LITMIR.BIZ

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too confused to care how stupid she must sound.

      Or stupefied, she then thought numbly, and wished the grass beneath her feet would open up and swallow her whole so she didn’t have to make herself turn around and face him.

      Not that she needed to look to know exactly what she would see—a dark devil who had the kiss of hell in his repertoire, she thought fancifully.

      A dark devil no less, who was cradling a sweet little baby on his arm, she added, and let out a strangled laugh that seemed to echo plaintively in the somnolent warmth of the afternoon quietness.

      Yet he didn’t sound like a devil when he said, ‘Come back, Claire,’ very gently. ‘You’re quite safe here; please believe me…’

      Safe, she repeated to herself. Tears sprang. Wretchedly she blinked them away. Then, on a small, tight, thickened suck of air, she attempted to pull herself together before turning round again.

      She didn’t look at him—refused to do so as she made her shaking limbs carry her back into the shade. Coming to her side, he paused for a moment, and her senses began to sting in an agony of need for him to say not another word!

      He must have sensed it and held his silence, which was something else she was realising about him—he picked up her feelings very easily.

      Which made her what? Claire wondered dizzily as they both began walking in silence along the terrace towards the door. Pathetically transparent? ‘I…’ Desperately she searched her foggy brain for something casual to say so she could pretend the kiss just hadn’t happened. And found it when the sound of a car engine powering into life reminded her of Desmona. ‘Does Desmona live here in this house?’

      ‘She has her own apartment in Athens,’ he replied. ‘But she comes to visit my grandmother quite regularly. Claire, listen to me,’ he then urged huskily.

      ‘Oh, good,’ she cut in, agitatedly aware he was going to say something about that wretched kiss, and equally sure she did not want to hear it. ‘Then I won’t have to watch my back for flying knives,’ she joked, and managed to gain some reassurance from the fact that she could joke while she was feeling like this.

      They turned together into a vast hallway with a white ceramic floor, cream walls and a white-painted staircase that swept gracefully upwards to a galleried landing above. It was all very grand. Very—

      At which point her brain ground to a stop when she found herself confronted by a long line of shyly smiling and expectant faces.

      Oh, what now? she groaned inwardly, eyeing the long row of what could only be the staff needed to run this big house, looking at the uniform neat pale pink dresses and white aprons the females were wearing, while it was white shirts and dark trousers for the men.

      Then, on a sudden flashback to a few minutes ago, her face suffused with mortified colour. ‘Do you think they saw us outside?’ she breathed for his ears alone, while having a sudden horrendous vision of them all crowding at the windows to watch Andreas kissing her.

      ‘If they did,’ he drawled, ‘then we will have no need to labour the game-plan.’

      It hit her then just what had been going on outside. That kiss had been part of this deception! No impulse, she realised. But merely part of his precious game-plan to make their liaison appear genuine.

      She felt oddly cheated. No, worse than that. She felt used.

      ‘Shall we get this over with?’ he suggested, while she was still struggling with the appalling proof of just how ruthless this man could be!

      With a light touch to the rigid line of her spine he prompted her into motion. For the next five minutes, face after face went by in a blur of smiles and curiously craning necks as his staff tried to get a peep at the sleeping baby lying in the crook of their employer’s arm.

      In fact the only face that registered was that of a young girl on the end of the row who reminded her of Althea. She stepped forward and shyly offered to take Melanie from Andreas. While Claire stood by, intensely conscious of everyone’s eyes on her, Andreas exchanged a few words in Greek with the young girl before he handed over Melanie.

      ‘I don’t believe you put me through that,’ she hissed when eventually he began leading the way up the staircase to the landing above, giving the staff the chance to crowd around the young girl holding Melanie.

      ‘It was not set up for your benefit but for theirs,’ he came back crushingly. ‘They need to know who it is they are going to be dealing with since you will in effect be the lady of the house.’

      Lady of the house? Claire almost tripped over the next stair in trembling dismay! His hand came out to steady her—she didn’t even notice! ‘But I can’t order those people around, Andreas!’ she protested, not noticing either that she had used his name for the first time in her urgency to get her point across. ‘I just wouldn’t know how!’

      ‘You will get used to it,’ he murmured indifferently.

      ‘But I don’t want to get used to it!’ she snapped, and at last realised he was touching her again and angrily tugged her arm free.

      ‘Fine,’ he concurred, letting her go—but only, she suspected, because they had reached the top of the stairs anyway, so she wasn’t likely to trip over again. ‘Then let Lefka do it when she arrives,’ he suggested carelessly.

      She had forgotten all about Lefka, who, she had learned in London, presided over whichever household Andreas was staying in. So—yes, she thought in relief, let Lefka do it. And felt her pounding heart settle down to a steadier pace. She was used to dealing with Lefka…

      She followed Andreas along a galleried upper landing to a glossy white-painted door that led, she discovered, to a suite of rooms very similar to the suite she had been allocated in his London home, only this suite was decorated in neutral shades of the palest gardenia and grey.

      While Claire walked over to the window to check out the view, Andreas walked across the thick carpet to another door and pushed it open.

      ‘My rooms,’ he announced, bringing her swinging abruptly to face him. ‘But no key,’ he dryly pointed out. ‘So you will just have to trust me to behave myself.’

      Was he really insensitive enough to joke about it after that kiss? Claire wondered furiously, and turned her back on him to walk over to the other side of the room where she opened another door, hoping to find a bedroom where Melanie would sleep. But a bathroom done in colours to match the bedroom gleamed cleanly back at her.

      ‘Where is Melanie going to sleep?’ she turned to ask.

      ‘In the nursery on the other side of the house,’ he said. ‘I will show you later…’

      He was already striding towards the only other door left in the room to open. Claire watched him, wondering what could be left to uncover. She remembered the huge dressing room in the London house and once again was ruefully envisaging her sad wardrobe inside it.

      The door came open at his touch, and he turned to Claire. ‘Come and look,’ he invited.

      Not a dressing room, then, she assumed, walking curiously forward—only to go still in a state of breathless surprise when she realised that she was not only right and that this was indeed a dressing room, but also that her wardrobe of clothes certainly would be lost inside it—amongst the racks and rails and shelves already filled to bursting with the most exquisite things she had ever seen.

      Expensive clothes. Designer clothes. Some of them very formal evening clothes. Yet still the kind of modern clothes any fashion-conscious twenty-one-year-old would die to possess.

      ‘For me?’ she asked breathlessly.

      ‘Yes,’ he replied, and watched grimly the way her fingers trembled as she lifted them to cover equally tremulous lips.

      ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she whispered.

      ‘Your response

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