Bella tugged her hand free of her mother’s and pulled at Jax’s jeans to be lifted. He hoisted her high and she giggled and rested her curly head down sleepily on his bare shoulder. Their interaction was so relaxed and natural now, Lucy thought with satisfaction, that it was hard to believe they had only met a month ago.
She and Jax hadn’t lasted a whole week on the island without Bella. Lucy had never been separated from her daughter before and had decided a week was unnecessarily long when there was a nanny on the household staff, willing and able to give the honeymooners a break from childcare: Heracles had prepared for every eventuality when he entertained. But the rumour of a private zoo had proved to be just that—a rumour.
The gardens, however, were spectacular although Jax and Lucy had spent more time on the beach, crunching through the pale sand to the water’s edge where Lucy, who could not swim, liked to paddle. Never having enjoyed many such opportunities, she was not keen on trusting her body to either a swimming pool or the sea, but Jax had insisted that her learning to swim was a safety issue more than anything else. So, Lucy had braved swimming lessons with Jax, which they had both found equally trying, Jax because he was naturally impatient and Lucy because she was nervous.
Over the past three weeks they had learned so much about each other, she acknowledged cheerfully. Jax was a morning person, Lucy was a night person. They had spent a wonderful ten days cruising round the Mediterranean on his father’s yacht, Sea Queen, docking at different islands to see the sights, dine out and shop. She loved to dance and they had enjoyed several really late nights out at clubs. He had bought her loads of clothes in hip boutiques on Crete and Mykonos and he had had a jeweller flown out to Tifnos for her to choose what he deemed to be the basics. A gold watch now encircled a wrist and gold hoops ornamented her ears. She had a diamond pendant, bracelet and earrings as well, which he had referred to as a ‘belated’ wedding gift. And Bella had a nursery overflowing with toys and clothing and picture books to go with the designer furnishings.
In fact, Lucy believed she already had almost everything she had ever wanted or ever dreamt of having. Jax had spoiled them both. He was marvellous with Bella, far more patient with her than he was with anyone else. He was making a huge effort to be a dad and she appreciated that when so many of his friends, smooth sophisticates whom they had met in the clubs where he was well known, had yet to even settle down. For a man who had never wanted to marry, Jax was settling down into family life remarkably well, she reflected gratefully.
Yet she couldn’t forget that Jax was the same guy who had dumped her for ‘boring’ him two years earlier, the same guy who had seemed perfectly content with her one day and who had then cut her out of his life only days later. That past still made her insecure because she had no faith that she could accurately read Jax and estimate his state of mind with regard to her and their marriage. Of course, he seemed to do and say all the right things, but then he had done that before in Spain and look how that had ended!
‘I’m hungry...’ Jax curved a hand to Lucy’s shoulder and steered her up the beach towards the buggy that would waft them up the steep hill. ‘And I think our daughter needs a nap...and maybe I need one too, glyka mou.’
Lucy coloured. Heat licked at her feminine core as Jax sent her a glittering green glance of sensual enquiry. Dampness gathered between her legs, anticipation rising because that side of their relationship was outrageously healthy. He still wasn’t doing the cuddling thing the way she wanted. No, with Jax what might start out as a cuddle invariably turned into sex. He said he couldn’t be that close to her and touch her without wanting to get naked and energetic. There was nowhere they hadn’t made love. They had indulged on the beach, in the pool, in the pine forest, in the labyrinthine privacy of the lush gardens, but most often in the delicious comfort of their own bed. The simmering flare-ups of passion that wound through their days felt so natural to her. It was as if Jax couldn’t get enough of her, a thought she kept tactfully to herself, and that made her feel safer. She couldn’t help viewing sex as a barometer to gauge the health of their marriage because Jax certainly wasn’t any keener to discuss such things than he had ever been.
‘It’s those freckles. I can’t resist them,’ Jax said huskily, skimming the bridge of her nose with a teasing finger.
Lucy laughed because she hated her freckles, seeing them as imperfections, but Jax thought they looked delightfully natural, which of course they were. Did anyone draw in freckles? She thought not and smiled as they piled into the buggy. A pang of sadness infiltrated her mood because the honeymoon as such was almost over. Jax was meeting with Heracles about some big project in Athens the following morning and she was accompanying him because she planned to take Bella to visit her father and Iola. She was hoping that the passage of time since her wedding day and Bella’s noisy presence would make the occasion less tense and awkward.
In actuality, Jax wasn’t looking forward to the next day either. He intended to confront his father with the file Heracles had had sent to him on Lucy two years before. From what he had so far managed to establish the file was full of inaccuracies and outright lies and he needed to know if those lies had been a deliberate attempt to break up their relationship or the simple product of a lazy investigator and a case of mistaken identity. He could scarcely censure Kreon’s ethics if his own father was guilty of the same lack of moral scruple when it came to getting the result he wanted most.
Even so, he still could not have said which answer he wanted to hear from Heracles because if the older man actually believed the contents of that file, it outraged Jax in a way he could not rationally explain. Yet he, more than anyone, knew Lucy was far from perfect. His mind skipped superfast over that acknowledgement and tucked the memory of that alleyway encounter back into the box where he kept it locked away. She had made an unforgivable mistake and he had to live with that...for Bella’s sake, he told himself urgently, only for Bella’s sake.
Bella’s nanny took the little girl off to bed. Lucy went for a shower because she was hot and sandy and she wasn’t at all surprised when Jax stepped into the shower with her, all lithe, wet bronzed skin and rippling muscles. She ran her hands up appreciatively over his torso and as the water jets shot at them, sprinkling even their faces with droplets, his mouth came crashing passionately down on hers. He tasted her with raw driving need and as always the strength of his hunger for her disconcerted her. He gathered her slippery body up and pinned her against the cold tiles, lifting her thighs round his waist while rocking and grinding against the tender triangle of flesh at the heart of her.
That fast she wanted him intolerably and with every probing plunge of his tongue she wanted him more. Evocative little noises were wrenched from low in her throat as skilled fingers teased and played to prepare her for his entrance. And then he tilted her back and thrust into her with vigour while she clung to his shoulders, her ankles wrapped round him. He grunted with raw male satisfaction, his hand supporting her hips as he pounded her yielding body with delicious force. Excitement writhed through Lucy in an unstoppable surge and she reached her peak with an involuntary cry, convulsive waves of exquisite pleasure rippling through her lower body as an orgasmic flush spread over her sun-dappled skin.
‘I didn’t use a condom,’ Jax groaned in her ear as he slowly lowered her back to her own feet. ‘Is that likely to be a problem?’
‘Hopefully not,’ Lucy muttered after doing some quick calculations and without looking directly at him as she stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. ‘It’s the wrong time of the month.’
What had he meant by that question? Was he asking her if she was willing to get pregnant again? Or was he worrying that she would conceive? And for that matter, was she willing to take that risk? Lucy thought not. She had not had an easy pregnancy the first time around and was not in a hurry to do it again, particularly when she did not yet feel secure with Jax. Even so, if she did conceive she would still welcome and love her baby.
But then what would it take for her to feel truly secure with Jax? she asked herself. Perhaps she was her own worst enemy and had quite unrealistic expectations of a marriage in which only one of them loved. She might not like the reality but their relationship was bound to be unbalanced with one of them wanting and hoping for more than the other.
‘Did you know that the contents of that file were a complete fiction?’
‘What do you want me to tell you?’ Heracles slapped the file on Lucy back onto his desk and sighed heavily. ‘I will not lie. I did what I felt I had to do.’
Sharply disconcerted, Jax tensed even more, anger roaring through his tall, powerful frame because he had somehow expected the older man to try and evade his very direct question. ‘Why did you think you had to do anything? Why did you even think that it was your place to interfere? It wasn’t as though I was talking about marrying her—’
‘Jax...in the space of two weeks, you flew back to Spain five times to see her,’ Heracles traded defiantly. ‘That was enough for me to view her as a serious contender for something and when I discovered that she was the daughter of Kreon Thiarkis, well, to be really blunt...that was that. Thiarkis is a slippery customer, always has been, always will be and I will not apologise for not wanting a criminal’s daughter involved with my family.’