The Markonos Bride. Michelle Reid

a sharp turn and diving into woodland on the dusty track which led down to the only hotel the island possessed. It had a name, though Andreas could not recall it. To the residents of Aristos it was simply The Hotel. If you did not know it was at the end of this track you would be lucky to find it, yet the sturdy, whitewashed building with its attached taverna sat right on the edge of one of the prettiest beaches on the island.

      They came upon it now, driving out from beneath the canopy of trees onto a tiny car park lit by a single low-wattage light hanging from the canopy above the hotel entrance. Bringing the car to a smooth halt, Andreas killed the engine then climbed out. The rear doors were already being pushed open and his two passengers climbed out then stood glancing about them as he strode to the back of the car.

      All around them the cicadas were calling, the warm evening air tangy with the scent of citrus and pine.

      ‘I can hear the ocean,’ Jamie said to his sister. ‘Are we right on the beach here?’

      So, Jamie had not made this trip before, Andreas surmised from that. Louisa answered so quietly that he lost what she said as he swung up the boot lid.

      He was about to lift the bags out when Jamie came up beside him. ‘I’ll do that.’

      ‘Don’t be a pain, Jamie,’ he said levelly, and the younger man flushed at the smooth shoot-down.

      Yannis, the owner of the hotel, came hurrying out of the entrance just then to greet Louisa with warm smiles and words of welcome, only to stop dead when he saw Andreas standing there and not his old friend Kostas.

      Yet more tension hit the atmosphere. Andreas ignored it as he stepped over to greet the hotel owner with a polite shake of his hand.

      But Louisa knew that Andreas was aware that Yannis had stopped dead like that because he had not expected to see both of them in the same place at the same time. The island was small and the memories of its people were long. Everyone here knew how the eldest son of Orestes Markonos had fallen head over heels for a teenage tourist, made her pregnant and married her against the wishes of both families. They also knew about their son’s tragic accident. They knew they lived separate lives. They knew that Andreas never came to the island when Louisa was visiting.

      In quiet words of Greek he instructed Yannis to help Jamie with the luggage. Andreas waited until they’d disappeared inside the hotel before he closed the car boot then turned to Louisa, who was still standing by the rear passenger door.

      ‘By tomorrow we will be the talk of the island,’ he drily predicted.

      ‘So what’s new there?’ Louisa responded, only to instantly regret the acid in her tone. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured.

      ‘Why be sorry for speaking the truth?’ He came to lean against the car beside her, side-on so he was facing her, hands in his pockets—too close for comfort and placing her senses on full alert. ‘I don’t give a damn about what others wish to say about me.’

      ‘You never did.’ Folding her arms across her body, Louisa fixed her eyes on her flat shoes and tried not to notice how tall he seemed standing this close beside her, how big and so skin-tinglingly masculine he—

      ‘No,’ he agreed. Then he really shattered her comfort zone by lifting up a set of fingers to gently stroke her cheek. ‘I was shocked out of my senses when I saw you walk off the ferry,’ he confided softly. ‘For a moment I thought I was dreaming.’

      ‘Stuff nightmares are made of.’ Lifting her chin up, she winged him a brief, tense smile then looked away again, dislodging his fingers at the same time.

      All he did was to move the fingers to hook a stray lock of hair behind her ear. ‘Not from where I was standing, agape mou.’

      This time Louisa stiffened right away from him. ‘Don’t toy with me, Andreas,’ she said tensely.

      ‘I was touching, not toying.’

      ‘You have no right to do either.’

      ‘I feel like I do…’

      That was some blunt confession to utter! ‘How dare you say that?’ She swung on him furiously.

      He grimaced, the hand going back in his pocket. ‘Because you are still my wife?’

      Stark, cold images of what he had been doing the last time she’d seen him in their apartment in Athens sprang like a burning blister into her head. Louisa tensed away from him then used up every single one of the next ten seconds to struggle with what was now crawling around inside her, while he dared—dared to lean against the side of the car and watch her with that lazily mocking challenge on his too handsome face!

      She lost the battle. On a seething short breath she stabbed her left hand out. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘no gold wedding ring on my finger. No sign that I ever belonged to you at all! I use the name Jonson now—Miss Jonson! I do not think of myself as a Markonos any more!’

      ‘Washed me right out of your life?’ he quizzed idly.

      ‘Yes!’ she confirmed it.

      He grabbed her and kissed her.

      It was so unexpected that before she’d even realized what was happening he’d crushed her hard up against him and was in full, burning possession of her mouth. Lights switched on all over her body. It was that quick, that explosive, like being dragged into a seething cauldron of remembered intimacy that felt crazily as though she had never lost it at all!

      Her breath caught in her throat as her lips responded, parting to his warm, moist invasion like hungry traitors to greedily invite him to do his worst. She didn’t want to believe this was happening—in some wildly shocked part of her brain she was horrified that he could still do this to her, yet at the same time she was drowning in the sheer pleasure of it, lost without a shred of control. His hands had control of her body, long fingers, passionately restless, moving on her hips and her spine. He was pressing her close; she could feel stirring evidence of his passion and felt her senses stir in response.

      And through it all their mouths moved on each other, hot, hungry, deeply intimate. Oh, so dreadfully intimate it came as a terrible shock when he just as suddenly pushed her back from him, making the air between them splinter with the sound of their mutual thick groans.

      Holding her at arm’s length, he let his fingers bite into her shoulders, eyes like glinting black lasers locked onto the swirling, shocked passion darkening her own.

      Then he spoke, hard, tight, cruelly mocking. ‘Not quite washed me away, agape mou, hm?’

      The unforgivable taunt crowned her tumbling sense of degradation. She began to tremble violently. Tears stung hotly in her throat.

      ‘Me and the thousand others,’ she hit back in thick and shaking, seething disgust then pulled free of him and ran into the hotel.

      Andreas watched her go and struggled to believe he’d actually said and done that.

      Why had he done it? What the hell was the matter with him?

      A string of tight curses raked from his tense lips as he spun around to face the car, because he knew the answer. It lay in the million dark forces running riot inside him—not one of them fit to justify him grabbing her like that.

      Her and the thousand others…

      What a damn great joke, he thought bitterly, and another set of curses leapt from him as he tugged the car door open and slammed himself inside.

      Still cursing, he took off from the hotel with a cruel spin of tyres.

      Leaning back against the hotel doors listening to the tyres spit up gravel as the car took off, Louisa was trembling so badly she felt ready to sink into a weak, limbless huddle on the floor.

      And her lips were throbbing, the hot, bitter tears that burned her eyes threatening to spill. How could he do that? How could he have just grabbed her and kissed her like that?

      A shimmer of something horrendously desperate went riddling right