by Julia James
‘He can also afford some new clothes for you before you fly out.’
She thought she saw a sudden unholy glitter in those incredible dark eyes she was so conscious of, try as she might not to be.
‘You should go shopping,’ he was saying, and there was a strange quality in his voice—a kind of smoothness that overlaid something quite jagged and pointed. ‘There’ll be time tomorrow morning before our flight.’
His eyes flickered over her, doing things to her they shouldn’t but did all the same. Now they weren’t disparaging. More like...assessing. She felt a sudden rush of ultra-self-consciousness that seemed to be heating her from the inside.
‘And you might also want to take advantage of the facilities here at the hotel,’ he went on in that same smooth voice. ‘Hair salon, nail bar, beauty room—that sort of thing.’
Rosalie looked at him doubtfully. Surely that would be hideously expensive?
Alexandros Lakaris’s expression had changed again. ‘Charge it to the room,’ he said now, as if seeing her reservations.
She swallowed. ‘I don’t want to cost my father too much,’ she said.
That unholy glitter was there once more. As if something were amusing him. She didn’t know what.
‘Believe me...’ his voice was as dry as desert sand ‘...he can afford it.’
Rosalie frowned. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked uncertainly. She could feel her stomach starting to churn. She pressed her hands together. ‘Mr Lakaris, all I know about my father is what my mother told me—that he was foreign and was working on a construction site. A brickie—nothing more than that. So—’
He cut across her. ‘Let’s just say he’s moved on since then. Now he has others to work for him.’
Her frown did not fade. Could what he was telling her be true? Belatedly she started to join up the dots she hadn’t yet joined. Alexandros Lakaris—with his flash suit and gold tiepin, his polished handmade shoes and chauffeured car—was obviously a Mr Rich. And why would a Mr Rich have been sent as messenger boy to fetch her if not by another Mr Rich?
‘How do you know my father?’ she heard herself ask.
‘We have a business association,’ came his reply, said in an offhand fashion. ‘I agreed to escort you to Athens for that reason.’
She opened her mouth to ask more questions, but he was opening his car door, getting out on his side. On her side a doorman came forward, opening her door and lifting out her suitcase as she stepped out on to the pavement.
Uncertainty still filled her—and confusion.
Could her father really afford all this? A hotel like this...new clothes for her? But it must be true—or why would she be here?
A wash of excitement swept over her. Had her life really been transformed like this—out of nowhere and so amazingly?
The doorman was holding a huge plate glass door open for her and Rosalie went into the hotel, staring around her. It was very modern, with a soaring glass atrium and miles of marble floor.
Alexandros Lakaris was striding past her, walking in as if he owned the place, going up to one of an array of reception desks, obviously as at home in this five-star hotel as he’d been out of place in that rundown house she’d been cleaning.
This was his world—the world of expensive luxury...
She hurried after him, staring about her, clutching her tote and knowing how totally underdressed she was for such a plush hotel. Swish, elegant people were everywhere and her gaze swept over them. For a moment she quailed. Then she rallied, her chin going up.
I hate being poor—but I’m not ashamed of it! Why should I be?
But maybe...maybe all that was over now.
Maybe I’m done with poverty! Done with it for ever!
Her eyes lit with excitement, anticipation and a pleasure and thrill she had never known in all her impoverished life. She looked around the spectacular atrium, drinking it in.
Oh, boy, was she going to enjoy this!
‘Your room key—you’re on floor five.’
Alexandros Lakaris was holding out a piece of folded card that contained a plastic key pass. The frown that was becoming so familiar to her was back on his face.
Well, what did she care about his disapproval? He was nothing to her—just her father’s messenger boy.
She kept her voice cool as she took her key. ‘Thanks,’ she said in a careless fashion. ‘Let me know when I need to be ready tomorrow.’
She didn’t wait for an answer—surely he could relay it to her through the hotel staff—and sauntered off towards the elevator banks.
Whatever Mr Oh-So-Handsome-and-Rich Lakaris, with his disapproving frown whenever he looked at her, was going to be doing till tomorrow, she couldn’t care less. As for herself—she knew exactly what she was going to be doing.
She stepped inside a waiting elevator, and jabbed the number five, rolling her shoulders. They were stiff from her day’s hard work. The overused muscles in her arms and legs were tired, and her hands felt like soggy sandpaper. The small of her back was aching, her knees knobbly from kneeling.
The elevator slowed, its doors slid open, and she stepped out into a lushly carpeted corridor, heading down towards her room on feet that were as tired and aching as the rest of her, but suddenly light as air.
Her drab and dreary life had been utterly transformed! Tomorrow she’d be flying to Athens—her first ever trip abroad!—to meet the father she had never known, who had now, like a miracle, discovered her existence! How fantastic was that? And for today—tonight—she was here in this amazing hotel and she was going to have a fabulous time, enjoying every last bit of what was happening to her!
Totally!
She couldn’t wait...
* * *
Xandros checked his appearance in the en suite bathroom’s mirror, minutely adjusting his bow tie. He was dressed for a formal dinner at one of the City’s livery companies which he’d decided to attend that evening while he was here in London. It might prove a useful occasion to start what he would now, inevitably and annoyingly, have to undertake: prospecting for an alternative merger target.
His mouth thinned with displeasure and exasperation. His hopes for the Coustakis merger looked to be totally scuppered by his point-blank refusal to give the slightest attention to Stavros’s outrageous scheming.
Did the man really think I would just swap from Ariadne to this other, totally unknown daughter?
It was ludicrously unrealistic—distasteful, even, for both himself and her—for Stavros to think that either of them would go along with it.
His thoughts strayed to the fifth floor...to Stavros’s worn-down, shamefully neglected English daughter whom he’d so impulsively brought here. He knew what was behind that impulse—and it wasn’t just his anger at Stavros. His face shadowed. Poverty was always frightening—even just the thought of it.
Memories from his own precarious childhood plucked at him. His parents, talking to each other in low voices, their expressions tense, talking about what further economies might next be made. His mother bewailing the fact that they might even lose the Lakaris family home. His father working long, punishing hours at the office, trying to salvage the wealth his own father had squandered.
The fact that he had done so—triumphantly—could not take away the stress and uncertainty—and outright fear—that had dominated his youth and childhood even all these years later. So much so that the luxury he now enjoyed—and enjoy it he did—was appreciated to the hilt. It might so easily have been otherwise...
And hopefully now Stavros’s English daughter, having known nothing but poverty all her life, condemned to cleaning filthy houses for a living, could look forward to an easier life, too.
He was glad he’d recommended that she do herself up, get some beauty treatments, buy some decent clothes, before she flew to Athens. After all, she was the daughter of o
ne of the richest men in Greece—she should start looking as if she was!
What will she look like when she’s dressed properly? Groomed properly?
He felt his masculine interest pique, a memory flickering of those hints of potential beauty behind her drab appearance, her luminous grey-green eyes. Her figure was good, even in the cheap jeans and sweatshirt...enticingly slender, yet full-breasted...
He snapped his thoughts away. They were inappropriate. He felt sorry for her—that was all. Nothing else.
He headed off for his dinner, resolutely putting her out of his mind.
* * *
Rosalie sighed luxuriously. This was bliss—bliss! And it had been ever since she’d slid the key card down the lock and stepped inside her hotel room.
What a room!
A vast bed, satin curtains, an armchair and a table, a massive wall-hung TV—and an en suite bathroom to die for! She’d tossed her bag down on the bed, kicked off her worn trainers and danced around in sheer glee. Then she’d sunk down on the huge soft bed and opened the leather brochure describing the hotel’s facilities.
Moments later she’d been lifting the house phone...making a lengthy—a very lengthy—booking in the spa, to be cleansed and pampered to within an inch of her life! Wraps, facials, manicure, pedicure, haircut, massage...the lot!
Now, hours later, with all the fatigue and the aches and pains of her overworked body vanished, her skin like satin and her hair like silk, she was propped up against the pillows on her huge bed, idly surfing her way through the vast array of channels on the TV. She was replete from the gourmet meal delivered by Room Service, picking at delicious chocolates and polishing off a half-bottle of white wine from the minibar.
Heaven—just heaven!
To think that this morning I woke and had no idea at all I’d be ending the day like this!
And she’d be flying off tomorrow to meet the father she had never known...
Wonder and joy flooded through her—and then a twist of grief.
Oh, Mum—if only you could have lived to enjoy this, too! To know that the man you fell for so many years ago finally discovered us again...
She lifted her glass, emotions full within her. As she set it back on the bedside table a rap on the door sounded. She started, then realised it must be Room Service, back to collect the dinner trolley.
Levering herself off the bed, she padded to the door in her complimentary bathrobe and slippers, opening it without thinking.
It wasn’t Room Service. It was Alexandros Lakaris.
* * *
Xandros had been in two minds as to whether to check on Stavros’s daughter on his return from his dinner or just leave her be. A reluctantly acknowledged sense of responsibility had led him to do the former. However much the girl was nothing to do with him, he’d plucked her out of her familiar surroundings and deposited her here, in what was obviously a totally alien environment for her. He’d better just make sure she was okay, and not doing anything stupid.
Like opening her hotel room door to anyone who knocked.
‘You should have checked who it was before opening the door,’ he reprimanded her.
For a second he thought he saw her eyes widen at seeing him. Then it was gone.
‘I thought you were Room Service,’ came the unconcerned answer. ‘Anyway, what do you want?’
She sounded offhand, as if she couldn’t care less.
‘I wanted to make sure you were all right,’ he replied evenly, keeping a tight rein on his annoyance at this indifference to his concern for her.
‘I’m fine,’ she answered. ‘In fact—blissful!’
Her offhand manner vanished as she said the word, her face lighting in a smile for which there was only one word.
Radiant.
Xandros’s breath caught. His eyes focussed sharply as he realised it was not just her smile that was making his breath catch. She had quite definitely undergone a whole bunch of beauty treatments...
The formerly pallid, blotchy skin was now clear and glowing, the lines of ingrained fatigue vanished, and there were no dark hollows underneath her distinctive grey-green eyes any more—eyes that were wide-set and luminous under finely arched brows. Her hair had obviously been washed, cut and styled, and was pinned up loosely, with delicate tendrils framing her face. She’d had a manicure, too. He could see the now smooth, long-fingered hand holding together the edges of her towelling robe, which was doing nothing to conceal the deep vee of smooth, pale flesh and the long line of her slender throat...
Without the slightest effort on his part, Xandros felt the start of a low, purring reaction stirring in him that came out of pure, unadulterated, raw masculine instinct.
Because there was something about talking at this late hour of the night to a woman standing in a hotel doorway wearing only a towelling robe and looking the way she was looking now. He had spent the evening dining well and drinking some very tolerable wines, with vintage port to follow, and something about the moment was really very...
Tempting.
Tempting, indeed...
The low purr intensified and he almost—almost—reached out his hand to draw a slow, exploring finger down that deep vee of her robe...almost let his other hand lift to her face, cup the delicate line of her jaw, tilt up her chin so that he could close in on her and lower his mouth to hers...to touch and taste those silken parted lips...
Thee mou! Am I insane?
He hauled his wayward thoughts away.
It’s out of the question—totally out of the question!
Having anything to do with Stavros’s English daughter other than the barest minimum was unthinkable.
‘Good,’ he said briskly, and continued in the same manner. ‘I stopped by to tell you that we’ll need to head for the airport after lunch. So you can have the morning for shopping. The concierge will book a personal shopper for you at one of the department stores to speed things up. Don’t worry about how to pay. I’ll cover it with the store directly for now and sort it with your father later.’
He would take a particular pleasure in sending a hefty bill to Stavros—and not just because the man owed his shamefully neglected daughter big-time. He was pretty damn sure that Stavros had known he’d be dismayed to see how unlike Ariadne his older daughter was. Ariadne—cultured and couture-clad—had been eminently suitable as a Lakaris bride...unlike her ill-dressed, downtrodden, impoverished London-born half-sister.
It would have amused Stavros, Xandros strongly suspected, envisaging Xandros’s predicted discomfiture at the prospect of taking so unlikely a bride in order to achieve the merger he wanted.
His mouth tightened. Yes, well, not only had he no intention whatsoever of matrimony now—with either sister!—but he could also play games of his own. It would amuse him to deliver Rosalie Jones to Stavros looking the way the daughter of one of Greece’s richest men should look. Deliver her—and walk away.
Because Stavros Coustakis was not going to game-play with him one single time more. He was done with it. Done.
He snapped his mind back to the present moment, keeping his voice and manner businesslike. ‘When you’ve finished shopping I’ll meet you in the hotel lobby and we’ll head to the airport.’ He gave her another brisk nod, keeping everything neutrally impersonal. ‘So, until tomorrow, goodnight.’
He turned away, heading back to his own room.
Best not to think of Stavros Coustakis’s English daughter.
However radiant her smile...
CHAPTER THREE
ROSALIE SANK INTO the hotel car that had been sent to collect her—and her treasure trove of purchases—from the very upmarket department store in Knightsbridge where she had just spent three fabulous hours in the hands of a personal shopper.
It had been heaven—a fantasy come to life!—to try on garment after garment, each and every one
of them so incredibly beyond her normal clothes budget, which had been focussed all her life on the cheapest of chain stores and charity shops.
It had been beyond her wildest dreams. And it was all thanks to her father! The father she had never known—who had never known about her!
And now they were to meet—this very evening!
Excitement and happiness filled her to the core.
Back at the hotel, the myriad bags full of her purchases were whisked away to be packed into the new suitcases she’d also bought. Her battered old case, full of her battered old clothes, would be held in storage for the time being. It was all being taken care of.
Now all she had to do was have lunch in the hotel restaurant and be ready, as instructed, for departure for the airport at two thirty.
Her expression changed. Alexandros Lakaris had made it crystal clear that she was nothing more than a chore to him. It was just as well she’d resolved to treat him as nothing more than her father’s messenger boy. Even if last night, when he’d turned up at her room door in that tailored tux of his, looking even more incredibly drop-dead fantastic than he had in a zillion-dollar business suit, she’d had to physically stop herself gawping at him and remember that he was nothing and nobody to her...
Well, it was obvious, wasn’t it? She was equally nothing and nobody to him. So she would match his manner with hers—brisk and impersonal.
An hour later, with another heavenly gourmet meal inside her, she was enjoying to the hilt the knowledge that today, in one of her umpteen fabulous new outfits, unlike on her arrival yesterday, she looked exactly the part for a swish hotel like this.
She sailed out of the restaurant into the lobby.
* * *
Xandros glanced towards the entrance to the hotel restaurant where, so the reception clerk had informed him, Stavros’s daughter was lunching. He had had a business lunch in the City, and now he wanted to head for the airport.
A woman was emerging from the restaurant, sashaying forward on high heels, her tall, elegant, long-legged figure cinched by a royal-blue waist-hugging fitted jacket with bracelet sleeves, and a narrow knee-length skirt. A pale blue silk chiffon scarf flowed behind her as she walked and her slender throat was adorned with a double rope of pale blue crystal beads. Long, lush blonde tresses waved back from her face...her perfectly made-up, beautiful face.