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
