“What on earth’s the matter?”
He shrugged himself upright, running a hand through his wet, unruly hair.
“Nothing,” he replied in stiff acknowledgement. “I need coffee that’s all.” He must have noticed the bemused look on her face as she stood motionless with a spoon drooping in her hand, because he added, “To wake myself up.”
“I thought we were being ambushed or something,” she half laughed. “Slow down!”
His eyes flickered around the kitchen and, if Kizzy wasn’t mistaken, he seemed to be struggling to say something.
“Are you all right?” she ventured gently, putting down the spoon and taking a step toward him.
He took her by the shoulders, closing his eyes as he buried his face in her hair and breathed in her spicy floral scent. “I just wondered where you were, that’s all,” he murmured.
“Well, it was probably reckless,” Kizzy replied as she wriggled in his embrace, “but I thought I’d make a start on breakfast—surprise you.”
Andreas smiled. “So what are we having, pethi mou?”
“Um, well, I’d gotten as far as finding the coffee.”
“Then let me take over,” he replied as he took the spoon from the table. “Your kitchen slave days are over now, and besides, I want to spoil you.”
“Wow.” Kizzy rewarded him with a wicked grin. “Do I pay for this later?”
“You most certainly do. In kind. You’re quite good at that but I can’t yet vouch for your coffee.” He shot her a look of admonishment. “And if we don’t stop getting distracted, madam, it’ll be lunchtime before either of us gets fed!”
He fended off her playful jab in the ribs with his elbow and felt laughter rising within him as she grabbed the belt of his robe and gave it a suggestive tug.
“I’m serious. If we don’t get out of the villa very quickly, I will be driven to taking you back to bed again.” He stroked a palm over the rounded swell of her bottom. “And that will be the entire day gone, won’t it?”
“It’s so beautiful here, so peaceful. I feel as if I could stay here forever,” Kizzy mused as she brushed breakfast crumbs off the robe she was wearing on to the stones of the outside terrace.
“You can if you like,” Andreas murmured.
Kizzy laughed uneasily as she noticed the serious expression on his face. He was astonishingly beautiful.
Their eyes locked for a few seconds before he lowered his gaze to his coffee cup.
She shouldn’t allow herself to imagine things that weren’t really there. It was just sex—a temporary, no-strings arrangement between consenting adults.
“No, I can’t stay, Andreas. You freed me from my ties in England, gave me my wings and now… When all this is over and I’ve paid back what I owe, I have to chase the dreams I never thought I could fulfill.”
“You don’t have to pay me back, Kizzy. I thought I’d made that clear.”
“But I do,” she replied with widened eyes. “It’s important to me, to stand on my own two feet—to be independent.”
Andreas ground his teeth silently before replying. “So what are these dreams, Kizzy? Tell me exactly what you want at this stage of your new life.”
Kizzy eyed him warily, unsure if she should open herself up fully to this beautiful man. He’d taken the body she had so eagerly offered up to him over and over again, but was she ready to give him a secret, tender slice of her soul as well?
“They’re all a bit low-key.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” he replied and placed his coffee cup down on the table with a look of intense purpose.
Kizzy took a deep breath. “Well, we never had a decent kitchen. I’d like an ultra-cozy one with enough room to have a long, wooden table and a bashed-up old sofa in the corner—with a fat cat sleeping on it. And copper pans.”
She shot him a sharp look to gauge his reaction, but his face gave nothing away.
“I want to ride a stallion across New Forest heathland at dusk.” Not even a twitch. “And I want to see what it’s like to get my hair done in a proper salon.”
Andreas swallowed. “I can give you all that, Kizzy. Won’t you let me do that for you?”
“I can’t,” she replied sadly and bit down on her bottom lip.
“Why not? Why not let me look after you? I have the means, you know that.” He glanced briefly toward the ocean, toward the sound of waves crashing against the rocks, and then switched his gaze back to her. “And I’d like to.”
She was almost too scared to continue as she looked into the dark, forbidding depths of his eyes, searching for the chip of ice she knew was in there. It was as if she were standing on a cliff edge over a deep, untested pool, balanced precariously as the wind buffeted her. One foot poised. Jump in? Or jump back?
“Because it’s not enough.”
“What’s not enough?”
She dived.
“One day I might want a baby, a family of my own, and I want to make a proper life for that family—better than the miserable one I had. I can’t bring my mum back, but I can try to keep the promise I made not to follow in her footsteps. But that’s a step too far on the wish list as far as you and I are concerned, isn’t it? “
His brooding silence told Kizzy all she needed to know and for some reason she was allowing it to slice her heart into tiny little pieces as she felt the flutter of something new, fragile, and beautiful die within her. She knew the score and had to stop herself from wanting to change the rules now their little game was under way.
“So, much as I love your kitchen and your island, and know you can buy all those other material things for me, I haven’t got much time to fit everything in.”
Her heart was pounding with sickening force and she was beginning to feel horribly light-headed. This was terrible, but she had to finish what she’d started. She couldn’t back out now. Straightening her back as if erecting an impenetrable shield around herself, she lunged in with a quick conclusion.
“So before I settle down I’d like to see some of the world. Move on, get that Gypsy wanderlust out of my system once and for all—I can’t do that with a mortgage and a fat, old cat relying on me, can I?”
Her breath quickened as Andreas tapped a coffee spoon on the table and let out a long, slow breath—the sound of his agreeing with her presumably, and not wishing to continue with this awkward conversation.