by Penny Jordan
Someone else in his life? Had it really been exasperation and the headache he knew lay ahead of him with their new acquisition that had prompted him into making the rashest statement of his life in telling his mother, ‘What makes you think there isn’t someone?’
There had been a startled pause, just long enough for him to curse himself mentally but not for him to recall his impetuous words, before his mother had demanded in excitement, ‘You mean there is? Oh, Andreas! Who? When are we going to meet her? Who is she? How did you...? Oh, darling, how wonderful. Your grandfather will be thrilled. Olympia, guess what...’
He had then heard her telling his sister.
He had tried to put a brake on their excitement, to warn them that he was only talking in ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’, but neither of them had been prepared to listen. Neither had his grandfather this morning, when he had rung at the ungodly hour of five o’clock to demand to know when he was to meet his grandson’s fiancée.
Fiancée... How the hell his mother and sister had managed to translate an off-the-cuff remark made in irritation into a real live fiancée Andreas had no idea, but he did know that unless he produced this mythical creature he was going to be in very big trouble.
‘You’ll be bringing her to the island with you, of course,’ his grandfather had announced, and his words had been a command and not a question.
What the hell was he going to do? He had eight days in which to find a prospective fiancée and make it clear to her that their ‘engagement’ was nothing more than a convenient fiction. Eight days and she would have to be a good enough actress to fool not just his grandfather but his mother and sisters as well.
Irritably he moved out of the sunlight’s direct beam, turning round so that Saskia saw him properly for the first time.
There was no opportunity for her to conceal her shock, or the soft-winded gasp of dismay that escaped her discreetly glossed lips as her face paled and then flooded with burning hot colour.
‘You!’ she choked as she backed instinctively towards the door, her memories of the previous night flooding her brain and with them the sure knowledge that she was about to lose her job.
She certainly was an excellent actress, Andreas acknowledged as he observed her reaction—and in more ways than one. Her demeanour this morning was totally different from the way she had presented herself last night. But then no doubt she was horrified to discover that he was the man she had so blatantly propositioned. Even so, that look of sick dismay darkening her eyes and the way her soft bottom lip was trembling despite her attempts to stop it... Oh, yes, she was a first-rate actress—a first-rate actress!
Suddenly Andreas could see a welcome gleam of light at the end of the dark tunnel of his current problem. Oh, yes, indeed, a very definite beam of light.
‘So, Ms Rodgers.’ Andreas began flaying into Saskia’s already shredded self-confidence with all the delicacy of a surgeon expertly slicing through layer after layer of skin, muscle and bone. ‘I have read the report Gordon Jarman has written on you and I must congratulate you. It seems that you’ve persuaded him to think very highly of you. That’s quite an accomplishment for an employee so new and young. Especially one who adopts such an unconventional and, shall we say, elastic attitude towards time-keeping...leaving earlier than her colleagues in the evening and arriving later than them in the morning.’
‘Leaving early?’ Saskia stared at him, fighting to recover her composure. How had he known about that?
As though he had read her mind, he told her softly, ‘I was in the foyer when you left...quite some time before your official finishing time.’
‘But that was...’ Saskia began indignantly.
However, Andreas did not allow her to finish, shaking his head and telling her coolly, ‘No excuses, please. They might work on Gordon Jarman, but unfortunately for you they will not work with me. After all, I have seen how you comport yourself when you are not at work. Unless...’ He frowned, his mouth hardening as he studied her with icy derision. ‘Unless, of course, that is the reason he has given you such an unusually excellent report...’
‘No!’ Saskia denied straight away. ‘No! I don’t... Last night was a mistake,’ she protested. ‘I—’
‘Yes, I’m afraid it was,’ Andreas agreed, adding smoothly, ‘For you at least. I appreciate that the salary you are paid is relatively small, but my grandfather would be extremely unhappy to learn that a member of our staff is having to boost her income in a way that can only reflect extremely badly on our company.’ Giving her a thin smile he went on with deceptive amiability, ‘How very fortunate for you that it wasn’t in one of our hotels that you were...er...plying your trade and—’
‘How dare you?’ Saskia interrupted him furiously, her cheeks bright scarlet and her mouth a mutinous soft bow. Pride burned rebelliously in her eyes.
‘How dare I? Rather I should say to you, how dare you,’ Andreas contradicted her sharply, his earlier air of pleasantness instantly replaced by a hard look of contemptuous anger as he told her grimly, ‘Apart from the unedifying moral implications of what you were doing, or rather attempting to do, has it ever occurred to you to consider the physical danger you could be putting yourself in? Women like you...’
He paused and changed tack, catching her off guard as he went on in a much gentler tone, ‘I understand from your boss that you are very anxious to maintain your employment with us.’
‘Yes. Yes, I am,’ Saskia admitted huskily. There was no use denying what he was saying. She had already discussed her feelings and fears about the prospect of being made redundant with Gordon Jarman, and he had obviously recorded them and passed them on to Andreas. To deny them now would only convince him she was a liar—as well as everything else!
‘Look... Please, I can explain about last night,’ she told him desperately, pride giving way to panic. ‘I know how it must have looked, but it wasn’t... I didn’t...’ She stopped as she saw from his expression that he wasn’t prepared even to listen to her, never mind believe her.
A part of her was forced to acknowledge that she could hardly blame him...nor convince him either, unless she dragged Lorraine and Megan into his office to support her and she had far too much pride to do that. Besides, Megan wasn’t capable of thinking of anything or anyone right now other than Mark and her upcoming Caribbean holiday, and as for Lorraine... Well, Saskia could guess how the older woman would revel in the situation Saskia now found herself in.
‘A wise decision,’ Andreas told her gently when she stopped speaking. ‘You see, I despise a liar even more than I do a woman who...’ Now it was his turn to stop, but Saskia knew what he was thinking.
Her face burned even more hotly, which made it disconcerting for her when he suddenly said abruptly, ‘I’ve got a proposition I want to put to you.’
As she made a strangled sound of shock in her throat he steepled his fingers together and looked at her over them, like a sleek, well-fed predator watching a small piece of prey it was enjoying tormenting.
‘What kind of proposition?’ she asked him warily, but the heavy sledgehammer strokes of her heart against her ribs warned her that she probably already knew the answer—just as she knew why she was filled with such a shocking mixture of excitement and revulsion.
‘Oh, not the kind you are probably most familiar with,’ Andreas was telling her softly. ‘I’ve read that some professional young women get a kick out of acting the part of harlots...’
‘I was doing no such thing,’ Saskia began heatedly, but he stopped her.
‘I was there—remember?’ he said sharply. ‘If my grandfather knew how you had behaved he would demand your instant dismissal.’ His grandfather might have ceded most of the control of the business to Andreas, but Andreas could see from Saskia’s expression that she still believed him.
‘You don’t have to tell him.’ He could see the effort
it cost her to swallow her pride and add a reluctant tremulous, ‘Please...’
‘I don’t have to,’ he agreed ‘But whether or not I do depends on your response to my proposition.’
‘That’s blackmail,’ Saskia protested.
‘Almost as old a profession as the one you were engaging in last night,’ Andreas agreed silkily.
Saskia began to panic. Against all the odds there was only one thing he could possibly want from her, unlikely though that was. After all, last night she had given him every reason to assume...to believe... But that had been when she had thought he was Mark, and if he would just allow her to explain...
Fear kicked through her, fuelling a panic that rushed her headlong into telling him aggressively, ‘I’m surprised that a man like you needs to blackmail a woman into having sex with him. And there’s no way that I...’
‘Sex?’ he questioned, completely astounding her by throwing back his head and laughing out loud. When he had stopped, he repeated, ‘Sex?’ adding disparagingly, ‘With you? No way! It isn’t sex I want from you,’ he told her coolly.
‘Not sex? Then...then what is it?’ Saskia demanded shakily.
‘What I want from you,’ Andreas informed her calmly, ‘is your time and your agreement to pose as my fiancée.’
‘What?’ Saskia stared at him. ‘You’re mad,’ she told him in disbelief.
‘No, not mad,’ Andreas corrected her sternly. ‘But I am very determined not to be coerced into the marriage my grandfather wants to arrange for me. And, as my dear mother has so rightly reminded me, the best way to do that is to convince him that I am in love with someone else. That is the only way I can stop this ridiculous campaign of his.’
‘You want me...to pose...as your...fiancée?’ Saskia spaced the words out carefully, as though she wasn’t sure she had heard them correctly, and then, when she saw the confirmation in his face, she denied fiercely, ‘No. No way. No way at all!’
‘No?’ Andreas questioned with remarkable amiability. ‘Then I’m afraid you leave me with no alternative but to inform you that there is a strong—a very strong possibility that we shall have to let you go as part of our regrettable but necessary cutbacks. I hope I make myself clear.’
‘No! You can’t do that...’ Saskia began, and then stopped as she saw the cynical way he was looking at her.
She was wasting her time. There was no way he was even going to listen to her, never mind believe her. He didn’t want to believe her. It didn’t suit his plans to believe her...she could see that. And if she refused to accede to his commands then she knew that he was fully capable of carrying out his threat against her. Saskia swallowed. She was well and truly trapped, with no way whatsoever of escaping.
‘Well?’ Andreas mocked her. ‘You still haven’t given me your reply. Do you agree to my proposition, or...?’
Saskia swallowed the bitter taste of bile and defeat lodged in her throat. Her voice sounded raw, rasping...it hurt her to speak, but she tried to hold up her head as she told him miserably, ‘I agree.’
‘Excellent. For form’s sake I suggest that we invent a previously secret accidental meeting between us—perhaps when I visited Hilford prior to our takeover. Because of the negotiations for the takeover we have kept our relationship...our love for one another...a secret. But now...now there is no need for secrecy any more, and to prove it, and to celebrate our freedom today I shall take you out for lunch.’
He frowned and paused. ‘We shall be flying out to the Aegean at the end of next week and there are things we shall be expected to know about one another’s background!’
‘Flying out to where?’ Saskia gasped. ‘No, I can’t. My grandmother...’
Andreas had heard from Gordon Jarman that she lived with her grandmother, and now one eyebrow rose as he questioned silkily, ‘You are engaged to me now, my beloved, surely I am of more importance than your grandmother? She will, I know, be surprised about our relationship, but I am sure she will appreciate just why we had to keep our love for one another to ourselves. If you wish I am perfectly prepared to come with you when you explain...everything to her...’
‘No!’ Saskia denied in panic. ‘There’s no need anyway. She’s in Bath at the moment, staying with her sister. She’s going to be there for the next few weeks. You can’t do this,’ she told him in agitation. ‘Your grandfather is bound to guess that we’re not...that we don’t... And...’
‘But he must not be allowed to guess any such thing,’ Andreas told her gently. ‘You are an excellent actress, as I have already seen for myself, and I’m sure you will be able to find a way of convincing him that we are and we do, and should you feel that you do need some assistance to that end...’ His eyes darkened and Saskia immediately took a step backwards, her face flaming with embarrassed colour as she saw the way he was looking at her.
‘Very nice,’ he told her softly, ‘But perhaps it might not be wise to overdo the shy, virginal bit. My grandfather is no fool. I doubt that he will expect a man of my age to have fallen passionately in love with a woman who is not equally sexually aware. I am, after all, half-Greek, and passion is very much a factor of the male Greek personality and psyche.’
Saskia wanted to turn and run away. The situation was becoming worse by the minute. What, she wondered fatalistically, would Andreas do if he ever learned that she was not ‘sexually aware’, as he had termed it, and that in fact her only experience of sex and passion was limited to a few chaste kisses and fumbled embraces? She had her parents to thank for her caution as a teenager where sexual experimentation had been concerned, of course. Their rash behaviour had led to her dreading that she might repeat their foolishness. But there was, of course, no way that Andreas could ever know that!
‘It’s now almost ten,’ Andreas informed her briskly, looking at his watch. ‘I suggest you go back to your office and at one o’clock. I’ll come down for you and take you out to lunch. The sooner we make our relationship public now, the better.’
As he spoke he was moving towards her. Immediately Saskia started to panic, gasping out loud in shock as the door opened to admit his PA in the same heartbeat as Andreas reached out and manacled Saskia’s fragile wrist-bone in the firm grip of his fingers and thumb.
His skin was dark, tanned, but not so much so that one would automatically guess at his Greek blood, Saskia recognised. His eyes were grey, she now saw, and not blue as she had so blush-makingly suggested last night, and they added to the confusion as to what nationality he might be, whilst his hair, though very, very dark, was thick and straight. There was, though, some whisper of his ancient lineage in his high cheekbones, classically sculptured jaw and aquiline nose. They definitely belonged to some arrogant, aristocratic ancient Greek nobleman, and he would, she suspected, be very much inclined to dominate those around him, to stamp his authority on everything he did—and everyone he met.
‘Oh, Andreas,’ the PA was exclaiming, looking in flustered disbelief at the way her boss was drawing Saskia closer to him, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you but your grandfather has been on—twice!’
‘I shall ring my grandfather back shortly,’ Andreas responded smoothly, adding equally smoothly, ‘Oh, and I don’t want any appointments or any interruptions from one to two-thirty today. I shall be taking my fiancée to lunch.’
As he spoke he turned to Saskia and gave her such a look of melting tender sensuality, so completely redolent of an impatient lover barely able to control his desire for her, that for a breath of time she was almost taken in herself. She could only stare back at him as though she had been hypnotised. If he had given her a look like that last night... Stop it, she warned herself immediately, shaken by the unexpected thought.
But if his behaviour was shocking her it was shocking his PA even more, she recognised as the other woman gave a small choked gurgle and then shook her head when Andreas asked her urbanely if a
nything was wrong.
‘No. I was just... That is... No...not at all...’
‘Good. Oh, and one more thing. I want you to book an extra seat on my flight to Athens next week. Next to mine...for Saskia...’ Turning away from his PA he told Saskia huskily, ‘I can’t wait to introduce you to my family, especially my grandfather. But first...’
Before Saskia could guess what he intended to do he lifted her hand to his mouth, palm facing upwards. As she felt the warmth of his breath skimming her skin Saskia started to tremble, her breath coming in quick, short bursts. She felt dizzy, breathless, filled with a mixture of elation, excitement and shock, a sense of somehow having stepped outside herself and become another person, entered another life—a life that was far more exciting than her own, a life that could lead to the kind of dangerous, magical, awe-inspiring experiences that she had previously thought could never be hers.
Giddily she could hear Andreas telling her huskily, ‘First, my darling, we must find something pretty to adorn this bare finger of yours. My grandfather would not approve if I took you home without a ring that states very clearly my intentions.’
Saskia could hear quite plainly the PA’s sudden shocked indrawn breath, but once again the other woman could not be any more shocked than she was herself. Andreas had claimed that she was a good actress, but he was no slouch in that department himself. The look that he was giving her right now alone, never mind the things he had said...
After his PA had scuttled out of his office, closing the door behind her, she told him shakily, ‘You do realise, don’t you, that by lunchtime it will be all over the office?’
‘All over the office?’ he repeated, giving her a desirous look. ‘My dear, I shall be very surprised and even more disappointed if our news has not travelled a good deal further than that.’
When she gave him an uncomprehending look he explained briefly, ‘By lunchtime I fully expect it to have travelled at least as far as Athens...’
