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She sighed as the hot water in the shower finally kicked in and warmed her weary bones. A warm shower, a roof over her head and a bed with her name written on it. Things could always be worse.
And come summer and the longer days, she’d have time to see something of the sights of London she’d promised herself before she went home. Not that there was any hurry. At the rate she was paid, after her board was deducted, it would be ages before she could even think about booking a return airfare to Australia. God, she’d been so stupid to trust Kurt with her money!
A sudden pang of homesickness hit her halfway back down the stairs. Barely six weeks ago she’d left the tiny outback town of Kangaroo Crossing with such confidence, and now look at her. If only she could go home. If only she’d never left! She’d give anything to hug her mum and half-brothers again. She’d even find a smile for her stepfather if it came down to it. But when would that be? And how would she be able to face everyone when she did?
She would be going home humiliated. A failure.
The bright side, she urged herself, look at the bright side, as she pulled her eye mask down and snuggled under the covers, the cold rain lashing at her tiny window. She was warm and dry and she had at least ten hours’ sleep before she had to get up and do it all over again.
‘But you can’t close the hotel,’ Darius protested. ‘There are bookings. Guests!’
‘Who will be catered for, as will the staff we have on file from your finance application.’ Andreas snapped open his phone, made a quick call and slipped the phone back into his pocket. ‘I’m sure the guests won’t mind being transferred to the four-star hotel we’ve chosen to accommodate them in and you can be assured the employees will be paid a generous redundancy.’
He cast a disdainful eye around the room. ‘I don’t foresee any complaints. And now I want you off the premises. I have staff coming in to take over and ensure the changeover is smooth. The hotel will be empty in two hours.’
‘And what about me?’ Darius demanded. ‘What am I supposed to do? You’re leaving me with nothing. Nothing!’
Andreas slowly turned back, unable to stop his lips from forming into a sneer. ‘What about you? How many millions did you steal from my father? You happily walked away and left my family with nothing. What did you care about anyone else then? So why should I care about what happens to you? Just be grateful you’re able to walk out of here with your limbs intact after the way you betrayed my father.’
A buzzer sounded, the security monitor showing a team of people waiting on the front step. ‘Let them in, Darius.’ The older man’s hand hovered over the door-release button.
‘I can help you!’ he suddenly said instead, pulling his hand away to join the other in supplication. ‘You don’t need all these people. I know this hotel and I…I’m sorry for what happened all those years ago. It was a mistake…A misunderstanding. Your father and I were once good friends. Partners even. Isn’t there any way you might honour that?’
Andreas dragged much-needed air into his lungs. ‘I’ll honour it in the same way you honoured my father. Get out. You’ve got ten minutes. And then I never want to see you again.’
Darius knew when he was beaten. Sullenly he gathered his personal possessions, the form guide included, in a cardboard box and slunk away even as the team filed into the office. Andreas took two minutes to go over the arrangements. Someone would email all forward bookings and advise of the change of hotels while the rest of the team would meet guests as they returned to expedite their packing and transfer to the new hotel. New guests would simply be ferried to the alternative premises nearby. There was no reason for the operation not to go like clockwork.
His cell phone beeped again as he dismissed the team to their duties and he reached for it absently, taking just a second to savour what he’d achieved. The look on Darius’ face when he’d realised the truth, that he had lost everything and to the son of the man he’d cheated of millions so many years ago, was something he would cherish for ever. Doubly so because his father never could.
He frowned when he looked at the phone. Petra calling again? Kolisi, maybe there really was an emergency.
‘Ne?’
Half a continent away, Petra’s voice lit up. ‘Andreas!’ She sounded so bright he could almost hear the flashbulb.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Oh, I’ve been so worried about you. How is it in London? It is all going to plan?’
Andreas felt a stab of irritation. No emergency, then. Merely Petra thinking she had some stake in what was happening here. She was wrong. ‘Why are you calling, Petra?’
There was a pause. Then, ‘The Bonacelli deal! The papers are here ready to be signed.’
‘I expected that. I told you I’ll sign them when I get back.’
‘And Stavros Markos called,’ she continued at rapid pace, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘He wants to know if they can book out the entire Caldera Palazzo for their daughter’s wedding next June. It’s going to be huge. They only want the best and I told them it should be fine, though I have to put off another couple of enquiries—’
‘Petra,’ he cut in, ‘you know they can. You don’t have to ring me to confirm. What’s bothering you? Is there something else?’
There was silence at the end of the line, and then she laughed, an uncomfortable tinkle. Or at least, it made him feel uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry, Andreas,’ she continued. ‘It probably sounds silly, but I miss you. When do you think you’ll be back?’
Something clenched in his gut, the pattern of her constant phone calls making the kind of sense he didn’t want them to make. But there was no other option. She’d been checking up on him, making sure nobody else was occupying his bed or his attentions while he was in London and she was holding the fort back on Santorini.
He murmured something noncommittal before sliding his phone shut. What was wrong with her? He didn’t do relationships. Petra, more than anyone, should have understood that. She’d witnessed the parade of women through his life. Hell, she’d been the one to organise the flowers for them when they were on the inner, the trinkets for them when they were on the outer. But he’d made one fatal mistake, broken his own rule never to get involved with the staff.
Drunk on success and the culmination of years of planning, he’d let his guard down when he’d heard the news that Darius had been found and the trap set. He’d been the one to insist Petra go out to dinner with him to celebrate. He’d been the one to order the champagne and he’d been the one to respond when she leaned too close, all but spilling her breasts into his hands. He’d wanted the release and she’d been there.
What a fool! He’d always assumed she was as machine-like and driven as he was. He’d always thought that she’d understood it was always just sex to him. And yet every time Petra called him now, he could almost feel her razor-sharp nails piercing his skin all over again. But why she’d want to be his mistress when she knew which way they invariably went…
Cold fingers crawled down his spine.
Or did she have something else in mind? Something more permanent she thought she was due after working alongside him for so many years?
Sto thiavolo!
What had his mother been telling him in her recent phone calls? That maybe it was time for him to settle down and find a wife?
And who did his mother like to talk to first, calling the office line instead of his cell phone, because ‘her own son never bothered to tell her anything’?
Petra.
Had his mother also confided the news with her good friend’s daughter that it was time for her only child to settle down? He’d just bet she had.
Damn. He didn’t want to have to find a new marketing director. Petra was a good operator. The best at marketing the package of luxurious properties that Xenides Exclusive Property let to the well-heeled looking for a five-star experience in some of the most beautiful places in the world. She’d single-handedly designed the website that made his unique brand of five-star luxury accommodation accessible to every computer on the planet and made it so tempting that just as many booked through the website alone as booked by personal referral.
He didn’t want to lose her; together they made a good team. But neither did he want her thinking she was destined to be anything more to him than a valued employee.
He sighed. What would she do when he found someone else, as he inevitably would? Would she leave of her own accord?
Andreas made up his mind on a sigh. It was a risk he would just have to take. Petra’s departure from the business, while inconvenient, was preferable to her making wedding plans. All of which meant one thing.
He wouldn’t be returning to Santorini without a woman on his arm and in his bed.
She would have to be somebody new, somebody different, someone who could step into the role of his mistress and then step out when he no longer needed her. No strings. No ties.
A contract position. A month should be more than enough.
Now he just had to find her before his flight back to Greece tomorrow.
He looked around the dingy room and sighed, the weight of years of the need for vengeance sloughing from his shoulders. His work here was done, an old score settled and Darius vanquished. There was no need for him to linger; his team knew what to do. He could hear them now knocking on doors and explaining the move, smoothing any objections with the promise of four-star luxury and their bill waived for the inconvenience. They would make the necessary transfers and see to the stripping bare of the furnishings in preparation for the builders and decorators that would turn this place into something worthy of being included in the Xenides luxury hotel portfolio.
Everything was under control.
And that’s when he heard the scream.
Chapter Three
THE earth-shattering sound rang through the basement, followed by a torrent of language Andreas had no hope of discerning. He was down the hallway and at the open door in just a few strides. ‘What the hell is going on?’
One of his team was busy backing out of the small room, closely followed by a slipper that flew past his head and smacked into the wall behind. ‘I had no idea there was anyone here,’ he said defensively. ‘It was marked on the plans as a closet. And it’s barely six o’clock. What’s anyone doing in bed at this time of night, least of all here?’
‘Get out!’ screeched the voice. ‘Or I’ll call the manager. I’ll call the police!’
So much for everything being under control. Andreas ushered his red-faced assistant out of the way. ‘I’ll handle this.’
He stepped into the tiny room that smelt and looked more like a broom closet, ducking his head where the stairs cut through the headspace and avoiding the single globe dangling on a wire from the ceiling, under whose yellow light he found the source of the commotion. She was sitting up in bed, or on a camp stretcher more like it, with her back rammed tight against the wall, the bedding pulled up tight around her with one hand despite the fact her fleecy pyjamas covered every last square centimetre below her neck. In her other hand she wielded a second furry slipper.
Her eyes were wide and wild-looking under a pink satin eye mask reading ‘Princess’ that she’d obviously shoved up to her brow when she’d been disturbed. Some kind of joke, he decided. In her dishevelled state, with her mousy-coloured hair curling haphazardly around her face, she looked anything but princess material.
Then his eyes made sense of the smell. In the yellow light he saw the vacuum cleaner tucked at the end of the bed and the drab uniform draped unceremoniously over the radiator, and one question at least was answered. The cleaner, he surmised, the one he’d spotted earlier in the corridor who’d stunk of beer. No doubt she’d been trying to sleep it off when she’d been disturbed.
He tried to keep the sneer from his lips as he addressed her. ‘I must apologise for my people startling you,’ he began. ‘I assure you, nobody means you any harm. We simply didn’t realise you were here.’
‘Well, I am obviously here and your people have a bloody nerve going about bursting into other people’s rooms. What the hell are you playing at? Who are you? Where’s Demetrius?’
He held up his hands to calm her. She was Australian, he guessed from her accent, or maybe a New Zealander, but her words were spilling out too fast to be sure.
‘I think perhaps you should calm down and then we can discuss this rationally.’
Her hand lifted the slipper. ‘Calm down? Discuss rationally? You and your henchman have no right barging into my room. Now get out before I scream again.’
Gamoto, the way she clung to those bedcovers as if her virtue were at stake! Did she really think he was going to attack her? It would take a braver man than him to tackle those industrial-strength pyjamas she was buried beneath.
‘I’ll leave,’ he conceded, ‘but only so you can get dressed. Come out when you’re ready to talk. It is impossible to reason with a woman sitting in bed dressed up like a clown.’
Her jaw fell open, snapping shut again on a huff. ‘How dare you? You have no right to be here. No right at all.’
‘I have every right! I’ve wasted enough time here as it is. Now get dressed and meet me in the office. I’ll speak to you then.’
He spun away, pulling the door closed behind him, but not before the other pink slipper went hurtling over his shoulder like a furry missile.
He’d barely started pacing the office floor, damning Darius for the spitting, snarling legacy he’d left behind, when he heard someone behind him. He turned to find a young woman in jeans and a top standing there, her expression sullen, her feet bare.
He sighed. What the hell else, he thought, has Darius left me to clean up? ‘Can I help you?’
‘You tell me. You’re the one who demanded my presence.’
His eyes did a double take. This was the cleaner? The banshee ready to scream the house down in the broom closet? He didn’t know what to be more impressed by, her speed in complying with his orders—the women he associated with couldn’t effect a quick change if their life depended on it—or the radical change in her appearance.
He asked her to shut the door behind her and he leaned back and perched himself on the edge of the desk, watching her as she complied. She’d discarded the fleecy pyjamas and ridiculous eye mask and pulled on faded jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and that brought the second surprise. She wasn’t tall, but what she missed out on in height she made up for in curves. He’d never have guessed there was shape under that drab uniform or hidden away under a mound of bed clothes, but her fitted T-shirt and hipster jeans accentuated the swell of breasts and the feminine curve of waist to hip that had been completely disguised before.
Nor would he have guessed she would scrub up so well. Sure, there were still grey shadows under her eyes, but she looked years younger than the haggard wreck he’d seen struggling with the vacuum cleaner in the hallway, and much less frightening than the banshee he’d encountered so recently in the closet-cum-bedroom. With not a hint of make-up and with her damp hair tamed into some kind of loose arrangement behind her head, a few loose tendrils coiled around her face served to soften features that weren’t classical in the least.
She would never pass for pretty, he determined, but if she bothered to make an effort she could probably do something with herself.
Although right now it looked as if she’d much prefer to do something with him, preferably involving knives.
He caught the glower as she folded her arms underneath her breasts and wondered if she had any idea that motion just accentuated their fullness. Or that it drew attention to their peaking nipples.
So she hadn’t bothered to put on a bra? No wonder she’d been so quick to appear. He was surprised to feel his body stir, but then he’d never had a problem with such time-saving measures, or with breasts that looked like an invitation. Despite the inconvenience, he could only be intrigued by the closet-dweller. He was sure he’d seen no mention of her in the reports that had crossed his desk.
Cleo bristled under the relentless gaze. What was his problem? She’d done what he’d demanded—abandoned any hope of sleep to get herself up and dressed and met him in the office and for what? So his eyes could rake over her as if she were some choice cut of meat in a butcher-shop window?
So maybe the look was marginally better than the one he’d given her in the hallway earlier when he’d regarded her as some kind of scum before sweeping imperiously by, but it certainly didn’t make her feel any more comfortable.
Quite the reverse. She rubbed her upper arms, not from the chill, but to ward off the prickling sensation his gaze generated under her skin. And if she was lucky the action might just break whatever magnet hold his eyes had on her breasts.
He only had to look at them for her nipples to harden to rocks.
Damn the man! Arrogance shone out of him like a beacon, but the only thing it was lighting up was her temper.
‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about or would you prefer to keep ogling me?’ She looked around the office. ‘Where’s Demetrius?’
‘The man you know as Demetrius is gone.’
Of course he would speak in riddles. The man was insufferable. ‘What are you talking about? Gone where? When will he be back?’ She’d never much liked her boss, who’d seemed more concerned with his form guide than with how his hotel was falling down around his ears, but as far as she was concerned, the sooner he was back, the better.
‘He won’t be back. This hotel now belongs to me.’
His revelation slammed through her like a thunderbolt. Where did that leave her? Her rapidly chilling toes curled into the cracked linoleum while a shudder of apprehension wormed its way into her mind. Whatever had happened must have been sudden. She’d heard Demetrius on the phone to his turf accountant when she’d finished the last room, just before this man had appeared, larger than life. A bloodless coup. And the man in front of her, with his cold eyes and strong jaw, looked just the kind of ruthless man for the job. Ruthless—but also her new boss. She swallowed, horrified at the impression she’d made so far. Hadn’t she flung a slipper past his ear? ‘What is this, then, some kind of interview? Okay, my name is Cleo Taylor and I’ve been cleaning here for three weeks, and doing the breakfasts. Demetrius probably told you—’
‘Demetrius told me nothing. There was no mention of you in the list of employees we had.’
‘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.
