was indispensable. And he couldn’t have her thinking she had claims on him.
Likewise he couldn’t have the woman alongside him thinking that she could just sit there, as far away from him as she could get and gaping out of her window like some tourist on a coach tour. Damn it, she was supposed to be interested in him!
He leaned across and wrapped an arm around her, cursing when her startled response earned raised eyebrows from their driver in the rear-vision mirror.
‘It’s not far to Fira,’ he told Cleo as the car powered up the road from the airport.
It was as he said. Within a few minutes the car had climbed its way past small picturesque villages and scattered whitewashed hotels to a road along the very edge of the island where it became more built up. On one side the land sloped down gently to where they’d just come, the lights of the airstrip bright in the dark night. On the other side, the land fell away steeply, to a dark flat sea. A scattering of lights shone across the waters while in front there seemed a sweeping curve of lights into the distance that curved in tiers down a hillside before being swallowed up by the darkness.
‘It is hard to appreciate in the dark,’ Andreas told her, the stroke of his thumb on her upper arm doing all kinds of crazy things to her breathing, ‘but Santorini is actually a collection of small islands, the remnants of an ancient eruption. Fira, the capital, is built on the lip of the crater. The lights you see further on belong to the town of Oia. Like Fira, it is a very beautiful town, full of narrow cobbled streets and beautifully restored buildings, centuries of years old. Some say the sunset in Oia is the best in the world. I will take you there if you like.’
She suspected he was merely acting his part, she knew she should be, but still the very picture of sharing a sunset with this man worked its way into her soul so much that she almost wanted it to be real. Her voice, when she found it, was breathless and short, and it was no trouble for her to inject into it the necessary enthusiasm. ‘I would like that, very much.’
There was a strangled sound from the front seat, followed by a cough and a murmured apology. ‘Andreas is right, Cleo,’ Petra said, steering the car through a succession of narrower and narrower streets, past ornate iron gateways and walls of polished white set off with colourful bougainvilleas that caught Cleo’s eye. ‘It is only a small island, but there is much to see on Santorini. Will you be staying long?’
Cleo shot a look at Andreas, who was scowling again, and she wondered if it was because she’d made such a hash of things that he was already regretting their deal and the time he’d said they’d have together. ‘Maybe a few weeks,’ she offered nervously, ‘maybe less…’
In the rear-view mirror she saw their driver’s eyebrows shoot up as she pulled up before a private garage alongside a red-brick building that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Venice and waited for the automatic door to roll up. ‘That long? How lovely for you. It will be like a wonderful holiday.’
‘Of course,’ Andreas added with a growl as Petra steered the car into the garage and pulled to a stop. ‘There’s every chance she may stay longer.’
‘Why did you say that?’ Petra had bid them goodnight and left them in the lobby, retiring to her own suite, and meanwhile Cleo had been playing and replaying the words over in her head, so much so that she’d barely taken in the details of the house, other than just a handful of impressions. Grand proportions, furnishings that were both elegant and exquisite, it was more a palace than any humble home she’d ever seen.
‘Say what?’ Andreas sounded almost bored as he instructed the hired help to take care of the luggage and led the way to his suite of rooms, and yet there was too much coiled tension in his every step, his every movement, for her to believe that. Even his words were brimming with tension. The sound of her heels clicking on the terrazzo floor only served to ratchet it up.
‘Why did you say I might stay longer?’
‘Because you made it sound like you weren’t planning on staying at all.’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d want me to.’
‘And I thought we had a deal.’
Maybe so, but she knew he wasn’t happy with her, knew she’d failed to impress him with her acting skills. But what did he expect when she’d never been a mistress, didn’t know how a mistress was supposed to act? It wasn’t as if she’d blown it in front of his business partners. It had only been his driver—his right-hand woman. An exceptionally beautiful right-hand woman.
Could the act all be for her benefit?
‘Petra is very beautiful.’
He shrugged, but gave every impression of knowing who he was talking about. ‘Is she? She’s good at what she does.’
‘And she lives here with you, in this—’ she looked around her, at the exquisite wall hangings and period furniture ‘—this house?’
‘The offices of Xenides Properties are here. I’m often away and Petra works long hours. It’s an arrangement that works well for both of us.’
There was no hint of any attachment in his words or the tone of his voice. In fact he could have been talking about any employee. Maybe her hunch had been wrong. Maybe he was just aware of Petra’s obvious resentment for his lifestyle and his constant change of companions? Or maybe he was just angry with her own hopeless acting skills. She could hardly blame him if he was.
‘Here we are.’ A pair of carved timber doors stood at the end of a passageway. He pushed them both open and her eyes opened wide. ‘The sitting room,’ he said, still moving.
She stayed where she was and let herself gape. By now she should have been used to the luxury—luxury suites in London hotels, a personal private jet with wrap-around leather and champagne on tap—but still the sheer opulence of his everyday lifestyle made her jaw drop. For this was no rented accommodation or flying office, this was his home. And this one room was large enough to house her entire family back home.
‘How much money do you have?’
And he turned and looked at her, a cold expression charging his eyes. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Well, no. It’s just…’
‘Do not fear, I have more than enough to pay for you.’
His words shouldn’t have stung but somehow they did. The notion he was paying to have her here, to stroke her hand with his thumb and kiss her when he needed to look as if he had someone to kiss.
It wasn’t as if he were paying her for sex. She was merely acting. Pretending. And yet there was no pretence about the impact his touch and his kisses had on her. It made no sense. She’d been the one to insist on no sex, so why was it that his touch made her think of nothing else? Why did his kisses make her hunger for that which she had refused to entertain? Did he really not feel it too, this ribbon of desire that seemed to tug her ever closer to his side?
No! Andreas was right. This was a commercial arrangement, not some fairy-tale Cinderella story. In a month’s time, or however long it took, she’d leave Santorini and go back to her home in Kangaroo Crossing, albeit a million dollars richer than when she’d arrived. For a girl with her background and her chances in life, surely that was fairy tale enough. And yes, clearly there was no question he couldn’t afford it.
‘Come
