They walked into the hall and Iola, Aristide’s housekeeper, smiled and asked them what time they wanted dinner that evening.
‘You decide,’ he told Tabby. ‘I’ll be working.’
‘Seven would be lovely,’ Tabby told Iola with a smile, reckoning that she didn’t need a thermometer to read Aristide’s mood. It was definitely bordering on chilly.
He was in the dressing room getting changed when she got to their bedroom. ‘So, that’s it, then, is it? You’re going to act as if nothing happened at lunchtime.’
Aristide straightened and zipped his jeans, wary dark golden eyes clashing unexpectedly with her questioning, open gaze. ‘Nothingdidhappen,’ he pointed out.
‘Obviously, I’m going to ask about her,’ Tabby replied defensively.
‘But that doesn’t mean that I have to answer.’
‘I don’t see why you wouldn’t,’ Tabby remarked, striving to be more casual about her curiosity. ‘She came up and spoke to us.’
Aristide shrugged a broad shoulder as he pulled on a black tee. ‘I don’t owe you chapter and verse on everyone who speaks to us,’ he countered very drily.
‘No, but there’s such a thing as explaining stuff to make people feel more comfortable…especially if we were to run into her again—’
Aristide straightened to his full intimidating height and the cotton tee dropped down, screening his spectacular muscled torso again. ‘I can assure you that you won’t run into her either in this house or my father’s—’
Tabby nodded, fresh out of an alternative approach that wouldn’t seem to be too much like prying. Of course, had she wanted to do that, she would have followed Andy to the cloakroom. She suspected that Aristide’s stepmother wouldn’t have had a problem telling her about Imogen, whom she had clearly disliked. But her self-respect cringed from the concept of going behind his back to find out information like a common gossip and his family would probably tell him what she had done anyway. She flushed with discomfiture, mortified that she had even thought of doing such a thing. Had it been Imogen who fell pregnant and miscarried? Tabby winced, grudging sympathy assailing her.
Aristide strode downstairs, marvelling at her curiosity. Surely it was obvious that he didn’t want to talk about Imogen? Did he really need to say any more? But Tabby was so blunt, so open, compared to the kind of women he knew best. He suppressed a groan and sat down at his laptop to catch up with his email.
Tabby lingered in the bedroom to change as well, throwing on a bikini and a wrap to take advantage of the pool behind the villa. Seriously, he wouldn’t be looking at her and actually comparing her to Imogen, would he be? How did she know when he wouldn’t even open the subject with her?
Having run him to earth in an obvious office space, Tabby hovered uncertainly in the doorway. ‘Why won’t you talk about her?’ she asked.
Aristide narrowed glittering black eyes on her as she posed there. She looked so awkward and uncomfortable in her persistence because she knew that she shouldn’t be pushing him. She was so unlike Imogen in every way and he cherished that even if it did make life more challenging. With her blonde hair lying rumpled on her shoulders, her make-up-bare face soft and open, she exuded honesty and good intentions.
‘I just don’t. Let’s say it’s a period in my life that I prefer not to revisit—’
‘But clearly, if you were engaged to her, it was a major relationship that must’ve lasted a fair time. And if she is the one who miscarried your child, it must have been even more distressing.’’
Aristide jerked a shoulder in dismissal and swung away.
‘Do you realise how much you’re annoying me?’ Tabby prompted.
An unwelcome smile slashed across his darkly serious features. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘I’m not going to fight with you about this…’
‘Good, because you would lose,’ Aristide told her equably.
‘No, I wouldn’t!’ she tossed back to him, lifting her determined little chin in the air.
Aristide sent his chair screeching back from his desk and vaulted upright. He opened his arms. ‘Come here,angelos mou,’ he urged huskily. ‘I want to kiss you.’
Tabby dragged in a shaken breath. ‘You can’t kiss me out of this!’
‘You may be stubborn but I think I could.’
And he stood there, tall and dark and drop-dead gorgeous, a curl of black hair lying on his brow above the scorching dark golden gaze suddenly locked to her mutinous face.
‘Try it and see,’ Tabby suggested with a dangerous spark in her eyes as she moved closer.
Aristide could no more have stopped himself from reaching for her then than he could’ve stopped breathing. He hauled her to him and crushed her parted lips beneath his with a suppressed groan. All the turmoil in his busy brain stopped dead. The chemistry between him and Tabby electrified him, making him splay a hand across the soft curve of her bottom, jerk loose the sarong shielding her from him and yank her into full contact with the urgent thrust of his erection.
