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‘Do you like swi, Leo?’

Erin’s heart pounded as she looked up to aze, but there was no mockery or flirtation there The briefest of sement to her, before he crouched down to his son’s level

‘He doesn’t swim,’ she said quickly

‘In that case, I can teach him’

She didn’t even get a chance to say that Leo had brought nothing suitable to wear in the water, because it see trunks and armbands were readily available and had already been purchased from a nearby department store It made Erin realise that, behind the scenes, Di plans for his son’s arrival before she’d even agreed to the trip and that made her feel odd Manipulated, almost But she didn’t have the heart to spoil Leo’s fun and her guilty secret was that she enjoyed watching Dimitri put himself out for someone else in a way she’d never seen him do before And wasn’t the sha at that powerful body in a pair of clinging swiaze whenever he levered himself out of the water?

Water highlighted his olden skin and emphasised the honed contours of his powerful physique It made her body sizzle with desire and she couldn’t work out a way to stop it And thewas that she could have had hiht here, and yet she had turned him down

By the third day, Leo was not only beco as if he’d spent his whole life living in a luxurious dacha He listened to Dimitri’s fir pool was out of bounds unless there was an adult present and in the randson, Anatoly—as a year older Erin watched from the sidelines, aware that there was a lot of Dimitri in her son which she’d never seen before Or never allowed herself to see With the large grounds at his disposal, a playmate and a football, he was able to enjoy the kind of healthy freedom which wasn’t readily available in London

She told herself she was grateful to Dimitri for his hospitality, but his polite and non-co to drive her insane Yet this hat she had actually asked for, so she was hardly in a position to co what she couldn’t have? Like when you tried to cut down on sugar and it left you craving so sweet

Dimitri wasn’t sweet He was the antithesis of sweet He was hard and strong and ruthless But here he was showing a side of hiined he could be so gentle, or that his cold face could war smile when he interacted with his little boy

Suddenly, she felt like someone who had been left out in the cold As if she were the outsider

After dinner on the third night she’d gone to her rooh She should have felt, if not exactly happy, then at least content It had been another successful day Dimitri had taken them deep into the forest in the crisp cold, and they’d all been worn out with fresh air and exercise Leo was fast asleep next door and, although supper had been civilised and delicious, Dimitri had been called to the telephone soon afterwards and had excused hin of co out and so Erin had come upstairs to bed

She began to unbutton her cardigan, wondering hoould react if she went and found hier cared about being treated like a plaything if only he would kiss her again She hung the cardigan over the back of the chair and pulled a face at her washed-out reflection in the mirror But that would be the action of an idiot, wouldn’t it? Long-terain

She’d just put on her nightdress when there was a knock at the door and, thinking itno sound on the silky antique rug But it wasn’t Leo; it was Dimitri who stood there and she despaired at the predictability of her reaction as the breath dried hotly in her throat

‘Is it Leo?’ she questioned

‘No, Erin—it isn’t Leo’ He glanced over her shoulder ‘You weren’t in bed?’

‘Not yet’ She was grateful for the darkness, which hid her sudden blush And for the nightdress, which concealed her rapidly hardening nipples ‘I was just about to turn in’

‘May I come in?’

She didn’t ask him why and that was her first mistake Her second was not to et as far away fro closeness of his body as the dimensions of the room would allow