stop herself shaking Lexi gripped her shoulder bag with one hand and pressed the other against the back of the leather sofa. She couldn’t risk ruining her carefully contrived show of being completely unfazed as she looked at Mark Belmont, pacing up and down the patio next to the swimming pool, her cell phone pressed to his ear.
Only this was not the business-guru version of The Honourable Mark Belmont that usually graced the covers of international business magazines around the world. Oh, no. She could have dealt with that stiff, formally dressed office clone quite easily. This version was an entirely different sort of man: much more of a challenge for any woman.
The business suit was gone. Mark was wearing a pair of loose white linen trousers and a short-sleeved pale blue striped polo shirt that perfectly matched the colour of his eyes. His toned muscular arms and bare feet were tanned as dark as the scowl he had greeted her with, and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone, revealing a bronzed, muscular chest.
His dark brown hair might have been expertly cut into tight curls, but he hadn’t shaved, and his square jaw was covered in a light stubble much more holiday laid-back than designer businessman. But, Lord, it suited him perfectly.
She knew several fashion stylists who would have swooned just at the sight of him.
This was a completely different type of beast from the man who’d defended his mother so valiantly in the hospital. This was Mark Belmont in his natural setting. His territory. His home.
Oh, my.
She could lie and pretend that her burning red neck was simply due to the heat of a Greek island in late June and the fact that she was overdressed, but she knew better.
Her curse had struck yet again.
She was always like this around Adonis-handsome men. They were like gorgeous baubles on display in a shop window. She could ogle them all day but never dared to touch. Because they were always so far out of reach that she knew she would never be able to afford one. And even if she could afford one it would never match the disorganised chaos of her life.
This particular bauble had dark eyebrows which were heavy and full of concern. He looked tense. Annoyed and anxious.
It had seemed only right to ring the publisher for him. Just to clarify things.
Only judging by the expression on his face the news that her assignment was not a practical joke after all had not gone down well.
Normally her clients were delighted that a fairy godmother had dropped into their world to help them out of a tricky situation.
Apparently Mark Belmont was not seeing his situation in quite the same way.
She had to persuade him to allow her to stay and help him with … with what? She still had no idea what type of book Mark Belmont was writing. Business management? A family history? Or … she swallowed … the obvious. A memoir of his mother.
Lexi looked up as Mark turned towards her from the door, lowering the phone, and searched his face for something—anything—that would help her make the decision.
And she found it. In his eyes of frosty blue.
The same eyes that had looked at her with such pain mixed with contempt on that terrible day in the hospital. When his heart had been breaking.
Decision made. If he could survive writing about his late mother then she would do her best to make the book the best it could be. Even without his help.
She could make this work. It would take a lot of effort, and she would have to be as stubborn as a stubborn thing in Stubbornland, but she could do it. She had stood her ground before, and she’d do it again.
Mark stood still for a moment, eyes closed, tapping the cell phone against the side of his head.
‘If you’re quite finished with my phone, Mr Belmont?’ A sweet, charming voice echoed out from behind his back. ‘It tends not to function very well after being used as a percussion instrument.’
Mark opened his eyes and stared at the offending cell phone as though he had never seen it before. He’d never used a purple phone in his life and he was extremely tempted to throw the offending article into the pool and leave it there. With its owner. The hack writer.
Fortunately for the phone, good manners kicked in and, holding it between his thumb and forefinger, he turned and extended his arm towards Lexi.
To her credit, she was not wearing a self-satisfied smirk but the same look of professional non-confrontational indifference he was used to seeing from city suits around the boardroom table where some of his riskier ideas were discussed.
Except for him this was not a job. It was very personal. And even the idea of sharing his deepest concerns and emotions about his parents made him bristle with resentment and refusal to comply.
He hadn’t built a venture-capital company from the ruins of his father’s business without taking risks, but they had been calculated risks, based on information he had personally checked and worked on until he’d known that the family’s money would not be wasted on the investment.
This girl—this woman—in this ridiculous outfit had arrived at his home without his approval.
His sister might have confidence in the talent agency, but he knew nothing about the plan, and if there was one thing guaranteed to annoy him it was things being planned behind the scenes without his knowledge.
Cassie was perfectly aware of that fact, but she’d done it anyway. Her intentions might be excellent, but the reality was a little difficult to stomach.
A light tapping broke Mark out of his reverie, and he flashed a glance at the girl just in time to see her keying furiously into the cell phone, her sparkly purple-painted fingernails flashing in the sunlight. Although how she could see through those huge sunglasses was a mystery to him.
In the living room she had been more stunned than stunning, but in the bright white light reflected back from the patio her skin appeared pale and almost translucent, as though she hadn’t seen sunlight for quite some time. The contrast between her English-rose complexion and the startlingly bright scarves wrapped around her neck was so great that it distracted him for a moment from the fact that she was talking.
‘I’ll be with you in a moment, Mr Belmont,’ she said away from the phone. ‘I’m just trying to find out the location of the nearest hotel on the island. Unless, of course, you can recommend one to me?’
She looked up and gave him a half smile—a pink-cheeked, polite kind of smile that still managed to brighten her whole face, drawing his full attention.
‘I apologise for not booking accommodation before I arrived, but this assignment was rather last-minute. I’ll need to stay somewhere close by, so I don’t waste too much time travelling back and forth. Don’t worry,’ she added, ‘I’ll be out of your hair within the hour.’
‘A hotel? That is quite out of the question,’ he answered.
‘Oh?’ She raised her eyebrows and her fingers stilled. ‘And why is that?’
Mark pushed his hands into his pockets to keep them from fastening around that pretty pale neck and squeezing hard.
‘Well,
