Page 27 of The Greek Tycoon's Unwilling Wife

If there had been the slightest trace of a sexual intonation in what he’d said, anything that had made her think that he was deliberately putting a double edge onto the phrase, then Becca knew she would have totally lost control. But the note of genuine concern destroyed her composure in a totally different way.

‘Why don’t you put on a swimming costume and spend some time in the pool? You’re clearly not used to this sort of heat and the water would cool you down.’

It wasn’t the heat of the sun that was disturbing her, Becca admitted to herself. It was the subtler, more sensual warmth of his body so close to hers that she could smell the intimate, intensely personal scent of his skin, topped with the tang of the water that still clung to it. That and the heat of her own response, the honeyed sense of need that flooded her body, pooling moistly at the junction of her thighs.

A swim would be just what she needed. It would ease the burn of hunger, soothe the ache in her body. But there was one very practical problem.

‘I don’t have a swimming costume,’ she managed, casting a longing glance at the cool, fresh water as it lapped against the clean blue tiles of the pool. ‘I—never thought that I would need one when I came here. And to be honest, I never thought I’d stay this long.’

She could have bitten out her tongue as soon as she’d spoken, realising too late how close she’d come to giving away the truth that she was not really the person he’d believed her to be. But Andreas hadn’t noticed the slip, too intent on his own train of thought.

‘That’s not a problem. I can soon provide you with a costume. There’s one in the pool house over there.’

A wave of his hand indicated the small stone-formed building that provided a changing room and a shower for those who used the pool.

‘I saw it hanging up there when I went in this morning. It should fit you. Why don’t you go and try it on?’

And come back here, wearing it?

Becca’s mind quailed at the thought. Just the idea of sitting here beside him, lying in the sun or swimming in the pool close to him in some sleek, close-fitting Lycra costume made the tingling worse, bringing it close to the sensation of an electrical shock running over her skin. If someone had left it here then it was probably one of those mistresses he had spoken of. In which case, was it likely that the costume was anything more than a few skimpy pieces of material, precariously held up by a couple of shoestring straps?

And yet the idea of getting away for a moment, going into the pool house to be by herself, as she had hardly been at any moment over the last three days, except when she had retired to bed, suddenly seemed such an appealing idea. She could hide away there for a while, regain her composure, gather her strength. And then maybe she’d be able to cope much better than she had been doing until now.

‘I’ll do that,’ she said, fighting with herself to make sure that she got to her feet slowly, trying desperately not to make it look as if she was running away even though she knew deep in her heart that that was what she was doing.

‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

And the costume? she asked herself as she padded on bare feet across the stone-paved terrace, heading for the pool house. Well, if it fitted—and was in any way modest—then she might risk it.

She’d make up her mind when she saw it.

But when she saw the pale lavender swimming costume hanging on a peg in the small changing room the effect of it was like a sudden blow to her heart, stilling its beat and leaving her standing staring in blank and stunned disbelief, unable to think at all.

It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be, was the phrase that repeated over and over inside her head, making the real world fade from her awareness into a buzzing, whirling haze in which the only real thing was the sleek, small item of clothing before her.

‘It can’t,’ she said, shaking her head in shock. ‘It can’t be.’

Because the costume she now held in shaking hands was the one that she had worn herself on the single day she had spent in the villa as Andreas’ wife.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT STILL fitted her.

That was a shock. She knew she had lost weight in the ten and a half months since her wedding and that she was no longer the relaxed, happy-go-lucky person she had been before she had met and married Andreas Petrakos.

But the lavender swimming costume still fitted almost perfectly. There was so much Lycra in the material that it clung to her new, more slender shape, the low neck exposing softer curves, the high-cut legs revealing slender hips and thighs that had been so much more rounded when she had first worn it.

Looking at herself in the full-length mirror that hung on the wall of the changing room, Becca smoothed hands that were none too steady over the clinging material and tried to remember the Becca who had looked into the same mirror not quite a year before. Then her eyes had been sparkling with delight and the sensual satisfaction of having just made wild, abandoned, passionate love with her brand-new husband. And there had been a wide smile on her mouth that she had felt sure was going to be there for ever and that nothing would ever erase it.

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