‘I bought it and gave my father a share, so he might finally work in his own restaurant, as he had always said he wanted to do. Growing up, we had no money and he said there were no jobs but there were jobs. Pot-washing jobs but, still, it was work. He got really angry...’ Luka didn’t add that he’d got the worst beating of his life that night. ‘My mother said he was a chef and that washing pots was beneath him. So, when I had the money, I bought him a share in a restaurant, one with the Kargas name on the door.’
‘But how on earth did a pool boy get the money to buy a restaurant?’
‘It wasn’t the establishment it is now,’ Luka pointed out.
‘But even so! Are you saying you were a gigolo?’
‘If you choose to call it that then, yes, I was,’ Luka said, expecting her to snap his case closed and walk away.
Yet she didn’t.
‘But how?’ Cecelia asked. ‘I mean, how does it work?’
Luka shrugged. ‘A smile, a nod. Often they would buy me a drink.’
‘I thought it would be the other way around.’
‘No.’
‘And did you name a price?’
‘Of course not,’ Luka said. ‘That would be in poor taste.’
‘But how?’ she asked, intensely curious. ‘I mean, I just can’t imagine...’
‘What?’ he said. ‘You can’t imagine naming your wants?’
‘No!’ Cecelia admitted. ‘I can’t.’
‘Perhaps you should try it before you knock it!’
‘No, thank you,’ she said primly. ‘And I can’t imagine giving the cabana boy a wink and a nod.’
Luka smiled. ‘The first time it happened was a surprise. I got chatting to one of the guests. She was a widow. I didn’t really know her but she asked me to join her for dinner. I said no, Geo would not like me dining with the guests. She said we would dine in her suite then. And so I went up and we ate and then we...’ He smiled. ‘I’m sure you can guess the rest.’
‘But I can’t,’ Cecelia said, for she wanted to know more, and in her curiosity she found herself sitting down on the bed. ‘How old was she?’
‘A good bit older than I was then. In her thirties, I think,’ Luka said. ‘She was my first.’ He looked at her. ‘Who was yours?’
‘I don’t have to answer that.’
‘If you want to know more you do.’
‘Gordon.’
He wrinkled his nose and Luka was surprised as something that felt like it should be called jealousy surged in his chest.
Which was ridiculous when he was telling her about his own depraved past.
‘Well, my first was actually stunning—a divorcée. She was there with friends but had her own villa. I was there every night until morning and I thought I had found the keys to heaven. The morning she left she came into Reception and when Geo wasn’t looking she gave me an envelope. I thought it was a letter. When I opened it there was a whole load of cash. Until that point I had thought it was a romance.’
‘Were you hurt when she paid you?’
‘Hell no,’ he said. ‘To tell the truth I was already starting to get restless.’
Cecelia suppressed an eye-roll and refrained from saying that perhaps it was an indicator of things to come, as Luka spoke on.
‘I was trying to work out how to break it off but had decided to do so after her holiday. I was the naïve one back then.’
Cecelia gave a wry smile at that. ‘I doubt you were ever naïve. And after she’d gone there was another?’
‘Of course, although it wasn’t always cash. Sometimes they would take me shopping for a watch or such like. Once a car...’
‘A car?’
She started to laugh. An embarrassed laugh, but she was also very curious. ‘Luka!’
‘What?’ He shrugged. ‘I was always careful and it wasn’t all sex.’
‘What else?’
‘Romance. Dinner. Shopping. But mainly talking.’
‘You mean, saying what they wanted to hear?’
‘Yep.’
‘Did you care for them?’
‘Some I did,’ Luka said. ‘Mostly it was work.’ He met her eyes. ‘They didn’t all care for me, Cece. They paid for the full Luka Kargas treatment.’
For a few years the pool had been his playground and the pickings had always been rich.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘once I had bought the restaurant I hired a decent chef and changed the décor.’
‘What about your father?’
Luka didn’t answer directly.
It felt disloyal to his mother to admit that his father hadn’t so much as lifted a saucepan.
‘The restaurant started to do well and was too busy for one chef. Though it didn’t do too well—I made sure of that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I knew it wouldn’t be long until Geo blew things again and would be forced to sell. When that happened I had planned to be in a good enough position to put in an offer on the resort. With help, of course...’
‘Financial help?’ Cecelia checked.
‘No, one of the women I was seeing helped me get my papers in order to go to the bank.’ He didn’t add that the woman had also warned him not to bring his father into the hotel side of things.
It was advice for which he would be grateful for ever.
‘How old were you by then?’
‘Twenty-two. Once the resort was safely mine I hired the best chef I could find and things really started to happen. As the guests came in I started to buy up the houses and land around it. Out of all the hotels I own, it is still the jewel in my crown. From humble beginnings it’s magnificent now.’
She looked at him. He mesmerised her, he truly did. And she was nervous too, for the more she knew him, the more she wanted him.
‘Is your father still your business partner?’
‘Not fully.’ He shook his head. ‘The hotels are mine, the restaurants belong to us both.’ And then, a touch unguarded, he admitted a little more. ‘I
