just assumed that he’d wanted to talk about the sex because, for her, no other issues existed. What they’d just shared had driven everything else from her head. But obviously he wasn’t similarly afflicted. For him there were issues much, much more important than talking about the sex. Like her identity.
Buying herself a little more time, she cleared her throat and tried avoidance tactics. ‘What makes you think I’m not Isabelle Ducat?’
‘Because the list of Isabelle’s previous lovers reads like a telephone directory,’ Angelos informed her helpfully. ‘Whereas I now know that your list contains only one name. Mine.’
His blunt reminder of the intimacy they’d just shared caused the colour in her cheeks to deepen still further. Wriggling like a fish on a hook, she breathed deeply and told herself that he couldn’t absolutely know. Could he? ‘I don’t see how you—’
‘Don’t even go there,’ he warned in a soft voice. ‘Unless you want me to treble your blushes by describing in meticulous detail exactly how I know.’
She breathed in and out and concentrated on a point between his feet and his knees. ‘Oh.’
‘Look at me,’ he demanded, and she shrank slightly lower in her seat.
She couldn’t look at him. It was just too, too embarrassing.
He sighed heavily. ‘Please will you look at me?’ This time his voice was slightly less autocratic, as if he knew that he wasn’t going to achieve his objective by sheer force alone.
Reluctantly, she looked. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Start with who you really are.’
Who was she?
She wasn’t sure she knew any more. She certainly didn’t feel anything like the person she’d been half an hour previously.
Would her body ever feel the same again? ‘I’m not Isabelle.’
‘I know that.’ His wide, sensuous mouth compressed as he struggled to contain his volatile nature. ‘What I don’t know is who you are and why you took her identity.’
‘I didn’t take her identity. Not really. You were the one who thought I was Isabelle.’
‘You were in possession of her ticket.’
‘Which just goes to show that external appearances can be deceptive.’
‘The only deception around here was yours.’
Sensing a dangerous tension in him, Chantal felt her heart bump against her chest. ‘It’s true that I used the ticket, but I didn’t pose as her. I didn’t once use her name, and you weren’t supposed to see the ticket.’
‘This conversation is going round in circles and you are making no sense. How did you obtain the ticket in the first place?’
It was like being on the witness stand, being cross-examined by a very unsympathetic prosecutor.
What would he say, she wondered, when he discovered that the truth was even worse than the lie? ‘It’s a long story.’
‘Give me the short version,’ he ordered in a tense voice. ‘I’m a guy who likes to get straight to the point, and we’ve already taken the long route. Let’s try it from a different direction. How do you know Isabelle?’
‘I don’t know her. I met her in the hotel where she was staying.’ Unable to look at him, Chantal examined each strand of the soft fluffy towel that now enveloped her. ‘I was—’ oh hell ‘—I was cleaning her room.’
There.
She’d said it.
Bracing herself for his reaction to her shocking confession, she sat there waiting, her fingers coiled in the damp folds of the towel.
Angelos said nothing.
Clearly he was so appalled that he’d flown a cleaner out to his island on his private jet that he couldn’t even find the words to express his disgust. She gave a tiny shrug and tried to ignore the pain that tore at her insides.
‘It’s all right.’ She tried to sound dismissive. Casual. ‘Go ahead and say what’s on your mind.’ After all, she was used to it. Used to being judged and instantly dismissed. Struggling to close her armour around her. She lifted her eyes to his and she found him watching her from beneath thick dark lashes that concealed his expression.
‘I’m still waiting for you to explain how you came to have the ticket.’ He spoke with exaggerated patience. ‘I’m assuming that if I wait long enough you will get to the point in the end.’
‘I’ve reached the point.’
He rubbed his fingers over his forehead, as if to ease the tension. ‘Chantal—that is your name, isn’t it?’ He spoke slowly and softly, as if he were hanging onto control by a thread. ‘I’m not a very patient man. If a member of my staff had taken as long to tell me something as you have, I would have fired them by now.’
She stiffened defensively. ‘I just told you I was working as a cleaner.’
‘I heard you. At the moment I’m not interested in your career choice. What I’m still waiting to hear is how you came by the ticket.’
‘But—’
‘I’m not good with long, involved stories,’ he informed her, his tone exasperated. ‘Get to the point, please, before we both age any further.’
Chantal opened her mouth to say that she’d thought that the fact she was actually a cleaner was the point, but the burning impatience in his eyes made her think twice. Obviously he wanted more. ‘I was cleaning her room. She was having a complete tantrum about what she should wear—flinging clothes all over the place and expecting me to pick them up. I thought she needed help, so I told her which dress I thought suited her best, and she just exploded in a rage. What did someone like me know about how to dress for an event like that? What did I know about attracting a rich man? I suffered fifteen minutes of verbal abuse, and then she decided that she wasn’t going at all. So she flung her ticket in the bin and checked out of the hotel. I think she left Paris that same afternoon.’
‘So you took the ticket out of her bin?’ He condensed her lengthy confession into a few very blunt words.
‘It sounds bad, I know. But—’
‘—But you wanted to prove her wrong about not being able to attract a rich man?’
Affronted, Chantal glared at him. ‘Of course not! It was nothing to do with attracting a rich man. It was a confidence thing.’ She subsided in her seat. ‘She made me feel so small—as if I were a completely different species to her.’ She could have told him the rest of her story, of course, but there was no way she was doing that, when she’d already told him far, far too much about herself. As far as she was concerned she’d given him everything he was having. The rest was staying locked inside. She straightened her shoulders. ‘And that’s why I took the ticket. It wasn’t about meeting men. I needed to prove to myself that she was wrong
