His Mistress for a Million
Trish Morey
For one million dollars: mistress at his mercy! Jobless, homeless and penniless: humble housekeeper Cleo Taylor seeks a suitable position of employment. All good offers accepted…Billionaire tycoon Andreas Xenides seeks beautiful woman for business contract on the luxury island of Santorini. Terms: mistress for a month. Salary: one million dollars. Training will be given…
Excerpt
‘So how much, Cleo? How much to secure your services for a month? Four hundred thousand dollars? Would that be enough?’
The numbers went whirling around her brain. Four hundred thousand dollars for a month of pretending to be Andreas’ companion? Was she nuts even to think about giving that up? She could go home, pay for the farm’s leaking roof to be fixed, and she’d still have enough left over to buy a place of her own.
But could she pretend to be this man’s lover? She shook her head, trying to work it all out. ‘Andreas, I—’
‘Five hundred thousand pounds! One million of your dollars. Will that be enough to sway your mind?’
One million dollars. She swallowed against a throat that felt tight and dry. ‘I don’t know if I’m the right person for the job.’
He smiled then, as he curved one hand around her neck. ‘You’ll be perfect. Any other questions?’
She shook her head. His fingers were warm and gentle on her skin and setting her flesh alight.
‘Then what say we seal this deal with a kiss?’
Trish Morey is an Australian who’s also spent time living and working in New Zealand and England. Now she’s settled with her husband and four young daughters in a special part of South Australia, surrounded by orchards and bushland, and visited by the occasional koala and kangaroo. With a life-long love of reading, she penned her first book at age eleven, after which life, career, and a growing family kept her busy until once again she could indulge her desire to create characters and stories—this time in romance. Having her work published is a dream come true. Visit Trish at her website, www.trishmorey.com
Recent titles by the same author:
THE RUTHLESS GREEK’S VIRGIN PRINCESS
FORCED WIFE, ROYAL LOVE-CHILD
THE ITALIAN BOSS’S MISTRESS OF REVENGE
THE SHEIKH’S CONVENIENT VIRGIN
His Mistress for a Million
By
Trish Morey
MILLS & BOON®
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)
To the Maytoners, every one of you warm, generous and wise. This one’s for you, with thanks. xxx
Chapter One
REVENGE was sweet.
Andreas Xenides eyed the shabby building that proclaimed itself a hotel, its faded sign swinging violently in the bitter wind that carved its way down the canyon of the narrow London street.
How long had it taken to track down the man he knew to be inside? How many years? He shook his head, oblivious to the cold that had passers-by clutching at their collars or burrowing hands deeper into pockets. It didn’t matter how long. Not now that he had found him.
The cell phone in his pocket beeped and he growled in irritation. His lawyer had agreed to call him if there was a problem with his plan proceeding. But one look at the caller ID and Andreas had the phone slipped back in his pocket in a moment. Nothing on Santorini was more important than what was happening here in London today, didn’t Petra know that?
The wind grew teeth before he was halfway across the street, another burst of sleet sending pedestrians scampering for cover to escape the gusty onslaught, the street a running watercolour of black and grey.
He mounted the hotel’s worn steps and tested the handle. Locked as he’d expected, a buzzer and rudimentary camera mounted at the side to admit only those with keys or reservations, but he was in luck. A couple wearing matching tracksuits and money belts emerged, so disgusted with the weather that they barely looked his way. He was past them and following the handmade sign to the downstairs reception before they’d struggled into their waterproof jackets and slammed the door behind them.
Floorboards squeaked under the shoddy carpet and he had to duck his head as the stairs twisted back on themselves under the low ceiling. There was a radio crackling away somewhere in the distance and his nose twitched at a smell of decay no amount of bleach had been able to mask.
This place was barely habitable. Even if the capricious London weather was beyond his control, he had no doubt the clientele would be much happier in the alternative accommodation he’d arranged for them.
A glazed door stood ajar at the end of a short hallway, another crudely handwritten note taped to the window declaring it the office, and for a moment he was so focused on the door and the culmination of a long-held dream that he barely noticed the bedraggled shape stooping down to pick up a vacuum cleaner, an overflowing rubbish bag in the other hand. A cleaner, he realised as she straightened. For a moment he thought she was about to say something, before she pressed her lips together and flattened herself against a door to let him pass. There were dark shadows under her reddened eyes, her fringe was plastered to her face and her uniform was filthy. He flicked his eyes away again as he passed, his nose twitching at the combined scent of ammonia and stale beer. So that was the hired help. Hardly surprising in a dump like this.
Vaguely he registered the sound of her retreat behind him, her hurried steps, the thud of the machine banging against something and a muffled cry. But he didn’t turn. He was on the cusp of fulfilling the promise he’d made to his father on his deathbed.
It wasn’t a moment to rush.
It was a moment to savour.
And so he hesitated. Drank in the moment. Wishing his father could be here. Knowing he would be watching from wherever he was now.
Knowing it was time.
He jabbed at the door with two fingers and watched it swing open, letting the squeak of the hinges announce his arrival.
Then he stepped inside.
The man behind the dimly lit desk hadn’t looked up. He was too busy scribbling notes on what looked like the turf guide with one hand, holding the phone to his ear with the other, and it was all Andreas could do to bite back on the urge to cross the room and yank the man bodily from his chair. But much as he desired to tear the man to pieces as he deserved, Andreas had a much more twenty-first-century way of getting justice.
‘Take a seat,’ the man growled, removing the phone from his ear long enough to gesture to a small sofa, still busy writing down his notes. ‘I’ll be just a moment.’
One more moment when it had taken so many years to track him down? Of course he could wait. But he’d bet money he didn’t have to.
‘Kala ime orthios,’ Andreas replied through his teeth, I’m fine standing, ‘if it’s all the same to you.’
The man’s head jerked up, the blood draining from his face leaving his red-lined eyes the only patch of colour. He uttered a single word, more like a croak, before the receiver clattered back down onto the cradle, and all the while his gaze didn’t leave his visitor, even as he edged his chair back from the desk. But there was nowhere to go in the cramped office and his chair rolled into the wall with a jolt. He stiffened his back and jerked his chin up as if he hadn’t just been trying to escape, but he didn’t attempt to stand. Andreas wondered if it was because his knees were shaking too much.
‘What are you doing here?’
Andreas sauntered across the room, until he was looming over both the desk and the man cowering behind it, lazily picking up a letter opener in his long-fingered hands and testing its length through his fingers while all the time Darius watched nervously. ‘It’s been a long time, Darius. Or would you rather I called you Demetrius, or maybe even Dominic? I really can’t keep up. You seem to go through names like other people go through toilet paper.’
The older man licked his lips, his eyes darting from side to side, and this close Andreas was almost shocked to see how much his father’s one-time friend and partner had aged. Little more than fifty years old, and yet Darius’s hair had thinned and greyed and his once wiry physique seemed to have caved in on itself, the lines on his face sucked deeper with it. The tatty cardigan he wore draped low on his bony shoulders did nothing to wipe off the years.
So time hadn’t treated him well? Tough. Sympathy soon departed as Darius turned his eyes back to him and Andreas saw that familiar feral gleam, the yellow glow that spoke of the festering soul within. And he might be afraid now, taken by surprise by the sudden appearance of his former partner’s son, but Andreas knew that any minute he could come out snarling. Not that it would do him any good.
‘How did you find me?’
‘That’s one thing I always liked about you, Darius. You never did waste your time on small talk. No “how are you?” No “have a nice day”.’
‘I get the impression you didn’t come here for small talk.’
‘Touché,’ Andreas conceded as he circled the room, absently taking inventory, enjoying the exchange much more than he’d expected. ‘I have to admit, you weren’t easy to find. You were good at covering your tracks in South America. Very good. The last we heard of you was in Mexico before the trail went cold.’ Andreas looked up at the high basement window where the sleet was leaving trails of slush down the grimy glass before he turned back. ‘And to think you could still be back there enjoying the sunshine. Nobody expected you’d be fool enough to show your face in Europe again.’
A glimmer of resentment flared in Darius’ eyes, and his lip curled into a snarl. The hungry dog was out of its kennel. ‘Maybe I got sick of beans.’
‘The way I hear it, you ran out of money. Lost most of it on bad business deals and flashy women.’ Andreas leaned over and picked up the form guide sitting on the desk. ‘Gambled away the rest. All that money, Darius. All those millions. And this—’ he waved his hand around him ‘—is what you’re reduced to.’
Darius glowered, his eyes making no apology in their assessment of his visitor’s cashmere coat and hand stitched shoes, a tinge of green now colouring his features. ‘Looks like you’ve done all right for yourself though.’
No thanks to you!
Andreas’ hands clenched and unclenched at his sides while he tried to remember his commitment not to tear the man apart. A deep breath later and he could once again manage a civil tone. ‘You’ve got a problem with that?’
‘Is that why you came here, then? To gloat?’ He sneered, swinging a hand around the shabby office. ‘To see me reduced to this? Okay, you’ve seen me. Happy now? Isn’t that what they say—success is the best revenge?’
‘Ah, now that’s where they’re wrong.’ This time Andreas didn’t restrain himself, but allowed the smile he’d been headed for ever since he’d set foot in this rat trap. ‘Success is nowhere near the best revenge.’
The old man’s eyes narrowed warily as he leaned forward in his chair, the fear back once more. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Andreas pulled the folded sheaf of papers from inside his coat pocket. ‘This,’ he said, unfolding them so that the other man could see what he was holding. ‘This is the best revenge.’
And Andreas watched the blood drain from the other man’s face as he recognised the finance papers he’d signed barely a week ago.
‘Did you even read the small print, Darius? Didn’t you wonder why someone would offer you money on this dump you call a hotel on such easy terms?’
The older man swallowed, his eyes once more afraid.
‘Did you not suspect there would be a catch?’
Darius looked sick, his skin grey.
Andreas smiled again. ‘I’m the catch. That finance company is one of mine. I lent you that money, Darius, and I’m calling in the debt. Now.’
‘You can’t…You can’t do that. I don’t have that kind of money lying around.’
He flung the pages in Darius’ direction. ‘I can do it, all right. See for yourself. But if you can’t pay me back today, you’re in default on the loan. And you know what that means.’
‘No! You know there’s no way…’ But still Darius scrabbled through the pages, his eyes scanning the document for an out, squinting hard when they came across the clause that proved Andreas right, widening as he looked up with the knowledge that he’d been beaten. ‘You can’t do this to me. It’s no better than theft.’
‘You’d know all about theft, Darius, but whatever you call it this hotel is now mine. And it’s closing. Today.’
The shocked look on Darius’ face was his reward. The man looked as if he’d been sucker punched.
Oh, yes, Andreas thought, revenge was sweet, especially when it had been such a long time coming.
Chapter Two
ROCK bottom.
Cleo Taylor was so there.
Her head ached, her bruised shin stung where the vacuum cleaner had banged into it, and three weeks into this job she was exhausted, both mentally and physically. And at barely five o’clock in the afternoon, all she wanted to do was sleep.
She dropped the machine at the foot of her bed and sank down onto the narrow stretcher, the springs that woke her every time she rolled over at night noisily protesting her presence.
Karma. It had to be karma.
How many people had tried to warn her? How many had urged her to be careful and not to rush in? And how many of those people had she suspected of being jealous of her because she’d found love in the unlikeliest of places, in an Internet chat room with a man halfway around the world?
Too many.
Oh, yes, if there was a price to pay for naivety, for blindly charging headlong for a fall, she was well and truly paying it.
And no one would say she didn’t deserve everything that was happening to her. She’d been so stupid believing Kurt, stupid to believe the stories he’d spun, stupid to believe that he loved her.
So pathetically naïve to trust him with both her heart and with her nanna’s money.
And all she’d achieved was to spectacularly prove the award she’d been given in high school from the girls whose company she’d craved, but who never were and who would never be her friends.
Cleo Taylor, girl most likely to fail.
Wouldn’t they just love to see her now?
A barrage of sleet splattered against the tiny louvred window high above the bed and she shivered. So much for spring.
Reluctantly she thought about dragging herself from the rudimentary bed but there was no way she wanted to meet that man in the hallway again. She shuddered, remembering the ice-cold way his eyes—dark pits of eyes set in a slate-hard face—had raked over her and then disregarded her in the same instant without even an acknowledgment, as if she was some kind of low-life, before imperiously passing by. She’d shrunk back in-stinctively, her own greeting dying on her lips.
It wasn’t just that he looked so out of place, so wrong for the surroundings, but the look of such a tall, powerful man sweeping through the low-ceilinged space seemed wrong, as if there wasn’t enough space and he needed more. He hadn’t just occupied the space, he’d consumed it.
And then he’d swept past, all cashmere coat, the smell of rain and the hint of cologne the likes of which she’d never smelt in this place, and she’d never felt more like the low-life he’d taken her to be.
But she had to get up. She couldn’t afford to fall asleep yet, even though she’d been up since five to do the breakfasts and it had taken until four to clean the last room. She reeked of stale beer and her uniform was filthy, courtesy of the group of partying students who’d been in residence in the room next door for the last three nights.
She hated cleaning that room! It was damp and dark, the tiny en suite prone to mould and the drains smelling like a swamp, and if she hadn’t already known how low she’d sunk that room announced it in spades. The students had left it filthy, with beds looking as if they’d been torn apart, rubbish spilling from bins over the floor, and an entire stack of empty takeaway boxes and beer bottles artfully arranged in one corner all the way from the floor to the low ceiling. ‘Leaning Tower of Pizza,’ someone had scrawled on the side of one the boxes, and it had leant, so much so that it was a wonder it hadn’t already collapsed with the vibrations from the nearby tube.
It had been waiting for her to do that. Bottles and pizza boxes raining down on her, showering her with their dregs.
No wonder he’d looked at her as if she were some kind of scum. After the day she’d had, she felt like it.
She dragged herself from the bed and plucked her towel off a hook and her bag of toiletries, ready to head to the first-floor bathroom. What did she care what some stranger she’d never see again thought? In ten minutes she’d be showered, tucked up in bed and fast asleep. That was all she cared about at the moment.
The bright side, she told herself, giving thanks to her nanna as she ascended the stairs and saw rain lashing against the glazing of the ground-floor door, was that she had a roof over her head and she didn’t have to go out in today’s weather.
“There’s always a silver lining”, her nanna used to tell her, rocking her on her lap when she was just a tiny child and had skinned her knees, or when she’d started school and the other girls had picked on her because her mother had made her school uniform by hand and it had shown. Even though her family was dirt poor and sometimes it had been hard to find, there’d always been something she’d been able to cling to, a bright side somewhere, something she’d been able to give thanks for.
Almost always.
She sighed as the hot water in the shower finally kicked in and warmed her weary bones. A warm shower, a roof over her head and a bed with her name written on it. Things could always be worse.
And come summer and the longer days, she’d have time to see something of the sights of London she’d promised herself before she went home. Not that there was any hurry. At the rate she was paid, after her board was deducted, it would be ages before she could even think about booking a return airfare to Australia. God, she’d been so stupid to trust Kurt with her money!
A sudden pang of homesickness hit her halfway back down the stairs. Barely six weeks ago she’d left the tiny outback town of Kangaroo Crossing with such confidence, and now look at her. If only she could go home. If only she’d never left! She’d give anything to hug her mum and half-brothers again. She’d even find a smile for her stepfather if it came down to it. But when would that be? And how would she be able to face everyone when she did?
She would be going home humiliated. A failure.
The bright side, she urged herself, look at the bright side, as she pulled her eye mask down and snuggled under the covers, the cold rain lashing at her tiny window. She was warm and dry and she had at least ten hours’ sleep before she had to get up and do it all over again.
‘But you can’t close the hotel,’ Darius protested. ‘There are bookings. Guests!’
‘Who will be catered for, as will the staff we have on file from your finance application.’ Andreas snapped open his phone, made a quick call and slipped the phone back into his pocket. ‘I’m sure the guests won’t mind being transferred to the four-star hotel we’ve chosen to accommodate them in and you can be assured the employees will be paid a generous redundancy.’
He cast a disdainful eye around the room. ‘I don’t foresee any complaints. And now I want you off the premises. I have staff coming in to take over and ensure the changeover is smooth. The hotel will be empty in two hours.’
‘And what about me?’ Darius demanded. ‘What am I supposed to do? You’re leaving me with nothing. Nothing!’
Andreas slowly turned back, unable to stop his lips from forming into a sneer. ‘What about you? How many millions did you steal from my father? You happily walked away and left my family with nothing. What did you care about anyone else then? So why should I care about what happens to you? Just be grateful you’re able to walk out of here with your limbs intact after the way you betrayed my father.’
A buzzer sounded, the security monitor showing a team of people waiting on the front step. ‘Let them in, Darius.’ The older man’s hand hovered over the door-release button.
‘I can help you!’ he suddenly said instead, pulling his hand away to join the other in supplication. ‘You don’t need all these people. I know this hotel and I…I’m sorry for what happened all those years ago. It was a mistake…A misunderstanding. Your father and I were once good friends. Partners even. Isn’t there any way you might honour that?’
Andreas dragged much-needed air into his lungs. ‘I’ll honour it in the same way you honoured my father. Get out. You’ve got ten minutes. And then I never want to see you again.’
Darius knew when he was beaten. Sullenly he gathered his personal possessions, the form guide included, in a cardboard box and slunk away even as the team filed into the office. Andreas took two minutes to go over the arrangements. Someone would email all forward bookings and advise of the change of hotels while the rest of the team would meet guests as they returned to expedite their packing and transfer to the new hotel. New guests would simply be ferried to the alternative premises nearby. There was no reason for the operation not to go like clockwork.
His cell phone beeped again as he dismissed the team to their duties and he reached for it absently, taking just a second to savour what he’d achieved. The look on Darius’ face when he’d realised the truth, that he had lost everything and to the son of the man he’d cheated of millions so many years ago, was something he would cherish for ever. Doubly so because his father never could.
He frowned when he looked at the phone. Petra calling again? Kolisi, maybe there really was an emergency.
‘Ne?’
Half a continent away, Petra’s voice lit up. ‘Andreas!’ She sounded so bright he could almost hear the flashbulb.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Oh, I’ve been so worried about you. How is it in London? It is all going to plan?’
Andreas felt a stab of irritation. No emergency, then. Merely Petra thinking she had some stake in what was happening here. She was wrong. ‘Why are you calling, Petra?’
There was a pause. Then, ‘The Bonacelli deal! The papers are here ready to be signed.’
‘I expected that. I told you I’ll sign them when I get back.’
‘And Stavros Markos called,’ she continued at rapid pace, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘He wants to know if they can book out the entire Caldera Palazzo for their daughter’s wedding next June. It’s going to be huge. They only want the best and I told them it should be fine, though I have to put off another couple of enquiries—’
‘Petra,’ he cut in, ‘you know they can. You don’t have to ring me to confirm. What’s bothering you? Is there something else?’
There was silence at the end of the line, and then she laughed, an uncomfortable tinkle. Or at least, it made him feel uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry, Andreas,’ she continued. ‘It probably sounds silly, but I miss you. When do you think you’ll be back?’
Something clenched in his gut, the pattern of her constant phone calls making the kind of sense he didn’t want them to make. But there was no other option. She’d been checking up on him, making sure nobody else was occupying his bed or his attentions while he was in London and she was holding the fort back on Santorini.
He murmured something noncommittal before sliding his phone shut. What was wrong with her? He didn’t do relationships. Petra, more than anyone, should have understood that. She’d witnessed the parade of women through his life. Hell, she’d been the one to organise the flowers for them when they were on the inner, the trinkets for them when they were on the outer. But he’d made one fatal mistake, broken his own rule never to get involved with the staff.
Drunk on success and the culmination of years of planning, he’d let his guard down when he’d heard the news that Darius had been found and the trap set. He’d been the one to insist Petra go out to dinner with him to celebrate. He’d been the one to order the champagne and he’d been the one to respond when she leaned too close, all but spilling her breasts into his hands. He’d wanted the release and she’d been there.
What a fool! He’d always assumed she was as machine-like and driven as he was. He’d always thought that she’d understood it was always just sex to him. And yet every time Petra called him now, he could almost feel her razor-sharp nails piercing his skin all over again. But why she’d want to be his mistress when she knew which way they invariably went…
Cold fingers crawled down his spine.
Or did she have something else in mind? Something more permanent she thought she was due after working alongside him for so many years?
Sto thiavolo!
What had his mother been telling him in her recent phone calls? That maybe it was time for him to settle down and find a wife?
And who did his mother like to talk to first, calling the office line instead of his cell phone, because ‘her own son never bothered to tell her anything’?
Petra.
Had his mother also confided the news with her good friend’s daughter that it was time for her only child to settle down? He’d just bet she had.
Damn. He didn’t want to have to find a new marketing director. Petra was a good operator. The best at marketing the package of luxurious properties that Xenides Exclusive Property let to the well-heeled looking for a five-star experience in some of the most beautiful places in the world. She’d single-handedly designed the website that made his unique brand of five-star luxury accommodation accessible to every computer on the planet and made it so tempting that just as many booked through the website alone as booked by personal referral.
He didn’t want to lose her; together they made a good team. But neither did he want her thinking she was destined to be anything more to him than a valued employee.
He sighed. What would she do when he found someone else, as he inevitably would? Would she leave of her own accord?
Andreas made up his mind on a sigh. It was a risk he would just have to take. Petra’s departure from the business, while inconvenient, was preferable to her making wedding plans. All of which meant one thing.
He wouldn’t be returning to Santorini without a woman on his arm and in his bed.
She would have to be somebody new, somebody different, someone who could step into the role of his mistress and then step out when he no longer needed her. No strings. No ties.
A contract position. A month should be more than enough.
Now he just had to find her before his flight back to Greece tomorrow.
He looked around the dingy room and sighed, the weight of years of the need for vengeance sloughing from his shoulders. His work here was done, an old score settled and Darius vanquished. There was no need for him to linger; his team knew what to do. He could hear them now knocking on doors and explaining the move, smoothing any objections with the promise of four-star luxury and their bill waived for the inconvenience. They would make the necessary transfers and see to the stripping bare of the furnishings in preparation for the builders and decorators that would turn this place into something worthy of being included in the Xenides luxury hotel portfolio.
Everything was under control.
And that’s when he heard the scream.
Chapter Three
THE earth-shattering sound rang through the basement, followed by a torrent of language Andreas had no hope of discerning. He was down the hallway and at the open door in just a few strides. ‘What the hell is going on?’
One of his team was busy backing out of the small room, closely followed by a slipper that flew past his head and smacked into the wall behind. ‘I had no idea there was anyone here,’ he said defensively. ‘It was marked on the plans as a closet. And it’s barely six o’clock. What’s anyone doing in bed at this time of night, least of all here?’
‘Get out!’ screeched the voice. ‘Or I’ll call the manager. I’ll call the police!’
So much for everything being under control. Andreas ushered his red-faced assistant out of the way. ‘I’ll handle this.’
He stepped into the tiny room that smelt and looked more like a broom closet, ducking his head where the stairs cut through the headspace and avoiding the single globe dangling on a wire from the ceiling, under whose yellow light he found the source of the commotion. She was sitting up in bed, or on a camp stretcher more like it, with her back rammed tight against the wall, the bedding pulled up tight around her with one hand despite the fact her fleecy pyjamas covered every last square centimetre below her neck. In her other hand she wielded a second furry slipper.
Her eyes were wide and wild-looking under a pink satin eye mask reading ‘Princess’ that she’d obviously shoved up to her brow when she’d been disturbed. Some kind of joke, he decided. In her dishevelled state, with her mousy-coloured hair curling haphazardly around her face, she looked anything but princess material.
Then his eyes made sense of the smell. In the yellow light he saw the vacuum cleaner tucked at the end of the bed and the drab uniform draped unceremoniously over the radiator, and one question at least was answered. The cleaner, he surmised, the one he’d spotted earlier in the corridor who’d stunk of beer. No doubt she’d been trying to sleep it off when she’d been disturbed.
He tried to keep the sneer from his lips as he addressed her. ‘I must apologise for my people startling you,’ he began. ‘I assure you, nobody means you any harm. We simply didn’t realise you were here.’
‘Well, I am obviously here and your people have a bloody nerve going about bursting into other people’s rooms. What the hell are you playing at? Who are you? Where’s Demetrius?’
He held up his hands to calm her. She was Australian, he guessed from her accent, or maybe a New Zealander, but her words were spilling out too fast to be sure.
‘I think perhaps you should calm down and then we can discuss this rationally.’
Her hand lifted the slipper. ‘Calm down? Discuss rationally? You and your henchman have no right barging into my room. Now get out before I scream again.’
Gamoto, the way she clung to those bedcovers as if her virtue were at stake! Did she really think he was going to attack her? It would take a braver man than him to tackle those industrial-strength pyjamas she was buried beneath.
‘I’ll leave,’ he conceded, ‘but only so you can get dressed. Come out when you’re ready to talk. It is impossible to reason with a woman sitting in bed dressed up like a clown.’
Her jaw fell open, snapping shut again on a huff. ‘How dare you? You have no right to be here. No right at all.’
‘I have every right! I’ve wasted enough time here as it is. Now get dressed and meet me in the office. I’ll speak to you then.’
He spun away, pulling the door closed behind him, but not before the other pink slipper went hurtling over his shoulder like a furry missile.
He’d barely started pacing the office floor, damning Darius for the spitting, snarling legacy he’d left behind, when he heard someone behind him. He turned to find a young woman in jeans and a top standing there, her expression sullen, her feet bare.
He sighed. What the hell else, he thought, has Darius left me to clean up? ‘Can I help you?’
‘You tell me. You’re the one who demanded my presence.’
His eyes did a double take. This was the cleaner? The banshee ready to scream the house down in the broom closet? He didn’t know what to be more impressed by, her speed in complying with his orders—the women he associated with couldn’t effect a quick change if their life depended on it—or the radical change in her appearance.
He asked her to shut the door behind her and he leaned back and perched himself on the edge of the desk, watching her as she complied. She’d discarded the fleecy pyjamas and ridiculous eye mask and pulled on faded jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and that brought the second surprise. She wasn’t tall, but what she missed out on in height she made up for in curves. He’d never have guessed there was shape under that drab uniform or hidden away under a mound of bed clothes, but her fitted T-shirt and hipster jeans accentuated the swell of breasts and the feminine curve of waist to hip that had been completely disguised before.
Nor would he have guessed she would scrub up so well. Sure, there were still grey shadows under her eyes, but she looked years younger than the haggard wreck he’d seen struggling with the vacuum cleaner in the hallway, and much less frightening than the banshee he’d encountered so recently in the closet-cum-bedroom. With not a hint of make-up and with her damp hair tamed into some kind of loose arrangement behind her head, a few loose tendrils coiled around her face served to soften features that weren’t classical in the least.
She would never pass for pretty, he determined, but if she bothered to make an effort she could probably do something with herself.
Although right now it looked as if she’d much prefer to do something with him, preferably involving knives.
He caught the glower as she folded her arms underneath her breasts and wondered if she had any idea that motion just accentuated their fullness. Or that it drew attention to their peaking nipples.
So she hadn’t bothered to put on a bra? No wonder she’d been so quick to appear. He was surprised to feel his body stir, but then he’d never had a problem with such time-saving measures, or with breasts that looked like an invitation. Despite the inconvenience, he could only be intrigued by the closet-dweller. He was sure he’d seen no mention of her in the reports that had crossed his desk.
Cleo bristled under the relentless gaze. What was his problem? She’d done what he’d demanded—abandoned any hope of sleep to get herself up and dressed and met him in the office and for what? So his eyes could rake over her as if she were some choice cut of meat in a butcher-shop window?
So maybe the look was marginally better than the one he’d given her in the hallway earlier when he’d regarded her as some kind of scum before sweeping imperiously by, but it certainly didn’t make her feel any more comfortable.
Quite the reverse. She rubbed her upper arms, not from the chill, but to ward off the prickling sensation his gaze generated under her skin. And if she was lucky the action might just break whatever magnet hold his eyes had on her breasts.
He only had to look at them for her nipples to harden to rocks.
Damn the man! Arrogance shone out of him like a beacon, but the only thing it was lighting up was her temper.
‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about or would you prefer to keep ogling me?’ She looked around the office. ‘Where’s Demetrius?’
‘The man you know as Demetrius is gone.’
Of course he would speak in riddles. The man was insufferable. ‘What are you talking about? Gone where? When will he be back?’ She’d never much liked her boss, who’d seemed more concerned with his form guide than with how his hotel was falling down around his ears, but as far as she was concerned, the sooner he was back, the better.
‘He won’t be back. This hotel now belongs to me.’
His revelation slammed through her like a thunderbolt. Where did that leave her? Her rapidly chilling toes curled into the cracked linoleum while a shudder of apprehension wormed its way into her mind. Whatever had happened must have been sudden. She’d heard Demetrius on the phone to his turf accountant when she’d finished the last room, just before this man had appeared, larger than life. A bloodless coup. And the man in front of her, with his cold eyes and strong jaw, looked just the kind of ruthless man for the job. Ruthless—but also her new boss. She swallowed, horrified at the impression she’d made so far. Hadn’t she flung a slipper past his ear? ‘What is this, then, some kind of interview? Okay, my name is Cleo Taylor and I’ve been cleaning here for three weeks, and doing the breakfasts. Demetrius probably told you—’
‘Demetrius told me nothing. There was no mention of you in the list of employees we had.’
‘Oh? But then, Demetrius paid me in cash. He said it was better for the both of us.’
‘He would no doubt think that.’ Andreas understood why. So Darius could pay her peanuts and most likely deduct the majority of it in return for the cot she occupied.
She shrugged, looking confused. ‘So…You’ll still be needing a cleaner, right?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Okay, I do more than clean. I get up at five for the breakfasts…’
‘I’m not looking for a cleaner. Or a kitchen hand.’
‘But the hotel—’
‘Is closing.’
The fear that had begun as a shred of concern exploded inside her in a frenzy of panic. It might be the worst job with the worst pay in the world—but it was a job, and it came with a roof over her head. And now she’d have no job. And, more importantly, nowhere to live.
Her mouth was drier than a Kangaroo Crossing summer’s day. ‘You mean I lose my job.’
He gave the briefest of nods. It might as well have been the fall of the guillotine. Once more she’d failed. Once more she’d bombed. She almost wanted to laugh. Almost managed to, except the sound came out all wrong and this was no place or time for such reactions, not with him here, watching her every move like a hawk.
Oh, Nanna, she beseeched, closing her eyes with the enormity of it all, where’s the silver lining to losing the worst job in the world? Unless that was it. She hated the job. Now she had no choice but to find something else. And hopefully, something better.
But it was so hard to think positive thoughts about losing her job when it also meant she’d be losing the roof over her head with it. She opened her eyes toward the window, the rain still pelting against the glass. A bright side. There had to be a bright side. But right now she was darned if she could see what it was.
‘When?’ Her voice was the barest of whispers. ‘How much time do I have?’ She would have to move fast to secure something. The little money she had wouldn’t last long and if she had to use it for any kind of rental bond…
‘Tonight. You need to pack your things and be gone in two hours. The guests are all being transferred to other premises. The builders and redecorators move in to gut the place tomorrow.’
‘Tonight? You’re closing the hotel so soon?’ And panic turned to outrage. ‘No. No way you can just walk in and do that!’
‘No? And why is that? Surely not some misplaced loyalty to your former employer? I see he showed you none.’
‘No, damn you. But it took me the best part of the day to clean this dump. Every single room from top to bottom and now you tell me you’re closing it and I could have knocked off at ten this morning? Thank you very much. You could have saved me the trouble!’ She flung out her arms to make the last point and then put a hand to her brow, pushing back the hair from her face. Although it was what the action did to her breasts that had his attention.
He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t the impassioned response she’d given him. Or the swaying floor show. No sag. Her breasts were full and round and pointed high. Would they look as good uncovered? Would they fill his hands as generously as he imagined they would? Would he like to find out? He needed a woman…
He dragged in a breath, trying to cool his rapidly heating groin, and forced his eyes away. Sto kalo, she was a cleaner. A cleaner with a drinking problem if how she’d appeared earlier was any indication. Petra must really be getting to him if he was getting hot under the collar over a cleaner. ‘You’re mad at me,’ he said, reluctantly dragging his attention back to her face, ‘because you’ve spent all day cleaning? Isn’t that your job?’
She choked back a sob. Yes, she probably sounded irrational, hysterical, but what did he expect—that she would turn around and calmly thank him for his bombshell? ‘You try being a cleaner in a dump like this. I’ve just had the worst day of my life. How would you like it if you were a cleaner and someone booby-trapped their rubbish? How would you like it if you ended up smelling like a brewery and wearing someone else’s dried pizza crusts and then somebody else told you that you hadn’t had to clean it up at all, that you needn’t have bothered?’
His ears pricked up. Maybe not a cleaner with a drinking problem after all. Maybe he wasn’t quite so crazy…‘You don’t drink beer? I thought you were an Australian.’
‘So that makes me a drinker? No, for the record, I don’t drink beer. I can’t abide the taste of it. And,’ she continued, without missing a beat, ‘then I get hauled from my bed and told that my job is over and that I have to leave. And that you want to throw me out in that!’ She pointed to the window, where the rain distorted the light from the streetlamps and turned it into crazy zigzags. ‘What kind of man are you?’
He wanted to growl. This was supposed to be the most successful day of his life, a day he’d dreamed about for what seemed like for ever. And here he was, being challenged by the likes of this scrap of a woman, a mere cleaner. He ground out his answer between his teeth. ‘A businessman.’
‘Well, bully for you. What kind of business is it that throws innocent women out onto the street in the middle of the storm from hell?’
He’d heard enough. He turned and flicked an imaginary piece of lint from his sleeve. ‘You must have somewhere else to go.’
‘Yes. And it’s twelve thousand miles away. Shall I start walking now, do you think?’
‘Then why don’t you just buy yourself a ticket home?’
‘And you think that if I could afford my fare home, I’d be working in a dump like this?’
‘Do you need to be so melodramatic?’
‘No. I don’t need to. I’m just doing it for laughs.’ She dragged in a breath and threw her arms out by her sides. ‘Look, why can’t I stay here? Just for tonight. I’ll go tomorrow morning, first thing. I promise. Maybe it will have stopped raining by then.’
‘The hotel is closing,’ he reiterated. ‘It will be locked down tonight in preparation for the builders and redecorators coming in tomorrow. The deal was the hotel would be delivered empty.’
‘Nobody made a deal with me!’
‘I’m making it now.’
It didn’t sound like much of a deal to her. ‘So where are the guests going? Why can’t I go there?’ She held up her hand to stop his objection. ‘Not as a guest. Surely they could do with a cleaner, with this sudden influx of additional guests.’
He uttered something in Greek, something that sounded to her dangerously like a curse. ‘I’ll call and ask. No guarantees. Meanwhile you get your things together. I assume that won’t take long.’
She sniffed. ‘And if they don’t have a job?’
‘Then you’re on your own.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’
She put her hands on top of her head and sighed, locking her fingers together, and turning her head up high, as if to think about it.
But Andreas couldn’t think about it. He was too busy following the perfect shape of her breasts, her nipples pulled up high, their shape so lovingly recreated by the thin cotton layer that was all that separated him from them. Her waist looked even smaller now. Almost tiny in comparison as she pulled her arms high, the flare of her hips mirroring the curve above. His mouth went dry.
Damn it all! He yanked his eyes away, rubbing them with his fingers. Anyone would think he’d never had a woman. She was a cleaner. It wouldn’t work. Clearly the day had taken more out of him than he’d realised.
‘And what about my wages?’ She was looking at him, her eyes wide, her arms unhooking. ‘Demetrius owes me for more than a week! And surely I’m entitled to some kind of severance pay, even if he was paying me cash, seeing you’re the one to terminate my job!’
Silently he cursed Darius again, along with his own team that had failed to pick up this stray employee. ‘How much are you owed?’
Cleo did some rapid sums in her head. Math had never been her strong point, so the calculations were a bit rough, but an entire week and a half, less board, that was a considerable sum. ‘Fifty quid,’ she said, rounding it off, hoping he wouldn’t balk.
He pulled a money clip from his pocket, withdrew a handful of notes and then added a fistful more before handing the bundle to her.
Her eyes opened wide as she took in the high-denomination notes and the number of them. Her math was still lousy, but it was more than clear he’d given her way too much. ‘I can’t take this! There’s heaps more than that here.’
‘Then consider it a bonus for doing what I ask and getting out of here. Call it your redundancy package, if you like, with enough for your accommodation tonight and probably for an entire week if you play your cards right. Now, it’s time you started packing.’
She looked as if she’d rather stay and keep arguing, her mouth poised open and ready to deliver another salvo, but she must have thought better of it. She jammed her lips shut and wheeled around, marching purposefully towards the door, shoving the wad of notes into her jeans pocket as she went. Not that it was any distraction. He was already looking there, admiring the way her denim jeans lovingly caressed the cheeks of her behind as she went. But she stopped before the door and turned, and he was forced to raise his eyes to meet hers.
‘I’ll go and pack,’ she said, colour in her cheeks and fire spitting from her eyes, ‘and I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure meeting you, but I’m afraid that isn’t possible. I’ll leave my key in the door. Not that you need it, apparently.’
And then she swept out with her head held high like the princess on her eye mask rather than a redundant cleaner.
There was no need for him to stay. But he sat there, leaning against the desk, thinking that he’d been wrong. She wasn’t pretty by any measure, she wasn’t tall and elegant like his usual choice of woman, but there was something about her, a fire in her eyes as she’d protested his closure of the hotel, something that had almost burned bright in the seedy air between them. Would she be as passionate in the bedroom, or would she go back to being the bedraggled mouse he’d seen lurking in the corridor?
Damn! Trust Darius to leave him to clean up his rubbish. But he should have expected it.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, hating the way his thoughts were going. The woman had a point. He, more than anyone, knew what it was like to be left with nothing and without even a roof over his head. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
He slid open his cell phone, found the direct number for the manager of the hotel the guests here were being transferred to and hit ‘call’. It answered within a moment. ‘It’s Andreas. Have you a position for another cleaner or kitchen hand? There is one here who requires a position, preferably live-in.’
There was a moment’s hesitation, but no argument, no question as to qualifications or referees from the manager. That Andreas himself had enquired was all the assurance the manager required, the moment’s hesitation all the time he needed to make the necessary rearrangements. Of course, they could use the help, came the answer. And there would be a bed the person could use in a shared room.
Andreas breathed deep with relief. When he’d thought of getting even with Darius, he’d thought they’d covered all the bases with everyone on the payroll. He’d not thought about any other fallout, the ones Darius had been paying on the sly. But now that fallout was well and truly taken care of. His father had been avenged and nobody had been inadvertently left homeless in the deal. It was the best of all worlds.
He tried to recapture the joy, the exhilaration of the day’s events. After what he’d achieved after a lifetime of wanting, he should feel better than this, surely. But something still didn’t sit right with him. Maybe it was just the adrenaline let-down now that he’d achieved his goal?
Or maybe it was because he wasn’t sure that he wanted someone else taking care of fallout that came complete with sweet curves and lush breasts?
He sighed. He might as well go give her the good news. His car was waiting and he had work to do.
She was already struggling out of her room with an oversized pack when he emerged and he wondered how she’d walk if ever she got it onto her back. It looked almost as big as her. He leaned down and took it from her, lifting its weight easily. Their fingers brushed and she pulled her hand away, tucking it under her other arm. ‘So you pack as quickly as you get changed?’
She looked up at him, her cheeks flaring with colour again as he looked down at her, surprised by the extent of her reaction. Did she not want to touch him that desperately, or was it something else she was feeling? Resentment perhaps, or even hatred that he’d bowled her out into such a night. But she’d dragged on some kind of all-weather jacket and her breasts’ reaction was hidden from him. ‘Please, you don’t have to take that. Not after—all those things I said about you. It was very ungracious after you were so generous. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day.’
‘I found you a job.’
Her eyes opened wide. ‘You did?’ They were blue, he realised for the first time, the kind of blue that came with the first rays of light on a misty Santorini morning showing all the promise of a new day. And then she smiled. ‘But that’s fantastic. Thank you so much. Is it a cleaner’s job at the other hotel? Can I stay there?’
He’d never seen her smile. He got the impression she didn’t use it a lot around this place, but it was like switching on a light bulb and for a moment it switched off his thought processes. He coughed, his mind busy rewinding, rethinking. ‘The job comes with accommodation, yes.’
‘Oh, I can’t believe it. I’m so sorry for all those things I said back there. I really am.’ She reached into her back pocket and hauled out the stash of notes he’d given her, pressing them into his free hand. ‘Here. I can’t take this now. I won’t be needing your money.’
A woman who wouldn’t take money when it had been given her? He didn’t know many women who wouldn’t be hanging around for more, not handing it back. So she worked as a cleaner—maybe she was better qualified than he’d assumed.
A month.
That was all he’d need. She wouldn’t be the kind of woman to expect to hang around. She wouldn’t want more than he was prepared to give.
A month would work out just fine.
Chapter Four
‘KEEP it,’ Andreas said, pushing her hand back, curling his fingers around it. ‘You’ll probably need some new clothes in your new job.’
Cleo solemnly regarded the notes still curled in her palm, her hand small and warm in his. ‘Oh, you mean a new uniform.’
‘Something like that,’ he said, turning away quickly. ‘Come on, my car’s waiting outside, I’ll give you a lift.’
He hauled her bag up the stairs as if it were a handbag and not stuffed full with all her worldly possessions and from there someone else took one look and relieved him of it, following in their wake, holding an umbrella over their heads as they emerged into the wet night. Who is this man, she wondered, to have his own people to fetch and carry and clean out an entire hotel at his say-so? A line of minibuses waited at the kerb outside, their exhaust turning to fog in the cold evening air. She recognised some of last night’s guests being bundled with their luggage into one of the vans.
She started walking to the one behind. ‘No,’ he said. ‘This one’s ours.’
She looked where he indicated and did a double take. He had to be kidding. The black limousine stretched for what looked an entire frontage if not the whole block! She swallowed. She’d never travelled in such a vehicle in her life. She flashed a look down at her outfit. Worn farm boots, denim jeans and an old Driza-Bone coat. She looked longingly at the line of minibuses. She’d feel much more comfortable in something like that.
But the chauffeur had the door open, waiting. ‘Are you sure we’ll both fit?’ she asked, but her companion didn’t crack a smile, just gestured for her to precede him, and she had no choice but to enter the car.
It was like being in another world as the vehicle slipped smoothly into the traffic. It was bigger than her bedroom in the hotel and she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn it boasted its own en suite. The plush leather seats were more like sofas with not a squeak of springs to be heard and they felt and smelled divine. A cocktail bar sprawled along one side, boasting spirits of every colour imaginable, a row of crystal-cut glasses held delicately in place, and then, just when she thought it couldn’t get more amazing, there were stars, or at least tiny coloured lights twinkling all over the ceiling. And even as she watched they changed from blues and greens to oranges and reds and back to blues again.
And then there was him. He sprawled on the seat opposite, his back to the driver, one arm along the back of the seat, and with one leg bent, the other stretched long into the space between them. He’d undone his coat and the sides had fallen apart. Likewise the suit jacket underneath, exposing an expanse of snow-white cotton across his broad chest, all the whiter against the olive skin of his face and hands.
He was watching her, she realised. Watching her watching him. Her skin prickled. How could he do that with just his eyes? But it wasn’t just his eyes, it was the slightly upturned mouth, the sculpted jaw and the attitude. Oh, yes, he had attitude to burn.
She pressed herself back into the seat, trying to look less overwhelmed, more relaxed. ‘I guess you’ve never met anyone who hasn’t been in a stretch limousine before. My reaction must have been quite entertaining.’
‘On the contrary,’ he said, without moving his eyes from hers, ‘I found it charming.’
Charming. Nobody had ever used that word around her before. She wouldn’t have believed them if they had. He was no doubt being polite. More likely thinking gauche. She felt it. Maybe she should steer the conversation, such as it was, to safer territory.
‘Is it far to the hotel?’
‘Not far.’
‘Do you know what kind of job it is?’
‘I think you will perform a variety of tasks. I’m sure you will find them to your liking.’
‘Oh.’ She wished he could be more specific. ‘But it’s a live-in position?’
Across the vast interior he nodded, his dark eyes glinting in the light of a passing streetlamp, and for some reason she suddenly felt uncomfortable, as if she’d almost glimpsed something in their otherwise shadowed depths.
‘There is just one catch.’
‘Oh?’ There had to be though, she thought. Why should her life suddenly turn around without there being a catch? ‘What is it?’
‘The position has a fixed contract. This job will last only one month.’
‘I see.’ She sank back in her seat. Well, a month was better than nothing. And at least she’d have time to sort something else in between now and then.
‘But you will be well compensated.’
She blinked up at him. ‘Thank you again for your generosity, Mr…’ and she was left floundering, speechless. She was in a car heading who knew where with a man who’d promised her a job somewhere and she didn’t even know his name. When would she learn? What the hell kind of mess was she heading for now? ‘Oh, My God, I can’t believe I’m doing this. I don’t even know your name.’
He smiled and dipped his head. ‘I assure you, you have nothing to fear. Andreas Xenides at your service.’
Her eyes narrowed. She was sure she’d heard the name, maybe even read something in one of the papers back home before she’d left. But that man had been a billionaire. She didn’t tend to meet many of them in her line of business. Maybe this man was related. ‘I think there’s someone called Xenides with a huge hotel up on the Gold Coast in Queensland.’
He nodded. ‘The Xenides Mansions Hotel. One of my best performers.’
She swallowed. ‘That’s your hotel? You own it?’
‘Well, one of my companies. But ultimately, yes, I own it.’
She didn’t so much sink back into her seat as collapse against it.
He frowned. ‘Does that bother you?’
‘Bother me? It terrifies me!’ She put a hand to her wayward mouth. Oh, my, the man was a billionaire and she’d thrown a slipper at his head, right before she’d bawled him out in the basement and insisted he pay her wages and find her a replacement job. As a cleaner. And the amazing thing about it was that he had.
Mind you, the way people were running around after him at the hotel ready to do his bidding, he could probably have found her a job as an astronaut if he’d put his mind to it.
What must it be like to wield that much power? She glanced over at him, her eyes once more colliding with his dark driven gaze. So he was a billionaire. That answered a few questions. But it didn’t answer all of them.
‘There’s something I don’t understand.’
‘Oh.’ He tilted his head to one side, as if almost amused. ‘What is it?’
‘Why would you care about a tiny dump of a hotel three blocks from Victoria Station? Why buy it? There must be plenty of other hotels better suited to a posh outfit like yours.’
And his eyes glistened and seemed to focus somewhere behind her and Cleo got the impression he didn’t even see her. ‘I had my reasons.’
She shivered at his flat voice as if the temperature had just dropped twenty degrees. Whatever his reasons, Andreas Xenides struck her as a man you wouldn’t want to cross.
Cleo looked away, wanting to shake off the chill, and was surprised to see how far they’d come. She’d expected a lift to another small hotel somewhere close by, as he’d intimated, but she could see now that the limousine was making its way towards Mayfair.
His cell phone beeped and she was grateful he had a distraction. She was happy just to watch the busy streetscape, the iconic red double-decker buses, the black taxi cabs all jockeying for the same piece of bitumen and somehow all still moving. ‘Petra, I’m glad you called. Yes, I’m finished in London.’
She wasn’t trying to listen to his call, but there was no way she couldn’t hear every word, especially when he made no attempt to lower his voice, and it was a relief when he dipped into his native language and she could no longer understand his words and she could just let the deep tones of his voice wash over her. When he spoke English his accent gave his words a rich Mediterranean flavour, a hint of the exotic, but when he spoke in Greek his voice took on another quality, on the one hand somehow harsher, more earthy and passionate on the other.
Much like Andreas himself, she imagined, because for all his civilised trappings, the cashmere coat and the chauffeur-driven limousine, she’d seen for herself that he could be harsh and abrupt, that he was used to making the rules and expecting people to play by them. And definitely passionate. Hadn’t he set her own body to prickly awareness with just one heated gaze?
It made sense that a man like him would have a Petra or someone else waiting for him. He was bound to have a wife or a girlfriend, maybe even both; didn’t the rich and famous have their own rules? She looked around at the car’s plush interior, drinking in the buttery leather upholstery with her fingers and wanting to apologise to the pristine carpet for her tired boots. She gazed out of the tinted windows and caught the occupants of passing cars trying to peer in, looks of envy on their faces, and sighed, committing it all to memory. What would it be like to be one of the Petras of this world? To move in such circles and consider this all as normal?
She smiled philosophically. This was not her world. Any minute now he’d drop her at the hotel to take up her new cleaning position and he’d be gone for ever, back to Petra or another, whoever and wherever she was.
‘We’re flying back tomorrow,’ she heard Andreas say, abruptly switching back to English. ‘Expect us around five.’
Cleo wondered at the sudden change of language but continued peering out at the scenery outside her limousine’s windows, the magnificent park to their left, the lights from buildings and streetlamps making jagged patterns on the wet roads. Even on a dark, wet night the streets of London fascinated her. It was so different from the tiny town of Kangaroo Crossing, where the main street was dusty and almost deserted after six at night. Here it was so vibrant and filled with life at whatever time of the day or night and she would never get sick of craning her neck for a look at the everyday sights here like Buckingham Palace, sights she’d only ever dreamed about one day seeing.
‘Us, Petra?’ Andreas continued. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I should have mentioned. I’m bringing a friend.’
Something about the way he said those last words made Cleo turn her head, some loaded quality that spoke of a message she didn’t quite understand. She didn’t mean to look right at him, she intended to swing her head around as if merely choosing to look out of the nearside windows, but her eyes jagged on his and held solid. ‘That’s right,’ he said, holding her gaze and her heartbeat, it seemed, in his. ‘A friend. Please ensure Maria has my suite prepared.’
He clicked the phone closed and slipped it away, all the while still holding her gaze.
‘Is it much further?’ she asked with false brightness, wondering what it was she was missing and why she was so suddenly breathless and why he needed to look at her that way, as if she were about to be served up for his next meal.
‘No. Not much.’
As if on cue the limousine pulled off Park Lane into a wide driveway and rolled to a gentle stop. She looked up at the hotel towering over the car. ‘But this…This is Grosvenor House.’
‘So it is.’
The door opened and cold air swept into the warm interior as the concierge pulled open the door. ‘But why are we here? I thought…You said…’
‘We’re here,’ he simply said, sliding one long leg out and extending his hand to her. ‘If you care to join me.’
‘But I can’t go in there. Not like this. I look like I’ve just stepped off the farm.’
‘They’ll think you’re an eccentric Australian.’
‘They must have a staff entrance!’ But still, she was already moving towards him, inexorably drawn by his assuredness.
‘Come,’ he said, taking her hand to help her out. ‘These people are paid not to take any notice.’
It was no consolation. She felt like someone who should be staying at some backpackers’ hotel, not the poshest hotel in Mayfair. She caught sight of her reflection in the glass frontage and grimaced. She looked like a total hick. Why couldn’t he have warned her? But Andreas didn’t seem to care. The concierge staff swarmed like foot soldiers around him, taking orders, trying to please, while others ferried her backpack onto a trolley as lovingly as if it were the finest Louis Vuitton luggage.
She followed in his wake uncertain, sure someone was about to call Security and send her on her way, but worry soon gave way to wonder.
She stepped from the revolving door into a lobby of white marble and columns the colour of clotted cream and forgot to think. It was amazing. Luxurious. A fantasyland. It took every shred of self-control she possessed not to spin around in a circle to take it all in. Instead she slipped her Driza-Bone from her shoulders and tried to look as if she belonged. Fat chance.
Could it be possible that she’d soon be working here? At Grosvenor House? Andreas left her momentarily while he dealt with Reception, she guessed to inform the housekeeper she was here, and she drank in the luxury and the ambience. Now she would have a reason to call her mother and not feel as if she had nothing but bad news. After the disaster that Kurt had been and her mother worrying about her working long hours in a seedy hotel, she would be thrilled she’d scored a position in one of London’s landmark hotels. She wouldn’t tell her it was only for a month. If she played her cards right, she’d have a reference from one of London’s top hotels and she would be set for another job.
And maybe some time soon she’d be able to save enough money to pay back the money her nanna had given her and she’d lost when she’d entrusted it to Kurt. At least now she had a chance.
Andreas returned and took her arm and steered her past a suite of red velvet chairs on a round signature rug that reeked money.
‘Are you taking me to meet the housekeeper? I’m sure I can find her. I’ve kept you long enough.’
He didn’t look at her, simply kept on walking her into a lift. ‘I thought you might like to see your room first, see if it’s suitable.’ He pushed a button and she frowned. ‘Did I tell you you’d have to share?’
His question distracted her. ‘You think I mind? Just look at this place.’ She paused as the elevator smoothly hummed into motion, suddenly making sense of what had niggled at her before. ‘Hang on. We’re going up. Surely they wouldn’t give staff accommodation on a guest floor?’
He held off answering as the lift doors slid open, welcoming them into an elegant elevator lobby decorated in olive and magenta tones, before he directed her to a nearby door and keyed it open. ‘It seems you’re in luck.’
And the hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention. ‘Tell me this is not my room.’
‘Strictly speaking, it’s not. Like I told you, you’d have to share.’
She swallowed. ‘Then tell me whose room it is. Who would even have a room like this in the Grosvenor to start with—Prince Harry?’ And even as she asked the question the chilling answer came to her, so unbelievable that she didn’t want to give it credence, so insane that she thought she herself must be. ‘It’s your room, isn’t it? There is no cleaning job. And you expect me to share with you?’
His dark eyes simmered with aggravation. ‘Come inside and I’ll explain.’
‘I’m not going in there! I’m not going anywhere except down in that lift unless you tell me right now what’s going on. And then I’m probably heading down in that lift anyway.’
‘Cleo, I will not discuss this in public.’
She looked around. ‘There’s nobody else here!’
A bell pinged behind her, followed seconds later by lift doors sliding open. A group emerged, the women chatting and laughing, their arms laden with shopping bags, the men looking as if they could do with a stiff drink.
She looked longingly at the open lift door behind them. Took a step towards it and then realised. She snapped her head around. ‘Where is my pack?’
‘No doubt still on its way up. Now come in and listen to what I have to say and if you still want to go, you can go. But hear me out first. I do have a job for you.’
‘Just not cleaning, right?’ Cleo bit her bottom lip. What kind of jobs did Greek billionaires give girls who’d dropped out of high school and made a mess of everything they’d ever attempted? Definitely nothing you needed qualifications for…
But that made less sense than anything else. Her looks were plain, her figure had always erred on the side of full, and she’d never had men lining up for her favours. Cleaning was about all she was suitable for.
‘Cleo.’
He made her name sound like a warning, the tone threatening, but maybe he was right. Maybe she should hear him out while she waited for her pack. Besides, if she was going to let fly with a few choice words of her own, maybe privacy was the preferred option.
And then she’d leave.
Spider legs skittered down her spine at the thought of going out into the cold wet night with no place to go. But she’d face that later. She wasn’t going to let the weather dictate her morals. She strode past him into the room, cursing herself for choosing that particular moment to breathe in, wishing that, for someone so aggravating, he didn’t smell so damn good.
Thankfully the room was large enough that she could put some distance between them. A lot of distance. She’d been expecting a bedroom, a typical hotel room. She found anything but.
The room looked more like a drawing room in a palace than any hotel room she’d ever seen, a dining table and chairs taking up one end of the room, a lounge suite facing a marble mantelpiece at the other with the dozen or so windows dressed in complementary tones of creams and crimsons.
But she wasn’t here to appreciate the fine furnishings or the skilful use of colour. She didn’t want to be distracted by the luxury she could apparently so easily take advantage of. Would it be easy? She wondered.
She dropped her jacket over a chair and turned, dragging in oxygen for some much-needed support. ‘Okay, I’m here. What’s going on?’
She almost had the impression he hadn’t heard her as he headed for a sideboard, opening a crystal decanter and pouring himself a slug of the amber fluid it contained. ‘You?’ he offered.
She shook her head. ‘Well? You told me I had a cleaning job at some hotel.’
Still he took his sweet time, taking a sip from the glass before turning and leaning against the dresser. ‘While it’s not exactly what I said, it is what I intimated. That much is true.’
‘You lied to me!’
‘I did not lie. I found you a job cleaning at another hotel. And then I decided better of it.’
‘But why? What for?’
He drained the glass of its contents and placed it on the dresser in the same motion as he pushed himself towards her. ‘What if I offered you a better job? More pay. Enough to buy your return ticket to Australia and a whole lot more. Enough to set you up for life.’
She licked her lips. If she could pay back her nanna what she’d borrowed…But what would she be expected to do to get it? ‘What kind of job are you talking about?’
He laughed, coming closer. ‘You see why I knew you would be perfect? Any other woman would ask how much money first.’
She sidestepped around the dining table, until it was between them. ‘That was my next question.’
He stopped and started moving the other way, slowly circling, step by step. ‘How much would be enough? One hundred thousand pounds? How much would that be in your currency?’
She swallowed, too distracted to concentrate on keeping her distance. Her maths might be lousy but even she had no trouble working that one out. Double at least. Her mouth almost watered at the prospect. But she’d heard plenty of stories about travellers being offered amazing amounts of money to courier a box or a package. And equally she’d heard of them getting caught by the authorities and much, much worse. She might have done some stupid things in her life, but she was so not going there. ‘I don’t want any part of drug money. I’m not touching it.’
He was closer than she realised, his dark eyes shining hard. ‘Cleo, please, you do not realise how much you insult me. This would be nothing to do with drugs. I hate that filthy trade as much as you. I assure you, your work would be legal and perfectly above board.’
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