Greek Mavericks: His Christmas Conquest. Cathy Williams

had to think about it, even though she had been the one to dish it up.

      ‘Somehow he strikes me as a bit too tame for a woman like you. Unless, of course, you like the role of dominatrix,’ Theo mused aloud, finishing his chicken and shoving the plate away from him. He leaned back into his chair and looked at her steadily. There was a little drop of sauce from the chicken on her chin, by her mouth, and he allowed himself the rogue thought of wondering what she would do if he covered the three steps towards her, bent down and licked it off.

      Guilt followed hard on the heels of the wayward image, but there was none of that savage longing he had had in the past to hold on to the image of Elena. The steady drumming of rain outside, the bursts of wind clawing against the window panes, was like a lullaby, easing his tortured conscience, leaving him free to indulge himself in the sight of her playing with the food on her plate.

      ‘You’ve got some sauce on your chin.’

      ‘Oh!’ Sophie wiped it off and licked her finger. For some strange reason, Theo found the innocent gesture intensely erotic. The erection he had put to rest earlier on was once more reminding him that he was still a man and one with very real physical needs.

      ‘Mind you, if you don’t really know whether the man actually wants you or not, then his technique can’t be very persuasive…’ Theo murmured, returning to the conversation and enjoying the faint flush of colour that spread along her cheekbones. There was nothing masculine about that reaction, he thought. In fact, it was very, very feminine.

      Before his body decided to do something of its own volition, he stood up and began clearing away the plates, insisting she stay put while he tidied.

      ‘I’m a twenty-first century man,’ he said, which was enough to make him grin. Dinosaur was one of the labels an ex-girlfriend from years back had once told him and certainly, however much he was in favour of equality of the sexes in the workplace, he still saw almost every chore to do with the house as something firmly planted in a woman’s domain. In fact, if he thought about it, he really couldn’t remember the last time he had ever done what he was now in the process of doing, namely clearing the dishes from a table after he had shared a meal with a woman.

      In fact, thinking even harder on the matter, he realised that sharing a meal with a woman anywhere other than a restaurant or, at a push, her place, was not something that had ever been on his agenda. Women fussing in his kitchen had always made him feel slightly uneasy. Until Elena. Although…

      Had she ever cooked for him? No—not enough time to enjoy the pleasures of domesticity before tragedy had taken her away. Their relationship had been frozen in the courtship stage.

      Before he could travel down the usual inexorable path, he realised that Sophie was saying something about his twenty-first century man observation and in a particularly acerbic tone of voice, he realised.

      ‘What am I doing?’ he demanded, temporarily distracted. He brandished one plate in his hand and looked meaningfully at the sink.

      ‘You’re putting your dirty plate into the sink and you’ve been polite enough to take mine as well. I wouldn’t,’ she added with scathing sarcasm, ‘be too hasty to enter any Man of the Year competitions based on that…’

      Before she could continue, Theo had swept round to face her and leant over her, bracing himself on the arms of her chair. He was so close to her, in fact, that she could see the golden specks in his eyes, was horribly aware of the thickness and length of his eyelashes, acutely conscious of the sexy contours of his mouth.

      She was also very very conscious of her own body and the way it was shrieking in response. Her nipples, grazing the thick cotton of her jumper, had tightened into buds and every part of her seemed to be melting.

      She could breathe him in. His uniquely clean male scent filled her nostrils and she blinked away the temptation to sigh and close her eyes.

      ‘And, in your opinion, what would qualify me to enter that Man of the Year competition…?’ Theo drawled. His eyes dropped to her heaving breasts and he hurriedly fastened them safely back on her face.

      ‘Not an ability to move a dish from one part of the kitchen to another…’

      Theo grinned and then laughed softly under his breath. ‘What, then?’

      Their eyes met and Sophie was sickeningly transfixed. Her heart was beating like a drum inside her, reverberating in her head and making her pulse race. In a minute she half expected to lose the power of speech completely.

      If he would only give her a little more breathing room, she might be able to gather herself into the coherent, fairly unflappable young woman she had always considered herself to be. As it was, she could feel her face getting hotter and hotter and probably redder and redder as well.

      He must have read her mind because, to her intense relief, he pushed himself away and fetched two mugs down from the cupboard. In her flurry of nerves, Sophie could hardly focus on resenting him for knowing his way around her house as well as she did.

      Instead, clearing her throat, she told him that she had to be getting along.

      ‘I apologise if I made you feel awkward by stepping on your toes about your boyfriend…’

      ‘Robert is not my boyfriend! And, anyway, you didn’t make me feel awkward. I’m not completely green when it comes to men, you know.’

      ‘No?’

      ‘No,’ Sophie said firmly, before he decided to question her on the subject. She wouldn’t put it past him. His lines between interested and downright rude seemed to be very blurry.

      She stood up, making sure to keep a healthy distance away from him. For a kitchen that had always seemed more than big enough, it suddenly felt claustrophobically small. ‘Shall I give you a hand with those dishes?’ she asked politely. She was pretty sure that he would leave them for Annie to do in the morning but reverting to her professional role of landlady went some distance to rescuing her from her muddled confusion.

      ‘And risk giving you an even bigger reason to accuse me of not being the perfect example of Modern Man…?’ Theo murmured, dragging a smile out of her. He folded his arms and leaned against the counter. He might, actually, wash the damned dishes. ‘I’m still interested in hearing your definition…’

      ‘Oh, it’s the same as any other woman’s…’

      ‘Some women like their men to be men…’

      Sophie edged imperceptibly towards the kitchen door. ‘Are you sure you don’t mean cavemen?’ she asked caustically. ‘These days women like men who share everything, from household duties to bringing up the kids. They like men who aren’t afraid to cry and who are willing to admit when they’ve made a mistake…’

      Theo struggled not to laugh. ‘Not all women…’he pointed out, moving towards her. He knew that he was flirting outrageously and it felt good. Reality was happening somewhere else but, here and now, there was just this. Feeling like a human being after months spent in a wilderness. He wasn’t about to forget that the wilderness was still there, waiting for him, but he could snatch this feeling of normality and enjoy it for a short while.

      This woman was nothing to him and never could be. She was too forthright, too abrasive and too damned unpredictable. In the blink of an eye she went from being erotically feminine to aggressively unappealing.

      Right now, one of the plaits was coming undone, which he had to admit looked quite cute.

      Spotting his eyes on her hair, Sophie dragged the elastic bands off and ran her fingers through the blunt blonde mane. Plaits were no good. Not when she was trying hard to hold on to her sang-froid.

      ‘Maybe not the ones you mix with…’ Sophie retorted. She wondered what sort of women he mixed with and came up with an assortment of choices, all stunningly beautiful and probably very tall. A drop dead gorgeous man in a glamorous field of work and with a good bank balance, if his ability to