‘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.