and unreadable.

Her fingers were icy around the glass, but she couldn’t seem to feel them. She couldn’t feel anything except her aching love for him and the raw agony of seeing him again when he didn’t share her feelings, when he had admitted to being incapable of love—virtually ridiculing it—that night he had carried her to his bed.

‘I just wasn’t happy being another notch on your bedpost,’ she murmured, looking down at the striped fabric covering the sofa and wondering what had happened in his life to make him so hard-bitten as she plucked absently at a loose strand of the faded weave.

‘Neither was I. That was why I let you go.’

‘That was very magnanimous of you.’ Her throat was clogged with emotion. Pray heaven that he didn’t guess just how much he had hurt her!

‘Just as well I did—in the circumstances,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to keep my hands off you if you had stayed.’

The ‘circumstances’ meaning the loss of her dignity and self-respect, Kayla realised painfully, wanting to tell him that making love with him had been the most intense and pleasurable experience of her life.

‘Well, you can tell Lorna that she doesn’t need to worry…’ Suddenly he was talking about business, dismissing what had happened between them as easily and as ruthlessly as he had dismissed her from his life. ‘That contract should have been with Kendon Interiors over two weeks ago. I’ll get on to Havens right away and your friends will have it within the next forty-eight hours.’

So he hadn’t been withholding it, Kayla thought. She had satisfied his requirements and he was upholding his part of the bargain. She just wished it hadn’t cost her so much to make it possible. But it had. And it hurt—like hell.

‘What’s wrong?’

Through the crushing emotion that seemed to be weighing her down she caught his hard yet strangely husky enquiry. His eyes were narrowed, probing, digging down into her soul again, and Kayla sucked in a panicky breath as he moved closer. He’d claimed her body as his own, and she would bear the brand of his consummate lovemaking for the rest of her life, but she wasn’t going to let him know that he had branded her heart as well!

‘I’d better go.’ She leaped up, spilling some of the juice she had scarcely touched over her clothes and over the flags. ‘Oh, no…’

‘I’ll get you a towel.’ The glass was retrieved from her shaking hand.

‘I can do it myself,’ she told him, her voice cracking.

‘Kayla!’

There was a thread of urgency in his voice but she took no heed of it as she stumbled along to the kitchen. The pain of loving him was like a knife piercing her heart.