‘Get yourself dressed and see me in my study on your way out,’ he said curtly, turning on his heel. The sooner this opportunistic backpacker was out of his house the better.
* * *
Ashleigh towelled herself dry with trembling hands. Her encounter with Lukas Christophedes had left her shaking. Not just because she’d been caught trespassing by the owner of this multi-million-pound house but because of him. For that split second before she’d screamed, her senses had registered that the dark stranger in the bathroom was gorgeous.
As an Aussie girl from a country town, she had had no experience of Greek billionaires. If anything, she would assume they would be old, grey-haired and possibly paunchy—and there were no personal photos on display anywhere in this house to indicate Mr Christophedes was anything different.
The reality was that thirty-something Lukas Christophedes looked as if he’d stepped off the pages of an upmarket men’s magazine—tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired with a lean, handsome face. But his dark eyes had smouldered with fury, his mouth set tight when he’d discovered her in his bathtub. Gorgeous had suddenly seemed grim.
Thank heaven she didn’t encounter him as she made her way to the bedroom she’d purloined, wrapped only in the towel he had tossed at her. Of course she’d been completely in the wrong to have abused her position of trust with Maids in Chelsea to squat at a client’s house. She’d been desperate but, in hindsight, she realised she must have been crazy to do such a thing.
As she dressed, then shoved her few belongings into her backpack, her mind roiled with thoughts of what she could say to him. If, as he’d threatened, he got the police involved, she could end up with a criminal record. Even get deported. And all because her friend Sophie had mysteriously disappeared on the night Ashleigh had intended to ask her if she could crash on her sofa until she found somewhere to live.
They’d been waitressing at a posh party and Ashleigh had been dealing with some obnoxious guests who’d downed rather too much champagne. By the time Ashleigh had sorted them, Sophie was nowhere to be seen—and hadn’t reappeared until the next day with an enigmatic smile and a refusal to explain where she’d been.
In the meantime, Ashleigh had had nowhere to sleep. In desperation, she’d thought of the house in Chelsea where she’d just accepted a two-month house-care job. The luxury residence was empty and, apparently, rarely used.
It had been after midnight by the time Ashleigh had let herself into the Christophedes townhouse and the smallest of the guest rooms. With an en suite shower, it might actually be earmarked for a housekeeper or nanny she’d told herself to quieten her conscience. That first night she’d slept fitfully, fully clothed on top of the bedcover, jumping in panic at any slight sound in the house. By now, the third night, she’d convinced herself she wasn’t hurting anyone and no one need know. Wasn’t it a waste to leave a house like this empty? And she had made herself useful by doing chores beyond the scope of a daily maid’s duties.
But, however much she’d tried to convince herself otherwise, she’d known staying there was wrong. What an idiot she’d been not to have just left it at one night. If she had, she might have got away with it. She dreaded facing Sophie, her friend she’d known since they were teenagers, who had recommended her for the position at Maids in Chelsea. Not to mention Clio. The charismatic owner of the agency had taken a risk on employing her—an unknown Australian with little prior experience of hospitality or housekeeping work.
Ashleigh slung her backpack over her shoulder. It was light. When she’d run away from her wedding, she’d only intended staying in London for a two-week vacation and had packed the minimum required. But she’d loved being in London so much she’d decided to quit her job back home and stay longer. Maids in Chelsea was hard work but fun and she’d made friends with two other maids as well as Sophie: posh Emma and shy Grace. She planned on staying in the UK for as long as it took to make it very clear to both Dan, her aggrieved former fiancé, and her family that she had no intention of returning home to get married. In her mind the ceremony was permanently cancelled. In their minds they seemed to think it had been merely postponed.
Sometimes it seemed her family sided more with Dan than with her. ‘Dan is like a son to us, we’re so fond of him,’ her mother was always saying of the guy who had been Ashleigh’s off and on boyfriend for years. Huh. That was the trouble. She’d realised she was fond of Dan too. Just fond. Not the head-over-heels in love she needed to commit to marriage.
She’d explained that to her parents when she’d confessed she wanted to call off the wedding a month before she was due to walk down the aisle. In frustrated reaction to their shocked disbelief, she’d even gone so far as to call Dan the world’s most boring man.
Instead of listening to her, instead of believing her, her mother had tut-tutted that she’d get over this little blip and that the stress of the wedding plans was messing with her mind. Her father had gone so far as to actually pat her on her head—as if she were seven instead of twenty-seven—and tell her there was nothing wrong with a bit of boring in a man. Boring meant steady and reliable. Ashleigh had gritted her teeth. Boring meant boring.
What did it take to get it into the heads of the folk back home that the engagement was over? She’d had every intention of going home to Bundaberg for Christmas. Her family celebrated Christmas in a big way and she’d never been away from them at this special time of year. But when the other day she’d video-chatted with her mother to talk about dates and flights, there was Dan, sitting beside her mum on the sofa. He’d blown her a kiss as if she still wore the engagement ring she’d consigned to the bottom drawer of her dressing table when he’d refused to take it back. ‘You’ll be wanting to wear it again,’ he’d said with pompous certainty.
Seeing him there, so complacent and cosy, had made her see red. It felt like a betrayal by her family. Then her mother had gushed that Dan would be with them for Christmas Day as both his mother and his father would be away. Without really thinking about the consequences, Ashleigh had informed her parents she was not coming home for Christmas and didn’t know when she’d ever go back to Australia.
So here she was on a dark, freezing December evening, about to be booted out into the vastness of London without anywhere to stay. Except perhaps a police cell if she wasn’t able to convince Lukas Christophedes to let her go.
She made her way up the stairs to the next level of the townhouse. There was an elevator, but she never took it, too frightened it might stall between floors and she’d be trapped in a house where she was staying illicitly. She sent up a prayer that the billionaire client would accept her grovelling apologies and let her go without punishment. Staying here had been a bad, bad idea.
She’d dusted and vacuumed around his already perfectly clean office so she knew where it was. Like all the rooms in this beautiful, luxurious house, it had been decorated with the most expensive of furnishings and fittings, yet still retained the cosiness of a traditional English library—the walls lined with books and Persian rugs on the floor.
The door was open. Lukas Christophedes sat at his desk, his back towards her. He’d taken off the jacket of his dark, superbly tailored business suit. The finely woven fabric of his shirt showed broad shoulders and a leanly muscled back. She knocked quietly and he immediately swivelled on his chair to face her.
She caught her breath, her trepidation momentarily overcome by heart-stopping awareness of his dark, Mediterranean good looks. He’d discarded his necktie and opened the top buttons of his shirt to reveal a vee of tanned olive skin pointing to an impressive chest. Rolled up sleeves showed strong, tanned forearms. His dark hair was rumpled as if he’d run it through with his fingers. For a moment, Ashleigh thought he seemed less intimidating. Until he turned his gaze to her, assessing her with narrowed eyes, his expression inscrutable.
A shiver travelled up her spine. This man had her in his power—and she had made herself vulnerable to him by her foolish behaviour. Talking her way out of this might not be easy.