Chapter 4
“Idon’t believe you.” She pushed up onto her hands and stared at his perfect naked body. The crisp white sheets were tangled beneath him, giving drama and depth to his tan.
“It’s been three nights. Why would I lie?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think you’re lying.” Guilt cut through her gut. “I just didn’t realize …”
“Because,” he pushed up off the bed and brought his mouth to hers, “We have either been doing this, or sleeping, and time seems to have lost all meaning. How long did you think we’ve been on the island for?”
“A day!” She shook her head. “I can’t explain it. That sounds ridiculous, I know.”
“A little,” he agreed. He curled some of her dark black hair around his finger and brought it to his lips. “I am not complaining. I don’t think I would ever get sick of being with you.”
The compliment found its mark, though a horrible sense of being a terrible, terrible person made it difficult to appreciate.
“Still. I can’t hide out here forever.”
“Why not?” He propped up on his side.
“You want me to stay forever?” She teased, shaking her head. Though he was right, they’d done very little talking since she’d come to L’isola Ourana, she somehow just knew that he was hardly the commitment type.
Thad chose his words carefully. Saphire had a strange effect on him.
In her presence, he found it hard to remember exactly what he felt and wanted.
He knew only that he couldn’t comprehend the thought of her leaving.
“I want you to stay while I am here. And for as long as this is pleasing to us both.”
She dropped her head forward. “I want that too. But … I can’t.” She thought of Jordan and Anita and a fever of anxiety swelled her veins.
“How long?” He said curtly, his eyes scanning her face.
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Three days? You’re serious?”
He nodded. “Very.”
“Wow. I really should have called my … friend … by now.” Would he be worried?
Undoubtedly. Jordan, on the partner track at her father’s prestigious law firm, Jordan who had political aspirations, Jordan who cared about what everyone thought of him, would be in a panic.
But about her, or about the damage she could do to his career and his reputation?
“Call your friend then,” he said, flopping back against the pillows. “Tell her that you have found a slice of paradise with a man who treats you as a sex-slave, and that you wish to stay as long as you are able.”
She grinned at the description. “So I’m your sex-slave, huh?
” She asked huskily, already pushing the sheet from his legs so that she could straddle his waist. “That’s funny, because all this time I’ve been thinking you’re mine.
” She dropped her mouth to his. It was heaven in a kiss. His lips were life-sustaining.
He tangled his fingers in hers and spread her arms wide, then he pushed up so that he could wrap his arms around her back, holding their torsos close together. “What reality is there beyond this?” He demanded, flicking one of her nipples punishingly.
She groaned against his mouth. “I would have thought that you’d have work to do anyway, Mr Konstanides. Aren’t you some big-shot tycoon?”
His smile was distracted. “I am on vacation.” It was an interesting statement and it caused her to look at him with renewed interest. She’d spent so much time thinking about what she was running from that she hadn’t given a moment’s contemplation to his normal life.
“A vacation? From work?”
He nodded, but his lips clung to hers.
“Where are you based?”
“All over,” he mumbled, reaching down and gripping her buttocks so that he could hold her firm against his growing arousal.
“Come on. Are you in London? Athens? Rome? New York? Where? Where’s your office? I presume a guy like you has one.”
“I have several,” he said simply. “And I work from whichever needs my attention most. Until recently I was stationed in London.”
She swallowed. London. In another life, another time, might they have met? “Where in London?”
It was the first attempt at conversation they’d had in days. And while he was already craving the sweet release her body offered, he forced himself to slow down. He pulled her down onto the bed beside him and lifted her hand to his lips. He kissed it gently. “My office is at Docklands.”
“And you live …?”
“I have a place in Hampstead.”
“Hampstead?” A flush stole into her cheeks.
“Yes. Do I take it from your reaction that’s significant to you in some way?”
She bit down on her lip. “I live in Notting Hill. Not so far from you.”
He traced an invisible circle pattern over her bare shoulder. “With this friend you need to call?”
A slight flush spread over her cheeks. “Yes.”
“Will she be worried that you have disappeared?”
“No.” She swallowed, and her fragile neck knotted visibly. “I doubt it.” She pushed up on one elbow. “Okay, where’s your favorite place to spend time?”
“Here. Now. With you.”
She laughed. “You’re devilishly charming, you know that? I should warn you, I’ve recently become quite cynical about men and their words. So you’d do better not to waste them on me.”
It was a very telling statement. He filed it away into the little dossier he hadn’t realized he was keeping on her.
“I’m serious,” she playfully punched his chest. He caught her hand and held it there, against his wall of rock-hard abdominals. “Where do you really live? Where’s that one place you call home?”
His frown was genuine. “I don’t know,” he said after several moments. He angled his head to face her. Sunlight formed a pretty, golden pattern across his cheek. “I grew up here. On this island. Until I was sixteen, this was home.”
“Sixteen? Did your family move?”
“I didn’t have a family as such,” he said, the timbre of his voice thick with memories he rarely gave voice to.
“My parents died when I was a boy. They … weren’t close to my grandfather.
In fact, when they died, he didn’t know about me at all.
It was only that my father had a lawyer, who thought to contact Aristotle. ”
“Aristotle Konstanides?” She said with a small smile. “That’s a formidable and intimidating name.”
Thad nodded. “He was an intimidating and formidable man.”
“Was?” She tilted her head onto his chest so that she could hear the steady beating of his heart.
“He died last week.”
Her silence was heavy pity. “Why didn’t you say anything? I’m so sorry.”
“He was ninety years old,” Thad said with a grimace. “But he was as strong as an ox. As bombastic as one, too. I never imagined he would go. He had too much life in his soul yet.”
“It’s a cruelty, isn’t it, that some people’s bodies fail them when they’ve still got so much to give.”
He nodded. It was exactly as he’d felt. “Only it was no tragedy. After all, his life was long. Very long. And he lived it well, for the most part.”
“Oh?” She prompted curiously.
He shook his head. “You don’t want to hear about this.”
“I do.” And she did, desperately. That alone should have been a warning; a sign of danger. But she was too far into the rip-tide to realize the ocean had turned.
“Aristotle disinherited my father. He was only a young man; twenty three. I don’t know the facts; my grandfather never told me.
I only knew that my father did something that Aristotle considered to be such a betrayal that he sent his son away, and removed any financial support. They never spoke again.”
“What could it have been?” She whispered, shaking her head.
“It is irrelevant. The decision to ostracize his own son haunted him for the rest of his life. I know he came to regret it. After all, once my parents died, there was no longer any prospect of reunion. It was all lost.”
“But there was you,” she smiled, and buried her fingertip into his chin dimple. “That must have brought him some consolation.”
His smile was a pale imitation of the emotion.
“I believe so. He was an excellent grandfather. He worked hard at being what he felt I needed. And he groomed me to take over the business, so that even at sixteen, when I left the island, I had the skills I needed. I lived and breathed business and finance. That was my life growing up. I sat in on board meetings when I was ten years old.”
“Even without that, I think this would have been your path.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“Why did you leave the island?” She shifted her weight, bringing her naked body to press against his side. “You speak about it like it was some kind of line in the sand, as though there was a ‘before leaving’ and an ‘after leaving’. Like it fundamentally changed you.”
“You are so damned perceptive,” he said with a laugh. “I cannot say yet if I like or hate that about you.”
Her cheeks flushed. “I don’t mean to pry.”
“The strange thing is that you aren’t. I do not speak often about my childhood. And yet with you … it seems to want to pour out of my mouth.”
“Maybe you’re in some kind of post-sex coma?”
He laughed. “Highly possible.” He stroked her hair gently.
“When I turned sixteen, the same lawyer who had brought me to my grandfather sent a package. It was a letter from my parents. Of course, they’d written it without any idea that I would ever read it.
Who prepares a will actually believing it will be enacted?
None of us is born with such pessimism with regards to our own mortality.
But write it he did, and undoubtedly when he was in a state of deep anger and resentment. ”
“What did it say?”
He sighed. “It outlined all of the reasons he hated Aristotle. From the grave, my father turned me against my grandfather. I should have been wiser. I should have let the facts settle before I reacted. But I have always been fuelled by passion. And on that night, I read the letter and I began to blame my grandfather for everything, even my father’s death. ”
“Was it his fault?”