LITMIR.BIZ

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didn’t care about The Harrington, or whether The Chatsfield swallowed it whole or not. He certainly didn’t care about this spoilt heiress.

      ‘Would you care to show me your room?’ he asked, his voice coolly polite, and with another huff she flounced past him and out into the lobby.

      She was a beautiful woman, he had to acknowledge, although it was the kind of shiny, polished beauty that made him cynical. Too manufactured. Too fake. And after all the lies he’d swallowed in his past, he didn’t like fake anything.

      Still, shiny, brown hair in carefully tousled locks that reached to the middle of her back. Big brown eyes. A dynamite figure, all willowy grace, encased in a jewel-green shift dress and high heels that drew Ben’s reluctant admiration to her long, trim legs, and the tempting curve of her calves.

      He yanked his gaze upwards and it fell on her butt. That was nice too. Up again, and he finally made contact with her shoulder blades as she marched ahead of him. Good. He’d keep his eyes trained there.

      She stabbed the button for the lift with one French manicured fingernail, her body quivering with tension as they waited for it to arrive.

      ‘When did you arrive in Berlin?’ he asked, deciding solicitude was his best bet. Not that anything would impress this kind of high-maintenance woman, but at least he would have tried.

      She turned to give him an icy stare. ‘About an hour ago. I’ve been flying all night, Mr Chatsfield.’

      And that was his problem how? Ben gave her a smile of bland equanimity. At least he hoped it was, and not the sneer he felt in his soul. ‘Please, call me Ben.’

      She didn’t respond.

      Thankfully the lift arrived and they stepped inside. At the last second before the doors closed a blowsy blonde woman in a bright pink designer tracksuit and sparkly high-tops squeezed in. She gave an obviously fake double take as she registered Olivia.

      ‘Olivia. I didn’t know you were coming to the festival.’ Insincerity dripped from the woman’s words and next to him Ben felt Olivia Harrington stiffen. After only a second she forced herself to relax, gave the woman what looked like a genuine smile but Ben knew in his gut was false.

      ‘Amber. So nice to see you. Yes, I’m here. I have a role in Blue Skies Forever. The indie film?’

      ‘Oh, right.’ The woman, this Amber wrinkled her nose. ‘A walk-on part?’

      ‘A supporting role,’ Olivia corrected, her smile not slipping so much as a millimetre. The lift doors pinged and she stepped past Amber her head held high. ‘See you around, I’m sure.’

      So she was an actress. Ben eyed her thoughtfully as she walked down the thickly carpeted hall, her chin lifted defiantly, her shoulders thrown back. It didn’t really surprise him, he decided. She certainly had a flare for the dramatic. And actresses, he acknowledged, tended to be high maintenance, difficult and fake. Olivia had already shown she was all three. No, he wasn’t surprised at all.

      She took him down another hall, this one narrower than the hotel’s main corridors, and then through a fire door that had Ben frowning. He didn’t think there were any guest bedrooms in this part of the building. It was staff accommodation and storage.

      ‘Here we are,’ she announced sunnily, and with a deliberate flourish she produced her old-fashioned key—not one of the hotel’s signature key cards—and unlocked the door to her room. Ben stepped inside, his shoulder brushing Olivia’s because the room was that small.

      It really was a broom cupboard. Or close enough to one.

      ‘Would you call this appalling?’ she asked with acid sweetness. She pointed to the rumpled, stained bed. ‘I don’t think the sheets have been changed in, oh, maybe a year? Plus the minibar has been raided, and there’s no en-suite bathroom despite the fact that The Chatsfield’s standard rooms are all meant to have them.’ She whirled around to face him, her hands on her hips, her body, and in particular her breasts, quite close to his own anatomy. The room was small.

      Ben held his ground, conscious of the way her hair had brushed his cheek when she’d whirled around, and how even after a thirteen-hour flight she smelled like strawberries. And vanilla.

      He took a deep breath, kept his voice even and his gaze on her furious face. ‘I’m sorry. Clearly there’s been a mistake.’

      ‘A mistake? You’re going to pretend putting me in this—this sty was a mistake?’

      Fury, all too familiar a feeling, spiked. All right, she was pretty, but what was her problem? She seemed determined to get the most mileage out of what clearly had to be an accident.

      ‘Yes, a mistake,’ he answered, all solicitude gone from his voice. ‘You don’t actually think someone would intentionally put a guest in a room like this?’

      She planted her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowed to chocolate-brown slits. ‘That’s exactly what I think, Ben.’

      He stared at her, first incredulous, then scornful. ‘You think I put you in this room because you’re a Harrington?’

      ‘It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.’

      Ben let out one short, sharp laugh. ‘You’re no rocket scientist, sweetheart.’

      Temper flashed in her eyes, turning them almost to gold. ‘Don’t patronise me...’

      ‘I could say the same. You must think you’re pretty damn important, for me to waste my time irritating you.’

      She shrugged defiantly. ‘If the shoe fits...’

      ‘So you think I trawled through the guest list during the film festival,’ he cut her off, his voice dripping disbelief, ‘when the hotel is completely booked, hoping that a Harrington might have made a reservation, just so I could make this petty power play?’ He thought of the sugar-laced venom of the woman in the lift. ‘Because, sorry to break it to you, Miss Harrington, but your presence in Berlin hasn’t been plastered all over the news.’ He raised his eyebrows, curved his mouth into a mocking smile. ‘Actually, I’m not sure if the media have even twigged you’re here.’

      Fury blazed colour onto each high, lovely cheekbone and her eyes narrowed further. ‘I don’t know how you found out, but...’

      ‘Oh, give it a rest.’ He was so tired of prima donnas and their outrageous demands. The last thing he needed was a Harrington breathing down his neck. ‘It was an honest mistake, and that’s all. I didn’t even know a Harrington was in Berlin. I assumed your whole family was in New York, working on the negotiations with my brother.’

      ‘What negotiations?’ Olivia demanded sharply. ‘My sister refused...’

      ‘I don’t think corporate takeovers are quite that simple,’ Ben answered dryly. ‘But honestly, it has nothing to do with me. I have nothing to do with The Chatsfield.’

      Olivia arched an incredulous eyebrow. ‘Yet you’re managing The Chatsfield, Berlin.’

      Something that he still couldn’t quite believe he’d agreed to. Didn’t want to think about why he had. ‘So I am,’ he responded, his voice as even as he could make it. ‘But only for the duration of the festival.’

      ‘So the Chatsfields are close,’ Olivia observed, her gaze sweeping over him, and Ben tensed. Close? He’d thought so. Once.

      ‘We’re family,’ he said now, his voice toneless. ‘Just like the Harringtons.’

      Olivia pursed her lips and they stared at each other, anger simmering, along with something else. Something Ben was reluctant to admit to but could easily name. Attraction.

      Olivia Harrington, personality aside, was a lovely woman. A beautiful, vibrant, sexy woman. With her eyes sparkling with all that self-righteous indignation, her hair tousled about her flushed face, she looked both angry and turned on.

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