She stayed where she was and let herself gape. By now she should have been used to the luxury—luxury suites in London hotels, a personal private jet with wrap-around leather and champagne on tap—but still the sheer opulence of his everyday lifestyle made her jaw drop. For this was no rented accommodation or flying office, this was his home. And this one room was large enough to house her entire family back home.
‘How much money do you have?’
And he turned and looked at her, a cold expression charging his eyes. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Well, no. It’s just…’
‘Do not fear, I have more than enough to pay for you.’
His words shouldn’t have stung but somehow they did. The notion he was paying to have her here, to stroke her hand with his thumb and kiss her when he needed to look as if he had someone to kiss.
It wasn’t as if he were paying her for sex. She was merely acting. Pretending. And yet there was no pretence about the impact his touch and his kisses had on her. It made no sense. She’d been the one to insist on no sex, so why was it that his touch made her think of nothing else? Why did his kisses make her hunger for that which she had refused to entertain? Did he really not feel it too, this ribbon of desire that seemed to tug her ever closer to his side?
No! Andreas was right. This was a commercial arrangement, not some fairy-tale Cinderella story. In a month’s time, or however long it took, she’d leave Santorini and go back to her home in Kangaroo Crossing, albeit a million dollars richer than when she’d arrived. For a girl with her background and her chances in life, surely that was fairy tale enough. And yes, clearly there was no question he couldn’t afford it.
‘Come on, then,’ he said gruffly as he tugged off his tie, pointing towards a door on the far side of the room at the same time. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
‘WHA…? What do you mean?’
Andreas sighed. What the hell had he been thinking to contract this woman to act as his mistress? As an actress Cleo was as stiff and unyielding as a block of cement. As a mistress, she’d been a total failure. And she would continue to be, until she got over this problem she had with being with him. He tossed the car keys Petra had given him onto a dresser where they slid straight off and fell with a clatter to the tiled floor. Behind him she did the startled thing again, jumping as if he’d just thrown the keys at her. And the quicker she got over it, the better. ‘What do you think I mean?’ He tugged off his already loosened tie and shrugged off his jacket.
Pointless!
She stood there in the doorway to the bedroom, knowing only that he was furious. Meanwhile Andreas had kicked off his shoes and peeled off his socks, tossing them into a corner. The shirt was next, exposing once again that muscled chest to her gaze. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. She was transfixed.
‘Couldn’t you have even pretended to be my lover? Why do you have to jump like a startled rabbit every time I touch you?’
‘Because you do startle me. I can’t help it!’
He swore under his breath. ‘We should have slept together last night. Instead we wasted a perfect opportunity to get comfortable with one another.’
His trousers hit the ground and he kicked them carelessly aside. She wanted to resent him for his arrogance, for his knowing that the hired help would pick them up, for his wealth that allowed him to be that way, and most of all for assuming that she would abandon the one condition she’d set on this arrangement. But he made it so hard, too hard, when, instead of mustering a defence, she was busy admiring his lean powerful legs and the way his muscles played under his olive skin with the action.
Her mouth was dry, her blood thick and thumping slow. ‘I don’t understand. I told you I wasn’t prepared to sleep with you.’
He looked up at her then. ‘No, you didn’t. You said no sex. I told you there would be times where we would have to share a bed and you made no protest.’ He looked up at her, her feet still stuck to the floor in the doorway. ‘Go on, then, get undressed.’
Her mouth went dry. Get undressed. She could be in a doctor’s surgery, awaiting an examination, but then the order would be a request and it would be gently and considerately done, with a curtain provided for her modesty and discretion. Here, she was somehow expected to take off her clothes and climb into bed with Andreas glowering at her, dissatisfied and unrepentant. ‘Andreas, I…’
But he was already leaving the room, striding barefoot through a door to a room she could see brimming with marble and gilt. Seconds later he returned, stopping dead when he saw her still there, rooted to the spot. ‘You’re planning on going to bed fully clothed? At least I won’t have to put up with that flannelette armour.’ The black silk pouch that was his final barrier hit the floor next, leaving him gloriously naked before her. He was beautiful clothed, carrying himself with an authority and presence that turned heads, but naked he was magnificent, broad shoulders that tapered down to a tightly packed waist and lean hips. He was so beautiful, just the sight of him caused her blood to sizzle. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard against a throat filled with cotton wool as he flipped down the covers and slid into the bed.
‘Last night,’ she began. ‘Last night I had my own bed. Why can’t I now?’
‘Last night we were in London. I told you we might have to sleep together, to keep up appearances. Given there is only one bedroom in this suite and the fact my offices are here, it wouldn’t look good if word got out that my latest mistress was sleeping on the sofa, because I certainly don’t intend to. Don’t worry, I’m sure I can resist you.’
She didn’t doubt it. But sharing the same bed as him, lying alongside his naked body when she already knew how his touch turned her flesh alight, she only wished she could be so sure she could resist him.
He pushed himself up on one hand. ‘I’m losing patience, Cleo. Are you going to take your clothes off,’ he growled, with more than a hint of menace in his voice, ‘or am I going to have to come over there and do it for you?’
She shook her head, fear congealing like a ball in her gut. God no, the last thing she wanted was Andreas undressing her. She’d claimed she was experienced. She could do this. But she wasn’t about to do it in front of him. She bolted for the bathroom, taking several minutes to calm herself, cooling her burning cheeks with water from the tap. Her luggage had not yet been delivered or if it had, Andreas wasn’t telling, so she stripped herself down to the camisole, bra and knickers and wrapped herself in a voluminous robe she found hanging on the back of the door. It would have to do. This wasn’t about sex, or so he’d claimed. So what she wore to bed shouldn’t matter.
She emerged from the bathroom a good ten minutes or more after she’d entered to find the lights dimmed and Andreas facing away, his eyes closed as if asleep.
Please God he was!
She padded silently to the bed, stood there a second watching him breathe and decided this was it. She’d practically told him she was a woman of the world, claiming she’d had sex loads of times, so just sleeping with a man in the same bed should hardly throw her. She unlaced the tie at her waist and let the robe slip from her shoulders. Andreas didn’t stir and she gained confidence. He wouldn’t even know she was here. She turned off the light and slipped between the covers, hovering so close to the edge there could be no way he would feel her presence, and he gave no sign that he did, his breathing slow and regular, a pattern that calmed her own frantically beating heart.
On tenterhooks she lay there listening to his breathing, feeling foolish and naïve, even as the curtains of sleep descended one by one, closing around her and pulling her into their embrace, until she was surrounded by them, warm and comforting