скачать книгу бесплатно
And then she glanced down at her watch and the spider ran all the way up again.
Wrong. Leo Zamos was here.
It made no difference reminding herself that it was illogical to feel this way. She had no reason, no reason at all, to feel apprehensive. It wasn’t like he’d asked her to meet his plane. In fact, it wasn’t like he’d made any arrangements to see her at all. Logically, there was no reason why he should—she was his virtual PA after all. He paid her to run around on his behalf via the wonders of the world wide web, not to wait on him hand and foot.
Besides, there was simply no time to shoehorn her into his busy schedule even if he did have reason. She knew that for a fact because she’d emailed him the latest version this morning at six, just before she’d got into the shower and worked out her hot water service had chosen today of all days to die, not twenty-four hours after her clothes line had turned up its toes. A sign? She sure hoped not. If it was, it wasn’t a good one.
No wonder she was edgy.
And no wonder this strange sense of foreboding simmered away inside her like a pot of soup that had been on the boil so long that it had thickened and reduced until you could just about stand a spoon in it.
Damn.
She shot a warning look at a cloud threatening to block out the sun and gave the old rotary clothes hoist a spin, hoping to encourage a breeze while cursing the fact that right now she probably had more hope of controlling the weather than she did reining in her own illogical thoughts, and there was no chance of controlling Melbourne’s changeable weather.
And then she stiffened her jittery spine and headed back to the house, trying to shake off this irrational urge to do a Rip Van Evelyn and go to sleep until Leo Zamos was safely and surely out of her city.
What the hell was her problem?
Simple, the answer came right back at her, catching her so unawares she forgot to open the back door and almost crashed into it instead.
You’re afraid of him.
It stopped her for a moment. Stilled her muscles and cemented her bones with the certainty of someone who had good reason to fear.
Ridiculous, she chided, her mind swiftly writing off the possibility, her breath coming short as she finally forced her fingers to work enough to turn the door handle and let herself in. Leo Zamos was nothing to her but the best hourly rate she’d ever been paid. He was a meal ticket, the ticket to renovating her late-nineteenth-century bungalow she affectionately referred to as the hovel, a ticket to something better in her life and getting it a hell of a lot sooner than it would ever happen otherwise. She just wished she didn’t have to spend her renovation money on appliances now, before she even had an idea of what she’d need when the final plans came in.
She glanced upward at the strips of paint shredding from the walls of the laundry and the ivy that was creeping inside through the cracks where sixty years ago her grandfather had tacked it onto the back of the bungalow, and told herself she should be grateful for Leo’s business, not a jittery bundle of nerves just because he was in town. Their arrangement worked well. That was all that mattered. That’s what she had to concentrate on. Not some long-ago dusty memory that she’d managed to blow out of all proportion.
After all, Leo Zamos certainly wasn’t wasting any time fretting about her. And in less than forty-eight hours he’d be gone. There was absolutely nothing at all to be afraid of.
And then she pulled open the creaking laundry door and heard a deep rich voice she recognised instantly, if only because it instinctively made her toes curl and her skin sizzle, “…find me a woman for tonight…” and the composure she’d been battling to talk herself into shattered into a million pieces.
She stood there, rooted to the spot, staring at the phone as the call terminated, emotions warring for supremacy inside her. Fury. Outrage. Disbelief. All of them tangled in the barbed wire of something that pricked at her skin and deeper, something she couldn’t quite—or didn’t want to—put a name to.
She ignored the niggling prickle. Homed straight in on the fury.
Who the hell did Leo Zamos think he was?
And what did he think she was? Some kind of pimp?
She swooped around the tiny kitchen, gathering dishes and piling them clattering into the sink. Oh, she knew he had his women. She’d arranged enough Tiffany trinkets and bottles of perfume to be sent to his countless Kristinas and Sabrinas and Audrinas over the last two years—and all with the same terminal message—
Thanks for your company.
Take care.
Leo
—to know he’d barely survive a night without a bed-warmer. But just because he was in her home town it didn’t mean he could expect her to find him one.
Pipes groaned and hammered as she spun the hot water tap on fruitlessly, until she realised she needed to boil the kettle first to have any hope of hot water. But finally the sink was filled with suds and the tiny room was full of steam. She shoved her hands into rubber gloves and set upon attacking the stack of dishes and plastic cups, all but hidden under the froth and bubbles.
It had been lucky the machine had cut him off when it had or she might have been forced to pick up the receiver and tell him exactly what he could do with his demands—and that would be one sure way to terminate an income flow she had no way of replacing any time soon.
But, then, did she really want to work with a man who seemed to think it was perfectly acceptable asking his PA to organise him a night-time plaything? Maybe she should just call him herself. Remind him of the duties she had agreed to undertake.
Except that would require talking to him…
Oh, for heavens sake! On impulse she swiped at a tea towel and dried her gloves as she crossed the small living area towards the answering-machine, jabbing at a button before she could change her mind, her brain busy being rational. She dealt with his correspondence all the time, even if mostly by email. Surely she wasn’t about to go weak at the knees at the sound of his voice?
And then the message replayed and she heard the weight of expectation in his pause as he waited for her to pick up—expected her to pick up—before his message. “Listen, I need you to find me a woman for tonight…”
And this time her outrage was submerged in a tremor that started in a bloom of heat that radiated across her chest and down her belly, tingling as it shot down her arms and legs. Damn. She shook her hands as if to rid herself of the unwelcome sensations, and headed back to finish the dishes.
So nothing had changed. Because his voice had had the same unsettling effect on her from the very first time she’d heard him speak more than three years ago in a glass-walled boardroom fifty floors above Sydney’s CBD. She recalled the way he’d swept out of the lift that day, the air shifting in currents around him in a way that had turned heads and caused more than one woman to stumble as she’d craned her head instead of looking where she was going.
He’d seemed oblivious to his impact, sweeping into the boardroom like he owned it, spicing the air with a mix of musk and wood and citrus and radiating absolute confidence in himself and his role. And no wonder. For whether by sheer force of his personality or acute business acumen, or maybe the dark chocolate over gravel voice that had soothed everyone into submission, he’d successfully brought that deal to a conclusion that day, bringing together an over-eager buyer and a still unconvinced seller, and had had them both smiling as if they’d each got the better part of the deal.
She’d sat in the far corner of the room, taking minutes for her lawyer boss, while another part of her had been busy taking inventory of the man himself even as his rich voice had rippled through her and given birth to all kinds of wayward thoughts she had no business thinking.
Was there anything the man lacked?
Softness, she’d decided, drinking in the details, the thick black hair, the dark-as-night eyes, the strong angles of jaw and nose and the shadowed planes and recesses of his face. No, there was nothing soft about his looks, nothing at all. Even the lips that gave shape to that smooth-as-sin voice were fiercely masculine, a strong mouth she’d imagined as capable of both a smile as a cruel twist.
And then she’d looked up from her notebook to see him staring at her, his eyes narrowing, assessing as, without a move in his head, their focus moved down, and she’d felt his gaze like the touch of his long-fingered hand down her face and throat until with burning cheeks she’d wrenched her eyes away before she felt them wander still lower.
The rest of the meeting had passed in a blur and all she remembered was that every time she had looked up, it had seemed as though he was there, waiting to capture her eyes in his simmering gaze. And all the while the discussions had gone on around her, the finer points of the agreement hammered out, and all she’d been able to think about was discovering the sinful pleasures promised in his deep, dark eyes.
And when she’d gone to help organise coffee and had met him on the way back, she’d felt warmth bloom in her chest and pool in her belly when he’d smiled at her, and let him draw her gently aside with no more than a touch of his hand to her elbow that had almost had her bones melt.
‘I want you,’ he’d whispered, shocking her with his savage honesty, thrilling her with his message. ‘Spend the night with me,’ he’d invited, and his words had poured into all the places that had been empty and longing all her life, even the tiny crevices and recesses she’d never known existed until then.
And she, who had never been noticed in her life by anyone with such intensity, let alone a powerhouse of masculine perfection like this man, had done the only possible thing she could do. She’d said yes, maybe a little too breathlessly, a little too easily, for he’d growled and pulled her into a room stacked high with row upon row of files, already pulling her into his kiss, one hand at her breast, another curving around her behind even as he manoeuvred her to the furthest corner of the room.
Blown away by the man, blown away by the red-hot magma of sensations surging up inside her, she hadn’t made a move to stop him, hadn’t entertained the possibility until, with one hand under her shirt and his hard thighs wedged between hers, the door had opened and they’d both stilled and waited while whoever it was searched a row of files, pulling one out with a swish and exiting the room. And he’d pulled her shirt down and pushed the hair back from her face from where he’d loosened it from the coil behind her and asked her name, before he’d kissed her one more time. ‘Tonight, Eve,’ he’d said, before he’d straightened his tie and gone.
Cups clunked together under the suds and banged into the sides of the tiny sink, a sound reassuringly concrete right now. For this was her reality—a ramshackle bungalow it would cost a fortune to tear down and rebuild and probably more if she decided to renovate and try to preserve what original features might be worth saving.
She finished up the dishes and pulled the plug, letting the water go. She had commitments now. Obligations. A glimpse at her watch told her that her most important obligation would be waking up any minute now.
Would her life be any different if she had spent the night with Leo that night, if he hadn’t been called away with barely a hurried goodbye to sort out a hiccup in the next billionaire deal he had been brokering somewhere halfway around the world, and if they’d actually finished what they’d started in that filing room?
Or given how she’d been incapable of saying no to him that day, maybe her child might simply have been born with skin even more olive, hair a little thicker?
Not that Leo would make those kind of mistakes, she was sure.
No, it was better that nothing had happened that night. He wouldn’t be her client now if it had.
Besides, she knew what happened to the women Leo bedded. She could live without one of those terse thank-you notes, even if it did come attached to some pretty piece of bling.
The room darkened and she looked out the window in time to see the first fat drops fall from the dark clouds scudding across the sky and splatter against the glass.
‘I thought I warned you,’ she growled at the sky, already making for the back door and forgetting all about Leo Zamos for one short moment.
Until the phone rang again.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_738d1804-1e9c-58f8-bd51-8094be9ea369)
SHE stood there, one hand on the door handle, one thought to the pattering rain growing louder on the tin lean-to roof, and yet Eve made no move towards the clothesline as the phone rang the requisite number of times before the machine cut in, inviting the caller to leave a message.
‘Evelyn, it’s Leo.’
Redundant really. The flush of heat under her skin told her who it was, and she was forced to admit that even when he sounded half-annoyed, he still had the most amazing voice. She could almost feel the stroke of it across her heated skin, almost feel it cup her elbow, as his hand once had.
‘I’ve sent you an email,’ Leo continued, ‘or half of one, but this is urgent and I really need to speak with you. If you’re home, can you pick up?’
Annoyance slid down her spine. Of course it was urgent. Or it no doubt seemed urgent to Leo Zamos. A night without a woman to entertain him? It was probably unthinkable. It was also hardly her concern. And still the barbed wire prickling her skin and her psyche tangled tighter around her, squeezing her lungs, and she wished he’d just hang up so she could breathe again.
‘Damn it, Evelyn!’ he growled, his voice a velvet glove over an iron fist that would wake up the dead, let alone Sam if he kept this up. ‘It’s eleven a.m. on a Friday. Where the hell are you?’
And she realised that praying for the machine to cut him off was going to do no good at all if he was just going to call back, angrier next time. She snatched the receiver up. ‘I didn’t realise I was required to keep office hours.’
‘Evelyn, thank God.’ He blew out, long and hard and irritated, and she could almost imagine his free hand raking through his thick wavy hair in frustration. ‘Where the hell have you been? I tried to call earlier.’
‘I know. I heard.’
‘You heard? Then why didn’t you pick up? Or at least call me back?’
‘Because I figured you were quite capable of searching the Yellow Pages yourself.’
There was a weighted pause and she heard the roar of diesel engines and hum of traffic, and she guessed he was still on the way to the hotel. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I mean, I’ll do all manner of work for you as contracted. I’ll do your correspondence and manage your diary, without issue. I’ll set up appointments, do your word processing and I’ll even flick off your latest girlfriend with some expensive but ultimately meaningless bauble, but don’t expect me to act like some kind of pimp. As far as I recall, that wasn’t one of the services I agreed to provide.’
This time the pause stretched so long she imagined the line would snap. ‘Is something wrong?’
God, everything was wrong! She had appliances to replace that would suck money out of her building fund, she had a gut that was churning so hard she couldn’t think straight, and now she was expected to find this man a sleeping partner. ‘You’re the one who left the message on my machine, remember, asking me to fix you up with a woman for the night.’
She heard a muttered curse. ‘And you think I wanted you to find me someone to go to bed with.’
‘What else was I supposed to think?’
‘You don’t think me perfectly capable of finding my own bedtime companions?’
‘I would have expected so, given…’ She dropped her forehead in one hand and bit down on her wayward tongue. Oh, God, what was she thinking, sparring with a client, especially when that client was almost single-handedly funding her life and the future she was working towards? But what else could she do? It was hard to think logically with this churning gut and this tangle of barbs biting into her.
‘Given what, exactly?’ he prompted. ‘Given the number of “expensive but ultimately meaningless baubles” I’ve had you send? Why, Evelyn, anyone would think you were jealous.’
I am not jealous, she wanted to argue. I don’t care who you sleep with. But even in her own mind the words rang hollow and she could swear that the barbed wire actually laughed as it pulled tighter and pressed its pointed spines deeper into her flesh.
So, okay, maybe she had felt just a tiny bit cheated that nothing had happened that night and she hadn’t ended up in his bed, but it was hardly wrong to wonder, surely? It was curiosity, more than anything. Naturally she’d had plenty of time since then to count herself lucky she had escaped that fate, after seeing how efficiently and ruthlessly he dispensed with his women, but it didn’t stop her wondering what it would have been like…
She took a deep, calming breath, blew it out slowly and cursed whatever masochistic tendencies had made her pick up the phone in the first place when it would have been far more productive to rescue her washing than risk losing the best client she was ever likely to have. ‘I’m sorry. Clearly I misunderstood your message. What is it that I can do for you?’
‘Simple.’ His liquid voice flowed down the line now she was so clearly back on task. ‘I just need you to find me a wife.’
‘Are you serious?’
So far this call was going nothing like he’d anticipated. It wasn’t just her jumping to the wrong kind of conclusion about his earlier call that niggled at him, or her obvious disapproval of his sleeping habits—most PAs he’d met weren’t that openly prudish; in fact, most he’d encountered had been too busy trying to get into his pants—but there was something else that didn’t sit right about his indignant PA. She didn’t sound at all like he’d expected. Admittedly he was out of practice with that demographic, but since when did middle-aged women—any woman for that matter—ask their employer if they were serious?
‘Would I be asking if I weren’t? And I need her in time for that dinner with Culshaw tonight. And she probably doesn’t have to be a pretend wife—a pretend fiancée should do nicely.’
There was silence on the end of the line as the car climbed the sweeping approach to the Western Gate Bridge and for a moment he was almost distracted by the view of the buildings of Melbourne’s sprawling CBD to his left, the port of Melbourne on his right. Until he realised they’d be at his hotel in Southbank in a matter of minutes and he needed to get things moving. He had to have tonight’s arrangements squared away before he got tied up with his lunchtime meeting with the government regulators due to sign off on the transfer of ownership when it went ahead. He’d dealt with those guys before and knew it was likely to be a long lunch. ‘Evelyn?’
‘I’m here. Although I’m still not quite sure I understand.’
He sighed. What was so hard to understand? ‘Culshaw’s feeling insecure about the deal. Wants to be sure he’s dealing with solid family people and, given the circumstances, maybe I don’t blame him. Culshaw and Alvarez are both bringing their wives to dinner tonight, and I don’t want to do anything to make Culshaw more nervous by having me turn up alone, not when we’re so close to closing the deal. So I want you to increase the number at dinner to six and find me someone who can play my fiancée for a night.’
‘I can certainly let the hotel know to cater for six,’ she said, sounding like she meant to go on before there the line went quiet again and he sensed a ‘but’ coming.
‘Well?’ he prompted, running out of time and patience.
‘I can see what you’re trying to do.’ Her words spilled out in a rush. ‘But is taking along a pretend fiancée really wise? I mean, what if Culshaw finds out? How will that look?’
Her words grated on both his senses and his gut. Of course it was a risk, but right now, with Culshaw feeling so vulnerable, so too was turning up alone. ‘Choose the right woman,’ he said, ‘and that won’t be an issue. It’s only for a night after all. Are you anywhere near your email? I sent you an idea of what I’m looking for.’
‘Look, Mr Zamos—’
‘Leo.’
‘Okay, so, Leo, I appreciate that I got the wrong end of the stick before, but finding you someone to play fiancée, that’s not exactly part of the service I offer.’
‘No? Then let’s make it part of them.’
‘It’s not actually that simple.’
‘Sure it is. Find an acting school or something. Tell whoever you find that I’m willing to pay over the odds. Have you got that email yet?’
‘I’m opening it now,’ she said with an air of resignation, her Australian accent softened with a hint of husky sweetness. He decided he liked it. Idly he wondered what kind of mouth it was attached to. ‘Charming,’ she read from the list of characteristics he’d provided, and he wondered. Surprisingly argumentative would be a better way to describe his virtual PA right now.
‘Intelligent. Classy.’ Again he mused. She was definitely intelligent, given the calibre of work she did for him. Classy? Maybe so if she’d worked as a corporate PA for several years. It wasn’t a profession where you could get away with anything less than being impeccably groomed.
‘And I’ve thought of something else.’
‘Oh, goodie.’
Okay, so maybe charm wasn’t her strong point, but so long as she got him the perfect pretend fiancée, he would overlook it for now. ‘You might want to brief her on both Culshaw and Alvarez. Only the broad-brush stuff, no details. But it would be good if she wasn’t completely ignorant of the players involved and what they do and can at least hold a conversation. And, of course, she’ll need to know something about me as well. You know the kind of stuff…’
