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CHAPTER ONE
‘FOUR FORTY-FIVE.’ Saskia grimaced as she hurried across the foyer of the office block where she worked, heading for the exit. She was already running late and didn’t have time to pause when the receptionist called out. ‘Sneaking off early... Lucky you!’
Andreas frowned as he heard the receptionist’s comment. He was standing waiting for the executive lift and the woman who was leaving hadn’t seen him, but he had seen her: a stunningly leggy brunette with just that gleam of red-gold in her dark locks that hinted at fieriness. He immediately checked the direction of his thoughts. The complication of a man to woman entanglement was the last thing he needed right now, and besides...
His frown deepened. Since he had managed to persuade his grandfather to semi-retire from the hotel chain which Andreas now ran, the older man had begun a relentless campaign to persuade and even coerce Andreas into marrying a second cousin. Such a marriage, in his grandfather’s eyes, would unite not just the two branches of the family but the wealth of the family shipping line—inherited by his cousin—with that of the hotel chain.
Fortunately Andreas knew that at heart his grandfather was far more swayed by emotion than he liked to admit. After all, he had allowed his daughter, Andreas’s mother, to marry an Englishman.
The somewhat clumsy attempts to promote a match between Andreas and his cousin Athena would merely afford Andreas some moments of wry amusement if it were not for one all-important fact—which was that Athena herself was even keener on the match than his grandfather. She had made her intentions, her desires, quite plain. Athena was a widow seven years his senior, with two children from her first marriage to another wealthy Greek, and Andreas suspected that it might have been Athena herself who had put the ridiculous idea of a marriage between them in his grandfather’s head in the first place.
The lift had reached the penthouse floor and Andreas got out. This wasn’t the time for him to be thinking about his personal affairs. They could wait. He was due to fly out to the Aegean island his grandfather owned, and where the family holidayed together, in less than a fortnight’s time, but first his grandfather wanted a detailed report from him on his proposals to turn the flagging British hotel chain they had recently bought into as successful an enterprise as the rest of the hotels they owned.
Even though Andreas had become the company’s chief executive, his grandfather still felt the need to challenge his business decisions. Still, the acquisition would ultimately be a good one—the chain-owned hotels were very run-down and old-fashioned, but had excellent locations.
Although officially he was not due to arrive at the chain’s head office until tomorrow, Andreas had opted to do so this afternoon instead, and it looked as though he had just discovered one way at least in which profitability could be improved, he decided grimly, if all the staff were in the habit of ‘sneaking off early’, like the young woman he had just seen...
* * *
SNEAKING OFF EARLY! Saskia grimaced as she managed to hail a cruising taxi. If only! She had been at her desk for seven-thirty this morning, as she had been every morning for the last month, and neither had she had a lunch hour, but they had all been warned that Demetrios Hotels, who had taken over their own small chain, were relentless when it came to pruning costs. Tomorrow morning they were all due to meet their new boss for the first time, and Saskia wasn’t exactly looking forward to the occasion. There had been a lot of talk about cutbacks and there had also been grapevine rumours about how very formidable Andreas Latimer was.
‘The old man, his grandfather, had a reputation for running a tight ship, and if anything the grandson is even worse.’
‘They both favour a “the guest is always right even when wrong” policy, and woe betide any employee who forgets it. Which is, of course, why their hotels are so popular...and so profitable.’
That had been the general gist of the gossip Saskia had heard.
Her taxi was drawing up outside the restaurant she had asked to be taken to. Hastily she delved into her handbag for her purse, paying the driver and then hurrying quickly inside.
‘Oh, Saskia—there you are. We thought you weren’t going to make it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Saskia apologised to her best friend as she slipped into the spare seat at the table for three in the Italian restaurant where they had arranged to meet.
‘There’s been a panic on at work,’ she explained. ‘The new boss arrives tomorrow.’ She pulled a face, wrinkling the elegant length of her dainty nose and screwing up her thick-lashed aquamarine eyes. She paused as she saw that her friend wasn’t really listening, and that her normally happy, gentle face looked strained and unhappy.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked immediately.
‘I was just telling Lorraine how upset I am,’ Megan answered, indicating the third member of their trio, Megan’s cousin Lorraine, an older woman with a brisk, businesslike expression and a slightly jaded air.
‘Upset?’ Saskia queried, a small frown marring the elegant oval of her face as she pushed her long hair back and reached hungrily for a bread roll. She was starving!
‘It’s Mark,’ Megan said, her voice shaking a little and her brown eyes full of quiet despair.
‘Mark?’ Saskia repeated, putting down her roll so that she could concentrate on her friend. ‘But I thought the two of you were about to announce your engagement.’
‘Yes, we were...we are... At least, Mark wants to...’ Megan began, and then stopped when Lorraine took over.
‘Megan thinks he’s involved with someone else...’ she told Saskia grimly. ‘Two-timing her.’
Older than Megan and Saskia by almost a decade, and with a broken marriage behind her, Lorraine was inclined to be angrily contemptuous of the male sex.
‘Oh, surely not, Megan,’ Saskia protested. ‘You told me yourself how much Mark loves you.’
‘Well, yes, that’s what I thought,’ Megan agreed, ‘Especially when he said that he wanted us to become engaged. But...he keeps getting these phone calls. But when I answer the phone whoever’s ringing just hangs up. There’ve been three this week and when I ask him who it is he says it’s just a wrong number.’
‘Well, perhaps it is,’ Saskia tried to reassure her, but Megan shook her head.
‘No, it isn’t. Mark keeps on hanging around by the phone, and last night he was talking on his mobile when I walked in and the moment he saw me he ended the call.’
‘Have you asked him what’s going on?’ Saskia questioned her in concern.
‘Yes. He says I’m just imagining it,’ Megan told her unhappily.
‘A classic male ploy,’ Lorraine announced vigorously with grim satisfaction. ‘My ex did everything to convince me that I was becoming paranoid and then what does he do? He moves in with his secretary, if you please!’
