The Greek and the Single Mum. Julia James

and devastating her with his kisses, the kisses of a man deprived for too long of what he most wanted.

      The flames had consumed them, as they always did, bathing them like writhing salamanders in the fire of passion. But afterwards… ah, afterwards… Clare shut her eyes, shivering with remembered emotion. He had gone on holding her, tightly, closely, fervently. His hand had slid around her head, spearing through her hair, pressing her into his shoulder, while his other arm had wrapped around her like a clamp. She had heard, against her breast, the tumultuous pounding of his heart, felt her own beating against his.

      He had said words to her in Greek and then fallen silent. She’d gone on lying crushed against him, her heart so full, so full. Then his hand had left her waist, and his other hand the back of her head, and he had shifted to cup her head with both his hands, one either side, and she’d half lifted herself from him.

      She’d gazed down into his face. The face she knew so intimately, so absolutely. Every line, every plane, every lean contour, every sooty lash, every indentation around his sculpted, mobile mouth. He’d stared into her eyes from the depths of his own dark, midnight eyes, and there had been something in the way he’d looked at her that had made her heart turn slowly over.

      He’d said another word in Greek. She hadn’t known what it meant, hadn’t cared, had only gazed down into his eyes, her heart slowly turning over, like a satellite in space, dissociated from the common earth.

      It was that look, that long, endless exchange, that she clung to now. It had become a symbol, a beacon that she was now about to test her fate upon.

      He cares for me. I know he does. It’s not just the consideration of a lover, the conventional courtesy of a man towards his mistress. It’s more than that.

      How much more she did not know, dared not hope. But there was something there—a seed, nothing more as yet, but enough, oh, enough for her to feast on!

      But she must not feast—she must be frugal in her hope. And she must not, must not, seek to harvest it before it had time to grow, blossom to fruition.

      Automatically she paused in her pacing, lifting her hand to her abdomen, and placing it there. She felt, as always, emotion welling up in her. So much depended on that harvest.

      If he cares for me then it will be all right. It will all be all right.

      But what if she were wrong? Chill shuddered through her.

      Too much depended on his reaction. Her whole life. Her whole future.

      And not just hers.

      Again, in an instinctive gesture as old as time, she cupped her abdomen.

      ‘It will be all right,’ she whispered to herself.

      Clare went off to the kitchen to make herself a cup of calming herb tea. The kitchen—fearsomely modern—still made her breath catch whenever she went in. So did the whole apartment—but then so did Xander’s apartment in Paris, not just the one here in London, and the one in Manhattan.

      She still found it strange that he seemed to have no fixed abode anywhere. Nowhere he called home.

      But then, neither did she. Since her father’s death two years ago she had had no home. Both her parents had been only children, and her mother had died when she was thirteen. The tragedy had thrown her and her schoolteacher father very close together, and his death from a long drawn-out cancer, when she was twenty, had been devastating.

      And it had made her vulnerable. Susceptible. With the death of her father she had been entirely on her own. She had gone back to college, her studies having been interrupted when her father’s illness had demanded full-time care, but her heart had not been in them. She had gone to London, preferring the anonymity of a huge city, far away from everything familiar and painful. The casual come-and-go of city life had suited her, teeming with people, none of them important to her, or her to them. She had taken temporary jobs, undemanding and unimportant, her emotions completely on hold after all the trauma of her father’s death.

      And then, without the slightest expectation, her emotions had sprung to life again. Vividly, terrifyingly alive. Alive in every nerve, every sense, every shimmering awareness.

      Because of one man. She could remember in absolute detail the moment she had first seen him.

      Clare had been sent by her temping agency to cover for a sick receptionist, and on her very first day, as she was sitting behind a plush, modernist-style desk, a covey of suited men had swung in through the doors. Her eyes had gone to them automatically—and stalled.

      The man at the centre of the group had been the most arresting male she had ever seen—she hadn’t been able to take her eyes from him.

      He’d been tall, easily six foot, and lithe, and lean. His suit had been fantastically cut, making him look smooth and svelte and… devastating. And that was even before she’d registered the rest of him.

      The sable hair, the tanned Mediterranean skin, the jaw-droppingly good-looking features.

      And the eyes.

      Eyes to drown in.

      He had walked right past her with his entourage, unchallenged by the security guard, who had merely said in a respectful tone, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Anaketos.’ But just as he’d swung past her, sitting there staring at him, his head had suddenly moved minutely and brought his gaze to her. Abruptly, instinctively, she had twisted her head away…

      They had gone past, and she had breathed out again, not even aware till then that she’d been holding her breath.

      She had felt alive for the first time in a long, long time. As if she had woken from a long sleep…

      It had been stupid, she knew, to have done thereafter what she had done. She’d been a woman rendered incapable of behaving rationally, but she had done it all the same. She had let Xander Anaketos seduce her.

      And he had done it with a swiftness that had cut the ground out from under her feet. Before the week was out she had been flying to Geneva with him. How had he done it? She still did not know. She had done her best not to react to him whenever she had seen him, and even when he had paused by the reception desk to have a word with the security guard she had assiduously paid attention only to her computer screen. Yet on the day she’d been due to finish the posting, she had been summoned by phone to Xander’s executive office on the top floor, where he had coolly invited her to dinner that night.

      She had stared blankly.

      ‘I’m afraid I don’t think—’ she had begun. Then stopped. Her chest had seemed tight. Xander Anaketos had been looking at her. She’d felt her toes start to melt into her shoes.

      So she had gone.

      And from dinner she had gone to his bed.

      Should she have done it? Done something she had never done before—slept with a man on her very first date with him? She had. She had gone to his apartment, his bed, as unhesitatingly as if she’d had no conscious thought. But then she hadn’t had any conscious thought about it. It had been instinct, an urge, an overwhelming, irresistible desire, that had made it impossible, utterly impossible, to say no, to stop the evening, to back away from him.

      So she hadn’t. She’d been able to do nothing but stand there, her whole body trembling with an intensity that she had never, ever experienced before, while Xander Anaketos walked across his vast apartment lounge towards her and slid one hand around the nape of her neck, caressing it lightly, oh so lightly, so sensuously, while his other hand slid long, skilled fingers into her hair and drew her mouth to his.

      She had drowned. Fathoms deep.

      Falling deep, deep into that wondrous, blissful world she still dwelt in now.

      Or did she? Again, the strained look haunted her eyes again. Living with Xander was bliss—but it came with a price. She had learnt swiftly to start paying that price. Learnt it the first time she had taken Xander’s hand in a spontaneous gesture of affection