LITMIR.BIZ

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someone home with him.

      Thank God he hadn’t turned up tonight alone. Sto thiavolo, he should have chosen someone who could be a bit more convincing! Cleo was as rigid and stiff in his arms as a store dummy. Even his kiss, designed to show Petra that they were completely and sexually into each other, had backfired. Your mistress wasn’t supposed to ask what you were doing when you kissed her, as if you’d taken some liberty. No, it would take some doing to make Cleo more comfortable, and more convincing in her role, but if sex was off the agenda he didn’t know what would do it.

      He hadn’t needed Petra turning up at the airport. Had she imagined that one look at her and his desire would be rekindled, the new lover forgotten? Or had she hoped he’d been bluffing, and that there was no woman? Why else would she dress so provocatively, in clothes that clung to her body like a second skin? He was suddenly beginning to get a new appreciation of his right-hand woman. She’d always been a good operator but he’d never realised just how cunning she was.

      ‘Would you mind if I asked you to drive, Petra? Cleo and I have had such a long day. Haven’t we, sweetheart?’ The implication hung on his words that he’d had a long night and was expecting another to follow. The endearment was meant to convince Petra. Meanwhile a wide-eyed Cleo looked up at him like a rabbit caught in the headlights. He pulled open a rear door and ushered her in, wishing that just once she might act like the mistress he was paying her to pretend to be.

      Petra, left with no other choice but to comply, smiled meekly and slid into the driver’s seat.

      ‘Have you eaten?’ she asked a moment later as the car’s powerful engine turned over. ‘I’ve made you a booking at Poseidon.’

      Andreas couldn’t fault her logic. It was what he normally did if he arrived with a woman in the late afternoon or evening. Sometimes they’d be in time to catch the sunset, sometimes they’d miss it, but a platter of fresh seafood and a Greek salad filled with olives, feta and fresh tomatoes bursting with Greek sunshine ensured that they would be fuelled for the night ahead.

      But not tonight. Not when his so-called mistress was as jumpy as a kitten. Maybe she might relax at the house.

      ‘No, take us straight to the house. We had a late lunch. We will eat later.’

      There was silence from the driver and yet Andreas could almost hear her mind ticking over, wondering just what was so important that they would rush back to the house and pouncing on the answer in the very next thought. He wondered how far Petra could be pushed. Would she leave if she could see her position was hopeless? He hadn’t wanted to lose her expertise but maybe that would be for the best. No one was indispensable. And he couldn’t have her thinking she had claims on him.

      Likewise he couldn’t have the woman alongside him thinking that she could just sit there, as far away from him as she could get and gaping out of her window like some tourist on a coach tour. Damn it, she was supposed to be interested in him!

      He leaned across and wrapped an arm around her, cursing when her startled response earned raised eyebrows from their driver in the rear-vision mirror.

      ‘It’s not far to Fira,’ he told Cleo as the car powered up the road from the airport.

      It was as he said. Within a few minutes the car had climbed its way past small picturesque villages and scattered whitewashed hotels to a road along the very edge of the island where it became more built up. On one side the land sloped down gently to where they’d just come, the lights of the airstrip bright in the dark night. On the other side, the land fell away steeply, to a dark flat sea. A scattering of lights shone across the waters while in front there seemed a sweeping curve of lights into the distance that curved in tiers down a hillside before being swallowed up by the darkness.

      ‘It is hard to appreciate in the dark,’ Andreas told her, the stroke of his thumb on her upper arm doing all kinds of crazy things to her breathing, ‘but Santorini is actually a collection of small islands, the remnants of an ancient eruption. Fira, the capital, is built on the lip of the crater. The lights you see further on belong to the town of Oia. Like Fira, it is a very beautiful town, full of narrow cobbled streets and beautifully restored buildings, centuries of years old. Some say the sunset in Oia is the best in the world. I will take you there if you like.’

      She suspected he was merely acting his part, she knew she should be, but still the very picture of sharing a sunset with this man worked its way into her soul so much that she almost wanted it to be real. Her voice, when she found it, was breathless and short, and it was no trouble for her to inject into it the necessary enthusiasm. ‘I would like that, very much.’

      There was a strangled sound from the front seat, followed by a cough and a murmured apology. ‘Andreas is right, Cleo,’ Petra said, steering the car through a succession of narrower and narrower streets, past ornate iron gateways and walls of polished white set off with colourful bougainvilleas that caught Cleo’s eye. ‘It is only a small island, but there is much to see on Santorini. Will you be staying long?’

      Cleo shot a look at Andreas, who was scowling again, and she wondered if it was because she’d made such a hash of things that he was already regretting their deal and the time he’d said they’d have together. ‘Maybe a few weeks,’ she offered nervously, ‘maybe less…’

      In the rear-view mirror she saw their driver’s eyebrows shoot up as she pulled up before a private garage alongside a red-brick building that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Venice and waited for the automatic door to roll up. ‘That long? How lovely for you. It will be like a wonderful holiday.’

      ‘Of course,’ Andreas added with a growl as Petra steered the car into the garage and pulled to a stop. ‘There’s every chance she may stay longer.’

      ‘Why did you say that?’ Petra had bid them goodnight and left them in the lobby, retiring to her own suite, and meanwhile Cleo had been playing and replaying the words over in her head, so much so that she’d barely taken in the details of the house, other than just a handful of impressions. Grand proportions, furnishings that were both elegant and exquisite, it was more a palace than any humble home she’d ever seen.

      ‘Say what?’ Andreas sounded almost bored as he instructed the hired help to take care of the luggage and led the way to his suite of rooms, and yet there was too much coiled tension in his every step, his every movement, for her to believe that. Even his words were brimming with tension. The sound of her heels clicking on the terrazzo floor only served to ratchet it up.

      ‘Why did you say I might stay longer?’

      ‘Because you made it sound like you weren’t planning on staying at all.’

      ‘I wasn’t sure you’d want me to.’

      ‘And I thought we had a deal.’

      Maybe so, but she knew he wasn’t happy with her, knew she’d failed to impress him with her acting skills. But what did he expect when she’d never been a mistress, didn’t know how a mistress was supposed to act? It wasn’t as if she’d blown it in front of his business partners. It had only been his driver—his right-hand woman. An exceptionally beautiful right-hand woman.

      Could the act all be for her benefit?

      ‘Petra is very beautiful.’

      He shrugged, but gave every impression of knowing who he was talking about. ‘Is she? She’s good at what she does.’

      ‘And she lives here with you, in this—’ she looked around her, at the exquisite wall hangings and period furniture ‘—this house?’

      ‘The offices of Xenides Properties are here. I’m often away and Petra works long hours. It’s an arrangement that works well for both of us.’

      There was no hint of any attachment in his words or the tone of his voice. In fact he could have been talking about any employee. Maybe her hunch had been wrong. Maybe he was just aware of Petra’s obvious resentment for his lifestyle and his constant change of companions? Or maybe he was just angry with her own hopeless acting skills. She could

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