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‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure!’
‘I would have to disagree with you on that particular point,’ he remarked coolly and she blushed at the implication.
‘Do you really think trying to ignore me is the best way to deal with our predicament?’ he continued.
‘The only predicament we have, Leon,’ she echoed sarcastically, ‘is two strangers standing looking at one another, with one of them wishing they’d never met.’
‘So would that be you, I wonder, agape mou? Or me?’
‘Oh!’ she said, as wrong-footed by his silken retort as by his use of the word he’d murmured against her neck last night just before he’d made his fateful discovery of her innocence. But she didn’t want to think about that either. She wanted to remind herself that he was trespassing and she had the upper hand. ‘I’m not going to say it again,’ she vowed.
‘Five minutes. That’s all.’
‘And then you’ll go?’
He shrugged. ‘If you still want me to.’
He sounded so sure of himself, she thought furiously. So completely certain that she would comply with his wishes. She supposed the subtext was that no woman in her right mind would ever eject a man like him from the premises. Which was exactly what she should do. But his gaze was so steady and compelling and once again he was managing to exude an aura of power so spellbinding that, stupidly, she didn’t want him to go. At least, not yet. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to hear him out, especially as they had been so intimate. Because what if someone saw him and worked out what he was doing on her doorstep? Hadn’t one of the waitresses recently been sacked for skinny-dipping with one of the clientele? She mustn’t forget that she was leaving the day after tomorrow—so why jeopardise her much-needed bonus, by risking someone discovering she’d had sex with one of the hotel’s most important guests?
She opened the door a little wider. ‘I suppose you’d better come in,’ she said.
‘Efharisto.’
‘I’d like to say you’re welcome, but I’m not that much of a hypocrite!’
He smiled and instantly his powerful body seemed to suck up all the available light and air, as if the universe were silently acknowledging his formidable presence. Clicking the door shut, Marnie moved as far away from him as possible—not terribly easy in this confined space—because close up he was making her feel helpless. And she wasn’t helpless. That was what she needed to remember. She was strong. That was her trademark. Her legacy from having been ejected from her mother’s womb a full five minutes before her sister, and then left to deal with the dreadful fallout of that day. She tilted her chin and regarded him unwaveringly.
‘Okay. You’ve got five minutes, and the clock is ticking.’
He didn’t seem in the least bit fazed by her attitude—in fact, he was behaving as if he was enjoying the challenge rather than being annoyed by it. And didn’t his unflustered air only add to his lazy confidence, which had been one of the things which had attracted her to him in the first place?
‘You’re angry,’ he mused.
‘Yes, I’m angry. But I’ll get over it.’
‘And you’ve been crying.’
‘So? That’s not a crime, is it?’
‘Is it because I didn’t ask to see you again?’
‘Oh, the arrogance! Is that what you really think? That I’ve been sobbing into my pillow because you made clear it wasn’t going to happen again?’ She gave what she hoped was a liberated smile instead of the bitter laugh which was hovering on her lips. ‘I may not have had much experience with men, but I’ve listened to enough people over the years to understand the meaning of a casual hook-up. Don’t worry about it, Leon. I certainly wasn’t expecting a repeat performance.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
Her smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The problem was that she felt overwhelmed by all her emotions—concern for her sister in prison but also how to deal with him. She’d been hurt before—many times—but never by a man, because she’d never put herself into a position where that could happen. And none of her usual coping mechanisms seemed to be working. She could admit that she’d found it humiliating to rock up with her manicure kit while he was standing quaffing champagne with his billionaire mates, but that wasn’t really what all this was about.
‘I thought you were like me,’ she said.
He frowned. ‘In what way?’
‘Ordinary.’ The word puffed out of her mouth. ‘Not...’
‘Rich?’ he prompted, into the pause which followed.
‘Rich?’ she echoed. ‘Oh, come on, Leon. I suspect that’s a pretty modest assessment, judging by the bar bill which your party apparently ran up at lunch time, and by the way all the hotel staff keep referring to you all as if you’re some kind of royalty.’ She shook her head. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were staying here when you dropped me off last night, instead of letting me run across you while I was working? I felt completely disoriented when I saw you down by the pool.’
‘If you must know, I felt pretty disoriented myself.’
