LITMIR.BIZ

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city and the small room she’d ended up with was clean, but soulless. There were fake flowers in a vase and an enormous TV dominating the limited space. But at least the shower worked and afterwards she felt one hundred per cent better.

      She lay down, intending to shut her eyes just for a moment—but when she opened them again she realised that it had been a lot longer than that. The artificial light which was streaming in through the small window showed that she had been asleep for hours and a glance at her watch confirmed it. It was almost ten o’clock at night!

      Rebecca’s heart sank. She had been planning to go to Xandros’s place of work and just ask to see him—without giving him time to think up some reason why he shouldn’t. But now she could see that she hadn’t really been thinking straight—or did she really think that a man in Xandros’s position would be instantly accessible to the general public?

      At Evolo, she had worked with enough powerful people to know that they were always protected. Whether it was night or whether it was day, she would still need Xandros to give his permission if she wanted to see him. There was no way she would ever have been able to burst in on him, unannounced—not unless she was planning to hang around the entrance to his offices like some tramp waiting for a handout. And how undignified would that be?

      Rebecca flinched. Well, there was no way she was going to postpone the inevitable—not for a moment longer. The sooner she had done her duty, then the sooner she could go away.

       But it’s ten o’clock at night—what if he’s with another woman?

      Then she would just have to face up to it—because that, too would be reality.

      Her hair was all rumpled where she’d slept on it while it was damp, but there was no time to redo it. And this wasn’t some kind of beauty contest. Rebecca had very firmly banished from her heart and her mind the idea that Xandros would take one look at her and realise what a fool he’d been. Because life wasn’t like that—and even if it was she had been growing her self-respect in the intervening weeks. And there was no way she wanted a man who treated her like a sexual commodity, the way Xandros had done—even if she had gone along with it at the time.

      Applying only a little make-up, she tied her hair back and put on the floaty dress. Then she pulled her phone out and tapped out his number with a trembling finger.

      It rang for so long she thought it was going to go straight to messages but at last there was a click, and he said in his distinctive accent, ‘Yes?’

      Her name must have come up on the screen because she heard the wariness in his voice and it made her want to weep. If only she could have put the phone down. But she couldn’t. She sucked in a deep breath.

      ‘Xandros? Hello, it’s me. Rebecca. Am I disturbing you?’

      He didn’t answer that. Staring out at the bright glitter of lights on the skyline with narrowed eyes, Xandros thought how to respond to her question in a thousand different ways. He hadn’t expected her to ring him—and he didn’t particularly want her to. But his curiosity was aroused—and he wondered what had made her swallow her pride to get in touch with him. ‘How are you, Rebecca?’

      That was quite a difficult one to answer. ‘I need to see you.’

      Need? A pause. ‘But I’m in New York.’

      ‘Yes, I know. So am I.’

      This time the pause was so long that Rebecca actually thought he might have hung up on her. To her surprise he didn’t demand to know just what she was doing in New York—but maybe that shouldn’t have surprised her. He was many things, but never predictable.

      ‘Where exactly are you?’ he questioned.

      She read out the address from the top of the laminated room-service menu which was lying on the bedside table. ‘Do you know it?’

      Did he know it? Ah, the exquisite irony of life! Briefly, Xandros closed his eyes. He remembered staying in that self-same area when he’d first arrived in the city—presumably for the same cost-cutting reasons as her—and thinking how the fabled streets of New York were certainly not paved with gold. He had seen homeless people, and hungry ones, too. He recalled his sense of shock—and his determination, too—that one day he should conquer this great city. Within weeks, he had found himself a job to help support him through college—and had never been back there since. ‘Can you come here?’ he questioned silkily.

      ‘Where?

      ‘I’m in the office.’

      Rebecca stifled her instinctive sigh of relief. At least he wasn’t cosying up to whoever must have replaced her by now. ‘That’s late,’ she commented.

      His mouth hardened. He wanted to tell her that the hours he worked were none of her damned business. Why the hell was she here? Deliberately, he injected his voice with steel. ‘I will send a car for you,’ he said.

      And the cool note in his voice reminded Rebecca of another stark reality of the situation. They were ex-lovers. There was no fondness for her in Xandros’s heart. And even less when he discovers what you are about to tell him. ‘No, I’ll take the subway—’

      ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Rebecca,’ he cut in, with an impatient click of his tongue. ‘It’s late and I’ve said I’ll send a car. The driver will ring you when he’s outside.’

      Rebecca recognised that there was no sense in arguing with him—and that to do so would be fairly stupid, under the circumstances. Why turn down his offer of safe transport in a strange city at night?

      ‘Thanks,’ she said, and put the phone down quickly.

      And, besides, she was beginning to feel rather peculiar and she couldn’t quite work out whether that was because she was pregnant or slightly jet-lagged or because she hadn’t eaten since early on in the flight.

      So eat something!

      Her burgeoning body craved food and she had no desire to faint in front of him. Raiding the mini-bar like a guilty teenager, she ate chocolate, some pretzels and a glass of juice and worried how much they would charge her for the pleasure of eating junk. And then her phone began to ring and she felt a little like someone going to face their own trial.

      A dark limousine was waiting outside with a uniformed driver holding open the door for her. She sat back on soft leather as the powerful car negotiated the streets—so new to her and yet strangely familiar from years of having seen them on TV programmes—but Rebecca wasn’t really paying attention to them. She was too wrapped up in choosing her words as carefully as possible.

      But how did you tell someone who was so definitely in your past that you were carrying part of his future?

      The car stopped outside a vast, towering building lit mutedly save for the very top of it, which shone as brightly as a planet. A young woman stood waiting by the entrance, her tumble of dark curls and striking scarlet dress suddenly making Rebecca feel very pale and unexciting. Who was she? she wondered—hating herself for still caring as the brunette opened the car door.

      ‘Hi. I’m Miriam.’ The woman smiled, her teeth gleaming like a dentistry advertisement. ‘Xandros asked me to come and meet you. He’s upstairs in his office.’

      ‘Thanks,’ said Rebecca, feeling more than uptight now as a glass lift sped upwards. He hadn’t come to fetch her himself, had he? And how, she wondered, had Xandros explained her sudden appearance to this woman Miriam? Was this his girlfriend—sent down to fetch her so that there could be no possible misunderstandings? Or was she a powerful man’s gatekeeper—would she expect to sit in on what was probably going to be the most difficult conversation of Rebecca’s entire life?

      Well, she was going to have to assert herself. She was not going to have an audience while she stumbled to tell him. If he wanted he could tell Miriam later, once Rebecca had gone.

      She was taken into a large and very beautiful office, dominated by a giant desk on which lay a few large sheets of drawings

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