Greek Mavericks: His Christmas Conquest. Cathy Williams

and fidgeted uncomfortably.

      ‘Are you all right?’ Sophie asked, concerned. ‘Am I boring you?’

      ‘Not at all,’ Theo muttered. His eyes strayed down to her thighs. She was sitting on her hands and when she leaned forward like that…He just knew that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

      He just managed to control the groan that threatened to escape.

      ‘I could go…’

      ‘No!’ He waved her down, even though she hadn’t stood up. ‘No. Look, why don’t you stay and have some dinner with me? There’s stuff in the fridge. Catherine has been very diligent about…making sure that I don’t go hungry. At any point.’

      ‘I don’t know…’ She thought of the meal for one waiting back at the flat for her. Robert had invited her out to dinner, but she had refused the offer on the grounds of exhaustion. And she really had been exhausted an hour ago. Where it had gone was a mystery.

      ‘Okay,’ she said, making her mind up. ‘But I won’t stay for very long. It’s been a tiring week.’ She stood up, expecting him to follow suit.

      ‘You…go ahead…I’ll join you in the kitchen in a short while. I’m just going to…have a quick shower…’

      ‘Now?’

      ‘Seize the moment,’ Theo said. He waited until she had left the room before heading to his bedroom, taking the stairs and exhaling a long sigh of relief when he was safely ensconced in the bedroom.

      He hadn’t felt this horny since he was a teenager and he was far from proud of himself. The cool water took a while to take effect but at least he felt in control once again when he strolled downstairs to find her in the kitchen and the table set.

      Sophie looked up at him and her heart skipped a beat. His hair was still damp and he had changed into some beige trousers and a baggy white T-shirt that brought out the drama of his colouring.

      ‘You haven’t let me forget that this is your cottage,’ Theo said, fetching another bottle of wine from the fridge and pouring them both fresh glasses, ‘but it still seems strange to walk into the kitchen and find the table set.’ He wished to God that he hadn’t asked her to stay. Now that he was back in control of himself, he could feel a bitter resentment simmering inside him at the way his body had betrayed him. And the whole domestic scene laid out before him, while it was hardly her fault, only made matters worse.

      What was he doing? His body was responding like a dog on heat to a woman whose personality left him cold.

      ‘It would seem odd to me not to set it,’ Sophie replied. She turned away hurriedly and began prodding the chicken, which she had transferred from a casserole dish to a frying pan. ‘I apologise for making myself at home…’

      ‘In your own home?’ Theo laughed shortly, watching how her slim shoulders stiffened.

      ‘While there’s a tenant in the cottage, it’s no longer my home. It’s just bricks and mortar to look after so that no problems arise with the fabric of the house.’ She reluctantly turned around and leaned against the counter top, arms folded. ‘Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea,’ she continued awkwardly. ‘You should have eaten your chicken on your own and I should have gone out to dinner with Robert.’

      Theo afforded her a swift look but she wasn’t looking at him. She was frowning and staring into the distance. He had an insane impulse to drag her back to the here and now, which was dinner with him. ‘You should be careful of that man,’ Theo murmured and at first he wasn’t sure if she had even taken in what he had said but, sure enough, after a few seconds Sophie looked at him in open astonishment.

      The familiar anger flooded into her and she had never been happier to feel an unpleasant emotion. Earlier on there had been moments of breathless confusion that had had her floundering and uncertain. She glared at him.

      ‘Do I need to ask why or will you tell me anyway?’

      ‘Okay, he may not be a crook, but I’ve met men like him before…’

      ‘Oh. And would that be in the fascinating world of literature?’

      Theo ignored the interruption. ‘They’re insecure, hesitant, desperate for a bit of love. They’re the ones who marry the first woman they meet so that they can retire from the headache of the chase. Basically, they’re losers.’

      ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life! Robert isn’t a loser.’

      ‘Sadly, men like that,’ Theo mused, disregarding her heated objections, ‘usually go for a strong-willed woman, much like yourself…’

      ‘I’m not even going to pretend to be listening.’ She turned and stuck the rice into the microwave, pushing the numbers hard to drown out the sound of his voice. Not that he was saying anything. At the moment. He was looking at her. She could feel his eyes boring through her top and the sensation was like having her breasts touched by him, a feathery soft caress that made her redden.

      For some reason she wished she had worn a bra, but then she hadn’t expected to be staying on for dinner—just fixing the heating and clearing off—and it was comfortable not having her breasts constrained. Although she was slight in build, she was not flat chested. The opposite, in fact. She now felt the weight of her generous breasts bouncing under the loose jumper, swaying as she dished out the food.

      ‘Dinner,’ she said flatly, nodding to his plate and sitting down at the kitchen table opposite him.

      ‘And the end of our conversation, I take it?’

      Sophie watched him, hunkered over his plate, eating the chicken with his fork, every inch the kind of alpha male who could walk into a room and have the ladies swooning. She would have to be as thick as a plank of wood not to realise that the man’s massive ego and staggering self-assurance would have come from the power he probably exerted over the opposite sex. Did he think that his extraordinary looks somehow qualified him to be a judge of what made other people tick? Whatever he said, she couldn’t believe that his contact with the rest of the world was particularly huge, never mind how many books he had had published in the past. Writing was a solitary profession. Yes, if he wrote real adventures about real people, then he would have to interview them, but after that he would be on his own, transcribing. Transcribing at a desk somewhere in London certainly didn’t qualify him to offer advice on one of her closest male friends.

      She wondered whether he assumed that she must be completely ignorant of the opposite sex, living in this backwater as she did.

      Suddenly, Sophie felt an unusual protective urge towards Robert. She thought of his little kindnesses recently and bitterly resented Theo’s sweeping assumption that he could insult the man without compunction.

      ‘You can say what you like about Robert, but he’s gentle and kind and considerate. In fact…’ she allowed a few seconds of silence to stress the importance of what she was going to say ‘…he’s even offered to help bail me out of this financial mess…’

      ‘Really,’ Theo drawled.

      ‘Really.’ Sophie shot him a smug little smile, which he greeted by raising his eyebrows in apparent amusement.

      ‘Maybe he just wants to get you into bed and buttering you up with an offer he knows you’ll probably refuse seems the quickest way.’

      Sophie recovered quickly. ‘Maybe that’s it. Although maybe I wouldn’t need buttering up to get into bed with him…’ She gave a shrug which she hoped displayed the wealth of worldly wisdom which was definitely not at her disposal. Whether it was the wine or a combination of the wine and the dangerously intrusive conversation, she was beginning to feel heady. She was twenty-six years old and she couldn’t remember ever having a conversation like this before. The boys in her circle, most of whom were doing post grad courses, would never have dreamt of challenging her in this way. She didn’t know whether she liked it or not. And