LITMIR.BIZ

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be a virgin on her wedding night.’

      It was meant to wound, and it did—but it was the truth, and who was she to argue with that?

      She wanted to tell him to drink his coffee and go, and yet wasn’t there some irrational side of her that wanted the very opposite? To take him into her arms as if the intervening years simply hadn’t happened—and, in the process, to exorcise him and his sensual influence once and for all.

      ‘So now what?’ she questioned, amazed at how steady her voice sounded. ‘You haven’t even told me why you’re here, or how long you’re staying. Or even how you ended up living so close?’

      Her eyes were questioning and he gave a soft laugh. ‘You think I tracked you down? Found where you were living and moved into the house next door?’

      As he said it she realised how preposterous the idea was. ‘So it’s just a terrible coincidence?’

      Terrible? Right at that moment, it didn’t seem so terrible. The woman who had always been able to take him straight to heaven and back was living in the house next door. Thoughtfully, Dimitri stroked the pad of his thumb against the warm circumference of the coffee-cup. If fate had provided such a breathtaking opportunity for a taste of former pleasures, then who was he to refuse such an opportunity?

      He stared at her, wondering if there really was such a thing as coincidence? Now that he came to think about it, hadn’t she once described Hampstead to him, telling him how beautiful it was and painting a picture of the heath and all its glories? Had that description planted a seed in his subconscious mind, so that, when he had been choosing where to stay in London, he had instinctively plumped for the leafy green area which seemed so far from the centre of a city it was so close to? Had he subconsciously willed fate to step in—and had it not done just that?

      ‘I am here for a few weeks,’ he said slowly. ‘Zoe is going to an English summer school and I wanted to accompany her.’

      Her mind ticked over; she was getting quite good at mental arithmetic. A few weeks. It wasn’t a lifetime. Surely it wouldn’t take too much planning for both of them to be able to keep out of the other’s way for that long. As long as they were agreed.

      ‘So what are we going to do?’

      ‘Do? What do you suggest?’ More as a diversionary tactic, he picked up his coffee and sipped it, black eyes challenging her through the thin cloud of steam which rose up like clouds. He wondered what she would say if he told her exactly what he would like to do at that precise moment, and how she would react. Would she open her mouth to his if he pulled her into his arms and began to kiss her? He saw the inky dilation of her pupils and once again he felt the powerful pull of desire. Because nothing was more seductive than mutual desire, particularly if one of the parties was doing their utmost to suppress it. ‘We are neighbours, Molly,’ he said softly. ‘And we must behave as neighbours do.’

      ‘You mean…’ she swallowed ‘…avoid each other wherever possible?’

      ‘Is that how English neighbours behave?’ he mocked. He shook his head and smiled. ‘On the contrary,’ he said, and the gravel-deep voice sounded as sweet as honey as he rose to his feet, managing to make the high-ceilinged kitchen look like a doll’s house with his tall, dominating figure. ‘We will say good morning and talk about the weather whenever we meet!’

      ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ she said automatically.

      He raised his eyebrows. ‘But we are both grown up now, ne? I have been married and you have been married. What is it that you say—about a lot of water?’

      ‘Has flowed under the bridge,’ she filled in automatically, and remembering how she had helped him with his English was curiously more poignant than anything else. She slid her legs down off the stool and wished she hadn’t. She was a tall woman, but Dimitri managed to make her feel like a tiny little thing; and her skirt was suddenly feeling as though it had shrunk in the wash.

      ‘Gallons of the stuff!’ she joked, thinking that soon this would be over. It had to be. He would see sense and realise that they couldn’t possibly ever be friends, and they certainly couldn’t be anything else, either. Not now.

      He smiled then, but it was an odd, grown-up smile that Molly didn’t recognise and it threatened her more than a smile ever should.

      ‘So I will come to your party,’ he stated softly.

      She stared at him. ‘My p-party? What are you talking about?’

      ‘You are having a party, Molly.’

      Had he turned into a mind-reader? Were there balloons and boxes of champagne glasses lying around the place, giving him clues? Feeling half mad and disorientated, Molly looked round the kitchen. No. ‘How the hell did you know that?’

      She wasn’t thinking straight, or clearly—and there was usually only one reason why a woman acted in such a distracted way, he noted with a warm sense of triumph. ‘You sent me an invitation, remember? “To The New Residents!”’ he quoted drily.

      Of course she had. She had posted them all the way down the road; she always did. Her heart had begun to thunder and she wasn’t such a self-deluding fool as to deny that part of the reason was excitement. But it would be madness if he came. Sheer and utter madness.

      ‘I sent an invitation to all my neighbours,’ she said wildly. ‘Because it’ll probably be noisy, and late.’

      ‘Well, then.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘You want to pacify your neighbours, of which I am one? Then pacify me, Molly.’

      ‘Dimitri,’ she appealed, steeling herself against the sensual undercurrent in his tone, wondering if that had been deliberate or just part of the whole irresistible package he presented. ‘You can’t seriously want to come?’

      ‘Oh, but I can,’ he demurred. ‘It will be good for me to mix a little while I’m here, don’t you think? And besides—’ he gave a slow, curving smile ‘—I like parties.’

      She bet he liked them!

      ‘Well, of course I can’t uninvite you now,’ she observed slowly. She raised her face to his with a defiant tilt to her chin, in a gesture which told him quite clearly that she could cope with his presence. She certainly wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of being barred! ‘So if you insist on coming, then I guess I can’t stop you.’

      When she lifted her face like that, she was almost begging to be kissed and the desire to do so almost took his breath away. What would she do if he kissed her? he wondered. ‘You could stop me if you wanted to,’ he taunted softly. ‘You just don’t want to. Do you, Molly?’

      Not if she was going to show him that she didn’t really care one way or the other. ‘Oh, it’ll be interesting to see your predatory instincts at work with my friends,’ she said sweetly. She made a great pantomime of looking at her watch. ‘Now I really do have things to do—shall I show you out?’

      Without waiting for an answer, she marched out of the kitchen towards the hall, and, reluctantly, Dimitri began to follow her. He was being dismissed! It was behaviour that he simply would not have tolerated from another woman and he felt the dull, hot ache of frustration as she opened the door. Then allowed himself to think of the tantalising inevitability of what was going to happen between them.

      He glittered her a smile.

      The kiss could wait.

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