there, so complacent and cosy, had made her see red. It felt like a betrayal by her family. Then her mother had gushed that Dan would be with them for Christmas Day as both his mother and his father would be away. Without really thinking about the consequences, Ashleigh had informed her parents she was not coming home for Christmas and didn’t know when she’d ever go back to Australia.
So here she was on a dark, freezing December evening, about to be booted out into the vastness of London without anywhere to stay. Except perhaps a police cell if she wasn’t able to convince Lukas Christophedes to let her go.
She made her way up the stairs to the next level of the townhouse. There was an elevator, but she never took it, too frightened it might stall between floors and she’d be trapped in a house where she was staying illicitly. She sent up a prayer that the billionaire client would accept her grovelling apologies and let her go without punishment. Staying here had been a bad, bad idea.
She’d dusted and vacuumed around his already perfectly clean office so she knew where it was. Like all the rooms in this beautiful, luxurious house, it had been decorated with the most expensive of furnishings and fittings, yet still retained the cosiness of a traditional English library—the walls lined with books and Persian rugs on the floor.
The door was open. Lukas Christophedes sat at his desk, his back towards her. He’d taken off the jacket of his dark, superbly tailored business suit. The finely woven fabric of his shirt showed broad shoulders and a leanly muscled back. She knocked quietly and he immediately swivelled on his chair to face her.
She caught her breath, her trepidation momentarily overcome by heart-stopping awareness of his dark, Mediterranean good looks. He’d discarded his necktie and opened the top buttons of his shirt to reveal a vee of tanned olive skin pointing to an impressive chest. Rolled up sleeves showed strong, tanned forearms. His dark hair was rumpled as if he’d run it through with his fingers. For a moment, Ashleigh thought he seemed less intimidating. Until he turned his gaze to her, assessing her with narrowed eyes, his expression inscrutable.
A shiver travelled up her spine. This man had her in his power—and she had made herself vulnerable to him by her foolish behaviour. Talking her way out of this might not be easy.
LUKAS STARED AT Ashleigh Murphy as she peered around the door then stepped tentatively into his office. He schooled his face to hide his surprise. He’d been expecting a scruffy backpacker, the type travelling the world on a shoestring, seeking cut-price meals, free Wi-Fi and a cheap place to lay their heads. Backpackers of her ilk had filled the Greek seaside villages where he’d sailed and swam and partied as a student—before responsibility had grabbed him by the scruff and dragged him back to save the family business from his parents’ gross mismanagement.
But Ashleigh Murphy seemed something more than that. True, she wore blue jeans that had seen better days, a sweater of some nondescript muddy colour and scuffed trainers. Trainers. His elegant mother would have hysterics at the sight of running shoes on the hand-woven carpet of a Christophedes residence. But there was something about this trespassing maid that transcended her humble attire and he found it difficult to drag his gaze away.
More petite than she’d appeared in his bathtub, fine-boned and slender, she moved with a natural grace. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders in a bright, untamed mass. It framed even features, pale skin flushed high on her cheekbones and those extraordinary blue eyes. Without even trying, she seemed classy.
He was still irritated by her outrageous incursion into his privacy. But Lukas’s irritation began to dissipate as an idea began to form. An idea that could help him solve a particularly bothersome problem that, for all his business smarts, had him stumped. The problem had been plaguing him ever since his meeting at The Shard this afternoon. And it could impede the success of the business expansion he was determined to achieve.
But first he had to assess Ashleigh Murphy’s suitability for what he had in mind. In the right clothes, her looks would pass muster. But he needed to find out more about her background, see if she was capable of what else was required.
Curtly, he indicated she take the chair on the other side of his desk. She put her backpack on the floor beside her and sat down. He made her wait while he tapped out some notations on his tablet. She sat up straight and appeared composed. Her attempt to mask her discomfort, perhaps even fear, at the situation in which she’d found herself was impressive. But she betrayed her anxiety in the way she shifted in her seat, her overly tight grip on the arms of the chair. In other circumstances, he would have put her at her ease. At this time, he felt it wouldn’t hurt for her to squirm a little before he hit her with his demand.
He lifted his head to face her full on. ‘I need to decide what course of action to take against the person I found basking in my bathtub instead of cleaning it.’
She flinched and the flush deepened on her cheekbones. ‘Please, I can’t apologise enough. I know how wrong it was to do what I did.’ Her speaking voice, as opposed to her singing voice, was pleasant and well modulated.
‘How long did you intend to stay here in my home?’
‘Tonight. Then I—’
‘You mean for as long as you could get away with it?’
‘No!’
Lukas didn’t reply. He’d learned silence often elicited more information than another question.
‘Until I could find somewhere I could afford to live. I’m expecting a funds transfer from home any day. I...I haven’t been working for Maids in Chelsea long enough to ask for an advance.’
She might not appear like the typical backpacker but it seemed she was as perpetually broke. That might play well into his hands.
‘What kind of visa are you on that allows you to work in the UK?’
‘No visa. My father is English by birth. I have an EU passport and the right of abode here.’
‘Yet you live in Australia?’
‘My grandparents emigrated when my father was a child. But we lived in Manchester for two years when I was a teenager while my father studied for his PhD.’
‘Your father is an academic?’
‘He’s the principal of a secondary school in Bundaberg in Queensland where we live.’
‘And your mother?’
‘She’s a schoolteacher too.’ She tilted her head to one side in query. ‘I don’t know what that has to do with me doing the wrong thing here.’
‘It interests me,’ he said. She interested him.
She bit her lip, as if against a retort she wouldn’t dare utter considering the precariousness of her situation.
‘Have you always been a maid?’
‘Of course not.’ She spat out the words then backpedalled. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with being a maid. In fact I consider myself to be a very good maid, and waitress and front-of-house person—all learned since I’ve been in London. But my real job is something quite different. I’m an accountant. I have a degree in commerce from the University of Queensland.’
‘You—’
