about to reach for the phone and see if she could arrange for a car to take her to Athens when the bedroom door opened and Angelos strode into the room.
Clearly fresh from the shower, he’d changed into a pair of lightweight linen trousers and a shirt that emphasised his athletic physique. Tall and broad-shouldered, he emanated power and sexuality.
Her body leapt to life and she turned away, mortified that she was so susceptible to him. Well, tough. She was going to do what he was obviously doing and just not think about the sex. ‘I was trying to arrange for a car. Now you’re here, perhaps you could do it for me?’
‘To go where, precisely?’
‘Athens. I’ll arrange a flight home from there.’
There was a tense silence. ‘Home?’
‘Yes.’ Summoning up as much dignity as she could, she reached into her bag and removed the roll of cash she’d counted out carefully a few minutes earlier. ‘This is for you.’ She thrust it into his hand and he stared at it in astonishment.
‘What is this?’
‘Money. You should know, since it obviously plays such an important part in your life.’ It was all the money she had, minus the amount she was going to need for her flight home. ‘You can put that towards what I’ve cost you so far. Whatever you may think, I don’t want a free holiday. I never should have come. I see that now. It’s inevitable that a man like you would think that my reasons for coming here have something to do with money. In the circumstances, I don’t even blame you for thinking that.’ Some of her pride salvaged, she stepped forward and picked up the case, avoiding eye contact. It was terribly, terribly important that she didn’t look at him. If she looked, she was lost.
‘I don’t want your money.’ He dropped the money unceremoniously onto the nearest hard surface and Chantal tried not to flinch as she remembered just how long it had taken her to earn that amount.
‘Well, I want you to have it. In fact, I insist.’
He glanced at the roll of notes and then back at her. ‘Obviously my comments upset you,’ he breathed. ‘But you have to admit that I had cause.’
‘Of course. Why else would someone like me be with someone like you?’
His body tensed. ‘You pretended to be Isabelle Ducat, and she is the queen of gold-diggers.’
‘Maybe. But even when you knew that I wasn’t Isabelle your assumption was that I’d just come along for a free holiday.’ Still suffering from a serious assault on her pride, Chantal clutched her case. ‘It’s obvious that you’ve discovered the sort of person I really am, so there’s no point in me staying. Please arrange for me to leave the island. Is there a water taxi you can call?’
‘I have no intention of calling you a taxi.’ His tone had a raw edge to it. ‘Put the case down.’
‘No.’
He inhaled deeply. ‘I can see that I’ve seriously upset you—’
‘What makes you think that?’ Her tone flippant, she walked towards the door. ‘We gold diggers have very thick skins. It’s part of the job description.’
With incredibly quick reflexes, he crossed the room and grabbed her. ‘Tell me why you accepted my invitation.’ He hauled her hard against him, and she gasped as the contact ignited a flash of excitement deep inside her.
‘You already know why.’ Desperately she tried to shut down her response. ‘It seemed a perfect way to enjoy a free holiday in the sun.’
‘So, if that is the case, then why are you leaving now?’
‘Because what we did makes it impossible for me to stay.’
‘You are saying that because your feelings are hurt.’ His mouth was dangerously close to hers and the heat between them was mounting. ‘I am willing to admit that I owe you an apology.’
‘No, you don’t. I don’t blame you for what you thought. It was a perfectly reasonable assumption in the circumstances.’ Desperate to get away before she made a fool of herself yet again, Chantal tried to wriggle out of his grasp. ‘Why else would someone like me have accompanied you?’
He held her firm. ‘Why did you?’
Swamped by an almost agonising sexual tension, her anger subsided. ‘Because of your father,’ she muttered. ‘You persuaded me that I could make a difference to his recovery. He was so kind to me that night at the ball. No one has ever been that kind to me before. I was feeling really vulnerable and horribly out of place. Which just goes to show that Isabelle was right all along. I didn’t fit in.’
‘Why would you want to?’ He looked genuinely perplexed. ‘Individuality is to be celebrated.’
Spoken like a billionaire who didn’t follow any of life’s rules, she thought weakly, wishing she possessed just a fraction of his self belief. ‘You need masses of confidence to be different. I stood out. I felt as though everyone was staring.’
‘They were staring. Because of your dress.’
‘Yes, the dress was a huge mistake.’
‘The dress was amazing. Where did you find it?’
She concentrated on one of the buttons of his shirt. ‘They were refurbishing one of the hotel rooms and I found some red lining material that they’d thrown away. I thought it would look perfect.’
A stunned silence followed her frank confession. ‘Are you telling me that your red dress started life on the inside of a curtain?’
‘A very expensive curtain.’ She shrugged. ‘Why are you looking so shocked? You just said that individuality is to be celebrated.’
His handsome face was a mask of incredulous disbelief and he released her. ‘That night—’ His voice not quite steady, he rubbed his fingers over the bridge of his nose. ‘You really didn’t have a clue who I was, did you?’
She tried not to feel disappointed that he’d let her go. ‘Of course I didn’t know who you were. Why would I?’
It took him a moment to answer. ‘Women usually do.’
‘The women you mix with do. But I’m not one of those. And I wouldn’t want to be,’ she said firmly. She knew far too much about that type of woman. ‘I only spoke to you because you spoke to me first. I’d been standing there, wishing I’d never decided to go to the ball, and then there you were.’ She swallowed as she remembered the sharp intensity of that moment. ‘And you were—there was—something—’
Their eyes met for a moment and he frowned. ‘If all that is true, and you genuinely came to the villa because of concern for my father’s health, then why are you leaving now?’
Because she had to.
Her fingers tightened on the case and she looked away from him so that she wouldn’t be tempted. ‘Because everything has changed. You know I’m not Isabelle, and our relationship has become—’ She broke off and searched for the right word. ‘Become personal. It goes against my principles.’
