The bedroom door opened and, before he had time to retreat, the butler walked through to the sitting room. ‘I thought that my father and Miss Stanford might be here,’ Andreas explained.
‘Kyrios Stelios is downstairs in the salon. He asked me to fetch his glasses.’ Dinos lifted his hand, in which he held a spectacles case. ‘Miss Stanford’s room is next door but she is down in the salon with your father.’
So Stelios and Isla were not sharing a bedroom at the villa, Andreas mused as he descended the marble staircase. It struck him as unusual behaviour for a couple who had announced their intention to marry. The whole situation of the sudden engagement was odd, especially as his father hadn’t mentioned his marriage plans at their last meeting a month ago.
It was not his concern if Stelios made a fool of himself over his pretty young housekeeper, Andreas told himself. If he admitted that passion had flared between him and Isla, his father might not believe him, or might accuse him of trying to make trouble. Their relationship had never been close, especially after Stelios had been forced to choose between his wife and family, and his mistress.
Andreas had been twelve when his father had admitted that he’d been seeing another woman in England and intended to leave his marriage for her. Andreas’s mother had been devastated, and Andreas had vowed that he would never speak to his father again unless he dumped his mistress and returned to his wife and children. He’d hoped that by taking his mother’s side he would win her love, but she had continued to treat him with the same disinterest that she’d always shown him. His father had remained married but from then on he had been cool towards Andreas.
Helia Karelis had died two years ago from an overdose of her sleeping pills. A tragic accident, the coroner had recorded, but Andreas was sure his mother had known what she was doing when she’d swallowed a handful of pills, just as he was sure she had never got over her husband’s affair, even though it had happened many years ago. Her unhappiness with her marriage had proved to Andreas the folly of falling in love. He avoided emotional dramas in the same way that any sane person would take precautionary measures against coming into contact with the Ebola virus.
As for Isla, Andreas shrugged his shoulders. He couldn’t explain why he had come on to her like a teenager on a first date in London. It wasn’t his style and he was confident that when he met her again he would see her for the gold-digger he suspected she was. The way she had responded to his kiss with a sweet ardency that had almost made him believe she was inexperienced must have been an act, he told himself.
He strode into the salon where pre-dinner cocktails were being served and stopped dead in his tracks. The room was full of guests—various relatives and, curiously, considering the dinner party was supposed to be a family gathering, several high-ranking representatives from the oil industry were present as well as members of Karelis Corp’s board of directors. There was a low hum of chatter, the clink of glasses on silver trays carried by the serving staff. But Andreas only saw Isla and his blood thundered in his ears.
This was a different Isla to the decorous housekeeper he had met on previous occasions at his father’s house in Kensington. Tonight she was a lady in red—a sultry siren in clingy scarlet velvet, with sparkling jewels around her throat that drew his attention to the pale upper slopes of her breasts above the plunging neckline of her dress. Her blonde hair was swept up into a chignon to expose the delicate line of her neck. The scarlet gloss on her lips emphasised their fullness.
Lowering his gaze, he saw that the hem of her dress came to her mid-thigh and her long slim legs were enhanced by high-heeled strappy shoes. Isla Stanford was every hot-blooded male’s fantasy and Andreas was burning up. She looked over at him, and as their eyes locked he saw a pink stain spread across her face. The convulsive movement of her throat when she swallowed told him that she was as aware as he was of the electrical current that arced between them. He stared at her mouth, so lush and red and infinitely inviting, and felt the urgent stirring of his desire swell beneath his trousers.
For a moment Andreas forgot that Isla was attending the party as Stelios’s guest. Something primitively possessive swept through him and he strode across the room, driven to stake his claim on the woman who had been in his thoughts too often in the past months. He and Isla had unfinished business.
But just then his father finished talking to another guest and slipped his arm around Isla’s waist. Andreas’s eyes narrowed as he halted in front of the mismatched couple.
‘Finally, you are here.’ Stelios sounded irritable. ‘I expected you to arrive several hours ago. We were about to start dinner without you.’
‘Good evening, Papa,’ Andreas greeted his father drily. ‘Miss Stanford.’ He kept his expression bland as he glanced at Isla and back to Stelios. ‘I apologise if I am late. I said I would arrive some time in the afternoon but I did not specify an exact time and I was unaware that you were giving a dinner party.’
Stelios sniffed. ‘Well, you are here now. I hope you will offer your congratulations when I tell you that Isla has agreed to be my fiancée.’
Even though Andreas had been pre-warned by his sister of his father’s engagement, the sight of a diamond the size of a rock on Isla’s finger filled him with fury. It had to be a joke, surely? This grey-haired, wrinkled old man and an exquisite English rose who must be some forty years younger than her future husband.
He jerked his gaze to Isla’s face and noted the faint quiver of her lower lip, the flash of sexual awareness in her wide grey eyes that she quickly concealed beneath the sweep of her lashes. She was his, goddammit. Yet it was his ageing father’s arm around her slender waist and Stelios’s obscenely gaudy ring glittering on her finger.
‘Well, Andreas?’ his father prompted. ‘I can see you are surprised by my news, but I’m sure you will agree that I am a lucky man to have such a beautiful fiancée.’
At a rough guess, the diamond solitaire was worth a six-figure sum. Andreas gave a sardonic smile. ‘Congratulations,’ he drawled, directing his mocking gaze at Isla. ‘You appear to have hit the jackpot.’
Copyright © 2020 by Chantelle Shaw
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ISBN: 9781488059254
Cinderella in the Sicilian’s World
Copyright © 2020 by Sharon Kendrick
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Cinderella In The Sicilian's World (HQR Presents) Page 16