Seven
THE cloud cover cleared after lunch when they were somewhere over the south of France, revealing a coastline that was staggeringly beautiful even from this height, the world below like a rich tapestry of colour and texture of sea and land and mountains complete with their frosting of snow. Cleo watched the colours change below as they sped towards the night, the shadow moving over the earth as night claimed more and more for its own.
The contract had taken no time at all to deal with, the terms reasonably straightforward, even to her unbusinesslike brain. One month of partnering Andreas in exchange for one million Australian dollars and an all-expenses first-class fare home. Simple really, if she didn’t let herself think about whom she was contracting with. No sex seemed such a crystal clear notion until she looked at him and felt that increasingly familiar tingle in her flesh, a tingle that felt too much like longing.
So she wouldn’t look at him. Instead she pushed back in the wide armchair that felt more like a bed, shucking off her shoes and tucking her legs beneath her. Once in Greece she’d be four hours closer to home, a four-hour head start when she left in a month to return to Kangaroo Crossing. She smiled when she thought about seeing her mum and her nanna again, and her rough-and-tumble half-brothers who were happiest in their own company and probably hadn’t even realised she’d gone yet. She’d send them a postcard the first chance she got, let them all know she was a few hours closer to coming home…
The next thing she knew, she was waking up with a start, struggling to sit up with her chair reclining to near horizontal, a weightless but snug mohair rug covering her.
‘You’re back with us, then,’ Andreas said, putting away his laptop. ‘We’ll be landing soon.’
She put a hand to her hair, and then to her eyes, worried she’d just undone all the good work of the morning. ‘I must have drifted off.’ She looked outside her window but it was inky blackness outside, clusters of lights visible way down below, but, more importantly, no reflection to assure her she wasn’t wearing panda eyes. Or, worse still, just the one.
‘You look good.’
She blinked and turned slowly, not sure she’d heard right or that he was even talking to her.
He was stashing his briefcase away in the compartment alongside his knees, and for a moment she thought she must have misheard or been mistaken. Until…‘If that’s what you were worried about.’ Now he did turn, and once again she was staggered by the intensity of his gaze and the power he had to skewer her with just one glance. ‘Stunning, in fact. I don’t suppose I told you that before.’
Nobody had ever told her that before. Let alone a man whose five o’clock shadow only served to increase his eye appeal. Along with his white shirtsleeves rolled up and the dark V of skin at his unbuttoned neck, he looked more like a pirate now than a property magnate. She licked her lips. Boy, she could do with a drink. ‘Um. Thank you.’ She wanted to believe the butterflies in her stomach were all to do with the fact the pilot had chosen that second to commence his descent, but she’d be lying to herself. For the hungry look she’d seen in his eyes when she’d got his attention in the car was back again, and that had been enough to start the fluttering sensation, enough to switch on the slow burn inside her.
Nobody had ever called her anything approximating stunning before. Nobody. Even her own mother had never got beyond cute. Hearing Andreas say it made it all the more real.
And made him all the more dangerous.
She injected a lightness into her voice that was at odds with the pounding of her heart. Why let him know how much he affected her? That was never part of the deal. ‘Well, it’s good to know all this morning’s work didn’t go to waste.’
She unclipped her seat belt and stood, heading for the bathroom, and she was halfway to escape when the ground went from under Cleo’s feet, her stomach suddenly in her mouth. With Cleo thrown offbalance, it took only a jerk of Andreas’ hand to steer her towards him. She landed in his lap a moment later, appalled that he’d borne the brunt of her weight as she’d collided against him.
‘This is no joking matter,’ he warned, showing no discomfiture for her sudden landing, indeed, giving every impression that he welcomed it as he nestled her deeper into his lap. ‘This is serious.’
She could see it was. She could feel it was. She looked up at his shadowed face, so supremely confident while she lay there breathless and terrified, her heart thudding like a drum as she battled to get her wayward stomach under control. She was no good in turbulence, she knew from experience, the unexpected motion flipping her stomach end to end.
And right now, sitting on Andreas’ lap, was no ordinary turbulence. Flames under her skin licked and curled in all the places their bodies met—where his hands touched her and where her legs lay across his before they spilled over the arm rest, where her breast rested heavy and full against his chest and, most of all, where her bottom pressed tight into his lap. Where something growing and rock-hard pressed back.
She squirmed, embarrassed at the intimacy of the contact. He felt huge, so much bigger than he had looked this morning before his shower, so much bigger than Kurt, and she didn’t want to know. Didn’t need to know. ‘Andreas,’ she pleaded, not even sure what she was pleading for as she squirmed some more, the urge to escape such intimate contact warring with an inexplicable need to get even closer.
But his eyes were closed, a frown pinching the skin between his brows, the skin drawn tight across his cheekbones. ‘You really should stop wriggling…’ he said cryptically, and then he opened his eyes and she read desire in their swirling depths and it only served to confuse her more. ‘Unless you’re planning on rescinding that no sex condition.’
She launched herself from his lap, scrabbling to get herself upright and away from him. ‘Don’t flatter yourself! It was you who yanked me into your lap, remember?’
He smiled as she headed, chin up, for the bathroom. ‘How could I forget? But it wasn’t me who was wriggling.’
Clusters of lights clung to the hilltops off to one side, but it was the air Cleo noticed first as they stepped from the plane, so clear and fresh after London’s heavy atmosphere, it seemed to have been washed with the very ocean itself. She inhaled deeply and tried to relax. It wasn’t working. The plane might have landed but the flock of butterflies in her stomach hadn’t come down with it.
‘Welcome to Santorini,’ Andreas said, drawing her into the circle of his arm and pressing his lips to her hair as they headed towards a waiting car, its headlights lighting their path. She shivered, as much from the cool night air as from his sudden and unexpected touch, and he squeezed her closer so she had to tuck her arm around him. Clearly the pretence had already begun.
It was no hardship to hold him, there was a firmness about his body that made him a pleasure to touch, and the closer she was to him, the more of his delicious masculine scent she could consume, but it was impossible to relax. Her legs felt stiff, her steps forced, her features tense. It was all for show, all to give the appearance they were lovers. And all of it was fake.
‘Smile!’ he ordered. ‘Anyone would think you were about to meet a firing squad.’
Maybe not, but Andreas was paying her a million dollars to pretend to be his mistress and it was a role she had no concept of. A million-dollar mistress who couldn’t sell what she knew about being someone’s mistress for one dollar.
She should have told him, should
