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.’
Legal. Above board. And it paid in the hundreds of thousands of dollars? Yeah, sure. There were jobs in the paper like that for high-school dropouts every other day. ‘What is it, then?’ she asked, circling the other way, pretending to be more interested in an arrangement of flowers set upon a side table. The red blooms were beautiful too, she thought, touching her fingers to the delicate petals, just like everything else in this room. Did he really expect her to share it with him? ‘So what’s the job?’
He didn’t move this time, made no attempt to follow her, and because she was ready for it, expecting it, the fact he stayed put was more unnerving than anything. ‘It’s really quite simple. I just need you to pretend to be my mistress.’
‘P
RETEND
to be your
what
?’ Cleo started to laugh. If ever there was a time for hysterical laughter, this moment was tailor-made, but shock won out in the reaction stakes, choking off the sound and rendering her aghast. ‘You must be insane!’
‘I assure you I’m perfectly serious.’
‘But your mistress? Who even uses that word any more?’
‘Would you prefer it if I used the word
lover
?
‘No!’
Definitely not lover
. And definitely not when it was said in that rich, curling accent. She didn’t want to think about being Andreas’ lover, pretend or otherwise. ‘I don’t know where you got the impression that I might say yes to such a crazy proposition, but I’m afraid you have the wrong impression of me, Mr Xenides. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to turn down your generous proposal.’
‘Call me Andreas, please.’
She looked over her shoulder anxiously, watching the door, before she looked back. ‘And why would a man like you even need someone to act as his mistress anyway? It makes no sense.’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe I just don’t like to be seen as available.’
‘Maybe you should just put out a press release.’ She looked
longingly at the door again. ‘When is my bag supposed to arrive? I want to go.’
‘At least think about it, Cleo. It’s a lot of money to throw away. Can you afford that?’
‘You’re crazy. Just look at me.’ She held her arms out at her sides, her heart jumping wildly in her chest, her words tumbling over her tongue. ‘I’m a cleaner. I muck out bathrooms and rubbish bins and have the split nails and red hands to prove it. I’m short and dumpy and have never once in my life been called so much as pretty, and you’re suggesting I could pretend to be your mistress? Who’s going to believe that for a start? They’ll think you’ve gone mad and they’d be right.’
He answered her with a raised eyebrow and a half-hearted shrug as he eased closer. ‘I think you underestimate your charms.’
Charms? What planet was this man from? ‘Why
me
? You could have any woman in the world. You probably already have.’
He turned her implied insult to his advantage. ‘Exactly. Which is why I don’t want just any woman in the world.’ He was close now, so close she could see the individual lashes that framed his dark eyes, close enough to see his pupils flare as he held out his fingers to her cheek. She flinched but he kept coming, tracing the line of her cheek with the backs of his fingers. ‘I want you.’
Her heart missed a beat or two. She tried to shake her head but still his fingers remained, his touch feather-light and yet bone-shudderingly deep in effect.
‘I don’t…I can’t…’
And he pulled his hand away, concern muddying his eyes as if something had just occurred to him. ‘You’re not a virgin?’
The intimacy of the question threw her for a moment. She could feel her cheeks burning up as she fought to find an
answer. ‘I thought this was about pretending. Why should whether or not I’ve ever slept with anyone even be an issue?’
He shrugged. ‘Because there will be nights we are forced to share a bed to keep up appearances. And it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that as a man and a woman, together, we might wish to seek mutual pleasure in each other’s bodies.’
Help!
‘So you expect sex, then, as part of this deal?’
He frowned and drew away, as if the very idea of her asking offended him. ‘Not necessarily. Just that it may well be a by-product of our arrangement.’
Sex as a by-product of our arrangement?
How formal that sounded. How impersonal. It sounded more like a business deal, which she supposed it was. Not that she’d been involved in too many business deals, especially where they included a sex clause.
‘I don’t want it,’ she ventured, not entirely sure if she meant just the contract or the sex or both. Because there was something about Andreas’ touch that sent her senses into overdrive, something about his touch that made a secret part of her ache in ways it shouldn’t, especially not for a man she’d only just met, a man she knew nothing about.
‘It’s a good offer,’ he continued, as gently and convincingly as a parent trying to get a child to drink its milk. ‘It’s a fixed-term contract and in one month you go home. All expenses paid. First-class travel naturally.’
He watched her face, searching for the crack in her resolve. ‘And no sex, if that’s what you want. Though if it did happen, I can guarantee it wouldn’t mean anything.’
His words blurred.
“It wouldn’t mean anything.”
And all she kept hearing was the echo of the words Kurt had said to her when she’d told him she loved him. And he’d just laughed as he’d yanked up his jeans.
“What’s your problem? It didn’t mean anything. You really are stupid.”
And all she had felt was the bottom falling out of her world as her newly discovered heart had lain shredded. She’d made a pointless journey, thrown what she’d always believed to be special away on a deadbeat who’d taken everything he could get and left her high and dry.
‘You have had sex? Can we be clear on that?’ Andreas’ uncertain voice came from a long way away and still it brought her hackles up. What did he think now, that she was a complete loser?
‘Oh, sure, loads of times.’
Once.
But then why should it matter if he thought her a complete loser? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought the same thing herself.
‘Then it’s all settled.’
Her head snapped up. ‘Hang on, what’s settled?’ She had a feeling she’d missed something somewhere. Had she said yes and somehow forgotten?
‘Tomorrow you will fly with me to my home on Santorini.’
She knew the name. Kurt had wooed her with his promises of travel and sunsets, of short breaks they could take to the Mediterranean, to Corfu and Mykonos and Santorini, of crystal-clear waters and lazy summer days. It had sounded so romantic, but of course, it had all been lies designed to convince her that they had a future together in order to lure her to London. She’d all but given up any hope of seeing anything at all of Europe.
But now she had the chance to go there with Andreas. Was it enough of a reason to say yes?
A buzzer sounded and Andreas moved swiftly to the door, pulling it open to the porter at last with her luggage. ‘We will leave at twelve. The morning will be busy with appointments so we will have to start early.
‘In the bedroom, thank you,’ Andreas directed the porter, pressing a note into his hand.
‘No!’ she called, surprising them both and causing the porter to wheel around. ‘I’ll take that.’ She grabbed one of the shoulder straps.
‘Leave it, Cleo.’
‘But there’s no point. I was just leaving anyway.’
The porter looked nervously from one to the other, Cleo tugging on the pack, knowing it was her hold on reality and on control, and Andreas glowering until finally the porter decided that discretion was the better part of valour and withdrew, uttering a rushed, ‘Call me if you need anything more,’ before making himself scarce.
Cleo heaved the backpack onto her shoulder.
‘I thought we had a deal.’
‘You thought wrong. I never agreed to anything. And I’m leaving.’
‘But you have no job, nowhere to go.’
‘I’ll find something. I’ll manage.’ She retrieved her Driza-Bone from the back of a chair and bundled it in front of her before being game enough to steal one last glance at him.
Impossibly good-looking
. That was how she’d remember him. Eyes of midnight-black and hair that waved thick and dark to collar length, an imperious nose and a passionate slash of mouth it was almost a crime for any man to possess. And a face like slate, just like she’d thought in the hotel, until it heated up and the angles took on curves she’d never seen coming.
But so what? She was leaving. It might be a huge amount of money to give up and already she could hear the girls from her high school singing out a familiar chorus of “loser, loser, Cleo’s a loser”. But she’d been hearing that chorus a long time and she was used to it. She’d been an object of pity ever since her father had walked out on her pregnant mother, never to be seen again.
And besides, she knew she was doing the right thing. For
Andreas’ proposal was flawed. She didn’t want the chance of ‘sex as a by-product’ of anything. She’d had sex that didn’t mean anything and she’d hated herself in the aftermath. It had made her feel cheap and disposable and had hurt her more than she wanted to admit. She didn’t care for the chance of more, no matter how much he might be paying.
‘I’ll see myself out.’
‘I need you,’ he said as she turned for the door.
She halted, her fingers around the door handle. ‘I get the impression, Mr Xenides, that you don’t need anyone.’ She twisted and pulled. She didn’t belong here. Now she’d made up her mind, she couldn’t wait to get away. Had to get away.
The door was open just a few inches when his palm slammed it shut. ‘You’re wrong!’
She turned to protest but the words sizzled and burned in the heat she saw coming from his eyes. ‘How much will it take, then? How much do you want? I thought you didn’t care about money, but you’re just like the rest, one whiff and you want more. You’re just a better actress. Which tells me you’re exactly the woman I need.
‘So how much, sweet, talented Cleo? How much to secure your services for a month? One hundred thousand clearly isn’t enough, so let’s say we double it. Two hundred thousand pounds. Four hundred thousand of your dollars. Would that be enough?’
The numbers went whirling around her brain, so big they didn’t mean anything, so enormous she couldn’t get a grip on them. Four hundred thousand dollars for a month of pretending to be Andreas’ companion? Was she nuts to even think about giving that up? She could go home, pay back her nanna, pay for repairs to the farm’s leaking roof that her mother always complained about but there was never enough money to repair, and she’d still have enough left over to buy a place of her own.
More than that, she’d be able to go home and hold her head up high. And for once, just once in her life, she didn’t have to be a loser.
But could she do it? Could she pretend to be this man’s lover and all that entailed and simply walk away in the end?
She shook her head trying to work it all out. She truly didn’t know. If she just had some time to think it all out. ‘Andreas, I—’
‘Five hundred thousand pounds! One million of your dollars. Will that be enough to sway your mind?’
She gasped. ‘You have to be kidding. That’s an obscene amount of money.’
‘Not if it gets me what I want. And I want you, Cleo. Say yes.’
She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, only one note of clarity spearing through the fog of her brain.
One million dollars.
How could she walk away from that? It was unthinkable, unimaginable, like winning the lottery or scooping the pools. And she’d even get to live on Santorini for a whole month, the island she’d longed to visit, the island Kurt had only talked about visiting for a day or two. Wasn’t that some kind of justice? She licked her lips, once more feeling her hold on the world slipping, swaying. ‘Just for a month, you say?’
The corners of his mouth turned up. ‘Maybe even less if you play your cards right.’
‘But definitely no sex. Just pretending. Is that right?’
A shadow passed across his eyes and was just as quickly gone. ‘If that’s the way you want it.’
‘That’s exactly the way I want it. No sex. And in one month I go home.’
‘No questions asked. First class. All expenses paid.’
She swallowed against a throat that felt tight and dry and
against a fear that he might soon discover he was making the mistake of his life and she’d be booted out with the week. ‘I don’t know if I’m the right person for the job.’
He slipped the pack from her shoulder and dropped it on the ground beside them before she’d noticed, relieving her of the weight on her back, but not even touching the fear in her gut. ‘You’ll be perfect. Any other questions?’
She shook her head. How could she expect him to make sense of anything going on in her mind when she couldn’t unscramble it herself? ‘No. Um, at least…No, I don’t think so.’
He smiled then, as he curved one hand around her neck, his fingers warm and gentle on her skin and yet setting her flesh alight. ‘Then what say we seal this deal with a kiss?’
She gasped and looked up at him in shock. That message cleared a way through the fog in her brain as if it had been shot from a cannon. ‘We could always just shake hands.’
‘We could,’ he agreed, both hands weaving their magic behind her head, his thumbs tracing the line of her jaw while he studied her face. ‘But given we will no doubt have to get used to at least this, we might as well start now.’
And he angled her upturned face and dipped his own until his lips met hers. Fear held her rigid, that and a heart that had taken on a life of its own and threatened to jump out of her chest. But as his lips moved over hers, gentler than she’d imagined possible, gentle but, oh, so sure, she sighed into the kiss, participating, matching him.
One hand scooped down her back, pressing her to him from chest to thigh, her nipples exquisitely sensitive to the chest that met hers, heat pooling low down between her thighs, making her more aware than she’d ever been of her own physical needs. They called to her now, announcing their presence with logicnumbing desperation until her knees, once stiff with shock, threatened to buckle under her. She trembled, reaching for
him, needing something to steady herself as his mouth wove some kind of magic upon her own.
It was just a kiss. Tender almost, more gentle than she would ever expect this man to give, but, oh, so thorough in its impact. Her fingers tangled in his shirt, her fingertips drinking in the feel of the firm flesh beneath and she was sure she felt him shudder. Was this how a man felt, rock-hard and solid, as opposed to a boy? Kurt had claimed to be twenty-six and told her he worked out regularly, but his body had been white-bread soft and just as unsatisfying.
But Andreas felt as if he’d been sculpted from marble, firm flesh over muscle and skin that felt like satin and her fingers itched to feel more. Ached to feel more.