He lifted a hand, as if to stay anything she might be about to say, but it was impossible for her to speak. Impossible to do anything except meet his gaze. He was speaking again, his voice insistent.
“It’s the obvious thing to do! Last night proved that the flame between us still burns as fiercely as it ever did. How can you deny it?” His voice changed, and the look in his eyes too.
“And why should you want to deny it, Laurel, after last night?”
She heard the change in his voice. It licked at her like the sweetest poison.
“Taking you into my arms, making love to you, glorying in your incredible beauty, finding the ecstasy again for both of us, making you mine again, making me yours again…”
Seduction was in his voice, the poison sweeter still, his eyes washing over her now, his hand reaching for hers across the table, winding his fingers into hers.
He smiled, and the sweet deadly poison filling her veins flowed more deeply yet, reaching into her. Oh, dear God, that smile.
Memory, flooding in on the poison, burned in her. Not just of last night, of that hectic, urgent fusing of their heated bodies, but from so much longer ago. His smile—lazy, knowing, seductive, caressing—as they’d raised champagne glasses to each other on the deck of his yacht, as they’d lain beside each other, limbs entwined, on the hot sand of a secluded cove after a swim to shore, as they’d lounged negligently amidst the tangled sheets after he’d brought her to the ecstasy that had made her cry out in sobbing crescendo.
Dear God, that smile.
Through the haze of memory she heard him speak. That same seductive caressing voice, his fingers, warm and strong, capturing hers.
“Marry me, Laurel,” he said. “Marry me so we can make a true family for Dan, a home for all of us and bliss for ourselves. Marry me.”
His eyes were pouring into hers, that lethal smile playing about his sculpted mouth, willing her to yield to him…tempting her so, so much…
But slowly she drew back her hand. Looked across at him. Her face was expressionless, her voice the same. Saying what she must now say.
“Do you really think,” she said, “that I would ever stoop to marrying a man who treated me as you did?” A razor was in her voice. “A man to whom I am, and always will be, a lying, despicable thief.”
For a moment he said nothing. Then, in a voice that was strangely blank, he spoke. “If I give you my word of honour that never again will I call you liar or thief, can we finally put it behind us?”
She went on looking at him. “No,” she said.
Chapter Eleven
XANDER STOOD BYthe edge of the pool at his father’s house. If Dan were here he’d be straight into that water, splashing away happily. For an instant Xander could see him there. But Dan was two thousand miles away in England. A wave of missing him went through Xander. Video calls were just not the same.
Dan had said as much to him. Asking him when he was coming back. He’d sounded plaintive, and it had wrung Xander’s heart. He wanted to get on to a plane and rush straight there. But how could he? He’d only arrived in Greece three days ago.
He’d left the UK the day after their Easter. He hadn’t intended to leave that soon, wanting to spend the Easter Monday holiday with Dan.
And with Laurel.
With them both.
But Laurel had wanted him to leave. Made it clear she wanted him gone. Crystal clear.
She had refused, point blank, to say any more to him. She’d got up from the table, gone indoors into the sitting room and sat down on the sofa, taking her cooling tea with her. Xander had followed her with his equally cooling mug of coffee. Dan had beamed at them, offered them some of his Easter egg. Xander had taken some; Laurel had not.
“It won’t make you fat, Mum!” Dan had teased.
Xander’s eyes had gone to her, sitting opposite him on her own sofa, while he sat on his. Remembering, with burning vividness, just how very perfect her body was, how wonderful making love to her had been.
He was remembering it again now. Remembering everything about that night and the day that came after. The day when he’d screwed up completely.
I thought I’d found the perfect way forward for us. Putting the bad part of the past aside, taking the good forward.
It still seemed so right.
It’s the perfect solution, the perfect answer! Dan is part of my life forever, and why should Laurel not be too? Marriage solves everything, provides for everything!
