doesn’t like it, surmised Angelos. She doesn’t like parading up and down on command. Doesn’t like taking orders. Showing herself off. He could see her resentment in every stiffened line of her body as she stalked up and down.
‘That’s enough.’
The girls stopped, came back to the table. The creative director leant forward to say something to Angelos, but he held out a hand to silence him. His gaze remained on the girls clustering around. He worked his gaze along them, his face expressionless.
Then he simply said, ‘You, you, you,’ nodding at each he’d chosen in turn.
One was blonde, with long hair down to her waist—clearly her particular asset—the second was an aristocratic brunette, and the third was Eurasian and any man’s private fantasy. They would all be ideal for the campaign.
Having made the required decision, he left everything else to his staff. But as he got to his feet his eyes went to the girl at the end of the row. She looked even more apart than before. The other rejected girls were peeling off into a group, some shrugging, some looking unconcerned, while the favoured three were taken off by two of his staff to get more details of the forthcoming shoot.
For a long moment the girl in the eau de nil silk just stood there, very still. Her face was quite expressionless. Then she turned away, walking back to the door.
There wasn’t any sign of resentment now. Only deliberate indifference.
Except that it wasn’t indifference. He could see exactly what it was—defiance. Not by the slightest slump of her shoulders letting any trace of having been rejected show. He watched her a moment, ignoring whatever it was his creative director was saying to him.
Then he went after her.
He caught her up just in the upper foyer, as she was heading for the stairs down and out of the hotel. He took her arm.
She stopped dead and jerked around. Her eyes flashed.
‘Don’t handle the merchandise, sunshine!’ she said, and made to tug away. It had no effect on his grip.
Angelos looked down at her upturned face. There was antagonism bristling in her eyes, but more than that. Something behind the antagonism.
‘There may be room for one more model. I’m prepared to consider it,’ he said.
Something flashed in her eyes, then disappeared.
He let go of her arm. ‘I’ll discuss it with you in my suite.’
Her eyes flashed again, but not with the emotion that had just been in them.
‘Get stuffed,’ she said, and wheeled round. He caught her again.
‘You mistake me,’ he said, and his voice was icy. ‘This concerns merely whether you are, or are not, suitable for this campaign. Nothing else.’ He walked towards the bank of lifts, not bothering to see if she was following. She would be, he knew.
She stepped into the lift beside him, standing as far away from him as possible, staring straight ahead, her shoulders rigid. Wary as a cat, but with a hunger, he knew perfectly well, for what he had in his power to offer her. As the elevator lifted away he caught the faintest tang of perfume—something citrusy. Sharp. It suited her, he realised.
Beside him, Kat stood, every nerve end bristling. It had been a rollercoaster all afternoon—from realising she wasn’t going to be short-listed to the exultation that she had been, and then, just now, the bitter knowledge that she still hadn’t made it, despite her best shot and her evening gown.
Only to have hope flare all over again—
She felt pincers snip away inside her stomach. And now it was not just because of the job she wanted so much. It was because of the man she was standing beside. Something about him was setting her nerves jangling.
It’s because he’s an arrogant s.o.b—that’s why! Mr High-and-Mighty, Filthy-Rich-Big! Looking at me like I’m nothing more than meat.
And it was in his power to give her a job she really, really wanted.
No other reason. Absolutely no other reason.
As she walked after him into the suite she stopped dead, gazing round, mouth dropping open. So this was how the rich lived! The place was like some kind of apartment, with rooms opening off a lounge that had a balcony on one side and a dining table in a huge alcove. Two huge sofas faced each other across an acre of coffee table.
‘Sit down and wait.’
The voice was indifferent, assuming obedience. She did as she was told, still looking around her, and then her eyes went to him without her volition, watching as he extracted some papers from a briefcase, setting them down upon the dining table and standing to look through them. He started to make phone calls in a foreign language. It didn’t sound like anything she’d heard before, so maybe it was Greek—the guy was Greek, the model who’d told her about him downstairs had said. Greek—and loaded.
And not just with money.
Kat found herself looking at him. Staring at him.
He might be an arrogant s.o.b, but she knew exactly how he was getting away with it. With looks like his—all that height and toughness and hard, planed features and dark, measuring eyes, plus that magnetic Mediterranean appeal with his olive skin tone and sable hair and that indefinable aura of being ‘foreign’—he must have women slavering for him!
Oh, not her. No chance. Because she didn’t slaver over any man, and never would. But she could still feel her nerves jangling, and she didn’t like it. Didn’t like it one bit. Every impulse told her to jump to her feet and run, but she had to sit there, like a good little girl, because this man—however much her made her hackles rise—could give her the job she craved.
Her eyes flashed momentarily. But I’m still not kow-towing to him! He can take the job and stuff it before I do that!
She set her jaw, forcing her eyes away from where he stood, looking as if he owned the place. Which he might very well do, she realized. He was stuck giving orders in Greek, or whatever it was, down the phone. Her eyes went back to looking over this room where the rich folk hung out, taking it all in—the décor, the furniture, the deep carpets, the vast bouquet of flowers on the sideboard. All the trappings of luxury that a man as rich as Mr Big took for granted every moment of his gilded life.
A world away from her own life.
Well, she would never get to this level—she knew that—but then she didn’t want to. Didn’t need to. All she needed was something a lot better than she had—a clean, nicely furnished flat, not the squalid, mouldering bedsit she was holed up in now, and enough money coming in for her not to be cold in winter and watching every penny every minute of the day. Something that was hers and hers alone—a decent life.
And one day she’d have it. One day—
Her focus snapped back to the present. The phone calls had stopped, and he slid the phone away in his inside jacket pocket, coming across to sit down opposite her in an armchair. He’d helped himself to a drink from somewhere, but wasn’t offering her one, she noticed. Just as well.
