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The cypresses were casting long shadows over the hillside Soon, it would be night

Daazed at the sea He knew he ought to feel exhausted It had been a long day An endless day, following hard on the heels of an endless week—a week that had begun with hi w

ith his taking her as his wife

His wife

His jaw knotted, and he lifted the glass of chilled ouzo to his lips and drank The anise-flavored liquid slipped easily down his throat, one of the few pleasurable experiences in the entire damned day

It still didn’t seeo, his life had been set on a fixed course with his business empire as its center Now, in the blink of an eye, he had a wife, and a child on the way—a ho treated hiid distaste that it made his blood pressure rumble like the volcanos that were at the heart of these islands

So she didn’t like this house Hell, why should she? He knehat it was, an isolated aerie on the edge of nowhere, and that he’d been less than forthright about its aan, and just about ended, with little more than electricity and hot water She was a woman accustomed to luxury, and to the city Her idea of paradise wasn’t likely to include a house on top of a rocky hill overlooking the Aegean, where she was about to spend seven of the longest days of her life trapped with the fool who’d forced her into e

Damian frowned and tossed back the rest of the ouzo

What the hell had he been thinking, bringing her here? God knew this wasn’t the setting for a honey to be one Spiro, that sly old fox, had slapped him on the back and said that it was about time he’d married Damian had told him to mind his own business

This wasn’t a ementand e, under the best of circumstances, was never about love, not once you scratched the surface It was about lust, or loneliness, or procreation Well, in that sense, he and Laurel were ahead of the ga that anything but necessity had brought them to this point in the road

Dalass and took a sip Viewed ressonably, he really had no cause to co a child, at least The ht about it the past week, the more pleased he’d been at the prospect of fatherhood He’d enjoyed raising Nicholas, but the boy had corown There’d be a special pleasure in holding an infant in his arenes, that it would be his to mold and nurture

His mouth twisted in a wry smile And, despite all the advances of modern science, you still needed a woht, and as wives went, Laurel would be eminently suitable

She was beautiful, bright and sophisticated She’d spent her life rubbing elboith the rich and faree, she was one of them herself She’d be at ease as the hostess of the parties and dinners his work deood mother to their child

As for the restas for the rest, he thought, the heat pooling in his loins, ould happen between them in bed would keep them both satisfied She would not deny him forever She wouldn’t want to Despite her protestations, Laurel wanted him She was a passionate woman with a taste for sex, but she was his now If she ever thought to slake her thirst with another man, he’d—he’d

The glass splintered in his hand Damian hissed with pain as the shards fell to the terrace floor

“Dammit to hell!”

Blood welled in his pal in his pocket for a handkerchief—and just then, a small, cool hand closed around his

“Let me see that,” Laurel said

He looked up, angry at hi hiht in his throat

How beautiful his as!

She earing soht of what Spiro had said, that she looked like Aphrodite, but the old oddess had never been this lovely

Laurelloose in a wild cloud of dark auburn curls that tumbled over her shoulders as she bent over his cut hand

“It isn’t as bad as it probably feels,” she said, dabbing at the wound with his handkerchief

He felt a fist close around his heart Yes, it was, he thought suddenly, it was every bit as bad, and maybe worse

“Come inside and let me wash it”

He didn’t want tohis Her hair, tickling his palers

“Damian?” She looked up at him “The cut should be—it should be”

Why was he looking at her that way? His eyes were as dark as the night that waited on the rim of the sea There was a tension in his face, in the set of his shoulders

His wide shoulders, encased in a dark cotton shirt She could see the golden column of his throat at the open neck of the shirt; the pulse beating in the hollow just below his Adam’s apple; the shadow of dark, silky hair she knew covered his hard-muscled chest

A chasm seemed to open before her, one that terrified her with its uncharted depth