Chapter One #2
The thunderous expression on his face should have given her cause for concern, but it was all so shocking and confronting, so confusing, that she could only stand there and drink in the sight of him.
‘I—you’re—’ She tried to speak, to explain, but she was still shivering, and her mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
Grimly, he walked towards her, the thunderclouds in his expression growing, if it was possible, even darker.
‘We will deal with the pleasantries later. You look as though you are about to pass out. Are you?’ His accent was unmistakably Greek, but his English was fluent.
‘I—don’t—’ She closed her eyes then as, indeed, a wave of exhaustion and nausea hit her, combining with the icy chill in her veins. ‘I’ll be okay,’ she said, but slowly, softly, the words lacking conviction.
He grunted and then, to Genevieve’s absolute shock, he was lifting her up and cradling her against his naked chest, carrying her across the sparsely furnished cabin, towards the door he’d emerged from a moment earlier.
It was almost as large as the other room, though it had only a shower, a basin and a toilet.
He placed her down on the tiled floor of the shower and began to run the water.
Then, to Genevieve’s further shock, his hands curled around the fabric of her shirt and began to lift it.
‘D-don’t,’ she stammered, feeling she must protest. It didn’t occur to her to fear the man, despite the notable differences in their size and strength.
He was rugged, yes, but there was nothing about him that screamed ‘violent’.
Her protestation then was all about modesty.
Her ex-husband was the only man who’d seen her naked.
It was strange to contemplate letting a stranger see all of her bared.
And yet, it was also exhilarating. James, for one, would hate it—and that thought was infinitely appealing.
‘You need to get out of these clothes.’
‘I can manage,’ she said, finally finding her voice, and hoping that she wasn’t lying.
‘Can you? Show me.’
‘I’m not going to get undressed in front of you.’
‘And I have no intention of leaving you here to pass out on your own. So?’
‘I’m not going to—’
‘We can argue later, as well,’ he said, lips forming a grim line.
‘All I care about, right now, is that you do not die on my watch. Whoever you are, and wherever you came from, is not my concern. What you do after leaving here is also of no interest. But for now, I intend that you stay alive. If not least because the inconvenience of having to report your death is the last thing I want.’
She was so shocked that she did reach for her shirt then, but before she lifted it off she turned her back on him so her breasts were shielded from his sight. Her shorts followed, but she kept her briefs on.
The water, in contrast to the rain outside, was scorching and with each moment she stood beneath it, she felt a little strength return. Though her legs felt like jelly after what must have been a ten-mile hike, most of it uphill and over uneven terrain. Fear had made her run much of the way.
He reached past her, his thick, strong arm brushing her side as he flicked off the water and then seconds later wrapped a large, coarse towel around her shoulders. ‘Can you walk or do you need to be carried?’
There was no way she was going to admit even a hint of weakness to this man, even though her legs felt as though they were impossibly trembly. ‘I can walk.’
‘Show me.’
He crossed his arms over his chest, apparently uncaring that he was still naked.
‘Do you own clothes?’ she muttered, aware that she sounded like a petulant child.
In the living area once more, he lifted a chair towards the fireplace and set it down. ‘Sit.’
‘I’m not a puppy, you know. You can speak to me like a fellow human being. Or is courtesy in short supply out here, in the middle of nowhere?’
‘I didn’t ask you to come into my home, and if it weren’t for the fact you could not survive out there—’ he jerked his thumb towards the single window of this cabin, large and just to the right of the front door ‘—I would have no compunction in turfing you out. Perhaps once the storm passes…’
‘Definitely once the storm passes,’ she responded, though she did sit on the chair, careful to keep the towel wrapped around herself, protecting her modesty.
‘Good.’ He turned away then, disappearing to a rustic-looking piece of furniture near the large bed, and removing—to her relief—a pair of cotton boxer briefs.
He dragged them up his body but Genevieve was startled to discover that, clothes or no clothes, the sight of him in all his glorious nudity was burned into her brain.
She looked away quickly, trying to focus on something—anything—other than this man.
‘Do you live here?’
‘I’ll ask the questions.’ He turned to face her, gaze narrowed. ‘Who are you?’
She opened her mouth to answer that, then faltered. For three long, miserable years, she’d been The Senator’s Wife. That was how she’d been defined by her husband, and everyone she’d come to know. Genevieve, as a person in her own right, was nothing and no one.
‘Genevieve,’ she answered shortly. Why give him the whole tragic story of her life? A first name was enough.
And it appeared to satisfy him, as he nodded once, albeit curtly.
‘And you are here, on the island, because…?’
‘I crashed,’ she muttered. ‘The storm came out of nowhere. I was too far out at sea to turn back. Then I saw this island and made my way here…’
‘You were in a boat, in this,’ he said.
‘Well, there was no storm when I set out,’ she repeated. ‘Or I would never have come so far from the mainland.’
Another grunt, this time the derision was abundantly obvious. ‘It is January—you cannot go two weeks without a storm like this.’
‘Yeah, well…’ She tapered off, hating that he was right. Hating that she felt stupid, and worthless, just as she had almost her whole marriage. The weather had been unseasonably warm, right up until that afternoon. ‘I thought it would be fine.’
He crossed the room then with easy athleticism to what she now saw was a rudimentary kitchen.
Everything about this cabin was rustic to the extreme.
The fact it had electricity and running water were the only saving graces.
She watched as he removed a can from a small cabinet, then used an old-fashioned opener to take off the lid.
He grabbed a fork from the bench and stalked over to her. ‘Eat this.’
She stared at it, frowning, her nose wrinkling at the smell. ‘Tuna fish?’
‘It’s good for you.’
There was something about the statement that drew a small smile to her lips, despite the desperation of her situation. He didn’t really seem like someone who’d follow nutritionist accounts on social media or something.
‘It will fill you up,’ he added.
‘It’s cold.’
‘This isn’t a five-star hotel.’
‘I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Hey, if you’ve got complaints, you’re welcome to take your chances out there.’ He gestured to the windows again.
‘I thought you didn’t want my death on your conscience?’
‘I don’t. So eat something.’
And yet, perhaps in a concession to her, he began to fill a small pot with water and set it on the gas stove—which reminded her a little of the Bunsen burners she’d used in high school science lessons.
She pulled her hair over one shoulder, running her fingers through the ends, squeezing it into the towel, careful not to let the fabric part and reveal her naked body.
There was a small fridge beside the bench and as she watched, he removed coffee from it, and then cream.
She dug the fork into the tuna and speared some flakes, lifting them to her lips with a grimace of distaste.
She’d never been a huge fan of canned fish, but desperate times…
because he was right. She was absolutely ravenous.
Now that the shock of the day’s events had worn off, she realised she hadn’t eaten since that morning, when she’d grabbed an apple on her way out of the door of her hotel.
She had intended to spend a few hours sailing around the Aegean, perhaps stopping at a populated island for lunch, if she felt like it, before going back to the mainland.
Instead, she’d wound up stranded in a stone cabin in the middle of the woods, God only knew where.
‘Who are you?’ she asked as he tipped a little coffee into a cafetière and then filled it with the boiling water. His hands were proportionate to the rest of him—which was to say, huge—and as he replaced the lid, she was reminded of a giant, handling a human’s possessions.
He pulled a mug from a drawer and began to fill it with coffee, before he added a generous amount of cream.
‘You have cream,’ she said, blinking at him. ‘Is there a shop on the island?’
He arched a single, thick dark brow, cynicism on his face as he strode towards her, mug held out. She took it very carefully, not wanting their fingers to brush. Her side still felt tingly from when his arm had brushed against her in the shower, and she had no need to feel that all over again.
His smirk showed that he’d recognised her gesture and understood her reasoning for it. Well, so what? Why shouldn’t she hesitate to touch a strange, enormous man?
‘No.’
She frowned, almost having forgotten her question.
‘Once a month, supplies are sent over. The cream is long life.’
‘Oh.’ She nodded slowly, considering that. ‘But there must be other homes? Other people?’
‘Not unless they have trespassed, like you.’
She closed her eyes against that accusation. ‘I was blown here by the storm.’
‘So you’ve said.’
‘Do you actually think I’d be stupid enough to wilfully come to this place? It took me hours to get to this cabin, and it’s a miracle I didn’t fall off a cliff or get eaten by a bear. I mean…truly. This is not how I saw my day going.’
He stood in front of her, hands on hips, face giving nothing away. Then, slowly, those dark grey eyes roamed lower. Starting at her eyes, before dropping to her lips, and then lower still, as though he was picturing her naked beneath the towel, before landing on her legs.
By the time he spoke, she was so flooded with heat that she could hardly hear him over the ringing in her ears. And damn it, how she hated that her body was, against common sense and her wishes, responding to him. How on earth could she find his slow, insolent inspection hot?
Although, it didn’t take a psychology degree to work that out.
Her marriage had been ice-like, in the end.
Her husband had spent all his time seducing other women, delighting in letting Genevieve find out about his affairs, and lording it over her that it was her fault he’d strayed.
Her frigidness. Her lack of responsiveness to him.
Her lack of experience and skills. Her failures as a wife that had led him to seek comfort in the arms of other women.
‘You’re injured.’
She glanced down at her legs and saw the grazes, and, on one of her thighs, a deep cut. She ran her finger over it, wincing as a sharp pain radiated through her body.
‘I fell,’ she murmured, as much to herself as him. ‘A few times.’
‘At a later point, we will discuss further how incredibly stupid it was to take this many risks with your life. Stay there.’ Her jaw dropped at his rude, insulting comment, even when it was so easy to believe it, courtesy of her husband’s conditioning.
He crouched down by the bed and removed a decent-sized box, which, when he opened it, she gathered must have been a medical kit. He removed a small bottle of disinfectant, some gauze and bandages.
She’d been so anxious to avoid touching him, and, despite the way memories of her husband’s insults had doused the strange flickering of desire, she still suspected that if he were to reach for her, she’d catch fire.
‘I can do it,’ she said, holding out a hand for the supplies.
‘Drink your coffee,’ was all he said, crouching at her feet, and pouring some of the disinfectant onto a gauze pad. His eyes lifted to hers and the whole world seemed to start spinning, faster than she’d ever thought possible.
She opened her mouth to say something, to insist that she do her own treatment, but then he touched her leg, and she closed her eyes on a wave of something joltingly warm.
Desire. She wasn’t sure she’d ever felt it before—and for a long time, she’d believed she couldn’t feel it.
So despite what she knew she should do, in this situation, she found herself sitting there, breath held, as this beast of a man tended to her wounds with all the gentleness and care of Florence Nightingale.