Greek Mavericks: His Christmas Conquest. Cathy Williams

felt dry and she had to look away. His eyes were throwing her into a tizzy.

      ‘Look, why don’t we have some coffee? You have my word that I won’t lay a finger on you…Unless, of course, you ask…’

      Sophie gasped at the softly spoken, intensely sexy offer and then realised that he must be joking. Probably just to gauge her reaction. She already knew that he thought her gauche and inexperienced and mouthy with it, and he would find it funny to wind her up. Come to think of it, there was something of the predator to him and didn’t predators enjoy playing with their victims before they moved in for the kill?

      Sophie laughed shakily to herself at the fanciful train of thought.

      But, when she met his eyes, she felt her skin begin to prickle in dreadful awareness. ‘Very funny,’ she managed to say in a strangled voice.

      ‘Come on. Your nervousness is making me nervous.’ His smile was reassuring. ‘Take the coat off. Now that the heating’s working it’s warm enough in here to walk around in shorts and a T-shirt. I didn’t think that old places could store heat that effectively.’ Suddenly it was vitally important that he didn’t frighten her away. This might just be his temporary salvation, just a sliver of normality unexpectedly offered to him, but he wanted it so badly it hurt.

      That said, he would seduce but never force. That wasn’t his style and never could be. If she was truly wary enough to keep her distance, then he would accept it.

      He contemplated returning to London, the same faces at the same society dos. He wondered whether this strange release he had found here would continue to work once he returned to normal life or whether he would be plunged back into the limbo he had left behind. Here, he thought of Elena but she didn’t haunt him.

      He started walking away, not to the kitchen but towards the cosy sitting room, hoping she would follow. She didn’t. When he looked around, she was rooted to the same spot.

      ‘You’re not coming…’ Theo said with a touch of incredulity and Sophie maintained an admirably stony expression.

      ‘Very observant.’

      ‘Why not? I told you,’ he continued, trying to fight down the edginess creeping into his voice, ‘I won’t bite.’

      ‘And I told you that I don’t want to discuss the inappropriate situation that took place. If you can disrespect what I say, then I’m free to ignore what you say.’

      Theo stared at her and wondered how the hell he could ever have thought her gullible. Her face was red with embarrassment but, hell, that hadn’t stopped her from speaking her mind.

      ‘We have to discuss it,’ he grated. She didn’t budge and, red-faced or not, she looked him squarely in the face and refused to back down. Theo was beginning to feel impotent in the face of such outright female lack of co-operation.

      ‘Why?’ Sophie asked.

      ‘Because…’he delivered his sentence with heavy-handed, thinly veiled patience ‘…you are my landlady. We’re going to need to meet occasionally and we need to get this out in the open, talk about it so that it doesn’t hang between us the way it’s doing now.’

      ‘It’s only hanging between us because you brought it up,’ Sophie pointed out. Going through her head was the thought that she had never been so achingly aware of a man in her life before. He oozed sex appeal and it didn’t seem fair. It was bad enough having a routine conversation with him, far less a conversation to do with sex. Just bracketing those two harmless words, Theo and sex, in the same sentence was enough to make her mind do all manner of wild leap-frogging.

      ‘It’s hanging between us because it happened!’

      ‘Yes, and I’m prepared to pretend it never did.’

      Theo greeted this remark with stunned silence. In his world, at least the world he had once inhabited for years, in his carefree pre-Elena days, he had been able to play women with the finesse of a musician playing his instrument. It had always been a mutually enjoyable experience. The lazy talk of sex, dropped negligently into a conversation while his eyes expanded on the subject and promised pleasures that could only be guessed at.

      ‘I mean,’ Sophie took up the thread of her conversation, ‘discussing it and having a post mortem isn’t going to change anything. What we have to agree on is that nothing like that will take place again and I would appreciate it if you don’t…don’t…drop any innuendoes into the conversation. You might find it funny, but I don’t.’

      Sophie weathered the silence which stretched between them with the tautness of tightly pulled elastic. She was beginning to think that she had misheard his earlier remark and misread the situation. And why, she thought with sudden agonising clarity, had she warned him not to touch her again? As if he couldn’t resist her womanly charms? No wonder he was standing there, lost for words and staring at her as though she had taken leave of her senses! Lord knew, he had probably wanted to give her a little speech about keeping her hands to herself!

      She gathered herself together and pursed her lips. ‘Right. So I only came here to tell you about the electricity going. There’s a proper fireplace in the sitting room and also in the bedrooms, so if it gets very cold you are welcome to light them. I haven’t ordered in a huge amount of logs as yet but there are enough stacked by the fire downstairs to tide you over until the current comes back and the heating can go on again.’

      ‘I’m not likely to be using the bedroom in the morning, am I? So there should be no need for me to light a fire in it, and I think I’ll be able to manage for a few hours without falling into a state of hypothermia.’

      Theo, piqued that his attempt at seduction had fallen crushingly flat, was at pains to sound as normal as possible but he was still bemused at the unsavoury and novel sensation of being blown out of the water.

      And, now that she had said what she had to say, he could tell that she was itching to be off. And he should be more than happy to see the back of her, he decided. Fate might have ironically chosen to remind him at this point in time that he was still alive and still a healthy red-blooded male, but the woman was not worth pursuit. Least of all to a man who had never had the need to pursue any woman in his life before. Not, he mused, even Elena. She may have captured his heart with her delicate China doll prettiness and her sweetly subservient nature, but their attraction had been immediate and mutual. He frowned at the bristling little figure standing in front of him.

      ‘And how do you intend to while away the morning, considering all useful activity will grind to a halt while the power is off?’

      ‘Useful activity doesn’t necessarily mean work,’ Sophie pointed out.

      ‘You mean you won’t be cooped up in your office sifting through paperwork?’

      ‘Someone’s got to do it! You make it sound as though I actually enjoy sitting there, staring at piles of paper and wondering which bundle to go through first!’

      ‘Well, what would you rather do?’

      ‘Anything! Go for a walk on the beach! Get to see a movie for the first time in six months! Eat out at a fancy restaurant, which is something I haven’t done since forever! Sorry.’ She shrugged lightly, inviting him to laugh at her overblown response, but he didn’t. His eyes narrowed and he stared at her in silence.

      ‘Why are you sorry?’ he asked eventually. It seemed strange to be having a conversation with the width of the hallway separating them.

      Sophie, wondering how it was that she was managing to have a conversation with the man when she had been literally on the way out, took a few steps towards the door. ‘Because I really should leave you to get on with your work,’ she said, constrained to be polite after her outburst earlier on. ‘I guess you might have to resort to longhand if you work tomorrow! Isn’t that always such a shock to the system when we’ve all become so accustomed to computers?’

      She could feel the energy pulsing out of him as she neared him and finally arrived at