Chapter Four #2
He simply stared back at her, in that disconcerting way of his, as though he was thinking things he knew better than to say.
She prodded the fire back to life first, choosing a large log and placing it into the embers, then using the fire poker to shift the log around until flames began to lick against its sides.
Afterwards, she moved to the kitchen, exploring the burner he’d used, the pot for water.
It seemed simple enough. Add heat to water, let it boil, add coffee, et voilà.
She turned to say as much, only to find Nikos was out of bed and standing right there, in the kitchen, all big, looming, enormous hulk of a human, all gorgeous and, thankfully, wearing a pair of shorts, so at least she was spared from whatever her reaction might have been to seeing his nakedness again.
To remembering the way that nakedness had thrust inside her and turned her world utterly and wholly upside down.
‘Allow me,’ he said, his eyes probing hers, and now there was something in his face that was softer.
Almost gentle, except nothing about this man with his harsh lines was gentle.
This was the kind of man who could kill a bear with his hands alone, who could scale mountains and probably even part the sea, she thought with a surprising flicker of amusement.
She’d never known anyone like him.
Hardly surprising, given the circles she’d moved in.
A quiet childhood on the outskirts of Boston, an Ivy League college education thanks to a full-ride scholarship, and then marriage to James, which had led to a suffocatingly pretentious Washington life.
No chance to use her degree—James hadn’t wanted a wife who worked.
‘Something amusing?’
Her eyes flicked to his. ‘I was just imagining you in my normal life,’ she said, honestly. ‘I can’t imagine you anywhere but here.’
‘I don’t want to be anywhere but here.’
‘I wasn’t offering.’
His eyes sparked to hers and the air between them crackled with something that could have been animosity or could have been desire. Her insides tightened with a mix of the two.
‘You’re just so…rugged. The thought of you in a suit is hard to imagine.’
‘Easier to think of me naked?’ he asked, the question teasing. Light in tone, in a way she hadn’t heard from him before. Her lips quirked but when she glanced at him, he was busying himself making coffee, back turned to her.
There was no comfortable armchair to sit in, and she didn’t fancy the cold hardness of the chairs at the dining table, so she padded back to bed and sat gingerly on her side of it, propping the pillow behind her to create a sort of headrest.
‘Do you work?’
He glanced over his shoulder then turned properly to face her as he waited for the water to boil.
‘Yes.’
She nodded slowly. ‘Are you some kind of botanist?’
At that, he actually burst out laughing. ‘No, I’m not a botanist.’
‘A naturalist? A scientist of some kind? Some sort of conservationist?’
‘No.’
‘Then, what?’
‘Why would I tell you, when having you guess is more entertainment than I’ve had in years?’
He turned away again abruptly, reaching for the coffee and adding it to the bottom of the pot. She pleated the bedsheet with her fingers, contemplating that.
‘Since you’ve been on the island?’
He made a grunting sound that didn’t really answer her question.
‘Well, if you’re not a scientist, I’m at a loss. I can’t really fathom why anyone would come and live out here, in the middle of nowhere. I mean, it might be nice for a holiday, I suppose, if you wanted to completely disconnect.’
He poured two mugs of coffee—yet another sign that he did entertain here, occasionally, at least—and carried them to the bed.
But rather than handing one to Genevieve, he placed both on his bedside table before sitting beside her, his large frame unsettling the mattress so she was drawn a little into the middle.
Towards him. Their shoulders brushed and she startled.
Nikos turned towards her, his face so close their eyes sparked, and she could see all the flecks of colour in his eyes—grey, silver, and some a golden amber.
‘Are you okay?’
His question caught her unawares, and seemed to tip her world even more to the side. ‘I—yes.’
‘After last night,’ he clarified.
She glanced down at the space between them, only there was no space. Just flesh. His glorious chest was right there, and the sight of it, the memories of him, made her heart pound in a way that was unsettling to the extreme.
She’d spent so much of her marriage lying.
Or, rather, faking it. Pretending to be something she wasn’t, because she’d thought if she could play the part of the perfect wife, James might come back to her, and be like he had been in the beginning.
She’d smothered her own discontent, she’d quietened her upset, in order to keep the peace with him.
But Nikos was a stranger, a man she didn’t intend to see again, once she left the island. So why hide the truth from him? What was the downside of honesty, when she didn’t actually care what he thought of her?
‘Why did you go and shower last night? Afterwards, I mean.’
Even as she asked the question, though, she was surprised by how forthright it was. And proud, too. Why shouldn’t she ask? As far as she was concerned, she had every right to wonder. It wasn’t exactly the done thing. At least, not according to movies and romance novels.
‘Did it offend you?’
She considered that. It had, but perhaps that had more to do with her past than his act.
She lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug.
She’d signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of her divorce.
She wasn’t supposed to talk about James, or he’d stop paying off her mother’s medical debts.
Worse, he’d do a tell-all interview about her father.
While he was long gone, his political legacy lived on; she couldn’t be the reason it was tarnished.
Despite those threats, was there any harm in talking to this man, who had taken himself completely out of civilisation?
What was the harm in being honest with him?
Did she think he had some kind of hotline to one of the Washington papers?
A gossip columnist on speed dial? The thought almost made her laugh out loud.
Besides, he didn’t know her last name, and had zero idea who James was.
‘I’m probably too sensitive around this stuff,’ she said, eventually.
‘I—was recently divorced.’ The words were tinged with bitterness but she supposed, to other ears, it might sound like grief.
She flicked a glance at his face, briefly, but his features were set in a mask that gave nothing away.
‘Coffee?’ she prompted, embarrassed, because she’d revealed something vital and important, and he hadn’t reacted.
He turned away from her, took hold of a mug and held it out. Genevieve tried to rearrange herself, to put space between them, but it just wasn’t possible in a bed this size, with a man this weight.
She resigned herself to the fact that their shoulders would brush as they sat there.
‘And you’re upset?’
So he wasn’t letting it go, then. She tilted her face to his. ‘I’m getting used to my new reality.’
‘Was it your idea, or his?’
‘Mine.’
He raised his brows. ‘You weren’t happy?’
She sipped her coffee, closing her eyes as the pleasure of that sip wrapped around her.
The last thing she expected was his feather-light touch on her face, a single finger tracing the line of her jaw, before gently angling her chin towards him.
‘You were unhappy?’ he repeated, eyes tracing her face, so she felt completely exposed to him.
‘That’s generally the reason people seek divorces, isn’t it?’
A frown flickered across his features. ‘Not always.’
She sipped her coffee again, purely in an attempt to cut through the connection he was forging by asking her these questions, so close, staring down into her eyes.
She didn’t want to feel a connection to this man, apart from, she supposed, the physical.
She would never be stupid enough to put her happiness in the hands of a man again, even temporarily.
‘Well, it was for me,’ she said, crisply. ‘My marriage was a mistake. I realised within a few months.’
‘Yet you stayed.’
‘It was complicated.’
‘Why?’
She glanced across the room, considering that. ‘There were other people in the picture. My mom. His parents. His work. Getting divorced after a few months would have been disastrous for him.’
‘And staying wasn’t disastrous for you?’
Surprised by his perception, she shot him another glance. There was a haunted look in his face that took her breath away. ‘I thought I could fix it,’ she said, finally, sipping her coffee, cheeks flaming with regret at that. How silly she’d been. How na?ve. ‘I thought I could fix him.’
‘One person alone cannot fix a broken relationship.’ It was too insightful to be anything but personal experience. She opened her mouth to say something along those lines, but he spoke first.
‘It’s been a long time, since I’ve been with a woman.
To be honest, I never expected to have sex again.
’ Her jaw dropped at that. He was far too masculine, too virile, to even contemplate a lifetime of denial.
‘I reacted badly, afterwards. I am sorry if that offended you. Believe me when I tell you, my response had nothing to do with you.’ He leaned closer, so their faces were almost touching.
‘Everything about you was perfect, as I said at the time.’
Her heart leaped into her throat and her pulse went into overdrive.
Stars shimmered in her eyes again, all bright and silver, and, of its own accord, one hand lifted to press to his chest. Not to push him away, but to feel his warm skin beneath her palm, to touch him because he was inviting her to.
He was opening the door again, to the intimacy they’d shared.
And in that moment, it was all she wanted. To banish all thoughts of James and their marriage from her mind with simple, deeply pleasurable sex with this incredibly gorgeous man.