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Sidonie fought down the urge to scream and smiled as if her boss wasn’t a sadistic control freak. There was nothing wrong with the way she’d made this bed in the five-star hotel where she worked for minimum wage three days a week.
‘No problem.’
‘And please hurry—the guest is due to arrive within the hour.’
Sidonie sighed deeply and stripped the bed in order to make it again. She ached all over and she longed for a hot bath like the one she’d had the other night. She hadn’t had the time since then, because she’d taken on a full-time waitressing job in a Moroccan restaurant near the apartment six evenings a week. Her boss there had no qualms about hiring a pregnant woman, unlike the boss of the café where she worked the other two days a week when she wasn’t at the hotel.
Finally her shift was over and she stretched out her back, instinctively putting a hand over her small bump, feeling the prickle of guilt. She knew she shouldn’t be working so hard but she had no choice. A small voice taunted her. You could contact him. But she slammed her locker door shut in the staff changing room.
No way. Not going there. The thought of crawling to Alexio for help was anathema. She never wanted to see his cold, judgmental face again.
But when she emerged from the staff entrance at the side of the hotel and walked to the top of the lane his was the first face she saw. Shock held her immobile. He was leaning nonchalantly against the bonnet of a gleaming sports car, with his hands in his trouser pockets and his legs crossed at the ankles. Then he saw her and tensed, straightened up.
She blinked, but he didn’t disappear. He was looking right at her with those golden-green eyes. For an awful treacherous second emotion rose in a dizzying sweep inside Sidonie. Her blood grew hot in her veins and her breath shortened. Her nipples tingled. All the signs of a woman in the throes of a lust that had lain dormant.
The oppressive, muggy August air seemed to seize the oxygen going into her lungs. For a second she felt so light-headed she thought she’d faint and she sucked in breath. It couldn’t be him, she told herself, in spite of his not disappearing. It was a mirage. An apparition from her imagination torturing her.
In a bid to convince herself of that Sidonie turned and started to walk down the street. She heard a curse behind her and then her arm was taken in a strong grip. A familiar grip. Immediately Sidonie reacted violently to the effect it had on her body and soul and whirled around, ripping herself free.
She looked up and felt dizzy again. It was Alexio. In the flesh. That gorgeous flesh. He had no right to look so gorgeous. She frowned. Even if he did look leaner than when she’d last seen him and even if there were lines around his mouth and face. Lines she recognised, because she saw them in her own mirror every day. But he was still gorgeous, and she was still aware of the woman who had just walked past and done a double-take.
Anger flared and she seized it like a drowning person might seize a buoy.
‘What do you want?’ she spat out, her belly jumping with panic and a mix of other things she didn’t want to investigate.
Sidonie vaguely noticed his open-necked light blue shirt and dark trousers and became very belatedly aware of her own woeful state of dress. Skinny jeans which she had to wear with the button open, flip-flops and a loose sleeveless smock shirt. Panic gripped her and then she reassured herself. He wouldn’t notice the bump.
The fact that he hadn’t come looking for her sooner stung her more than she liked to admit. She was pathetic.
That hatred burned bright within her, giving her strength. ‘Well? What do you want? As far as I recall I didn’t take anything on my way out of the villa.’
‘No,’ Alexio said heavily, ‘it’s what you left behind.’
Sidonie went blank for a moment, and then she saw that cheque in her mind’s ey
e and felt fury all over again. Suddenly it made sense and she said out loud, ‘You went back to the villa and discovered I hadn’t cashed your precious cheque?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted.
Sidonie didn’t like the way that made the fury diminish slightly. She’d assumed that he’d known all along that she hadn’t taken his money and that it had made no difference. But all this time he’d thought she’d cashed in. Still, that didn’t change anything.
‘And this...’
Sidonie looked to see him holding out her university sweatshirt and was immediately bombarded with memories of meeting him on that plane, feeling like a hick.
She took it from him and said cuttingly, ‘You came all this way to deliver my sweatshirt?’
A muscle in his jaw popped and Sidonie felt increasingly vulnerable.
She looked at her watch, and then at him, and injected her voice with false sweetness. ‘Look, I’d love to stay and chat, but I have work to get to—so if you don’t mind...’
She turned to walk away but he caught her arm again and Sidonie’s blood leapt. She stopped and turned around and said in a low voice, ‘Let me go, Christakos. We have nothing to say to each other.’
Except for the fact that he’s the father of the baby growing in your belly.
Sidonie ignored her conscience. She needed to get away from him before her composure slipped.
* * *
