His voice, still muffled by the pillows, was barely decipherable. But she knew now that he wasn’t speaking to her, he was still locked in the dream—and there was something horribly reminiscent of the commune about it.
But surely Tino hadn’t lived in a commune? That was too much of a coincidence to swallow, and the world would have heard of it by now—as her past had been played out in the glossies and tabloids. So, what, then? From the little Lisa could unravel, she gathered someone was trying to force him to do something, and Tino was determined to fight them off.
They both had terrible secrets locked inside them like maggots waiting to destroy any chance of happiness that came their way.
‘Don’t!’
She recoiled from his cry, but the sound of it was so distressing she reached out anyway, braving his flailing limbs. He swore at her viciously in Greek. It was as if in his sleeping mind the language he had been using all night with her, the language of business and Shakespeare and love, had been wiped from his mind by some unspeakable wickedness from his past.
When his breathing finally steadied and he was quiet again, she curled up, nuzzling her head into the hollow between his shoulders, and wrapping her arms protectively around his waist. She lay awake long into the night wondering if Stella knew… Did anyone know that Tino Zagorakis cried out in his sleep like a wounded child?
‘Lisa?’
She held her breath as he turned over, and then she smiled in the darkness to see him returned to his normal self.
‘Why are you staring at me?’ he murmured so softly she had to lean closer to hear him. ‘When you could be here—’ he turned her like lightning so that she found herself beneath him ‘—kissing me?’
‘You were dreaming.’
‘Of you,’ he said confidently. Lifting himself on his arms, he stared down at her.
‘No.’ Lisa shook her head. ‘Not me, Tino, you were dreaming about something else.’
She cried out—that small excited cry she always gave when he entered her. ‘This—I must have been thinking of this,’ he insisted, kissing her deeply as he started to move.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEY overslept on Thursday morning, waking twenty minutes before the meeting. There wasn’t a moment to spare for a kiss, or a lingering touch, there were just shrieks of panic from Lisa, and an amused expression on Tino’s face as he jumped out of her way when she scrambled for the shower.
‘There’s room enough for two,’ he pointed out.
She bumped him out of the way when he tried to get in close, soaping herself vigorously. ‘Oh, no, you don’t—I know what two in a shower can lead to with you. Let’s get this meeting over with, and the contract signed.’
‘I’m all for that.’ Stretching languorously, he pushed his hair back and turned his face towards the warm cascade.
‘Doesn’t anything unsettle you?’ Lisa gazed at him.
‘You, perhaps.’
But even as he spoke she remembered his nightmare, and wished there had been time to ask him about it. Leaving him in the shower, she snatched a towel from the heated rail. ‘I’ll see you at the meeting—don’t keep me waiting.’
Lisa felt obliged to say something in answer to the look on Mike’s face as she walked past him into the boardroom. Her hair was still wet, though she had gathered it on top of her head with a tortoiseshell comb, but there had been no time for make-up. ‘I’ve been swimming, Mike.’
‘Of course you have,’ Mike said smoothly. ‘Do I take it Zagorakis has been diving too?’
‘I said swimming, Mike. In the sea.’ Lisa was relieved when Tino chose that moment to walk into the room.
‘I’m sorry to have kept you, gentlemen.’
No explanation required for his damp hair, or for the fact that Tino was fresh out of the shower. He had kept everyone waiting, and, from the almost imperceptible easing of muscles amongst his team, Lisa guessed for the first time ever.
The meeting lasted just over two hours, and then financial directors each made a closing statement. They had straightened out any remaining niggles between them.
‘Are you ready to sign the contract?’ Tino invited, looking directly at her.