AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It would be all right, she told herself. It was only two stops on the underground plus a short walk, and she still had twenty minutes until her appointment.
She hurried down the street to the side entrance of the hotel, jumping out of her skin as a huge black SUV glided past her noiselessly and slid to a stop beside the kerb. It would be okay. All she had to do was go to her locker—
The door to the hotel swung open and a man erupted into the daylight, flanked by two heavily built men in black suits. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of sleek sunglasses, his attention fixed on the phone in his hand. But she didn’t need to see them to know they were blue.
It was the man from the lift, and he was heading straight for her.
For a few half-seconds she hesitated, one foot hovering above the step, her brain telling her to move, her body frozen. Finally, she made a last-minute attempt to sidestep him, but it was too late. She had a fleeting impression of a broad, masculine chest in a blue shirt, topped by a dark-stubbled scowl, and then her bag tumbled from her shoulder and she let out a gasp as her body collided with a solid wall of muscle.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ she apologised automatically—guests were always right. But her words were cut off as the man from the lift reached out and caught her elbow to steady them both. His grip didn’t hurt, but his beauty did. Her heartbeat stumbled. Up close, his face was arresting, extraordinary. But it wasn’t just his face making her head feel light.
Beneath that impeccable dark suit there was a barely concealed animal vitality, a power and a ferocity that filled her with a prickling kind of panic, so that she was suddenly and acutely conscious of the rise and fall of her breath beneath her too-tight skin.
‘You wouldn’t need to be sorry if you’d been looking where you’re going,’ he said curtly, staring down at her in a way that made her body feel taut and loose at the same time. He took a step closer and tapped the lens of her glasses. ‘Maybe these need replacing.’
Effie stared up at him, her cheeks colouring—not just at the injustice of his remark but at the intimacy of his action.
She slipped her arm free. ‘Actually, you walked into me, Mr...’ She hesitated, waiting for him to provide his name.
‘Kane,’ he said finally. ‘Achileas Kane.’
The name hovered between them like one of the glittering dragonflies she sometimes saw by the Serpentine when she went to Hyde Park after work. She shivered inside. Achileas...from Achilles, the greatest warrior of Ancient Greece, legendary hero of Troy. Formidable. Ruthless. Remorseless.
And the current occupant of the Stanmore Hotel’s Royal Suite.
‘And you are...?’
His voice was soft, but there was a hard undercurrent in it that made her shake inside.
‘Effie Price.’ Feeling the shimmering, dismissive never-heard-of-you sweep of his blue gaze, she said quickly, ‘And, like I was saying, you walked into me, Mr Kane. So maybe I’m not the only one who needs glasses.’
She felt her breath catch, and something stirred inside her as his pupils flared like twin lighthouse beams across a darkening sea. Behind her the noise from the main road seemed to fade and she was aware of nothing beyond the beating of her heart.
Skin prickling, needing to escape from his penetrating blue gaze, she reached down to pick up her bag. But he beat her to it, and as they straightened up he held it just out of her grasp. Stray beams of sunlight added tiger stripes to the mitred planes of his mesmerising face.
‘Is that right?’ he said smoothly.
She felt a rush of irritation. The sun might seek him out, burnishing him with celestial golden light like a mythical hero, but nothing could gild his arrogance.
‘Yes, it is. Oh, and while we’re on the subject I’m taking back my apology,’ she added, when she could breathe again. Just because he looked like a Greek god, didn’t mean he could act like one. Throwing down thunderbolts with his eyes and looming over her in his dark suit so that he took over the entire world—or at least the bit she was standing in.
‘Excuse me?’
Now he was looking at her as if seeing her for the first time.
Probably he was. She had spent most of her life being ignored and side-lined—why should this moment be any different? Or perhaps he was just stunned that anyone, particularly someone like her, should question his world view.
‘Taking it back?’ His voice had dropped another notch, but it was his mouth that caught her attention, curling up at the corner into a sensual question mark that seemed to tug her upwards like a fish on a hook.
Suddenly, instead of feeling side-lined, she felt sideswiped by the fierce intensity of his focus, but she just about managed to hold his gaze. ‘I’m not sorry,’ she said shakily. ‘How can I be sorry for something I didn’t do? I was just being polite,’ she said quickly, answering her own question as his eyes narrowed on her face. ‘In fact, you should be apologising to me.’
Seriously?
Achileas Kane gazed down at the woman tapping one small foot in front of him, his fury vying with wordless disbelief.
To say that he was in a bad mood would be something of an understatement. The day had started on a wrong note when they had finally left the party at Nico’s house this morning.
They.His jaw tightened. He hadn’t arrived with Tamara, and he certainly hadn’t been planning on leaving with her. Their nine-week relationship had been a purely physical and mutually satisfying affair that he had brought to a close a good six months ago.
