Greek Mavericks: His Christmas Conquest

Theo grinned. ‘Does that make me a boring person, do you think?’

‘You’re the least boring person I’ve ever met!’ The words were out before Sophie had a chance to think about how they sounded. She cringed back, mortified, into the chair and tried to think how she could explain that what she had meant was that he was too arrogant, too opinionated and too clever by half to ever be considered boring. Which didn’t mean that he was fun or exciting or stimulating!

‘Is that a fact?’ Theo drawled lazily.

‘I mean…’ What did she mean? He was looking at her expectantly, waiting for her answer. Didn’t he realise that that was just plain conceited—to enjoy hearing himself discussed?

‘My computer isn’t very up-to-date,’ Sophie said, changing the subject. ‘I couldn’t afford to buy a new one when I started my teacher training course and I only realised afterwards that there’s a reason why people get rid of their computers after a couple of years. They just become obsolete. So I hope this amazing program you have in mind won’t be too much for it to handle.’

Theo leaned back in his chair and looked at her. Just when he felt as though he was close to working her out, she skittered away and he was left trying to figure out her complexities. She didn’t find him boring—she had just said so even though he had had the sneaking suspicion that she might have wished she hadn’t. She was attracted to him, although she was determined not to act upon it. He wondered whether there was something going on with the Robert character, although she had been at pains to deny it. Where was the man, anyway? She hadn’t actually answered his question when he had asked earlier.

‘I’ll check and see,’ Theo said indifferently. ‘We could always get a new one.’

‘Get a new one?’ Sophie looked at him as though he had taken leave of his senses.

‘Computers have come down in price substantially over the years…’

‘And getting one would still cost too much, never mind how substantially they’ve come down in price over the years! Why do you think I’ve had to rent out the cottage? I need the money!’ She cast a despairing look around her. ‘I’ve only been through half of this. There’s more stuff upstairs and more yet in the cottage, buried in boxes in the attic. And I’ve unearthed more bills than I can shake a stick at. You have no idea! Your rent has already been eaten up paying off creditors. So when it comes to flinging another few hundred pounds in the direction of a new computer, then you can think again.’

The sympathy on his face was too much. Sophie stood up, stretched and tried to gather herself by walking over to the kettle to make a cup of coffee for them. Belatedly she remembered that no power meant no functioning kettle, and she turned to look at him with an apologetic smile.

‘Sorry. You haven’t come here to take time out so that you can be bored by my problems.’

‘Is there no one who can guarantee you a loan until such time as you can pay them back?’

Sophie thought of Robert and hesitated. ‘Not really…’

‘What does not really mean?’

‘Robert has said that he would be willing to bail me out. I mean, obviously that would depend on how much I end up owing…’

‘Where is he now?’ Theo frowned in frank dismissal. ‘Anyway, tell me, what’s the catch?’

‘Oh, no catch!’ Sophie waved a little too airily. ‘I’d make you some coffee but no electricity for the kettle. Are you all right with the heating off? It’s just a localised power cut. A few miles down the road and you can easily do some shopping, find somewhere warm to sit and have some tea…’

Theo wondered why she was suddenly so desperate to change the subject. ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch, Sophie, and I can tell from the look on your face that whatever offer your friend came up with has some strings attached to it. So what are they? Hefty interest rate? The cottage as collateral? I’d be very careful about taking money from a loan shark.’ He felt himself getting hot under the collar at the thought of an opportunist taking her for every penny she had. And he would because Sophie, for all those forthright mannerisms that would send any normal man’s blood pressure soaring in irritation, was an innocent in the world of finance. It would have been no problem for him to give her the money but he knew that she would never accept it, not even if she knew the full extent of his massive personal fortune.

‘Robert’s no loan shark! Anyway, either he’s dull and insecure or he’s a clever opportunist. He can’t be both!’ Sophie objected hotly, already regretting her slip-up.

‘I never said dull…You just did. Interesting. Well, what repayment scheme does he have in mind?’ Theo asked, raising his eyebrows in a mixture of curiosity and cynicism.

‘Stop twisting my words. All I’m saying is that I’ve been offered a life belt if I think I need one. And if I mentioned the word dull it’s because that’s the picture you insist on conjuring up every time his name is mentioned! Never mind that you’ve met him for five seconds!’

She was waffling, he noticed, without actually enlightening him, which sharpened his curiosity still further.

‘Well?’ he pressed. ‘I’m very experienced in all matters relating to money so I’m immune to surprises in that particular quarter.’

‘You do blow your own trumpet, don’t you?’ Sophie said tartly. ‘Is there any area you would admit to not being good at?’

Writing, Theo considered, except of the most prosaic kind. ‘I’ve been clever at picking things up along the way.’ He spread his hands expansively, with an expression of don’t blame me if I’m good at everything.

That, of course, was what did it. Sophie, never one to see the benefit of taking someone down a few notches just to watch the expression on their face, could not resist the temptation to wipe that smirk off Theo’s face. The devil inside her made her nod in a knowing way, totally understanding the hideous disadvantages of just being brilliant at everything, with the possible exception of mending central heating devices in old cottages. Yes, being that sharp would make him immune to surprises.

‘Well, I’ll confess what the catch is, although I don’t think anyone would really call it a catch. As such.’ She paused for a few dramatic seconds. ‘Robert has proposed to me.’

‘Proposed what?’

‘Proposed that we get married!’ Sophie said through gritted teeth. Was the possibility of someone asking for her hand in marriage such a difficult concept to take on board?

‘You’re joking!’

‘No. No, I am not joking. You might think you know everything because you’re so clever at picking things up along the way, but you obviously don’t know women that well or you would know that they never joke about marriage proposals.’

For some reason, Theo was finding it hard to take in what Sophie had just said. Why, he had no idea. When he approached her revelation logically, he could see that, as solutions went, it didn’t get better. A man wanting to help his woman out of her financial mess because he loved her.

So what if he had been temporarily attracted to the woman? He almost laughed aloud at his crazy overreaction to her news! As if there weren’t a million other fish in the sea! True, he had imagined that the strangeness of his circumstances had been responsible for opening up a chink in his protective armour, but really, thinking about it, that wasn’t the case at all. The change of scenery had been a catalyst. He would never forget Elena—indeed there would never be another woman to match her—but his body was responding once again. It was a bitter truth he would have to swallow. He was still a man with needs that had to be met.

But this woman was not an integral part of that. He had thought that returning to London, getting back to his daily reality, would return him to the brooding workaholic that he had previously been, seeking out dangerous pursuits in an attempt to distract himself from his private pain. Now he considered the possibility of his life returning to some level of normality.

‘And…?’ he prompted. ‘Did you accept his kind offer? I suppose it would have been too much temptation to resist.’

Sophie hesitated, already regretting the impulse that had seen her confess something that should have been a private matter. ‘I’m thinking about it,’ she mumbled.

‘I had no idea your relationship with the man was so serious.’

Nor did I, Sophie thought, wondering how she could entice him away from the topic.

‘And all he wants is your hand in marriage?’ Theo quizzed, his brows knitted in a frown.

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’

Theo focused on Sophie’s face and registered the smug expression—just the sort of smug expression that could well and truly get under a man’s skin and try his patience to the limits.

‘Not really, when you think about it. As I said, an insecure kind of boy—your plight is probably the one thing guaranteed to make him feel like a man…’ Okay, so it was an arrogant, incendiary statement, but for some reason Theo was finding it distasteful to think of Sophie and that wet rag having any kind of relationship.

‘Thanks for the compliment!’

‘Probably one of those men who can’t wait for the whole family deal…Well, it sure beats the hell out of playing a field they don’t feel very comfortable in…’

‘Oh, and that’s what every woman fights shy of——a family man! Because we all want a rampant womaniser!’

‘I am usually right when it comes to reading people.’ Theo shrugged.

‘Oh, right. Yet another one of those handy talents you picked up along the way.’

‘Very handy,’ Theo agreed readily, enjoying the way she bristled as he ignored the sarcasm. ‘Life’s a lot easier if you can read people accurately and the way I read it is that his proposal might have set you thinking, but is it enough to overcome the fact that you don’t actually love the man? Because if you loved the guy you certainly wouldn’t tolerate me describing him as a wimp…’

‘Your opinion doesn’t matter to me, actually. And what’s love anyway?’ she scoffed. She had been encouraged to think that it was tumultuous and wonderful. Her parents had had one of those passionate, enduring romances and had misinformed her that she, too, would one day have the same. Well, as far as Sophie was concerned, she was still waiting. So far, she hadn’t even had a broken heart. No one had come close to being that meaningful a presence in her life. Which, she told herself, was obviously good. Who wanted a broken heart? On top of everything else at the moment, that would be absolutely the last straw.

And if there was no love, then why not see marriage as a business arrangement? Robert was proposing a business arrangement. He said that he was attracted to her, which she found extraordinary given the success with which he had managed to camouflage his feelings. She didn’t think he loved her, but he liked her well enough and was it so odd that he would see the whole business of marriage from the same jaded viewpoint as she did?

‘If love was that special, then how come the divorce rate is so high?’

Theo didn’t say anything. ‘Is this your way of talking yourself into marrying someone you don’t care about?’

‘This is my way of answering your question,’ Sophie muttered. ‘Anyway, if you’re such a fan of the whole Love thing, how come you’re not married?’ She would have bet her house that he felt the same way as she was stridently pretending to. He just looked too worldly wise to have a romantic bone in his body.

‘Oh, you have a point,’ Theo said coolly. ‘Why don’t you show me where your computer is and I can start working on this program as soon as power is restored?’

‘Oh.’ Sophie felt a very brief jarring sensation of disappointment at the abrupt change in conversation; then she was hastening to assure him that there was no need for him to involve himself in her situation. In fact, she hurried on to add, she would really rather he didn’t.

‘Why? It would make life a lot easier for you and would also be a far more efficient method of keeping track of all these documents.’

‘I wouldn’t be able to pay you for it…’

For some reason, that objection made Theo savagely angry. ‘I don’t believe I asked for payment,’ he said coldly.

‘I wouldn’t feel happy about you taking time out from your writing to help me.’ Sophie’s chin went up. ‘I’m not a charity case.’

‘No, but you’re a fool.’

‘I beg your pardon!’

‘Why look a gift horse in the mouth?’ Theo said harshly. ‘I’m offering to lend you a hand. Take the offer with good grace.’

‘As you said, though, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. What will your price be?’

Theo’s eyes narrowed on her until Sophie was squirming in her chair. Wrong question, she belatedly realised, but yet again the words had popped out of her mouth before she could sift them over in her head.

‘Consider it a trade-off. Your cottage has done wonders for…my writer’s block, as it happens and one good turn deserves another.’ But he had a sudden image of her paying him back with her body, lying beneath him, writhing with passion, her eyes languorous and heavy with desire.

Not to be. He had always made a point of zero involvement with a woman who was tied up with another man.

‘Where will you…do it?’

Theo looked at her, disoriented for a few seconds by the very graphic nature of the image in his head. ‘Where will I do…what?’

‘The program,’ Sophie explained patiently. ‘You’re welcome to work here with us, but it’s very cramped compared to the cottage. But no problem, of course, if you’d prefer here…I mean, the files are all around…’ Literally. Which in no way could be construed as an advantage as far as she could see. She tried to picture him sitting here in the office with them for hours on end, or however long it took him to install the program, and her stomach did a funny little dip that left her breathless.

‘No. I’ll take it to the cottage with me. Are there any files on it you’d rather I didn’t see?’

‘Like what?’

‘Use your imagination,’ Theo said dryly.

‘No. No! Just work stuff.’

‘Right. Well, no time like the present.’ He stood up and so did Sophie. The way to the upstairs flat was through the back, and she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing up on end as he followed closely behind her.

The flat was small and functional. It contained all the basic requirements to make life palatable, though only for brief periods of time. At the end of the narrow corridor was a kitchen which was really only good for essential cooking and tea and coffee and off the corridor was a bedroom, a bathroom and a spare room which her father had used for his office and which she used for her desk-cum-dressing table.

The computer was on the desk. In his head, Theo had assumed it would be a laptop computer. It wasn’t. It was as big as a television set and, with his recovering foot, he would be unable to carry it.

‘I didn’t think,’ Sophie said quietly and he spun round to look at her. ‘Your foot. This is going to be way too heavy for you to carry.’ She saw a flash of fierce pride in his eyes and felt a moment of real empathy for him. ‘How did it happen?’ she asked curiously.

Theo shrugged and sat down. He tapped his finger idly on the mouse mat, frustrated that a simple task, that he would have thought nothing of once, was now beyond his reach.

‘By me being an idiot,’ Theo told her roughly. She had pulled up a chair and was sitting by him, probably on the verge of pouring some good old-fashioned Christian sympathy all over him. He didn’t want it and he didn’t need it. He felt the inadequacy of his body like a shameful physical blow. ‘I thought I could master a black run and it turned out that nature had a little lesson in store for me. And now,’ he scorned, ‘I suppose I must expect your pity. Spare me. Please.’

‘I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to pity you, Theo,’ she said truthfully. ‘You’re too…dominant.’ She gave him a crooked smile.

‘Is that a good thing, I wonder…’ Theo murmured.

‘It has its…advantages…’ Sophie answered. ‘Ordering drinks at a crowded bar…getting rid of pesky door-to-door salesmen…showing a yapping dog who’s boss…’

Theo smiled and the blast of it nearly took her breath away. In fact, she was sure that her breathing stopped, just for a few seconds. Her heart rate also seemed to have slowed.

‘Useful, then.’

‘Useful, yes.’

‘But not particularly attractive…’

Sophie, mesmerised, could only stare at the harsh angular beauty of his face, softened by the slight smile playing on his lips. She was barely aware of leaning forward, of her eyes half closing or of the sigh that escaped before she kissed him.

Chapter Six

WITHIN that kiss lay the essence of forbidden passion. It was strong and urgent and shamefully hungry.

Theo’s surprise lasted all of two seconds, then he savoured the sweetness of her mouth and the soft yielding of her body inclined towards his. He hadn’t moved. Instead, Sophie had half risen from her chair so that she could lean into him and she moaned softly as he placed his hand on her naked waist, where her jumper had risen up.

‘I’m sorry…’ She drew back for air, confused and disoriented by the impulse that had overwhelmed her.

‘For what?’ Theo had his hand curled into her hair and, instead of removing it, he pulled her towards him and kissed her along her jawline, which sent hot and cold flushes racing through her body. He had planned to back away from her. She was involved with another man and he was no poacher, but her kiss had put paid to any such noble intentions. Wasn’t all fair in love and war? And she couldn’t be that involved with Robert if she was willing to fling herself at another man. Theo, starved of physical contact for so long, felt himself taking deep breaths to keep his body in some kind of check.

‘This shouldn’t have happened.’ Appalled by her own behaviour, Sophie tried to wriggle back but the hand behind her was like steel. The more she wriggled, the more firmly it remained in place. Eventually, she abandoned the unequal struggle. ‘I’m not comfortable talking to you like this. I’m going to pull a muscle in my back in a minute.’

‘So I let you go and you run away. Then, when we next meet, you tell me that we should pretend that nothing happened.’ He slipped his hand under the jumper and ran his finger along her spine until she thought she might just pass out from the sensation. ‘You don’t have to run away,’ he murmured, ‘and it’s no good pretending that there’s nothing between us…’

‘There is nothing…between us…! And could you please stop doing that…?’

‘Doing what?’ Theo allowed his finger to travel the dangerous route down her spine until he found the gap in the waistband of her trousers, just big enough for his gently exploring finger to linger along the stretchy Lycra band of her underwear. ‘Turning you on?’

Sophie shivered and made one last desperate attempt to make contact with Planet Earth. ‘You mustn’t…we mustn’t…It’s just not…right…’

‘Why? Because there’s a man in your life?’

Sophie, who hadn’t given Robert a moment’s thought, mumbled something that was totally inaudible. Her head was telling her to use any excuse at hand to prise herself out of this compromising position, but her body was singing a different tune, a wickedly seductive tune. Torn between conflicting demands, she could only listen to the velvety purr of his voice and knew, with horror, that she wanted to be persuaded because her body was screaming out to be touched and not just here and there, but everywhere.

‘You’re not serious about him, Sophie,’ Theo murmured softly. ‘Come and sit on my lap and I’ll tell you why…’

Sophie had never sat on a man’s lap before. Well, she guessed, she would have sat on her dad’s when she was a toddler, but never in a situation like this, when the atmosphere was thick with unspoken needs and the innocent act of sitting on his lap took on a whole new meaning.

But, of course, it was still within her grasp to pull away whenever she wanted. That was the thought that feebly ran through her head as she edged towards him and was spared a final decision because he yanked her down, forcing her to hold on to him to save herself from an undignified landing.

‘There. Now, isn’t that better? Warmer too, with the heating off. It’s a known fact that the best way to keep warm is through close proximity to another body. You would be surprised the amount of heat we give off.’

Sophie made a strangled noise and then lost herself in his indecently sexy eyes—the purest and deepest of greens, fringed by lashes that were thick and dark and ridiculously long for a man. She felt her body melt a little and the hands around his neck imperceptibly moved upwards so that she could feel the texture of his black hair.

‘So…I was saying…’ He rested the flat of his hand on her thigh and gently massaged through the denim of her jeans. ‘The boy—Robert—he may have proposed and perhaps, just perhaps, he’s deluded himself into thinking that the two of you would be good for one another, but you know and I know that that wouldn’t be the case, would it?’

Sophie hoped that he wasn’t expecting an answer to that because she was incapable of doing anything near as coherent as that at the moment, when his hand was managing to send urgent messages to her brain that told her to open her legs just slightly, enough for him to move upwards, while his eyes remained pinned to her face.

‘I mean…’ Theo mused softly, taking his time because his body wanted to race ahead and just take what it had missed for so long. ‘That man’s no good for you, whatever story he spins about being your knight in shining armour.’

‘Every girl needs a knight in shining armour…’ The observation ended on a gasp as his questing hand found the zip of her jeans and tugged it down, exposing her sensible black cotton underwear. Still talking in that lazy silky voice, Theo slipped his hand under her pants and he groaned when she arched back, eyes closed, enjoying his fingers as they played with her.

‘I think we should go somewhere where there’s a bed,’ he said.

Through the blurred mist of her thoughts, Sophie knew that this was her last chance to pull away. At this point, she could use any excuse she wanted. They would both know the truth of the situation and there was no excuse that wouldn’t reek of hypocritical emptiness.

Sophie had never been a risk-taker. She had never rebelled during her teenage years. Her minor disobediences had been along the lines of feigning illness to skip a test or refusing to carry on with piano lessons even though her parents wanted her to continue. She had been a goody two shoes, content to watch from the sidelines while other girls broke the rules.

Going with Theo would constitute the biggest risk she could take.

‘Let’s go,’ she heard herself say, peppering his mouth with kisses.

Two words and she metaphorically jumped off the side of the cliff. It wasn’t just that she was going to sleep with him. No. Deep inside her she knew that it was much more than that. She was going to sleep with a man she barely knew, someone to whom she responded, often antagonistically, on a gut level. There had been no courtship, no dating, no romance and it was a situation that was going nowhere. She was willingly going to go against everything she had always believed in and she was looking forward to it!

That realisation made her walk just that bit more provocatively as they headed to the bedroom. With each step, she could feel her excitement increasing until they were finally in the bedroom and the double bed was staring them in the face, screaming an invitation.

Sophie, released from a lifetime of conformity, moved towards the window and drew the curtains, shutting out the weak, intrusive winter sunlight. When she turned round, it was to find Theo standing by the door, looking at her.