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But of course she had looked at him. She suspected that even a nun might have given him a second glance because men like Alek Sarantos didn’t stray onto the average person’s radar more than a couple of times in a lifetime.
His rugged face was too hard to be described as handsome and his sensual lips were marred by a twist of ruthlessness. His hair was ebony, his skin like polished bronze, but it was his dark-fringed eyes which captured your attention and made it difficult to look away. Unexpectedly blue eyes, which made her think of those sunlit seas you always saw in travel brochures. Sardonic eyes which seemed to have the ability to make her feel...
What?
Ellie shook her head slightly. She wasn’t sure. As if she sensed something lost in him? As if, on some incomprehensible level, they were kindred spirits? Stupid crazy stuff she shouldn’t be feeling, that was for sure. Her fingers tightened around the tray. It was definitely time to excuse herself and go home.
But Alek Sarantos was still staring as if he was waiting for her to change her mind and as those blue eyes seared into her she felt a brief wobble of temptation. Because it wasn’t every day a Greek billionaire asked you to have a drink with him.
‘It’s getting on for twelve,’ she said doubtfully.
‘I’m perfectly capable of telling the time,’ he said with a touch of impatience. ‘What happens if you stay out past midnight—does your car turn into a pumpkin?’
Ellie jerked back her head in surprise. She was amazed he knew the story of Cinderella—did that mean they had the same fairy tales in Greece?—though rather less surprised that he’d associated her with the famous skivvy.
‘I don’t have a car,’ she said. ‘Just a bicycle.’
‘You live out in the middle of nowhere and you don’t have a car?’
‘No.’ She rested the tray against her hip and smiled, as if she were explaining elementary subtraction to a five-year-old. ‘A bike is much more practical round here.’
‘So what happens when you go to London—or the coast?’
‘I don’t go to London very often. And we do have such things as trains and buses, you know. It’s called public transport.’
He dropped another cube of sugar in his coffee. ‘I didn’t use any kind of public system until I was fifteen.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Absolutely.’ He glanced up at her. ‘Not a train or a bus—not even a scheduled airline.’
She stared at him. What kind of life had he led? For a moment she was tempted to offer him a glimpse of hers. Maybe she should suggest meeting tomorrow morning and taking the bus to nearby Milmouth-on-Sea. Or catching a train somewhere—anywhere. They could drink scalding tea from paper cups as the countryside sped by—she’d bet he’d never done that.
Until she realised that would be overstepping the mark, big time. He was a hotshot billionaire and she was a waitress and while guests sometimes pretended to staff that they were equals, everyone knew they weren’t. Rich people liked to play at being ordinary, but for them it was nothing but a game. He’d asked her to stay for a drink but, really, what possible interest could a tycoon like him have in someone like her? His unusually expansive mood might evaporate the moment she sat down. She knew he could be impatient and demanding. Didn’t the staff on Reception say he’d given them hell whenever he’d lost his internet connection—even though he was supposed to be on holiday and, in her opinion, people on holiday shouldn’t be working.
But then Ellie remembered something the general manager had told her when she’d first joined the hotel’s training scheme. That powerful guests sometimes wanted to talk—and if they did, you should let them.
So she looked into his blue eyes and tried to ignore the little shiver of awareness which had started whispering over her skin. ‘How come,’ she questioned, trying to make her voice sound cool and casual, ‘it took until the age of fifteen before you went on public transport?’
Alek leant back in his chair and considered her question and wondered whether now might be the right time to change the subject, no matter how easy he found it to talk to her. Because the reality of his past was something he usually kept off-limits. He had grown up in a pampered palace of a home—with every luxury known to man.
And he had hated every minute of it.
The place had been a fortress, surrounded by high walls and snarling dogs. A place which had kept people out as well as in. The most lowly of staff were vetted before being offered employment, and paid obscenely well to turn a blind eye to his father’s behaviour. Even family holidays were tainted by the old man’s paranoia about security. He was haunted by the threat of stories about his lifestyle getting into the papers—terrified that anything would be allowed to tarnish his outward veneer of respectability.
