Page 39 of The Tycoon's Affair: Tempted By Desire
She blinked, but he didn’t disappear. He was looking right at her with those golden-green eyes. For an awful treacherous second emotion rose in a dizzying sweep inside Sidonie. Her blood grew hot in her veins and her breath shortened. Her nipples tingled. All the signs of a woman in the throes of a lust that had lain dormant.
The oppressive, muggy August air seemed to seize the oxygen going into her lungs. For a second she felt so light-headed she thought she’d faint and she sucked in breath. It couldn’t be him, she told herself, in spite of his not disappearing. It was a mirage. An apparition from her imagination torturing her.
In a bid to convince herself of that Sidonie turned and started to walk down the street. She heard a curse behind her and then her arm was taken in a strong grip. A familiar grip. Immediately Sidonie reacted violently to the effect it had on her body and soul and whirled around, ripping herself free.
She looked up and felt dizzy again. It was Alexio. In the flesh. That gorgeous flesh. He had no right to look so gorgeous. She frowned. Even if he did look leaner than when she’d last seen him and even if there were lines around his mouth and face. Lines she recognised, because she saw them in her own mirror every day. But he was still gorgeous, and she was still aware of the woman who had just walked past and done a double-take.
Anger flared and she seized it like a drowning person might seize a buoy.
‘What do you want?’ she spat out, her belly jumping with panic and a mix of other things she didn’t want to investigate.
Sidonie vaguely noticed his open-necked light blue shirt and dark trousers and became very belatedly aware of her own woeful state of dress. Skinny jeans which she had to wear with the button open, flip-flops and a loose sleeveless smock shirt. Panic gripped her and then she reassured herself. He wouldn’t notice the bump.
The fact that he hadn’t come looking for her sooner stung her more than she liked to admit. She was pathetic.
That hatred burned bright within her, giving her strength. ‘Well? What do you want? As far as I recall I didn’t take anything on my way out of the villa.’
‘No,’ Alexio said heavily, ‘it’s what you left behind.’
Sidonie went blank for a moment, and then she saw that cheque in her mind’s eye and felt fury all over again. Suddenly it made sense and she said out loud, ‘You went back to the villa and discovered I hadn’t cashed your precious cheque?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted.
Sidonie didn’t like the way that made the fury diminish slightly. She’d assumed that he’d known all along that she hadn’t taken his money and that it had made no difference. But all this time he’d thought she’d cashed in. Still, that didn’t change anything.
‘And this...’
Sidonie looked to see him holding out her university sweatshirt and was immediately bombarded with memories of meeting him on that plane, feeling like a hick.
She took it from him and said cuttingly, ‘You came all this way to deliver my sweatshirt?’
A muscle in his jaw popped and Sidonie felt increasingly vulnerable.
She looked at her watch, and then at him, and injected her voice with false sweetness. ‘Look, I’d love to stay and chat, but I have work to get to—so if you don’t mind...’
She turned to walk away but he caught her arm again and Sidonie’s blood leapt. She stopped and turned around and said in a low voice, ‘Let me go, Christakos. We have nothing to say to each other.’
Except for the fact that he’s the father of the baby growing in your belly.
Sidonie ignored her conscience. She needed to get away from him before her composure slipped.
Alexio battled to control the lust that had almost felled him the second he’d laid eyes on Sidonie again. His libido was back with a vengeance. He felt the fragility of Sidonie’s arm under his hand. She’d lost weight—weight she could ill afford to lose. Her face was more angular...giving it a haunting beauty. Her eyes looked huge and there were shadows underneath. She was exhausted. He recognised it well.
He frowned. ‘Aren’t you just leaving work?’
She tried to pull her arm out of his grip but he had an almost visceral fear that if he let her go he’d never see her again. That glorious light golden hair was duller than he remembered, and scooped up into a bun much as it had been when they’d first met. Her neck looked long and vulnerable.
‘I have two jobs—daytime and evening. Now, if you don’t mind, I don’t want to be late.’
‘I’ll give you a lift,’ Alexio said impulsively.
He was still trying to get his head around seeing her again. His conscience pricked hard. She hadn’t taken the money and she was working two jobs. To pay off the debts. Debts that weren’t even hers. Because she had never wanted the money from him in the first place. The ramifications of this, if it were true, made Alexio reel.
This time Sidonie wrenched her arm free. She glared at Alexio and her eyes spat blue and green sparks at him. ‘No, thank you. I do not want a lift or anything else from you. Now, please, go back to where you came from and leave me be.’
She turned and hurried away, her bag slung over her body. She looked very young. Alexio was grim. No way was he going to walk away until he knew what she was up to. The fact that he was clearly the last person she wanted to see only made him more determined.
As Alexio battled not to go and grab her again, and watched her disappear down the steps of a nearby metro station, he took out his mobile phone and made a terse call.
