could talk, then yours is saying “take me”. You’re a walking advert for sex. I’m surprised you haven’t been arrested, walking the streets dressed in that. Or perhaps undressed would be a better description.’
This was the point where she should tell him that she had until a few hours ago been working as a waitress. But she had no intention of doing that. And anyway, when had she ever allowed herself to be defined by her job? ‘How I dress is my choice.’
‘I agree absolutely,’ he drawled, a cynical gleam in his dark eyes. ‘But, having made that choice, you cannot then object when a man responds in a predictable way. We’re not very advanced when it comes to matters as basic as sex. You chose to dress like that, and therefore it follows that you wanted to invoke a certain reaction in the male sex. And that is entirely in keeping with your reputation.’
Chantal felt a flicker of unease. What exactly had Isabelle been up to?
It would have been helpful to know.
Apart from the obvious deduction that she was the sort of woman willing to carelessly drop a coveted ticket in a hotel dustbin, Chantal knew nothing about her. But her curious, inventive mind had already started filling in the gaps. What had made a woman discard a ticket to an event to which only a select few were allowed access?
Who was she?
Judging from the derisive curl of Angelos’s mouth, no one she ever wanted to meet.
Chantal chewed her lip, trying not to reflect on the irony of the fact that she’d obviously borrowed the identity of a woman whose life was every bit as complex as her own.
Now what?
What should she do? Her whole life had been a web of lies since childhood, but her lies were only self-protection, and they’d never actually harmed anyone, had they? This was the first time that any of her stories had caught up with her and she felt a flutter of nerves in her stomach.
After their one explosive encounter she’d been left with the impression that he wouldn’t ever want to cross her path again. Even now she didn’t understand why he’d brought her here. At first she’d assumed it was for sex, but there was nothing lover like about the way he was glaring at her.
‘So what do you want from me?’ He came from a different world, and that world still had the ability to shrink her back to a terrified schoolgirl.
Victim.
The word flew into her head and she pushed it away immediately, straightening her shoulders.
She wasn’t going to be anyone’s victim. Never again.
Visibly tense, he tugged impatiently at the knot of his tie and undid the top button of his shirt, clearly finding it constricting. ‘You are going to continue the charade that you began the night of the ball.’
‘Sorry?’
Anger flashed in his dark eyes and his hand sliced through the air in a furious gesture. ‘Do not pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about,’ he breathed, ‘when we both know that you used the ball as a means to meet me.’
‘I’ve already told you that I didn’t. I—’
‘You virtually threw yourself across my path. And from the moment we met you couldn’t stop looking at me.’
‘Well, in order to have noticed you must have been looking at me too,’ Chantal offered logically, and he inhaled sharply.
‘You danced as though we were already horizontal in the bedroom.’
‘You danced too.’
Her comment did nothing to alleviate his temper. He muttered something in Greek that she just knew would be better off not translated.
‘I ought to congratulate you.’ He switched back to English, his derisive tone suggesting that congratulations were the last thing on his mind. ‘I thought I’d been on the receiving end of every possible trick, but you took the whole thing to an entirely new level.’
‘You’re obviously very angry, but—’
‘You’re right, I’m angry. Over the years various women have gone to enormous lengths to attract my attention. They pose as businesswomen, they apply for a job with me, they book tables in restaurants where I am dining, they hover outside my house in the hope of bumping into me. Sometimes they just turn up in my office wearing next to nothing, in the hope that they’ll attract my attention.’
‘Really?’ Astonished that some women had the confidence to go to those lengths to meet someone, Chantal gaped at him. ‘Gosh. That’s amazing.’
‘It is not amazing. It is intrusive and unacceptable.’
‘It must be one of the drawbacks of being a billionaire, I suppose. Can’t you laugh about it?’
He threw her an incredulous glance and sucked in a breath. ‘It is not amusing. Particularly when a woman stoops so low as to target my father in order to gain my attention.’
‘Ah.’ Finally sensing the direction of the conversation, Chantal gave an awkward shrug. ‘Actually, that wasn’t exactly what happened.’
The expression on his handsome face was grim as he surveyed her. ‘That is exactly what happened. Having danced with me, you then targeted him—like the greedy, unscrupulous, predatory woman you so clearly are.’
‘I didn’t know he was your father until you arrived with the drinks. And he approached me.’
‘Of course he did. My father’s fatal weakness is beautiful women—a fact of which you were well aware.’
‘I knew nothing about your father until that night.’ Until he’d rescued her. ‘I really liked him.’
Angelos shot her a look so fierce it would have stopped a riot. ‘I’m sure you did. He’s rich. And you have a taste for rich men—don’t you, Isabelle?’
‘Do I?’
‘Obviously. Given that you have already fleeced two in divorce settlements—one of them older than my father. For a woman of twenty six, you’ve been extremely busy.’
Chantal gasped. This Isabelle woman had married two men? One of them considerably older than her?
Perhaps continuing to let him believe that she was Isabelle hadn’t been such a sensible idea, after all.
The situation was going from bad to worse, and it was obvious that she just needed to walk away from it and try and put the whole thing behind her.
‘I’m obviously not your favourite person right now,’ she ventured cautiously, ‘so why am I here? Why did you come looking for me?’
‘Because of the lies you told my father.’
‘Lies?’ Shrinking at the memory of that particular conversation, Chantal stood there helplessly. She couldn’t explain without revealing things about herself that she’d spent her life concealing.
‘You
