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The racket of the helicopter flying overhead drove Maribel naked and dripping from the shower. Wrapping a towel round herself, she raced downstairs and found the telephone answer-machine flashing that a message had been received. She didn’t waste time trying to listen to it. Evidently Leonidas had made a last-minute decision to visit and, of course, it wouldn’t have occurred to him that she might have other plans. Elias, who had already worked out that the sound of a helicopter always signified the arrival of his father, was bouncing up and down as if Santa Claus were about to come down the chimney. She pelted back upstairs and dragged a comb ruthlessly through her wet hair while simultaneously pulling out clothes. She’d only got her panties on before the doorbell went. In feverish haste, she climbed into her jeans. The bell went twice more while she struggled to pull them up to fasten them at her waist. She ran out to the landing and bawled downstairs, ‘Give me a minute!’
Elias was whinging with the same appalling impatience on his side of the front door. She yanked on a T-shirt and raced down barefoot.
‘Thank you,’ Leonidas drawled in a long-suffering tone.
Rattled by his inopportune arrival, Maribel made the very great mistake of allowing herself to look directly at him for the first time in a month of vigilant self-restraint. And that one imprudent glance at him knocked her sideways: he looked amazing. Raindrops glistened on his black hair and classic olive-toned features. His brilliant dark eyes glinted below heavy lashes, his strong masculine jawline and beautifully shaped mouth accentuated by the faint bluish-black shadow where he shaved. Her tummy not only flipped, but performed a series of rapid somersaults.
‘I wasn’t expecting you—I was in the shower,’ she mumbled, fighting a belated defence action with all her might. Stop it, stop right now, her inner voice of sense was warning her. Don’t look at him and don’t respond to him, he’s pure poison and heartache in a very dangerous package.
‘Didn’t my staff contact you?’
‘I only came home ten minutes ago. I haven’t had time to check my messages yet.’
‘Your mobile?’
‘Forgot to charge it.’ As Maribel turned away to close the door his attention was hooked by the distinctly erotic ripple of her voluptuous breasts, which were moulded to perfection by a T-shirt that clung so lovingly to her damp skin that he could see the swell of her pouting nipples. His lean, well-built body reacted with rampant male enthusiasm. He could not shake the deep inner conviction that if he just got her back into bed everything would be perfect.
Maribel watched Elias clawing his way up Leonidas’s trouser-legs like a mini-mountaineer. Elias already adored his father. Helped up to chest level, the little boy wrapped two plump arms round Leonidas and covered his face with enthusiastic kisses. He was a very affectionate child, but Leonidas was unused to such physical demonstrations of warmth and liking. The first time Elias had kissed him, Leonidas had frozen in shock. But now Leonidas was trying to reciprocate with occasional awkward hugs. It hurt Maribel to watch, as she knew that Leonidas didn’t know how to show or return affection because he had not received it as a child. If anyone was capable of teaching Leonidas how to love another human being, it was her son. That was good, that was healthy. Unfortunately, the more signs of attachment Maribel saw developing between father and son, the more fearful she became of what Leonidas might do in the future.
Maribel would not let herself look again at Leonidas because she was fiercely determined to detach herself from feeling any personal response to him. She had a date, she reminded herself furiously; she was going out on a date in just over an hour. Sloan was an attractive, eligible guy, a research assistant, only a couple of years older than she was. Until Leonidas had arrived, she had been looking forward to the prospect of adult company.
Mouse the wolfhound peered out from below the table and whined in excitement. On his belly, he crawled into view with his long tail banging noisily on the floorboards in a show of ingratiating fervour. Once all of his long grey shaggy body had emerged, Leonidas tossed him a dog treat in reward. Mouse guzzled it down and fixed adoring doggie eyes on his new idol. Maribel didn’t think that Leonidas had ever had anything to do with dogs before, either. But once he had registered how important Mouse was to his son, Leonidas had mounted an edible charm offensive to lessen the animal’s terror of strangers. And, in common with most challenges that Leonidas set out to meet, he had achieved his goal with brilliance. Bribery, Maribel reflected grimly, worked even in the canine world.
‘I have to talk to you,’ Leonidas murmured with quiet insistence. ‘I can’t stay long. I have a flight to catch in a couple of hours.’
