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The older woman settled icy blue eyes on her defiant daughter. ‘You owe me, Emmie, and I intend to collect.’
‘How do I owe you?’ Emmie prompted painfully. ‘You never bothered with me from the age of twelve. You never visited or wrote or phoned or even paid towards my upkeep—’
‘I had a hard time surviving. And you were all quite happy living with your sister, Kat,’ Odette argued tautly. ‘But when it really mattered, I was still there for you—’
Emmie’s facial muscles were locked tight with self-discipline. ‘And when was that?’
‘When you needed surgery for your damaged leg. When you were desperate to walk again, I came through for you,’ her mother declared impressively.
Emmie was knocked sideways by that announcement. ‘You’re saying that you paid for the surgery I had on my leg?’ She gasped in shock.
‘Where did you think Kat got the money from?’ her mother enquired drily.
Emmie was too distraught at what she had been told to continue reasoning with her unrepentant parent. She changed for her shift at the café and went to work in a daze. Was it true that Odette had paid for her surgery? It was a supreme irony that as a teenager it had not even occurred to Emmie to wonder where her oldest sister, Kat, had got the cash to pay for Emmie’s private surgery abroad. Even though Emmie was now in her twenties it had never occurred to her to ask, an oversight that now struck her as unforgivably obtuse and selfish. Emmie knew how much that surgery had meant to her at the time, how desperately she had craved the normality and the independence of no longer needing assistance in almost everything she did. She was dumbfounded by the assurance that her mother had paid to make her deepest wish come true.
While she served meals and drinks that evening, her mind was lost on another plane. Her sister, Saffy, had never overcome her guilt that she had not been injured in that same crash and she had been fiercely protective of her injured twin in the aftermath. Saffy had never understood that the continual presence of her physical perfection and glowing health had only made Emmie all the more aware of what she had lost. Emmie’s teenaged experience of infirmity had been wretched and she had often been depressed. People had continually looked away from the awkward gait caused by her disability, embarrassed by her, embarrassed for her, pitying, avoiding her as if her brain might be as damaged as her body. At the same time Saffy, blonde, beautiful, sporty and gregarious, had been the most popular girl in school. Emmie hadn’t resented her twin and she hadn’t been jealous either, but that was when she had learned to hate the wounding comparisons that people made between the two girls, one so perfect, the other so physically flawed. Those feelings had been compounded from early childhood by Odette’s resentful attitude to having had twins when she had only wanted one child. Even worse, Emmie had proved to be a heavy responsibility, underweight when born and often ill afterwards, a sickly child continually requiring extra care and attention. Emmie was always painfully aware that in those days Odette had found caring for her too heavy a responsibility.
Her mother was in bed when Emmie got home and although it was a relief not to have to face the older woman again Emmie was still in turmoil. Odette might once have been a neglectful parent but that costly surgery had transformed Emmie’s life, not least giving her her freedom and independence back. If her mother had paid for that operation, Emmie did owe her a debt. But surely that didn’t mean she was honour bound to perform escort duties for some stranger? Hadn’t Odette said ‘a weekend abroad’? My goodness, could such an arrangement be any more bizarre or dangerous? A whole weekend out of the country? He could be a white slaver and she might never be heard of again.
‘I’d like to see that contract,’ Emmie told her mother staunchly over breakfast, determined not to let her emotions take control of her again. She needed a solution and another argument would be counter-productive.
A couple of minutes later, Odette passed her a slim document. Emmie glanced down it and leafed to the last page to see the signature and what she saw there astonished her. Sebastiano Christou! How was that possible? How could Emmie’s boss be the man who had booked her as an escort? The same boss who had informed her that her supposed second career as an escort ran contrary to company policy? Emmie was so enraged by the sight of that particular name that she was vaguely surprised steam didn’t pump from her ears. She stuffed the contract into her bag. ‘I’ll handle this,’ she told the older woman tautly.
Evidently having expected more of a reaction from her, her mother said, ‘Aren’t you surprised by the identity of the client?’
‘Should I be?’
‘You do work for the guy—’
‘Oh, so you’re aware of that?’ Emmie fielded thinly.
‘Of course I am. It puts a whole new spin on office romance,’ Odette remarked mockingly.
‘Believe me,’ Emmie declared as she stood up, ‘there’s nothing romantic about this situation.’
Rage was powering Emmie like adrenalin by the time she reached the office. Bastian Christou was a complete hypocrite. Unbelievably, the same guy who had paid a ridiculous sum for her services as an escort had dared to warn her that her working in such a role threatened to bring his company into disrepute. But at least now she knew why he had been looking at her so oddly, doubtless imagining that if she worked as an escort she was a much more sexually exciting and adventurous personality than she appeared on the surface. Well, we’ll just see about that, Emmie reflected, furiously gritting her teeth together.
‘Mr Christou and I discussed a private matter yesterday and I need to see him as soon as possible to update him on…er, a recent development,’ Emmie informed Marie.
Her eyes carefully veiled, Bastian’s PA passed no comment and swept up her phone.
‘Go on ahead,’ she urged then, before adding, ‘Be careful, Emmie—’
‘Careful?’ Emmie queried, glancing back over her shoulder.
‘Before Lilah, Bastian had a bad track record with women,’ his PA murmured warningly.
Her face flaming at the type of development that the other woman so obviously suspected, Emmie knocked on the office door and entered. Bastian surveyed her from his stance by the window, his arrogant dark head set at a questioning angle, his brilliant eyes narrowed. Emmie dug the contract from her bag and slapped it down on the desk top in explanation.
‘So, you know,’ Bastian remarked evenly, not one whit perturbed by her aggressive body language.
‘And now it’s time for you to know that it’s not on, not happening in this lifetime!’ Emmie specified with emphatic bite. ‘But what I really can’t believe is that you talked of how my photo on that website could bring your company into disrepute and then you went ahead and booked me!’
‘I realised that you were the perfect match for my requirements,’ Bastian fielded with characteristic cool, noting that with that pink warming her cheeks and her animated expression she was glowingly alive, like a candle that had suddenly been lit for the first time. ‘However, if you don’t want to do it, return the fee and we’ll say no more about it.’
Return the fee? Consternation at that practical suggestion filtered through Emmie’s anger because she didn’t have a penny in the world, indeed still had an overdraft on her bank account from her student days. Odette had admitted to having already spent some of the money and Emmie had no way of replacing it, nor was she naïve enough to believe that she had a prayer of persuading her materialistic mother to hand over what remained of that cash. ‘I can’t believe that you can still look me in the eye…’ she said with scorn, side-stepping the money issue.
Bastian strolled forward, lean, darkly handsome features infuriatingly calm and assured. He was disturbingly graceful in motion, not a visible ounce of tension in his big powerful frame as he stepped unexpectedly into her space and without warning whisked the spectacles off her nose to examine them. ‘These are clear glass…what do you wear them for?’
‘Give me those back!’ Emmie snapped, fit to be tied at his cheek.
With a sardonic laugh, Bastian tossed them aside and reached instead for the clip pinning her thick hair to the back of her head.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ Emmie gasped, overpowered by his proximity and totally disconcerted by his bold approach.
The clip went the same way as the spectacles and released the heavy golden fall of her hair round her taut shoulders. ‘Maybe I wanted to see what I was paying for,’ Bastian said succinctly, indifferent to whether or not he caused offence. After all, wasn’t he hiring her to do a job? Why should he pussyfoot around her sensibilities?
Rampant disbelief gripped Emmie as she focused on his devastating face, struggling to block out the hard male beauty of his bronzed features, refusing to acknowledge it when he was being so objectionable. ‘How dare you?’ she snapped furiously.
‘It’s the truth even if you don’t like it,’ Bastian countered drily, watching her dark pupils dilate in a betraying sign of sexual awareness, emphasising the incredible blue of her eyes all the more. Even up close, she was dazzling, skin luminous, eyes bright, mouth sugar-pink and luscious. Raw hunger pulsed at his groin, the kick of instant and intense arousal taking him by surprise. Yes, she was very beautiful but he was accustomed to beautiful women and repulsed by those who sought payment for their attention. Unfortunately the natural repugnance he had expected to feel around her wasn’t working as the barrier he had hoped it would.
‘You haven’t bought me…you can’t buy what isn’t for sale!’ Emmie flung back at him in fierce rejection, reacting to the maddening buzz in the atmosphere that was firing a sensation of uneasy warmth between her thighs and unnerving her.
‘Yet I’ve still managed to buy your time for the whole of one weekend.’ Bastian savoured the fact, dark eyes glittering golden as hot sunlight below level black brows.
‘No…no way!’
‘Then return the fee and we’ll forget about the arrangement,’ Bastian responded lazily again. ‘I’m not in the market for an unwilling escort. In the wrong frame of mind you would be useless to me.’
Emmie backed away from him, pausing to scoop up the clip and the spectacles he had carelessly abandoned on his desk. He was forcing her to accept unwelcome facts. Of course he wanted the money back if she wasn’t prepared to deliver the service he had booked and she wasn’t able to return his wretched money to him! It put her between a rock and a hard place and frustration roared through her. Had Odette won their battle so easily? She could deny all connection to her mother’s escort agency and leave Bastian Christou to pursue the return of the money he had paid, but that would undoubtedly plunge Odette into serious legal and financial trouble. And the woman who had financed the surgery that had given Emmie the opportunity to live a normal able-bodied life again deserved better than that from her, Emmie conceded reluctantly. the gift of that life-enhancing surgery truly was a debt that could never be repaid.
‘Why the disguise?’ Bastian enquired indolently. ‘Are you afraid of being recognised in the day job?’
Emmie went pink again. ‘Something like that.’
She couldn’t tell him the truth, had never told anyone the truth. When Saffy’s face had gone global and her twin was constantly pictured in the media, Emmie had no longer felt that her face was her own. Even more awkwardly, people had started mistaking her for Saffy in the street and it had got embarrassing: strangers approaching her asking for autographs and photos, men coming on to her, people getting angry and abusive when she insisted that she wasn’t the famous Sapphire because they didn’t believe her. The attention had mortified and intimidated her, making her feel like a fake copy of her famous sister, incapable of satisfying people’s expectations. She had always been a very private person and could never have put herself on show as her sibling had done to make a living in front of the cameras. She had never had that kind of confidence in her face and body.
Bastian relaxed back against the side of his desk. ‘If you make a good job of the role I have for you I’ll pay you a bonus,’ he told her smoothly. ‘This is very much a business arrangement, not a pleasure trip.’
Emmie wondered if this was what he always did when a woman became difficult: offer her more money, clothes, jewellery, whatever? Did he often use his wealth as a bribe?
‘Are you in the habit of using an escort service?’ Emmie enquired flatly.
‘You will be the first…and the last,’ he informed her grimly.
‘And why didn’t you tell me what you’d done when you spoke to me yesterday about the photo on the website? Wasn’t that complete hypocrisy?’ she asked him drily again.
‘Common sense. If I take you to my sister’s wedding, I naturally don’t want your escort identity to still be visible online,’ he pointed out coolly. ‘And I’m not a hypocrite. What You see is what you get. I’m a very forthright guy.’
‘Your sister’s wedding? You want me to accompany you to a family occasion?’ Emmie prompted in surprise.
‘I don’t want anything to take the gloss off my sister, Nessa’s big day,’ Bastian admitted. ‘Seeing me with you will persuade her that I have moved on from my broken engagement and that will make Nessa happy. She’s a very soft-hearted soul. And as my ex is one of her bridesmaids, it will be more comfortable for everyone present if I have a partner of my own.’
‘One of her bridesmaids?’ Emmie grimaced at the concept. ‘Sticky—’
‘But less so with you on my arm,’ he confirmed. ‘May I assume that you will be accompanying me to my home in Greece?’
Emmie gulped at the prospect, thinking frantically about how she could possibly repay the fee he had paid, knowing that, short of a lottery win, she could not. There was no way out, no convenient escape route. What was one weekend to be spent in the company of family and wedding guests? It sounded innocent, safe. She swallowed hard and then nodded in surrender, curling lashes lowering over her angry gaze.
‘All that remains is the provision of suitable clothing for you to wear over the weekend,’ Bastian remarked.
‘That won’t be necessary—’
‘It will be,’ Bastian contradicted, derisive eyes dropping to scan her loose shirt and ill-fitting skirt. ‘I’ll organise a stylist and personal shopper to furnish you with what you will require. Naturally I’ll cover the bills. I have your phone number. I’ll text you with the details.’
Emmie swallowed hard, dislike and resentment combining in a tangled knot of defiance inside her. He was treating her like an inanimate object to be correctly packaged for public show. He saw her as an escort, a woman for hire and, even though she told herself that she was doing this for her mother’s benefit and to repay a debt, it was an utterly humiliating process and not an experience that she would forget in a hurry.
CHAPTER THREE (#uec7f66fa-175c-52d5-859f-7bba278a37e3)
OUT OF THE corner of her eye, Emmie saw heads turning as she walked through the airport. She was mentally offering up a prayer that that would be all the attention she attracted when a man with a camera stepped right into her path. ‘Stop right there, Sapphire!’
Head high, face expressionless, Emmie sidestepped him, not even bothering to pause and contradict his assumption that she was her sister because she had learned that people and the paparazzi in particular refused to credit that she was not who they thought she was. After all, a photo of Sapphire was worth a lot of money and no pap ever wanted to admit that he had made a mistake. Dressed as she was in designer gear, Emmie knew there was even less chance than usual of anyone believing that she was not her twin. The mini wardrobe of new garments packed into the sleek case she was wheeling was not bargain-basement fare by anyone’s standards. Indeed Emmie had never in her life worn such expensive clothing and, ironically, knowing that she looked her best had lifted her confidence. That acknowledged, however, the prospect of a weekend at the Christou family home still had her nerves leaping about like jumping beans. There was a tight hard knot of anxiety in her abdomen as well, for nothing she had since learned about the Greek billionaire had eased her misgivings in the slightest.
Before his engagement Bastian had been a notorious womaniser and her Internet searches had offered her fertile information on his likes and dislikes for, in common with many rich, high-profile men, he had occasionally fallen victim to the kind of lover who sold her story of their intimate dealings to a newspaper for cash. There had been a sordid little tale of a chaotic affair with two sisters, more than one cringe-worthy reference to his penchant for early-morning sex and all the usual fillers about the extravagant gifts he bought, how easily he got bored, how quickly and coldly he severed ties when he lost interest. At the office he was a neat freak with everything in its place and no clutter and definitely on the emotionally detached side of sociable. Emmie had learned nothing else worthy of note and very little about his true nature. He was extremely intelligent but, having studied his career, she had already known that for a fact. He had built his business from the ground up and it had soared to meteoric heights.
Bastian saw Emmie walking towards him and experienced a rare instant of shock. She was a vision of golden loveliness and sophisticated elegance in tailored cropped trousers, sky-high heels and a soft clingy top. He tensed. Perfect for the role, he told himself sharply; nobody would doubt the veracity of his relationship with a woman who resembled a screen goddess with her simply amazing face, long lazy walk and incredibly shapely legs. OK, shorn of disguise and in the right clothing, Emmie Marshall was absolutely gorgeous, but he was not personally affected, he assured himself on the back of the reminder that he had always preferred small, curvy brunettes. But the cut of his trousers still felt too neat and his strong jawline clenched hard. A little reaction was normal, he conceded grudgingly. He would be dead from the neck down if he didn’t react to Emmie at all and didn’t wonder if that luscious pink-tinted mouth would taste as good as it looked. Only at the last possible moment did he finally appreciate that she was being pursued by a couple of men waving cameras and he could not work out why he had not noticed them first. He signalled his bodyguards to protect her from the intrusion.
‘Emmie…’ he breathed.
‘Mr Christou,’ Emmie replied glacially, resisting with all her might the sheer raw charisma of Sebastiano Christou, sheathed in a dark designer suit perfectly tailored to his lean powerful frame, his jawline darkened by faint stubble, heavily lidded dark golden eyes fringed by amazing black lashes resting on her like a gun to a target. Bull’s eye, she thought maniacally, a burst of heat warming her pelvis, breasts high and taut, her entire body positively leaping into a terrifying state of electrically charged sexual awareness.
‘Bastian…’ he traded drily a split second before he reached for her.
Emmie was so startled by the manoeuvre that she froze like a rabbit in headlights. She had convinced herself that she had nothing to worry about with Bastian Christou. After all, he wasn’t going to be getting much time alone with her at a big family wedding. Not only was she not his type, being blonde and about a foot too tall, but he also only wanted her on his arm for show. And then he kissed her and her every conviction that she was safe fell at the first hurdle.
He caressed the corner of her mouth with his firm male lips and she tingled all over, every sense awakening. Her lips parted and then he surged in like an invasion force and took shameless advantage. It was an explosive kiss and she was lost in it as unfamiliar excitement blasted through her slender body with every delving dart of his skilful tongue. It was agonisingly intimate, much more so than any kiss had ever been for her. Little tremors of shocked reaction quivered through her, the inner burn at her core exercising an almost unbearable ache as he set her back from him with strong hands, eyes so dark they glittered like polished jet in his hard face. Her legs felt dislocated from the rest of her body and that ache, that ache she dimly recognised as unfulfilled desire, clawed cruelly at her. For a split second she wanted to snatch him back into her arms and conduct a wild experiment on him. It didn’t matter that he was her boss or that they were in a public place. All that was driving her in that moment was a fierce need to feel that same wild conscience-free excitement again and see where it would take her.
‘I wasn’t expecting actual ph-physical contact,’ Emmie told him shakily while in the background a man with a camera argued volubly with one of Bastian’s security men.
‘You can’t be that naïve. We’re supposed to be lovers. Anyway, what’s a kiss worth?’ Bastian derided with an elegant shrug of dismissal.
On her terms it had been more than a kiss; it had been the kind of intoxication she felt as if she had been waiting for all her life. But that was a silly immature thought more worthy of a teenage fantasist than a grown-up, she scolded herself, fighting to stay cool and in control. A kiss was just a kiss: he was right. And that he should know how to do it so well was hardly surprising with his reputation. Even less surprising was that she should finally lust after a man in earnest. It was only proof that she was a normal breathing woman, nothing she needed to agonise about…at least as long as she didn’t surrender to the temptation.
Bastian was still seething with himself as they boarded his private jet, hostile eyes veiled, jawline clenched, handsome mouth compressed. Diavelos, she was a freaking escort, admittedly not a hooker, but he remained deeply suspicious as to exactly what following such a profession entailed. Obviously pleasing men went hand in hand with the role, so was it really a revelation that she turned him on hard and fast? No, to cope with such a job she had to be a practised flirt and seductress and confident she could handle a man. Well, there was no way that she was going to get the chance to handle him! He had principles, standards and hell would freeze over before he went to bed with a hired escort!
Listening to Bastian growl at the steward’s efforts to ensure his comfort, Emmie rolled her eyes and picked up a magazine. He was in a bad mood and he wasn’t polite enough to keep it to himself. Those lustrous eyes below those thick sooty lashes were positively smouldering, his spectacular bone structure set like granite below his bronzed skin. Why? He was the one who had launched the kissing thing. Men! Who needed them? Odette always had, she reflected unhappily.
Emmie had few happy memories of her childhood years with her mother. Odette had divorced her father when he went bankrupt. It had been a very bitter divorce and when the twins’ father had remarried and begun a second family, he had immediately decided to forget that he already had two children. Emmie had last seen her father when she was twelve years old. She knew where he lived, knew what his wife looked like and the names of her half siblings: that was the joy of the Internet, which enabled spying from afar and which had satisfied her curiosity. With her sister, Kat’s encouragement she had written to her father when she was a teenager requesting contact but he had never bothered to respond, his silence making his lack of interest clear. His detachment teamed with her mother’s lack of affection had hurt deeply.
While she was still getting work as a model, Odette had enjoyed a never-ending stream of men in her life and she had brought every one of those men home. The only one who had even been passably nice and semi-interested in Odette’s daughters had been the father of Emmie’s youngest sister, Topsy, a South American polo player, whose affair with her mother had died a natural death when he went home again.
Emmie had sworn that she would never need a man in her life. Men were demanding and difficult; men took over; men were selfish. She watched Bastian help himself to a drink from the built-in bar without offering her anything and suppressed a sigh: he was putting out enough moody bad-tempered vibes to cast a claustrophobic storm cloud inside the spacious cabin.
‘You sulk like a girl…Do you throw a tantrum afterwards as well?’ Emmie heard herself say without even thinking about what she was saying. But she was fed up, really fed up. Here she was dressed up exactly as he had requested, punctual, smiling…well, not perhaps smiling, she conceded reluctantly, but at least she was willing to try, which was more than he was.
In astonishment, Bastian swung round and settled outraged golden eyes on her in disbelief. ‘What did you say?’
‘You’re very temperamental and I’m doing the best I can but I suppose I shouldn’t have used those particular words,’ Emmie responded ruefully. ‘If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d like a drink as well. A pure orange if you have it…’
The slightest tinge of colour accentuated his carved cheekbones at the unspoken reminder that he had not offered her a drink. He lifted a bottle and uncapped it.
‘It’s all right, you can relax,’ Emmie told him with helpless amusement as he extended the glass to her. ‘I already know you don’t have any manners.’
‘What the hell gives you the idea that you have the right to insult me?’ Bastian thundered down at her.
Emmie was not intimidated. ‘I didn’t think it was an insult to tell you the truth. You never say please or thank you and you walk through every door first. You’re a very rich and powerful man, most people you meet are subordinate to you and naturally you have learned to take advantage of that. Might is right. Money talks. That’s how the world works, so I can’t even blame you for it.’
Bastian was stunned by the level of sheer indignation rising inside him, but then he could not remember ever having been attacked in such a way by a woman before. Generally women bored him stiff with their fawning flattery. Who did she, a little office worker going nowhere, think she was to criticise him? And if this was ‘trying to please’, what did she do for an encore? Pull a gun on him?
‘I do not take advantage of my employees!’ Bastian shot back at her, because although he would very much have liked to say otherwise he could not recall the words ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ ever figuring much in his vocabulary. But then he was a man of few words, he reminded himself furiously, but he made those few words count and issued clear concise instructions that were rarely misunderstood. In addition, for the past two years running his company had won an award for being one of the best to work for, offering as it did unrivalled working conditions to its employees.
‘Well, you certainly take advantage of Marie,’ Emmie fielded without hesitation. ‘I did her time sheets and I know that for a fact. I’m sure you pay her an excellent salary—’
‘I do,’ Bastian sliced in grittily on the score of his trusted PA, while wondering how on earth he would tolerate Emmie for an entire weekend without killing her.
‘But I doubt if it’s enough to warrant keeping a married mother of three working until eight at night on Christmas Eve,’ Emmie tossed back. ‘Or for taking her abroad to work on her fortieth birthday, so that she had to reschedule her party.’
‘I didn’t ask Marie to work late on Christmas Eve. As for her birthday, as I have no idea when her birthday is I can’t comment. But I will point out that if she didn’t choose to mention a prior arrangement to me, you can’t blame me for it!’
‘It was Christmas Eve. You told her the work was urgent and she did it,’ Emmie expanded gently. ‘Of course she did. She’s very diligent. A considerate employer would have appreciated her position on that particular day of the year.’
Bastian ground his even white teeth together. ‘Keep quiet,’ he told her harshly. ‘I don’t want to hear another word out of you for the remainder of the flight!’
Emmie made a teasing zip-up gesture across her lips, which went down like a lead balloon. She veiled her eyes, cloaking the amusement there and then glanced at him again. She knew she was annoying him and she didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty. Well, he shouldn’t have kissed her, she reasoned, still resenting that breaking down of boundaries. That had been a step too far in their pretence. She glanced up again, collided unwarily with burning golden eyes and felt heat surge as if he had lit a torch inside her. Her cheeks burned. Standing there, tall, lean and dark as sin, even with that brooding sardonic slant to his hard chiselled features, he was too gorgeous for words.
‘You shouldn’t have kissed me,’ Emmie said abruptly into the heavy silence.
‘And how do you expect to put on a convincing act of being my girlfriend in my home if you can’t cope with one little kiss?’ Bastian derided.
‘There was no need for you to touch me. There were no witnesses at the airport who needed to be convinced of anything,’ Emmie pointed out. ‘We’ll get along better if you respect the ground rules—’
‘What ground rules?’ Bastian demanded grimly.
‘Please don’t touch me unless you absolutely have to.’ Emmie studied him with clear blue eyes and lifted her chin. ‘You may have bought my time but don’t make the mistake of believing you’ve bought anything else.’
‘Are you saying that you have never slept with a client?’ Bastian pressed with so much incredulity in his voice that she wanted to slap him hard.
‘Never,’ Emmie told him vehemently.
