Suddenly Alex pulled back, his hands falling from her waist. ‘No, Lisa, I am not going to give you the chance again to accuse me of manipulating you with sex.’
‘I wasn’t going to,’ she teased, suddenly feeling lighthearted.
‘Good, then get dressed. We are leaving. We have to learn to communicate better and here is not the place to do it. Too many bad memories,’ Alex insisted.
‘I’ll send you an E-mail from my laptop. Is that communication enough for you? Though I do remember overhearing you tell Nigel something about your lap.’
Alex stiffened, and she watched with laughter in her eyes as his brow furrowed and he tried to remember, then he disconcerted her completely by roaring with laughter. Sweeping her up in his arms, he carried her to the bed.
‘You’re right. Who needs to talk when we have this?’ And, with a wolfish smile, he dropped her on the bed. Falling down beside her, he deftly eased her out of her robe, shed his own, and drew her in to the hard heat of him. Lisa trembled violently, and wondered how she had ever been dumb enough to even consider forgoing such pleasure.
A long time later she lay with her head resting on his broad chest.
‘Are you okay?’ Alex queried softly. She felt the vibration of his words against the wall of his chest.
‘I’m speechless,’ she sighed.
‘I’m surprised,’ Alex murmured. ‘You are usually such a verbal lover.’
‘Yes, well, for once I am struck dumb.’ But she knew what he was getting at.
Before she would have cried out in the throes of passion and declared her love in gushing terms. Not any more… She had accepted his reason for buying the shares in her company the same way she had accepted the fact that Alex did not believe in love. She told herself she didn’t care, that the pleasure she found in his arms was enough…
‘Good.’ He rolled her on to her back and, propping his head on one elbow, he grinned down at her. ‘How about a long weekend in Kos? Or perhaps you would prefer house-hunting again?’ he ended less than enthusiastically.
Lisa pretended to consider. ‘Well, a house is important…’ She saw the flash of disappointment in his dark eyes. It was time to take a chance, and her lips parted in a purely feminine smile. ‘But I doubt we’d find anything better than the first one we saw last week. So Kos it is.’
‘You little witch.’ Alex surveyed her with a disturbing light of understanding in his dark. ‘You wanted the house, but you had so little trust in me you could not admit it, hmm.’
‘Something like that,’ she agreed.
‘Hardly flattering, but understandable, I suppose.’ Slipping off the bed, Alex picked up his robe and put it on. ‘I have a few calls to make, so why not get up and get packed?’ He glanced down at where she lay on the bed, her blonde hair spread in a tangled mass over the pillow, her body relaxed in the aftermath of passion, and his firm lips curved back over his brilliant white teeth in a blatantly sexy grin. ‘And hurry, wife, or I might just change my mind!’
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE flight from London took a little over three hours and, allowing for the time difference, it was midnight when the jet touched down at Kos airport. They had travelled in the Solomos company jet, Alex explaining his father had been using it at the time of their wedding.
‘Are you sure your mother won’t mind our arriving in the middle of the night?’ Lisa asked Alex, as he helped her onto the Tarmac.
Alex gave her a surprised glance and tucked her hand under his arm. ‘You don’t know much about Greek custom if you think midnight is late. In my mother’s house we do not dine before ten, and quite often later.’
Two cars drew alongside them. In minutes, passport and customs details were accomplished, and Alex was ushering Lisa into the back seat of the second car, a chauffeur-driven limousine, and sliding in beside her.
‘You must be famous?’ She prompted. ‘Not for you the queue at Customs!’ She slanted him a sidelong glance. Dressed casually in jeans and a short-sleeved white shirt, he looked totally relaxed.
‘Famous no, but local, yes. The population of the island is only twenty-five thousand, and most people here know each other. Actually, I had forgotten the first weekend in July is one of the busiest of the year. For the next two months the island will be heaving with tourists and the population swells to more like a million. For which I should be grateful.’
‘Why?’ Lisa tipped her head back to look up at him, intrigued.
‘Because my father came here on holiday, met and married my mother, an island girl, and for the next few years built many of the hotels and apartments. In fact—’ he looked down at her warily ‘—we are in the process of constructing a large holiday complex at the other end of the island, beside Paradise Beach. I thought I might take a look at it while we are here, see how it is going.’
‘I might have guessed, you con-man,’ she mocked. ‘This is no holiday, but a business trip.’
‘And who slipped their laptop in the side pocket of their holdall?’ He asked drolly.
‘Force of habit.’ Lisa grinned at being caught out.
His dark eyes gleamed appreciatively down at her. She was a vision of loveliness, her blonde hair loose and curling around her bare shoulders. Her dress was a simple pale cream sheath in knitted cotton, the strapless bodice moulding her high, full breasts like the hands of a lover, the skirt ending a few inches above her knees. She had no idea how desirable she looked. Alex bent and placed a swift, hard kiss on her parted lips. ‘So was that,’ he said huskily.