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And that had been at the root of her sacking, apparently. The fact that she had broken trust with a valued client. She had blabbed—and Alek Sarantos was seething. Apparently, the telephone wires had been practically smoking when he’d rung up to complain about the diary piece which had found its way into a national newspaper.
The day was heavy and overcast and she heard the distant rumble of thunder as she brought her bike to a halt outside the hostel which was home to The Hog’s junior staff. Ellie locked her bike to the railings and opened the front door. Next to one of the ten individual doorbells was her name—but not for very much longer. She had a month to find somewhere new to live. A month to find herself a new job. It was a daunting prospect in the current job market and it looked as if she’d gone straight back to square one. Who would employ her now?
A louder rumble of thunder sounded ominously as she made her way along the corridor to her small room. The day was so dark that she clicked on the light and the atmosphere was so muggy that strands of her ponytail were sticking to the back of her neck. The day yawned ahead as she filled the kettle and sat down heavily on the bed to wait for it to boil.
Now what did she do?
She stared at the posters she’d hung on the walls—giant photos of Paris and New York and Athens. All those places she’d planned to visit when she was a hotshot hotelier, which was probably never going to happen now. She should have asked about a reference. She wondered if the hotel would still give her one. One which emphasised her best qualities—or would they make her sound like some kind of desperado who spent her time trying it on with wealthy guests?
Her doorbell shrilled and she gave a start, but the sense that none of this was really happening gave her renewed hope. Was it inconceivable to think that the big boss of the hotel might have overridden his HR boss’s decision? Realised that it had been nothing but a foolish one-off and that she was too valuable a member of staff to lose?
Smoothing her hands over her hair, she ran along the corridor and opened the front door—her heart clenching with an emotion she was too dazed to analyse when she saw who was standing there. She blinked as if she’d somehow managed to conjure up the brooding figure from her fevered imagination. She must have done—because why else would Alek Sarantos be outside her home?
A few giant droplets of rain had splashed onto the blackness of his hair and his bronze skin gleamed as if someone had spent the morning polishing it. She’d forgotten how startlingly blue his eyes looked, but now she could see something faintly unsettling glinting from their sapphire depths.
And even in the midst of her confusion—why was hehere?—she could feel her body’s instinctive response to him. Her skin prickled with a powerful recognition and her breasts began to ache, as if realising that here was the man who was capable of giving her so much pleasure when he touched them. She could feel colour rushing into her cheeks.
‘Mr Sarantos,’ she said, more out of habit than anything else—but the cynical twist of his lips told her that he found her words not only inappropriate, but somehow insulting.
‘Oh, please,’ he said softly. ‘I think we know each other well enough for you to call me Alek, don’t you?’
The suggestion of intimacy unnerved her even more than his presence and her fingers curled nervelessly around the door handle she was clutching for support. Now the rumble of thunder was closer and never had a sound seemed more fitting. ‘What...what are you doing here?’
‘No ideas?’ he questioned silkily.
‘To rub in the fact that you’ve lost me my job?’
‘Oh, but I haven’t,’ he contradicted softly. ‘You managed to do that all by yourself. Now, are you going to let me in?’
Ellie told herself she didn’t have to. She could slam the door in his face and that would be that. She doubted he would batter the door down—even though he looked perfectly capable of doing it. But she was curious about what had brought him here and the rest of the day stretched in front of her like an empty void. She was going to have to start looking for a new job—she knew that. But not today.
‘If you insist,’ she said, turning her back on him and retracing her steps down the corridor. She could hear him closing the front door and following her. But it wasn’t until he was standing in her room that she began to wonder why she had been daft enough to let him invade her space.
Because he looked all wrong here. With his towering physique and jewelled eyes, he dominated the small space like some living, breathing treasure. He seemed larger than life and twice as intimidating—like the most outrageously alpha man she had ever set eyes on. And that was making her feel uncomfortable in all kinds of ways. There was that honeyed ache deep down in her belly again and a crazy desire to kiss him. Her body’s reaction was making her thoughts go haywire and her lips felt like parchment instead of flesh. She licked them, but that only made the aching worse.
The kettle was reaching its usual ear-splitting crescendo just before reaching boiling point and the great belches of steam meant that the room now resembled a sauna. Ellie could feel a trickle of sweat running down her back. Her shirt was sticking to her skin and her jeans were clinging to her thighs and once again she became horribly aware of her own body.
She cleared her throat. ‘What do you want?’ she said.
Alek didn’t answer. Not immediately. His anger—a slow, simmering concoction of an emotion—had been momentarily eclipsed by finding himself in the kind of environment he hadn’t seen in a long time.
He looked around. The room was small and clean and she had the requisite plant growing on the windowsill, but there was a whiff of institutionalisation about the place which the cheap posters couldn’t quite disguise. The bed was narrower than any he’d seen in years and an unwilling flicker of desire was his reward for having allowed his concentration to focus on that. But he had once lived in a room like this, hadn’t he? When he’d started out—much younger than she was now—he’d been given all kinds of dark and inhospitable places to sleep. He’d worked long hours for very little money in order to earn money and get a roof over his head.
He lifted his eyes to her face, remembering the powerful way his body had reacted to her the other night and trying to tell himself that it had been a momentary aberration. Because she was plain. Ordinary. If he’d passed her in the street, he wouldn’t have given her a second glance. Her jeans weren’t particularly flattering and neither was her shirt. But her eyes looked like silver and wavy strands of pale hair were escaping from her ponytail and the ends were curling, so that in the harshness of the artificial light she looked as if she were surrounded by a faint blonde halo.
A halo. His mouth twisted. He couldn’t think of a less likely candidate for angelic status.
‘You sold your story,’ he accused.
‘I didn’t sell anything,’ she contradicted. ‘No money exchanged hands.’
‘So the journalist is clairvoyant, is that what you’re saying? She just guessed we were making out?’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not what I’m saying at all. She saw us. She was standing behind a tree having a cigarette and saw us kissing.’
‘You mean it was a set-up?’ he questioned, his tone flat.
‘Of course it wasn’t a set-up!’ She glared at him. ‘You think I deliberately arranged to get myself the sack? Rather a convoluted way to go about it, don’t you think? I think being caught dipping your fingers in the till is the more traditional way to go.’
He raised his eyebrows in disbelief. ‘So she just happened to be there—’
‘Yes!’ she interrupted angrily. ‘She did. She was a guest, staying at the hotel. And the next day she cornered me in the restaurant while I was serving her and there was no way I could have avoided talking to her.’
‘You still could have just said no comment when she started quizzing you,’ he accused. ‘You didn’t have to gush and call me a pussycat—to damage my business reputation and any credibility I’ve managed to build up. You didn’t have to disclose what you’d overheard when you’d clearly been listening in to my telephone conversation.’
‘How could I help but listen in, when you broke off to take a call in front of me?’
He glared at her. ‘What right did you have to repeat any of it?’
‘And what right do you have to come here, hurling all these accusations at me?’
‘You’re skirting round the issue. I asked you a question, Ellie. Are you going to answer it?’
There was an odd kind of silence before eventually she spoke.
‘She told me you had a girlfriend,’ she said.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘So you felt that gave you the right to gossip about me, knowing it might find its way into the press?’
‘How could I, when I didn’t know what her job was?’
‘You mean you’re just habitually indiscreet?’
‘Or that you’re just sexually incontinent?’
He sucked in an angry breath. ‘As it happens, I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment and if I did, then I certainly wouldn’t have been making out with you. You see, I place great store on loyalty, Ellie—in fact, I value it above everything else. While you, on the other hand, don’t seem to know the meaning of the word.’
Ellie was taken aback by the coldness in his eyes. She had made a mistake, yes—but it had been a genuine one. She hadn’t set out to deliberately tarnish his precious reputation.
‘Okay,’ she conceded. ‘I spoke about you when maybe I shouldn’t have done and, because of that, you’ve managed to get me the sack. I’d say we were quits now, wouldn’t you?’
He met her gaze.
‘Not quite,’ he said softly.
A shiver of something unknowable whispered over her skin as she stared at him. There was something unsettling in his eyes. Something distracting about the sudden tension in his hard body. She stared at him, knowing what he was planning to do and knowing it was wrong. So why didn’t she ask him to leave?
Because she couldn’t. She’d dreamed about just such a moment—playing it out in her mind, when it had been little more than a fantasy. She had wanted Alek Sarantos more than she had thought it possible to want anyone and that feeling hadn’t changed. If anything, it had grown even stronger. She could feel herself trembling as he reached out and hauled her against him. The angry expression on his face made it seem as if he was doing something he didn’t really want to do and she felt a brief flicker of rebellion. How dare he look that way? She told herself to pull away, but the need to have him kiss her again was dominating every other consideration. And maybe this was inevitable—like the thunder which had been rumbling all day through the heavy sky. Sooner or later you just knew the storm was going to break.
His mouth came down on hers—hard—and the hands which should have been pushing him away were gripping his shoulder, as she kissed him back—just as hard. It felt like heaven and it felt like hell. She wanted to hurt him for making her lose her job. She wanted him to take back all those horrible accusations he’d made. And she wanted him to take away this terrible aching deep inside her.
Alek shuddered as he heard the little moan she made and he told himself to tug her jeans down and just do it. To give into what they both wanted and feed this damned hunger so that it would go away and leave him. Or maybe he should just turn around and walk out of that door and go find someone else. Someone immaculate and cool—not someone all hot and untidy from cycling on the hottest day of the year.
But she was soft in his arms. So unbelievably soft. She was like Turkish Delight when you pressed your finger against it, anticipating that first sweet, delicious mouthful. He pulled his lips away from hers and slowly raised his head, meeting a gaze which gleamed silver.
‘I want you,’ he said.
He saw her lips tremble as they opened, as if she was about to list every reason why he couldn’t have her and he guessed there might be quite a long list. And then he saw something change—the moment when her eyes darkened and her skin started to flush. The what-the-hell? moment as she looked at him with naked invitation in her eyes.
‘And I want you, too,’ she said.
It was like dynamite. Like nothing he’d ever known as he drove his lips back down on hers. A kiss which made him feel almost savage with need. It went on and on until they were both breathless, until he drew his mouth away from hers and could suck in a ragged breath of air. Her eyes were wide and very dark and her lips were trembling. With a sense of being slightly out of control, he tugged open her shirt to reveal the spill of her breasts and stared at them in disbelief.
‘Theo,’ he said softly. ‘Your breasts are magnificent.’
‘A-are they?’
‘They are everything I dreamed they would be. And more.’
‘Have you been dreaming about my breasts?’
‘Every night.’
He drew a finger over one generous curve and he heard her moan as he bent to touch his lips to the same spot. And that was when she chose to press her palm over the tight curve of his denim-covered buttock, as if tacitly giving him her permission to continue.
He groaned as he straightened up to kiss her again and once he’d started he couldn’t seem to stop. It was only when she began to writhe frustratedly that he tugged off the elastic band so that her pale hair spilled free, and suddenly she managed to look both wholesome and wanton. She looked...like a woman, he thought longingly. Soft and curving; warm and giving.
His hands were shaking as he stripped her bare, then laid her down on the narrow bed as he removed his own clothes, his eyes not leaving her face. With shaking hands he groped for his wallet and found a condom. Thank God. Slipping it on as clumsily as if it had been his first time, he moved over her, smoothing back her thick hair with hands which were still unsteady. And as he entered her a savage cry was torn from his throat.
He moved inside her and it felt pretty close to heaven. Sweet heaven. He had to keep thinking about random stuff about mergers and acquisitions to stop himself from coming and it seemed like an eternity until at last her body began to tense beneath him. Until she stiffened and her back arched and, inexplicably—she started to cry.
Only then did Alek let go himself, although the salty wetness of her tears against his cheek gave him a moment of disquiet. Outside, the thunder seemed to split the sky. The rain began to teem down against the window. And his body was torn apart by the longest orgasm of his life.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_9ef8b313-a653-56f1-8522-2ce2f5e716b0)
ELLIE TURNED THE SIGN to Closed and started clearing away stray currants and dollops of frosting from the glass counters which lined the cake shop. She stacked cardboard boxes, swept the floor and took off her frilly apron.
And then she went and stood at the back of the little store, and wept.
The tears came swiftly and heavily and she tried to think of them as cathartic as she covered her face with her hands. But as they dripped through her fingers all she could think was: How had this happened?How had her life suddenly become a living nightmare?
She knew she’d been lucky finding work and accommodation at Candy’s Cupcakes so soon after leaving the hotel. She’d been doubly lucky that the kindly Bridget Brody had taken a shine to her, and not cared about her ignominious sacking. But it was hard to focus on gratitude right now. In fact, it was hard to focus on anything except the one thing she couldn’t keep ignoring. But you couldn’t make something go away, just because you wanted it to—no matter how hard you wished it would. Her feet were heavy as she made her way up to the small, furnished apartment above the shop, but not nearly as heavy as her heart.
The mirror in the sitting room was hung in a position you couldn’t avoid, unless you walked into the room with your eyes shut, which was never a good idea with such uneven floorboards. The healthy tan she’d acquired while working in the garden restaurant of The Hog had long since faded. Her face was pasty, her breasts were swollen and her skin seemed too loose for her body. And she’d lost weight. She couldn’t eat anything before midday because she kept throwing up. She hadn’t needed to see the double blue stripes on the little plastic stick to confirm what she already knew.
That she was pregnant with Alek Sarantos’s baby and didn’t know what she was going to do about it.
Slumping down in one of the overstuffed armchairs, she stared blankly into space. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. There was only one thing she could do. She had to tell him.
She had to.
It didn’t matter what her personal feelings were, or that fact that there had been a deafening silence ever since the Greek billionaire had walked out of her bedroom, leaving her naked in bed. This was about more than her. She knew what it was like not to have a father and no real identity. To feel invisible—as if she were only half a person. And that wasn’t going to happen to her baby. She hugged her arms tightly around her chest. She wouldn’t allow it to happen.
But how did you tell someone you were having his baby when he had withdrawn from you in more ways than one as soon as he’d had his orgasm?
Her mind drifted back to that awful moment when she’d opened her eyes to find Alek Sarantos lying on top of her in the narrow bed in the staff hostel. His warm skin had been sticking to hers and his breathing sounded as if he’d been in a race. On a purely physical level, her own body was glowing with the aftermath of the most incredible sexual experience of her life—although she didn’t exactly have a lot to compare it with. Her body felt as if she were floating and she wanted to stay exactly where she was—to capture and hold on to the moment, so that it would never end.
But unfortunately, life wasn’t like that.
She wasn’t sure what changed everything. They were lying there so close and so quiet while the rain bashed hard against the windows. It felt as if their entire lives were cocooned in that little room. She could feel the slowing beat of his heart and the warmth of his breath as it fanned against the side of her neck. She wanted to fizz over with sheer joy. She’d had a relationship before—of course she had—but she had never known such a feeling of completeness. Did he feel it, too? She remembered reaching up to whisper her fingertips over his hair with soft and rhythmical strokes. And that was the moment when she read something unmistakable on his face. The sense that he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life. She could see it in his eyes—those compelling blue eyes, which went from smoky satisfaction through to ice-cold disbelief as he realised just where he was. And with whom.
With a wince he didn’t even bother disguising, he carefully eased himself away from her, making sure the condom was still intact as he withdrew. She remembered the burning of her cheeks and feeling completely out of her depth. Her mind was racing as she thought how best to handle the situation, but her experience of men was scant and of Greek billionaires, even scanter. She decided that coolness would be the way to go. She needed to reassure him that she wasn’t fantasising about walking up the aisle wearing a big white dress, just because they’d had sex. To act as if making love to a man who was little more than a stranger was no big deal.
She reminded herself that what they’d done had been driven by anger and perhaps it might have been better if it had stayed that way. Because if it hadn’t suddenly morphed into a disconcerting whoosh of passion, then she might not be lying there wishing he would stay and never leave. She might not be starting to understand her own mother a bit more and to wonder if this was what she had felt. Had she lain beside her married lover like this, and lost a little bit of her heart to him, even though she must have known that he was the wrong man?
She remembered feigning sleepiness. Letting her lashes flutter down over her eyes as if the lids were too heavy to stay open. She could hear him moving around as he picked up his clothes from the floor and began pulling them on and she risked a little peep from between her lashes, to find him looking anywhere except at her. As if he couldn’t bear to look at her. But she guessed it was a measure of how skewed her thinking was that she was still prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
‘Alek?’ she said—casual enough to let him know she wouldn’t mind seeing him again, but not so friendly that it could be interpreted as pushy.
He was fully dressed by now—although he looked dishevelled. It was strange to see the powerful billionaire in her room, his shirt all creased from where it had been lying on the floor. He was running his fingers through his ruffled hair and his skin gleamed with the exertion of sex, but it was his eyes which got to her. His eyes were cold. Cold as ice. She saw him checking in his pocket for his car keys. Or maybe he was just checking that his wallet was safe.
‘That was amazing,’ he said, and her suddenly happy heart wanted to burst out of her chest, until his next words killed the dream for ever.
‘But a mistake,’ he finished with a quick, careful smile. ‘I think we both realise that. Goodbye, Ellie.’
And then he was gone and Ellie was left feeling like a fool. He didn’t even slam the door and for some reason that only added to her humiliation. As if the quiet click as he shut it behind him was all he could be bothered with.
She didn’t move for ages. She lay in that rumpled bed watching the rain running in rivulets over the window, like giant tears. Why had she cried afterwards? Because it had been so perfect? And that was the most stupid thing of all. It had. It had felt like everything her faintly cynical self had never believed in. He’d made her feel stuff she’d never felt before. As if she was gorgeous. Precious. Beautiful. Did he do that with everyone woman he had sex with? Of course he did. It was like tennis, or playing poker. If you practised something often enough, you got very accomplished at doing it.
She went straight to shower in the shared bathroom along the corridor in an attempt to wash away her memories, but it wasn’t that easy. Vivid images of Alek seemed to have stamped themselves indelibly on her mind. She found herself thinking about him at inconvenient times of the day and night and remembering the way he had touched her. And although time would probably have faded those memories away she’d never had a chance to find out because her period had been late.
What was she talking about? Her period hadn’t been late. It just hadn’t arrived and she was normally as regular as clockwork. Waves of nausea had begun striking her at the most inopportune times and she knew she couldn’t keep putting it off.
She was going to have to tell him. Not next week, nor next month—but now.
Firing her ancient computer into life, she tapped in the name of the Sarantos organisation, which seemed to have offices all over the world. She prayed he was still in London and as the distinctive blue logo flashed up on the screen, it seemed he was. According to the company website, he’d given a speech about ‘Acquisitions & Mergers’ at some high-profile City conference, just the evening before.
Even if she’d known his home address—which of course she didn’t—it made much more sense to go to his office. She remembered him telling her that he always stayed late. She would go there and explain that she had something of vital importance to tell him and—even if it was only curiosity—she was certain he would listen.
And if he didn’t?
Then her conscience would be clear, because at least she would have tried.
Wednesday was her day off and she travelled by train to London, on another of the sticky and humid days which had been dominating the English summer. Her best cotton dress felt like a rag by the time she left the train at Waterloo and she had a nightmare journey on the Underground before emerging close to St Paul’s cathedral.
She found the Sarantos building without too much difficulty—a giant steel and glass monolith soaring up into the cloudless blue sky. Lots of people were emerging from the revolving doors and Ellie shrank into the shadows as she watched them heading for the local bars and Tube. How did the women manage to look so cool in this sweltering heat, she wondered—and how could they walk so quickly on those skyscraper heels they all seemed to wear?
She walked into the reception area, where the blessed cool of the air conditioning hit her like a welcome fan. She could see a sleek woman behind the desk staring at her, but she brazened it out and walked over to one of the squidgy leather sofas which were grouped in the far corner of the lobby, sinking down onto it with a feeling of relief.
