Mediterranean Nights: The Mistress Purchase / The Demetrios Virgin / Marco's Convenient Wife. PENNY JORDAN

bed with a woman in over five years,’ Leon told her curtly. ‘I don’t happen to approve of anyone sleeping around just for the hell of it. It’s cheap and it’s a health hazard. What happened tonight was—’

      ‘You don’t have to explain. I understand!’ Sadie rushed in quickly. He was going to tell her that it had been a mistake, that things had got out of hand.

      ‘You do? I wish to hell that I could say that,’ Leon came back at her with harsh grimness. ‘Right now—’ he stopped and shook his head whilst Sadie held her breath, aching to have him complete what he had been going to say, and at the same time a little fearful in case he did!

      They had almost reached the door to her room.

      ‘Do you have any plans for tomorrow?’ Leon asked her abruptly as he stood in front of her.

      They were almost as close as they had been earlier, when he had kissed her. If she were to just shift her weight from one foot to the other she would be even closer!

      Sadie looked at him. Her body was already overruling the cautious anxieties of her heart and the stern warnings of her head, telling her very forcibly that the only plans it wanted to have, included Leon and preferably complete privacy!

      ‘Well, no… not really.’ As her heart jumped and thumped around her ribcage, with an adrenalin-fuelled cocktail of complex emotions, Sadie berated herself inwardly. Why on earth hadn’t she told him she was already busy, as she would normally have done? What was happening to her? Never in her life had she chosen danger over safety. It just wasn’t her style!

      Maybe it hadn’t been, a little voice inside her head mocked her, but that had been before she’d met Leon!

      ‘I’m driving out to see a mas I’m renting for the summer tomorrow. Why don’t you come with me?’

      ‘You’re spending the whole summer here?’ Sadie commented, unable to conceal her envy at the thought of being able to spend weeks on end enjoying the sunshine in a mas, as Provençal farmhouses were called.

      Yes… I have a variety of business interests on the continent, and the farmhouse I am planning to rent would make an excellent base for me to work from.’

      They were outside her door now, and the light on the wall illuminated Sadie’s expression as she looked up at him.

      ‘A farmhouse?’ she questioned, a little uncertainly.

      ‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic,’ Leon commented wryly. ‘What’s wrong? Don’t you like the countryside?’ he asked her.

      Immediately Sadie shook her head.

      ‘No, I love it,’ she told him vehemently.

      ‘So?’ The querying rise of Leon’s eyebrows warned her that he intended to get an answer.

      ‘Well, it’s just that… Well, I just didn’t think that you would be a country person. One always assumes, somehow, that a businessman will be city-based.’ Sadie began, and then stopped, biting her lip.

      But to her relief Leon didn’t take offence at her comment, simply shrugging his shoulders and telling her easily, ‘I do have an apartment in Sydney, it’s true. It’s convenient for business, but given the choice I’d much rather spend my time at the winery my parents own, way out in the country. They’re retired now, or supposed to be, but Dad’s already talking about putting new vines in and upgrading their wine, despite the fact that he’s got a bad heart and ought to be taking things easy!’ He stopped and apologised. ‘Sorry, you don’t want to hear about my family.’

      Sadie flicked her tongue-tip over her lips, aching to admit that there was nothing she wanted to learn about more—unless it was every tiny detail about Leon himself. What made him laugh, what kind of food he liked, which side of the bed he liked to sleep on… where he most liked to be touched and kissed… where…

      ‘Well?’ she heard him demanding softly.

      Her face flared hot pink as for an instant she thought he had somehow read her mind, but then she realised he was waiting for her to respond to his invitation. She ought to turn it down, her own sense of self-preservation told her that, but instead of doing so she heard herself saying huskily, ‘Thank you, yes. I… I’d love to join you.’ To join him. To join with him… to…!

      ‘Good!’

      The look he gave her sent a thrill of dangerous pleasure zinging right through her. Helplessly she clenched her muscles against it, against the betraying sexual shudder she could feel gripping her.

      Leon was smiling at her, his mouth curling up at the corners in the way that made her long to throw her arms around him and kiss every delicious centimetre of those tempting warm male lips. Especially where they curled so fascinatingly into the smile that made her heart somersault and sent a dizzying rush of pleasure showering through her.

      Hastily Sadie averted her gaze from his mouth and tried instead to focus on a point somewhere beyond his left shoulder. But she was still excruciatingly conscious of him, and of her own longing for him. Where had it come from, this savage, clawing, aching, longing that had hit her out of nowhere, left her drugged, doped, dependent on the proximity of him?

      When she had contemplated the prospect of falling in love in the past her mental meanderings had never come anywhere near encompassing anything like this! And they had certainly never allowed her to imagine anyone like Leon!

      ‘Hell, Sadie, will you please stop looking at me like that?’ Leon demanded savagely. ‘Because if you don’t I’m going to have to kiss you, and I warn you that if I do I’m not going to want to stop at just kissing you…’ he continued fiercely.

      Her face bright red, Sadie asked him quickly, ‘I… what time shall I meet you in the morning?’ She held her breath, not sure if she wanted Leon to stop speaking so erotically to her or not.

      ‘Well, from my point of view it will probably facilitate matters if we have breakfast together,’ Leon began.

      ‘Together?’ Sadie could hear the squeak of panic in her voice.

      ‘I meant in the dining room, of course,’ Leon assured her blandly. ‘Unless…’

      ‘Oh, the dining room. Yes, of course. Yes… er… what time? I…’

      Listening to herself gabbling, Sadie wondered if Leon knew just how much she was longing to have the courage to simply reach out and wrap her arms around him, to stand on tiptoe and press her body the entire length of his whilst she kissed him in a way that would leave him in no doubt whatsoever about where she most wanted to have breakfast with him tomorrow morning!

      Before he could guess what she was thinking she opened her handbag and searched for her key.

      Ten minutes later, safely inside her room on her own, with the door locked, she told herself that it was relief she was feeling that Leon hadn’t pushed or pressed to be allowed to come in with her—and not disappointment.

      Still, she would be seeing him in the morning. Blissfully she hugged that thought to her, lost in a dreamy fantasy of sensual blue skies and an even more sensual man.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      ‘THAT’S what I like to see—a woman who enjoys her food.’

      Sadie’s toes curled into her shoes as Leon’s warmly approving gaze embraced her.

      He had telephoned her at seven o’clock, the ringing bringing her out of the shower, to ask her if she was awake and suggest that they meet up in the restaurant at eight.

      ‘Awake—of course I’m awake,’ she had responded indignantly, adding without thinking, ‘I was actually in the shower.’

      There was a small silence, and then Leon’s voice, like warm honey melting down the telephone line, as he’d said thickly, ‘I wish you hadn’t told me that, Sadie!’

      He