That close he turned her bones to jelly and Hope couldn't think straight. She looked up and connected with his mesmerising dark golden eyes. A dulled heaviness gripped her lower limbs while a tight, hard knot of agonising tension formed in her pelvis. He lowered his handsome dark head and she guessed what was going to happen before it happened but still couldn't believe that he would actually do it. But Andreas confounded her expectations and captured her mouth with hungry urgency. That single kiss devastated her and as it began, it continued, his tongue delving between her readily parted lips to demand greater intimacy. She was defenceless against that wild, sweet tide of sensation, for her body flared into sudden desperate life. The tense knot low in her stomach spiralled into a drugging flare of heat that suffused her entire body with explosive effect. Only the need to breathe conquered that wicked heat and she had to pull her swollen lips free to drag in a great gulp of oxygen.
Andreas gazed down at her with heavily lidded dark eyes and then, abruptly, he yanked his head up and colour delineated his hard cheekbones. 'Theosmou … I had no intention of…' His handsome mouth clenched. 'I should never have touched you. I'm sorry.'
'Are you married?' Hope demanded, voicing her worst fear instantaneously and only contriving to drag her hands from him as she finished speaking.
'No.'
'Engaged?' Hope was no longer cold. Her entire body felt as though it were hot as a furnace with embarrassment.
His ebony brows pleated. 'No.'
'Then there's no need to apologise,' Hope declared half under her breath, scrupulously avoiding his scrutiny while she struggled to get a grip on herself. The way he had made her feel had been a revelation to her and she felt incredibly vulnerable and confused. Her fingers clenched into the cuffs of the coat sleeves to prevent her hands from reaching back to him. She turned away in an awkward semi-circle, so many thoughts and emotions and physical feelings bombarding her that she felt momentarily overwhelmed. Her first real kiss and he had apologised. It would be terribly uncool to confess that he had thrilled the socks off her and that if he wanted to do it again he was more than welcome. Her face flamed with guilt and bewilderment. For goodness' sake, where had that shameless thought come from? With hands that trembled she made herself concentrate long enough to pick up and drape her wet clothing over the pile of logs.
'I've upset you,' Andreas breathed.
Hope whirled round, turquoise eyes bright as precious stones in her flushed heart-shaped face. 'No… I'm not upset.'
She felt a hundred things but not upset; shocked, bemused and exhilarated by the sheer strength of her response to him. For too many years she had lived in a world empty of any form of excitement. Andreas was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her and so great was her fascination that it hurt to deny herself the pleasure of looking at him.
'I planned to leave you here alone,' Andreas drawled flatly, still struggling to get a handle on his own inexplicable behaviour and somewhat stunned by his loss of control.
Startled, Hope whirled round. 'Why? Where were you planning to go?'
'I intended to try and find a house but it's too dark now.'
'And I have your coat. Much better to wait until daylight.' Hope snatched in a stark breath of the icy air while she gazed out at the fast-swirling snow being blown about by the wind. It was no longer possible to see even the hedges bounding the road.
She drew nearer to the fire and then knelt down beside it to take advantage of the heat the flames were beginning to generate.
'Tell me about your interview,' Andreas invited, having noted that she would no longer meet his gaze and determined to eradicate her unease. 'What was the job?'
'The position of live-in companion to an elderly woman but the interview never happened,' Hope confided ruefully. 'When I got to the house I found out that a relative had moved in with the lady instead and there was no longer a job available.'
'So these people didn't bother to cancel your interview and left you stranded?' Andreas queried with disapproval.
'I asked why I hadn't been contacted but the woman who spoke to me said it was nothing to do with her because she hadn't placed the ad in the first place.' Hope just shrugged and smiled wryly. 'That's life.'
'You are far too forgiving,' Andreas told her. 'Why did you want work of that nature?'
'I'm not qualified for anything else…at least, not at present.' Hope wanted a stable roof over her head and a period of steady employment before she checked out what she considered to be the much more remote and ambitious possibility of winning a place on a design course. 'I also need somewhere to live and it would've suited me very well. Where were you travelling?'
'I was heading back to London.' 'Why did you kiss me?'
It was hard to know which of them was most surprised by that very abrupt question; Hope, who had not known that she was about to embarrass herself by asking for clarification on that score, or Andreas, who had never been faced with such a bald demand to know his motivation before.
Dark golden eyes surveyed her steadily. 'Why do you think?'
Face hot again; Hope studied her tightly linked hands. 'I haven't a clue… I was just curious.' 'You're very sexy.'
Her lashes swept up on her astonished gaze. 'Are you serious?'
'I should know… I' m a connoisseur,' Andreas asserted without hesitation.
Her lush, full mouth curved into a grin, for she liked his frankness. So, he liked women and no doubt in large numbers. And why should he not? He was gorgeous and women had to fall for him in droves. Naturally he took advantage and who could blame him? If deep down a little twinge of pain stabbed at her that that should be so, she ignored it.
After all, she was much more interested in what Andreas had said prior to that final statement. It seemed like a miracle to her but he had called her sexy. Hope was used to thinking of herself as plain, overweight and ordinary. She had spent years hating her own body and longing to be thinner. To that end she had dieted and exercised and her weight had fluctuated up and down while the slender figure she craved continued to elude her. Even the mother she loved had sighed over her daughter's lack of looks and lamented her keen appetite.
Yet Andreas, who was heartbreakingly handsome, considered her attractive. And not only that, he thought she was sexy. Even better he had proven his own conviction by succumbing to charms she had not known she had. She reckoned that she was probably going to love him until the day she died for allowing her to feel just once like a young and pretty woman. She had waited what felt like half a lifetime to hear such words and had truly believed that she would die without ever hearing them. He was the fulfilment of a dream and she studied him with massive and grateful concentration.
'So what do you do for a living?' Hope asked chattily.
'I deal with investments.'
'I suppose you're stuck at a desk all the time studying figures and it's a bit boring. Still, somebody has to do it.' Her turquoise eyes were warm with sympathy. Andreas got a high out of his immensely successful career but he had met far too many women who faked an interest in finance in an effort to impress him. Hope, he recognised, was not tempted in that direction. His rare smile illuminated his lean bronzed features, which in repose could seem grave and cold.
'Would you like some chocolate?' she asked, rooting round in her capacious bag and emerging with a giant bar and only then seeing that smile and riveted by it. He had buckets of charisma and she was entrapped.
'Yes… before you melt it,' Andreas laughed, hunkering down to reach for the bar, which she was holding perilously close to the fire. He broke off a piece and let his brilliant gaze sweep from her clear bright eyes and the fascination she couldn't hide to the ripe curve of her lips. He remembered the intoxicating taste of her and the laughter left him to be replaced by a disturbingly strong desire to haul her back into his arms. He put the square of chocolate he had intended for himself into her mouth instead.