Page 73 of A Diamond Deal
‘Konstantinos,’ she said, but it wasn’t a greeting. It was an acknowledgement to herself. He hadn’t left her. He’d been…
Her eyes flicked over his wet black hair, the droplets of water kissing his skin. A few stray drops ran down his broad shoulders, his curled bicep. Over his washboard-flat abdominal muscles. Her gaze flicked to the white towel in his hand.
‘You’ve been swimming?’ she asked, but she knew. It was an obvious statement. But she’d never understood it before. His routine to start his day doing endless laps. It hadn’t occurred to her this morning he’d be doing it. It hadn’t occurred to her why he did it.
It did now.
It thumped her on the temples.
It wasn’t a fitness ritual.
It was to perfect his swimming technique.
It was to make sure he could fight against the tide.
‘Why are you on the floor?’ he asked.
She looked down at the bra in her hands.Her nakedness.On her knees, she moved closer to the bed. She didn’t know why she felt the need to hide. Why she felt guilty. She held up her bra. ‘Getting dressed.’
‘Were you going to leave without saying goodbye?’
She understood it now. The darkening of his gaze. Its narrowed intensity as he awaited her reply. She was going to sneak out as though last night had been nothing but a one-night stand. Something casual. Something easily forgettable. But wasn’t that what it was? What they’d agreed it would be? Something to be done and now they’d done it. Now they both had to forget it. Move on. Close the door.
‘I thought you’d left already,’ she admitted.
‘I’m still here.’
Her breath caught. He was. And so was she.
The silence thickened until it pulsed with a low drumbeat of awareness. An awareness of the room where they stood.The bed.Of her nakedness. His near-nakedness. All he had on was black swim shorts. Wet, and clinging to his muscular thighs.
Her body forgot the rules. It tingled. Her feet ached to find the floor, to stand from her knees, and go to him.
She’d make herself remember what they’d promised to each other. She ducked her head. Hid her eyes from his, because she could feel the little blaze in them dilating her pupils. Her eyes found her shorts. She reached for them.
She looked up at him from behind lowered lashes. ‘I’ll get dressed,’ she said.
He ran the towel over his head. ‘I’m going in the shower.’ He turned to his right and without looking at her again he opened the door, walked through it and closed it behind him.
The water started to run.
The memory hit her now.
The day she’d hired the private investigator; she’d stood outside this bathroom, listening to him run the water, knowing he was beneath it, scrubbing himself clean.
Her heart squeezed into a tight fist.
She’d been so very angry that day. It had swallowed her grief. Eaten her from the inside out. And when he’d emerged from the bathroom barefoot and shirtless, his trousers unbuckled, smelling of soap…
She hadn’t been honest with himthatday. And if she had been…
She wouldn’t think of it. The past, it was just that.Gone.After everything they’d been through, didn’t she owe him honesty now? Didn’t she owe it to herself?
She’d been wrong.
Last night it hadn’t been enough.
She stood, leaving her bra and shorts on the floor.
