It seemed to take a lifetime before she could muster her good sense and years of regal breeding and drag her gaze away. Deliberately she consulted her watch, made a point of studying it intently, allowed her impatience full rein. It was better than looking at him—staring like a besotted teenager at his craggy hard compelling face.
Where in heaven’s name was Gerard, anyway?
She looked up desperately—and found herself staring straight into Demetrios Savas’s face.
He was close enough to touch. Close enough that she could see tiny gold flecks in those impossibly green eyes, and pick out a few individual grey whiskers in rough dark stubble on his cheeks and jaw.
She opened her mouth. No sound came out.
“Sorry,” he said to her, a rueful smile touching his lips. “Didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”
Me? she wanted to say, swallowing her serene princess smile. Surely not.
But before she could say a thing, he wrapped an arm around her and drew her into his, then pressed hard warm lips to hers.
Anny’s ears buzzed. Her knees wobbled. Her lips parted. For an instant she thought his tongue touched hers!
Her eyes snapped open to stare, astonished, into his.
“Thanks for waiting.” His voice was the warm rough baritone she’d heard in movies and on television. As she stared in silent amazement, he kept an arm around her waist, tucked her firmly against him and walked her briskly with him toward the shops at the far end of the lobby. “Let’s get out of here.”
Demetrios didn’t know who she was.
He didn’t care. She was obviously waiting for someone—he’d seen her scanning the room almost the moment he’d walked in—and she looked like the sort of woman who wouldn’t make a fuss.
Not fussing was at the top of his list of desirable female attributes at the moment. And amid all the preening peacocks she stood out like a beacon.
Her understated appearance and neat dark upswept hair would have screamed practical, sensible, unflappable, and calm if they had been capable of screaming anything.
As it was, they spoke calmly of a woman of quiet composed sanity. One of the hotel concierge staff, probably. Or a tour guide waiting for her group. Or, hell, for all he knew, a Cub Scout den mother. In other words, she was all the things that people in the movie industry generally were not.
And she was, whether she knew it or not, going to be his salvation. She was going to get him out of the Ritz before he lost his temper or his sanity or did something he would no doubt seriously regret. In her proper dark blue skirt and casual but tailored cream-colored jacket, she looked like exactly the sort of steady unflappable professional woman he needed to pull this off.
He had his arm around her as he walked her straight down the center of the room. It was as if they were parting the seas as they went. Eyes widened. Murmurs began. He ignored them.
In her ear he said, “Do you know how to get out of here?” Even as he spoke, he realized she might not even speak English. This was France, after all.
But she didn’t disappoint him. She didn’t stumble as he steered her along, but kept pace with him easily, turning her head toward him just enough so that he could see a smile on her face. She had just the barest hint of an accent when she said, “Of course.”
He smiled, then, too. It was probably the first real smile he’d managed all day.
“Lead the way,” he murmured and, while to casual observers it would appear that he was directing their movements, he was in fact following her. The murmurs in the room seemed to grow in volume and intensity as they passed.
“Ignore them,” he said.
She did, still smiling as they walked. His savior seemed to know exactly where she was going. Either that or she was used to being picked up by strange men in hotel lobbies and had a designated spot for doing away with them. She led him through a set of doors and down another long corridor. Then they passed some offices, went through a storeroom and a delivery reception area and at last, when she pushed open one more door, came to stand on the pavement outside the back of the hotel.
Demetrios took a deep breath—and heard the door lock with a decisive click behind them.
He grimaced. “And now you can’t get back in. Sorry. Really. But thank you. You saved my life.”
“I doubt that.” But she was smiling as she said it.
“My professional life,” he qualified, giving her a weary smile in return. He raked fingers through his hair. “It’s been a hellish day. And it was just about to get a whole lot worse.”
She gave him a speculatively raised brow, but made no comment other than to say, “Well, then I’m glad to have been of service.”
“Are you?” That surprised him because she actually sounded glad and not annoyed, which she had every right to be. “You were waiting for someone.”
“That’s why you picked me.” She said it matter-of-factly and that surprised him, too.
But he grinned at her astute evaluation of the situation. “It’s called improvisation. I’m Demetrios, by the way.”
“I know.”
Yes, he supposed she did.
If there was one thing he’d figured out in the past forty-eight hours it was that he might have fallen off the face of the earth for the past two years, but no one seemed to have forgotten who he was.
In the industry, that was good. Distributors he wanted to talk to didn’t close their doors to him. But the paparazzi’s long memory he could have done without. They’d swarmed over him the moment they’d seen his face. The groupies had, too.
“What’d you expect?” his brother Theo had said sardonically. He’d dropped by Demetrios’s hotel room unannounced this morning en route sailing from Spain to Santorini. He’d grinned unsympathetically. “They all want to be the one to assuage your sorrow.”
Demetrios had known that coming to Cannes would be a madhouse, but he’d told himself he could manage. And he would be able to if all the women he met were like this one.
“Demetrios Savas in person,” she mused now, a smile touching her lips as she studied him with deep blue eyes. She looked friendly and mildly curious, but nothing more, thank God.
“At least you’re not giddy with excitement about it,” he said drily with a self-deprecating grin.
“I might be.” A dimple appeared in her left cheek when her smile widened. “Maybe I’m just hiding it well.”
“Keep right on hiding it. Please.”
She laughed at that, and he liked her laugh, too. It was warm and friendly and somehow it made her seem even prettier. She was a pretty girl. A wholesome sort of girl. Nothing theatrical or glitzy about her. Fresh and friendly with the sort of flawless complexion that cosmetic companies would kill for.
“Are you a model?” he asked, suddenly realizing she could be. And why not? She could have been waiting for an agent. A rep. It made sense. And some of them could contrive to look fresh and wholesome.
God knew Lissa had.
But this woman actually looked surprised at his question. “A model? No. Not at all. Do I look like one?” She laughed then, as if it were the least likely thing she could think of.
“You could be,” he told her.
“Really?” She looked sceptical, then shrugged “Well, thank you. I think.” She dimpled again as she smiled at him.
“I just meant you’re beautiful. It was a compliment. Do you work for the hotel then?”
“Beautiful?”