His smile was slow—like a knife sinking into wet concrete. His family? That wouldn’t be his word of choice to describe the people who had raised him. His father’s whores had done their best, with limited success—but surely even they were better than no mother at all. Than one who’d run out on you and never cared enough to lift the phone to find out how you were.
‘No,’ he said. ‘The island was sold after my father died.’
‘A whole island?’ Her lips parted. ‘You mean your father actually owned an island?’
Another stab of lust went kicking to his groin as her lips parted. If he’d announced that he had a home on Mars, she couldn’t have looked more shocked. But then, it was easy to forget how isolating wealth could be—especially to someone like her. If she didn’t even own a car, then she might have trouble getting her head around someone having their own island. He glanced at her hands and, for some reason, the sight of her unmanicured nails only intensified his desire and he realised that he hadn’t been entirely honest when he’d told her he wasn’t planning to drag her away to a dark corner. He thought he’d like that very much.
‘You’ve been standing there so long that you’ve probably come to the end of your shift,’ he said drily. ‘You could have had that drink with me after all.’
‘I suppose I could.’ Ellie hesitated. He was so persistent. Flatteringly so. She wondered why. Because he’d been almost friendly since he’d helped with the little boy who’d cut his knee? Or because she’d displayed a degree of reluctance to spend time with him and he wasn’t used to that? Probably. She wondered what it must be like, to be Alek Sarantos—so sure of yourself that nobody ever turned you down.
‘What are you so scared of?’ he taunted. ‘Don’t you think I’m capable of behaving like a gentleman?’
It was one of those life-defining moments. Sensible Ellie would have shaken her head and said no thanks. She would have carried the tray back to the kitchen, unlocked her bike and cycled home to her room in the nearby village. But the moonlight and the powerful scent of the roses were making her feel the opposite of sensible. The last time a man had asked her on a date—and you couldn’t really call this a date—was over a year ago. She’d been working such unsociable hours that there hadn’t been a lot of opportunity for down time.
She looked into his eyes. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’
‘Well, think about it now. You’ve been waiting on me all week, so why not let me wait on you for a change? I have a fridge stocked with liquor I haven’t touched. If you’re hungry, I can feed you chocolate or apricots.’ He rose to his feet and raised his eyebrows. ‘So why don’t I pour you a glass of champagne?’
‘Why? Are you celebrating something?’
He gave a low laugh. ‘Celebration isn’t mandatory. I thought all women liked champagne.’
‘Not me.’ She shook her head. ‘The bubbles make me sneeze. And I’m cycling home—I don’t want to run over some poor, unsuspecting pony who’s wandered out into the middle of the road. I think I’d prefer something soft.’
‘Of course you would.’ He slanted her an odd kind of smile. ‘Sit down and let me see what I can find.’
He went inside the self-contained villa which stood within the extensive hotel grounds and Ellie perched awkwardly on one of the cane chairs, praying nobody would see her, because she shouldn’t be sitting on a guest’s veranda as if she had every right to do so.
She glanced across the silent lawn, where a huge oak tree was casting an enormous shadow. The wild flowers which edged the grass swayed gently in the breeze and, in the background, lights blazed brightly from the hotel. The dining room was still lit with candles and she could see people lingering over coffee. In the kitchen, staff would be frantically washing up and longing to get home. Upstairs, couples would be removing complimentary chocolates from on top of the Egyptian linen pillows, before getting into bed. Or maybe they would be sampling the deep, twin baths for which The Hog was so famous.
She thought she saw something glinting from behind the oak tree and instinctively she shrank back into the shadows, but before she could work out exactly what it was—Alek had returned with a frosted glass of cola for her, and what looked like whisky, for him.
‘I guess I should have put them on a tray,’ he said.
She took a sip. ‘And worn an apron.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Perhaps I could borrow yours?’
The implication being that she remove her apron... Ellie put her glass down, glad that the darkness disguised her suddenly hot cheeks because the thought of removing anything was making her heart race. Suddenly, the moonlight and the roses and the glint in his eyes was making her feel way too vulnerable.
‘I can’t stay long,’ she said quickly.
‘Somehow I wasn’t expecting you to. How’s your cola?’
‘Delicious.’
He leant back in his chair. ‘So tell me why a young woman of twenty...?’ He raised his eyebrows.
‘I’m twenty-five,’ she supplied.
‘Twenty-five.’ He took a sip of whisky. ‘Ends up working in a place like this.’
‘It’s a great hotel.’
‘Quiet location.’
‘I like that. And it has a training scheme which is world famous.’
‘But what about...’ he paused ‘...nightlife? Clubs and boyfriends and parties? The kind of thing most twenty-five-year-olds enjoy.’
Ellie watched the bubbles fizzing around the ice cubes he’d put in her cola. Should she explain that she’d deliberately opted for a quiet life which contrasted with the chaos which had defined her childhood? Somewhere where she could concentrate on her work, because she didn’t want to end up like her mother, who thought a woman’s ambition should be to acquire a man who was a meal ticket. Ellie had quickly learnt how she didn’t want to live. She was never going to trawl the internet, or hang around nightclubs. She had never owned a thigh-skimming skirt or push-up bra. She was never going to date someone just because of what they had in their wallet.
‘Because I’m concentrating on my career,’ she said. ‘My ambition is to travel and I’m going to make that happen. One day I’m hoping to be a general manager—if not here, then in one of the group’s other hotels. Competition is pretty fierce, but there’s no harm in aiming high.’ She sipped her cola and looked at him. ‘So that’s me. What about you?’
Alek swirled the whisky around in his glass. Usually he would have changed the subject, because he didn’t like talking about himself. But she had a way of asking questions which made him want to answer and he still couldn’t work out why.
He shrugged. ‘I’m a self-made man.’
‘But you said—’
‘That my father owned an island? He did. But he didn’t leave his money to me.’ And if he had, Alek would have thrown it back in his face. He would sooner have embraced a deadly viper than taken a single drachma of the old man’s fortune. He felt his gut tighten. ‘Everything I own, I earned for myself.’
‘And was that...difficult?’
The softness of her voice was hypnotic. It felt like balm being smoothed over a wound which had never really healed. And wasn’t this what men had done since the beginning of time? Drunk a little too much whisky and then offloaded on some random woman they would never see again?
‘It was a liberation,’ he said truthfully. ‘To cut my ties with the past.’
She nodded, as if she understood. ‘And start over?’
‘Exactly that. To know that every decision