Golden eyes flaming with fierce pride, Cristos sprang off the bed like a panther about to pounce on prey. 'Why wouldn't you fall in love with me?'

'It's nothing personal but you're not Rory,' Betsy told him brittly, horrified to recognise the prickling sensation behind her eyes and taking hurried refuge in the bathroom before she let herself down a bucketful.

Seething with frustration, incapable of letting the issue drop, Cristos knocked on the door. She ignored it. He opened the door. Tear-tracks marking her cheeks, she was wiping her eyes. His anger vanished. He closed his arms round her. 'This is insane. I don't even know what we're arguing about-'

'Your conviction that you're an intensely lovable person and fatally attractive to virgins,' Betsy countered somewhat snidely in punishment for his having caught her crying.

'It's the tension we're living with here…it had to find a vent somewhere,' Cristos asserted, disregarding that facetious comment.

Her rigidity gave and she collapsed into the sheltering warmth of his lean, powerful body. She didn't know why she had got so angry and distressed. She didn't know why he had a magical ability to make her so angry she was ready to explode. She didn't even know why she was ruder to him than she had ever been to anyone else. All she recognised at that instant was that she was confused, afraid of the disturbing strength of her own emotions and in dire need of comfort. She had not acknowledged that they were both stressed out and striving to make the best of a frightening situation they could not control. Cristos was like her. He didn't whinge.

Pulling her close, he scooped her up and carried her back to bed. 'You have three choices,' he murmured, stunning dark golden eyes entrapping her with charismatic ease. 'One… I give you some space.'

Betsy considered that and finally wrinkled her nose. 'Two… 1 give you your first swimming lesson.' Betsy made a rather vulgar gagging sound, which made him grin with startled appreciation.

'Three… I get out the champagne, which is probably of vinegar vintage, and come back to bed.'

'Stuff the champagne,' she told him, but hot cheeked at her own nerve she opened her arms. She wanted him. It was that simple. No need to make a production out of it, she told herself staunchly.

Five days later, Betsy flopped on the sand and punched a victory sign in the air. 'I can swim!'

'But you still don't go into the water on your own,' Cristos delivered.

Laughing, green eyes shining with mischief, she leant over him. 'Don't you ever get tired of ordering me about?'

'No, 1 really get off on it…' Cristos curled his fingers into the wet coil of her bright hair and dragged her down to him with the cool confidence of a male who knew that his attentions were always welcome. He captured her lips, c01Jducted a sensual invasion that reduced her to shivering compliancy. His beautiful dark golden eyes flared over her with sensual intent and then he sat up, carrying her with him. 'I want you again, pethi mou.'

He took her into the cool of the bedroom. He had barely touched her but already her body was ready for him. She wanted him so badly she was trembling. He unclipped her bikini bra, baring her pert breasts. His roughened growl of pleasure broke the buzzing silence and she leant back against him with a low moan of encouragement while he stroked the distended pink nipples straining for his attention.

'You're so quiet with me now,' Cristos censured, pressing her back against the bed where she rested boneless, enslaved by him.

Her lashes lowered in concealment. What was there to say when she had to be careful not to betray herself? There was not a minute in the day when she did not think of him. Initial fascination and attraction had melded into a much more dangerous obsession. She had begun admiring the flip side of his arrogant temperament: his courage, his' uncompromising strength of character and intelligence. Before she knew where she was, she had found herself lying in eager wait for his wonderful smile. In spite of all her proud assurances to the contrary, she had fallen headlong and hopelessly in love with Cristos Stephanides.

'But even your silence excites me,' Cristos confided, tugging up her shapely knees to remove her bikini pants. 'It gives me a high when you cry out with pleasure… '

He parted the damp petals of her womanhood to find the most sensitive spot of all and suddenly she was all heat and desperate need. But where she most ached for him, he touched her not at all. In a process of sensual torment he took her to a peak again and again, always denying her the fulfilment she craved. She writhed in frustration, whimpered in protest. Only when he was satisfied that she had reached the very edge of extreme arousal did he turn her over and plunge into the tender heart of her with a devastating expertise that sent her into an instantaneous and wildly exciting climax.

Afterwards, he curled her slender, exhausted body up against him and surveyed her with immense satisfaction. Sex with her was incredible but he would not have dreamt of telling her that. He could not get enough of her. He would not have told her that even under torture. He lifted her hand and planted a kiss in the centre of her palm. He wrapped his arms round her, submitted with only a very slight wince to being hugged for the first time since his childhood. He knew what she liked. He knew how to keep her happy. In return for unlimited sex, and moreover the best sex he had ever had, he made a very real effort to be affectionate. Why? He had already decided that when they got off the island he would keep her in his life as his mistress. After all, he had moulded her into -exactly what he wanted.

When Betsy emerged from the bathroom towelling her hair dry, she found herself alone again. Cristos would be checking the fire on the headland. He was impossibly energetic from dawn to midnight and she struggled to keep up with him. The old boathouse was piled high with junk and he was using it to keep the signal fire alight. So far, the fire had failed to attract attention. But then, since they had not even seen a fishing boat, it was clear that the island did not lie close to the shipping lanes. With stones they had picked out a giant SOS on the beach that could be seen from the air, but they had yet to see a single small plane of the type that would fly low enough to read their message..

It was very hot but Betsy was determined to do her share of the heavy work. She padded into the shadowy depths of the boathouse and swept up a dusty old cardboard box. Through the tom lid she could see magazines. She would cart it up to feed the fire. It was a steep climb and when she got there Cristos was nowhere to be seen; She espied him down on the beach. The fire was low and she settled the box hurriedly on top of it, reasoning that it would burn slower and last longer as fuel that way.

She had reached the dunes below when a whistling, hissing sound followed by an explosive bang brought her to an astonished halt. The seeming equivalent of a very violent firework torched through the clear blue sky above and her jaw dropped.

'Why didn't you tell me you'd found a flare? Why the hell did you just throw it on the fire?' Cristos shouted at her from about thirty feet away, his lean, darkly handsome face hard with incredulity.

Another flare shot up over the headland in a fierce bright rocket of flame and a shower of sparks. Paralysed to the spot, and it was a paralysis that Cristos seemed to share, she watched in horror as a pyrotechnic display of flares fired off in all directions. In all six had exploded and of those only one failed to make the ascent into the sky.

'I didn't know there were flares. 1 took the box out of. the boathouse. I thought it was full of magazines… that was all 1 could see!' Betsy admitted in consternation.

Glittering dark eyes pinned to her in angry condemnation, Cristos spread his lean brown hands wide. •

'You put the box on the fire without checking the contents?'

Stiff with guilt, she nodded.

'Those flares would have had a much greater chance I

of being noticed at night. Thanks to your carelessness, j

they've been wasted!' Cristos derided. j

'I thought you'd already searched through everything in the boathouse!' Betsy protested and, sidestepping him, she headed off, eyes stinging at the awful fear that she might have blown their best chance for getting off the island.

When Cristos was annoyed with her, a knot of pain formed inside Betsy and she started feeling as if she had lost a whole layer of protective skin. But in truth, she recognised ruefully, what she had lost was her independence and her peace of mind. She judged herself through his eyes. His opinions mattered. He had imposed his powerful personality on her whether she liked it or not. Her time with him had also taught her a lot about herself. The love she had honestly believed she still cherished for Rory had been composed of nothing more than fondness and her reluctance to let go of her sentimental links to the past.

Late afternoon, Cristos strode into the house and pulled her into his arms, impervious to the ice signals she was handing out. They were both hot-tempered. It was a scene that had occurred between them on several occasions. He would never discuss the argument. He would simply pretend it had not happened and even while she was soothed by the speed with which he always healed a breast that arrogant refusal to acknowledge their differences drove her crazy. But this time she had no opportunity to quibble about the silent terms of reconciliation. He kissed her with hard, hungry urgency.

Taken aback, she had no time even to catch her breath before Cristos, emanating tightly feashed emotions in a force field that she could feel, his dark eyes bright with satisfaction, turned her to the window so that she could see the blue and white fishing boat tied up at the jetty. 'We've been rescued…'