Another foolish move. She’d already got under his guard once, while his brain was scrambled from the accident. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.
But just the sight of her made him so damn sexually hungry. After living for almost a year without her, he might have thought that he had forgotten the impact she had on his senses. But it seemed that she had only to walk back into his life and he was a slave to his libido like some horny adolescent in the throes of his first physical affair.
He might have thought that he’d have forgotten…Hah!
A harshly cynical laugh broke from him as he realised the bitter irony of what he had just thought. He’d spent the last months trying to force himself to forget that someone called Becca Ainsworth—Becca Petrakos legally, but very definitely not morally—had ever existed.
And failed miserably.
‘Andreas?’
Becca was watching him—nervously, he could almost swear. He had never realised that she was such a good actress. But sitting there like that, with the sheet twisted tightly round her, those beautiful blue eyes wide in a damnably perfect face, she looked the picture of innocence. So innocent that he could almost believe in her himself.
This was the Becca he’d tried to push from his mind. But then the accident had done that for him by wiping her from his memory, and in the time that he had been out of it she had walked back in, cool as could be. And lied through her teeth to him.
And he had been fool enough to let his lust for her drown out all thought of common sense. One tug on the golden chain of sensuality that tied them both together and he had fallen straight into bed with her. Right where she wanted him, it seemed.
But why? What did she want from him? Not just sex, that was obvious. She had to have something else up her sleeve.
So what had happened between her and her precious Roy Stanton? Because something must have done to bring her here, like this, when she had vowed that she would rather die than come back.
‘On second thoughts…’
He turned towards the door, where his black towelling robe hung. Grabbing it, he tossed it roughly in Becca’s direction, not caring that it overshot by several metres and landed on the floor on the other side of the bed.
‘Put that on. I’ve had enough of the sight of you.’
Liar, his conscience reproached him. Hadn’t today—the past couple of days—taught him anything? He could never get enough of the sight of her, the feel of her, the taste of her. He doubted if he ever would. The truth was that passion made him a fool where Becca was concerned and that was a feeling he didn’t like one little bit.
‘And then we talk. You can start explaining just what the hell you are up to.’
‘I’m not “up to” anything!’ Becca protested, struggling to get off the bed and reach the black robe, while at the same time keeping the sheet securely wrapped around her.
‘No?’
‘No!’
‘It seems that way to me. You surely don’t expect me to believe that you turned up here out of love for me—to beg me to take you back? No—I thought not,’ he added when he saw the way her face changed, her lips pinching tight together. ‘So you’ve obviously come for something, and I want to know what.’
And when he did know he would take a great delight in throwing his rejection of her request right back in her face, Becca told herself as she tried once more to grab the black robe. She’d really messed up this time. What had possessed her to fall into bed with him like that, forgetting all about the reasons why she was here? She should have known that there was a chance that something like passionate lovemaking—passionate sex, she amended painfully—together with the fact that she’d been wearing the lavender costume that had practically been the last thing he’d seen her in, would be likely to stir his memories, if not actually bring them right back. She would never be able to forgive herself if she threw away Daisy’s chance of the life-saving operation because of her own foolish passion.
She had the robe in her hand now, but when it came to pulling it on, while still holding on to the sheet that was wrapped round her, she found the situation was impossible. And it was made all the worse by the fact that Andreas stood, dark and devastating, on the far side of the room, watching her through cynically amused black eyes.
‘You might have the courtesy to look away,’ she flung at him in indignation, knowing that the struggle she was having was making her face look pink and flustered.
‘Why?’ he shot back, leaning against the wall and folding his arms across his chest as he met her furious glare with icy calm. ‘Did you do that for me? Did you look away when I got out of bed—or before that? Did you insist on covering your own eyes then?’