The Purchased Wife(12)

'Well, I feel like it now!' he rasped. 'And if you refuse to listen to reason then maybe I will take you up against a tree, with your knees trapped beneath my arms and your heels digging into my back!'

Such a lurid, vivid picture made her push back from him, all big, shocked green eyes. 'You've done it before like that!'

Xander laughed-thickly, so thoroughly disconcerted by the attack that he discovered he had no defence. The whooshing sound of a helicopter's rotor blades suddenly sounded overhead, saving him from having to defend himself. They both looked up then Xander uttered a thick curse.

'We have a visitor,' he muttered.

'Who?' Nell shot out as they watched the helicopter swoop down the side of the hill then come to a hovering stop beside the other one.

There was a moment of nothing, a moment of hovering stillness in Xander that brought her eyes back to his face. He didn't look happy. He even sent her a grimace.

'My mother,' he said.





CHAPTER FIVE

HIS mother...

Nell's heart sank to the soles of her bare feet. The beautiful, gorgeous, always exquisitely turned out Gabriela Pascalis was paying them a visit and Nell looked like this-wet, bedraggled, and more than half-ravished.

Her voice developed a shake. 'Did you know she was coming here?' .

There was a sighed-out, 'No,' before he changed it to a heavy, 'Yes... She said she was coming. I told her not to bother. I knew she would ignore me-all right?'

Nell flashed him a killing look. 'You didn't think to warn me about that?'

'We were busy talking about other things-I forgot.'

He forgot...

'And I suppose I was hoping she would listen to me for once...'

Nell didn't even grace that with the spitting answer sitting on her tongue. Turning, she began striding down the hillside, leaving Xander cursing colourfully as he gathered up their scattered things.

She knew that mother and son did not enjoy a warm relationship, in fact the best she could describe it as was cool. They met, they embraced, they threw veiled but heavily barbed comments at each other; they embraced then parted again until the next time. It was like standing in the middle of a minefield when they were together. One step out of line and Nell had a feeling that they would both ignite and explode all over her, so she'd tended to keep very quiet and still in their company.

Not that it happened often. It wasn't as if with a relationship like that mother and son lived in each other's pockets. Xander had his life and Gabriela had hers-par for the course with Xander's relationships, she tagged on acidly. The very few times that Nell had come into contact with both of them together was usually at one of those formal functions Xander would drag her to occasionally-to keep up appearances while Vanessa hovered around somewhere in the murky background, awaiting her lover's return.

Her skin turned cold as she thought that.

A shriek of delight suddenly filled the hillside, dragging her attention down the hill towards the house. She saw that the helicopter had settled next to the other one and Gabriela was now standing by the pool with her arms thrown wide open while Thea Sophia hurried towards her clapping her hands with delight.

To witness the dauntingly sophisticated Gabriela dressed in immaculate lavender silk fold the little black-clad bundle that was Thea Sophia to her in a noisily loving hug came as almost as big a surprise as the way Nell had just behaved with Xander up on the hill. Where had all the warmth and affection come from? She would never have believed Gabriela capable of it if she was not seeing it with her own eyes.

The two faces of the Pascalis family, she thought grimly as she maintained a brisk pace downwards. Behind her was a man who had been as cold as ice for ninety-nine per cent of their marriage, suddenly showing her he had passion hot enough to singe layers from her skin! Now here was the drop-dead sophisticated mother putting on a demonstration of childlike adoration that would shock her peers-though anyone would love Thea Sophia, she then had to add with a brief softening inside. The sweet old lady would make the devil want to give her a loving hug.

As the two embracing women dropped out of sight behind the red-tiled roof of the house, Nell felt the silly burn of tears sting her eyes. It was stupid to feel hurt by such an open display of affection from Xander's mother for his aunt, but that was exactly what she did feel. Gabriela had never greeted her like that, never welcomed her with open arms and shrieks of delight. On those few tension-charged occasions they had met just the brief air-kissing of Gabriela's perfumed cheeks had always made Nell feel as if she were desecrating holy ground.

Or was it the other way around and she was the one who repelled deeper displays of affection? Had those defensive shells Xander talked about kept her mother-in-law at arm's length? She didn't know. She didn't even know if Gabriela knew the full truth about the true disaster that her son's marriage was.

The two women had gone from the pool area by the time Nell reached it. Making directly for the rinse shower that occupied a corner of the patio area, she switched it on and began washing the dust from her feet. The bottom of her foot still stung from its contact with the sharp stone, but as she was about to lift up the foot to inspect it she saw Xander arrive a few paces behind her and her full attention became fixed on him.

He had gathered up their things and was now placing them on one of the tables, tall, dark, uncomfortably alluring with his shiny wet hair, loose clothes and bare feet. Nothing like the man she was used to seeing-nothing. The other Xander was all skin-tingling, sophisticated charisma; this one was all-sex.

She looked away as he turned towards her, stiffened like mad when his hands snaked around her waist to gently crush fine muslin against her skin. A long brown foot with long brown toes appeared next to her foot so he could share the water sprinkling down on them. Next the smoothness of his cheek arrived against her cheek. 'We are being watched, agapita,' he warned huskily as she tried to pull away from him.

It was all he needed to say to halt her attempt to escape. So she clamped her teeth together, kept her chin lowered and swapped one cleaned foot for the other and felt the intimacy deep in her trembling bones in watching Xander do the same thing.

'You're trembling all over. I like it,' he remarked in a sexy, husky groan by her ear, felt the heat mount her cheek and laughed softly as he brushed his lips against that tell-tale heat.

'I'm trembling because I'm angry with you,' she said. 'Look at me, Xander,' she then said heavily. 'I'm all wet and salty and now I have to go in there and meet your mother looking like this. You should have given me more warning then at least I could have· found time to shower and change before she arrived...and she will know, won't she,' she then added unhappily, 'what the papers have been saying about us?'

'And that bothers you.'

'It bothers you too or you would not have brought me here and hidden me away like you have.'

His foot disappeared and she sensed a new grimness in him as he reached over her shoulder to turn off the shower. 'I did not bring you here to hide you,' he denied.

'Yes, you did. The same as you've been hiding me away all year.'

'So you thought you would make me wake up and take notice by involving yourself with another man?'

'Isn't that just typically arrogant of you to think I was trying to grab your attention?' She tried to move away again but he still would not allow it, the flat of his hand resting lightly but firmly against her stomach to keep her trapped in front of him. She sucked in a short, tense breath. 'I was leaving you, Xander,' she stated bluntly. 'And I was going, hoping never to set eyes on you again.'

'You did more than set eyes on me a few minutes ago, Nell, and I don't recall you turning away. In fact…' He turned her to face him. His eyes wore a hard glitter. 'I would say that you could not get enough of what you saw.'

'That was just sex.'

'And you know so much about it to sound so dismissive?' Nell didn't answer. She was glaring at the ribbon of hard brown skin dressed with crisp dark hair showing between his gaping shirt and wishing with all her heart that her tongue didn't tingle with a desire to taste.

'We were talking about your mother.' She slewed her eyes sideways to stare at the glinting pool.

'She's here to discuss some family business.'

'Well, maybe she will be kind enough to give me a lift off this island when she leaves.'

'You think I would allow it?'

Green eyes flashed into contact with his. 'Would you like to repeat that bit about not hiding me?'

He went several steps further and lowered his dark head and kissed her, not hot and driven like before but slow and gentle with just enough passion to elicit a response. 'That is why you're here, agape mou,' he murmured as he lifted his head again. 'We are going to kick-start this marriage. Then let us see if you still wish to leave.'

Xander could say this in that tone of voice because she'd responded. He could say it because her fingers were already in contact with his brown skin. This beautiful, defiant, contrary creature might not want to want him but hell, she did want him, Xander thought grimly.

Letting go of her, he strode off, leaving her standing there knowing that he had won that little battle without her putting up much of a defence.

Waiting in the coolness of the foyer, he viewed Nell's arrival in the open doorway through carefully hooded eyes and had to lock his jaw to keep other parts of him under control. Lit from behind by the sunlight, she looked like a sea nymph standing in the jaws of a hungry shark. He was the hungry shark. If they had been alone here he would be closing those jaws and carrying her off to finish what he'd started out there. He'd laid down the gauntlet as to where this marriage of theirs was going to go from here and by the way she was hovering in the doorway he would say that she knew she did not stand a chance of changing that course.