She looked up at him with a quizzical expression, her eyes still warm with laughter. ‘You’re full of surprises, Lukas Christophedes—and I’m enjoying discovering them.’
Did she mean that? Or was it all part of the act? He realised how much he wanted her to mean it.
Then the music changed to something slow and smoochy and contemporary. The kind of music that didn’t call for steps but a sensual swaying, a pressing of bodies close to each other—a couple’s dance.
Ashleigh took a step back from him. For a long moment his gaze locked with hers. Traces of laughter lingered in her eyes, to be replaced by something moodier that seemed to be an echo of the want that coursed through him. She wound her arms around his neck and pulled him close—breast to chest, thigh to thigh—in what was sanctioned as a dance but felt more like an intimate embrace, a prelude to a passionate kiss. He captured her thigh between his legs and they moved slowly together. Did she want to be closer as much as he did?
* * *
Lukas. Ashleigh gave herself over to his embrace, his arms holding her tight, his strong body pressed as close as her full skirts allowed. She ached for him to kiss her. Ached for so much more than a kiss. She wanted him badly. So badly she might make an utter fool of herself if he didn’t feel the same. She thought she’d seen a new light in his dark eyes, a recognition of desire, a connection. But was it just part of the fake date—a touch of passion to add authenticity? She had never felt more uncertain of a man.
But dancing with Lukas, the waltz, felt so right—their rhythms so in step. She gasped out loud at the thought of how it might be if they became lovers. Lukas pulled away from her. ‘You okay?’
‘F...fine,’ she stuttered. He seemed so calm, unaffected by this intimate dance—while she was a quivering wreck of want. Had she misread him entirely?
Over his shoulder, she noticed Tina making her way towards them. Ashleigh edged closer to Lukas, pressed her lips near his ear in what would surely look like a kiss to Tina. ‘Tina alert—better look convincing.’ Back to work on her role as a loving girlfriend—which was becoming more and more difficult as she started to want it to be for real.
But, instead of holding her tighter, Lukas stiffened, disengaged himself from her arms and abruptly stepped back from her. ‘You’re right to remind me. I should ask Tina to dance,’ he said gruffly without looking at her.
Baffled and shaky, Ashleigh pasted a smile on her face and watched him walk away. She was still warm from the heat of his body but was rapidly cooling. Of course it was all still about the game for him. All about business. It would all be over tomorrow. She’d been a fool to even imagine it could be anything more. But he had aroused a tumult of feelings and desires in her that would not easily dissipate. She would not let him see how it hurt.
While Lukas danced with Tina, Ashleigh danced with Tina’s business associate and made polite small talk with a huge effort. Then she danced with Tina’s other guest while Lukas danced with the guest’s wife. But even while Ashleigh did her duty dances her eyes were on Lukas, hungry for any glimpse of his sternly handsome face, his surprisingly graceful body. She only danced with him once again, at arm’s length. She looked up at him and smiled so much the corners of her mouth ached. Pretend girlfriend was all he wanted—and she would continue to put on the best act she could. She would not give him any hint of her growing feelings. It would only embarrass both of them.
All pretence of a relationship was dropped after the ball was over and Lukas’s driver drove them back to Chelsea. It became so awkward and uncomfortable that Ashleigh slumped back against her seat and pretended to be asleep.
She didn’t think she fooled Lukas one little bit.
CHAPTER TEN
WHEN ASHLEIGH AWOKE next morning, Lukas’s townhouse seemed very quiet. She lay back against the pillows and listened to the sounds of the house—the clock ticking, the slight shifting of old timbers, the occasional clank from the central heating. But there were none of the muted footsteps, the doors shutting, his muffled voice on the phone in the distance that she associated with the master of the house being in residence.
He must be out at one of his meetings, perhaps even with Tina Norris while his prospective business partner was still in town. Good. Ashleigh would find it hard to be chirpy and upbeat this morning. Unusually for her, she felt down, even a touch depressed. This was how Cinderella must have felt when her carriage turned back into a pumpkin and her footmen into mice. Oh, and her touched-by-fairy-dust wardrobe shrivelled back into a hand-me-down anorak and jeans.
The glorious lavender ball gown hung outside the closet where she’d left it to air last night. It looked like a work of art. The shoes had been kicked off haphazardly when she’d staggered into the room, her feet protesting against so much dancing in new leather. Those shoes! Of all the wonderful clothes Lukas had bought to outfit her for her role as pretend girlfriend, the purple suede shoes were the one thing she wished she could afford to buy from him to take with her when she left.
All around her London was fizzing with Christmas spirit. She felt like a balloon that had lost all its gas.
Fact was, Lukas had no further use for her. If Tina signed the deal—and all indications had looked good last night—the pretend girlfriend could be shunted backstage. And maybe onward to Sophie’s sofa. Their paths were unlikely to cross again and she felt immeasurably sad about it. She’d become hyper-sensitive to his mood. He’d already started to distance himself from her, if the way last night’s ball had ended was any indication.
Ashleigh swung her legs out of bed. Felt a twinge of discomfort from her right knee—no more dancing for a while. There was a fluffy white bathrobe in the closet that she’d been wearing, thoughtfully left there for guests. She slipped into the robe and a pair of multi-striped socks and headed downstairs.
As she neared the basement kitchen the aroma of coffee reached her. A step closer and she heard the hiss of steam from the coffee machine. When she stood at the threshold she saw Lukas. He sat at the table with his broad back to her, his laptop open in front of him and a mug of coffee nearby. He was wearing a dressing gown too, thick velour in a geometric pattern of burnt orange and chocolate brown. It came to his knees and his legs were bare—strong, tanned with just the right amount of dark hair.
From somewhere—not her heart...surely not her heart—came the fierce urge to loop her arms around him from behind, to nuzzle into his neck, drop a kiss there and say how wonderful the ball had been last night. How much she’d loved dancing with him. How awesome he’d been. As if he really was her man. But she couldn’t do that. And she couldn’t mention the ball. Because then she would have to acknowledge the feelings he’d aroused in her as he’d danced her around the room in his arms.
Ashleigh paused, uncertain whether or not to creep back up the stairs and stay out of his way. But she wasn’t a person to run away from an uncomfortable situation—the exception being her ill-fated wedding.
She remembered the excruciating silence in the car on the ride home from the ball, the stilted ‘goodnight’s when they’d got back here. The refusal on either side to acknowledge the sizzle of attraction between them that had burned up that dance floor. Or had the way he’d held her, the hunger in his eyes been all part of the game of pretend?
‘Good morning,’ she said, attempting chirpy but resulting in croaky. ‘Any chance of a coffee?’
‘Of course,’ he said. He went to get up. She caught her breath at how handsome he looked, his jaw shadowed with dark growth, his hair unruly and falling over his forehead. Of course it wasn’t her heart that reacted to him—it was her body thrilling to the sight of him, remembering last night and the erotic sensation of the dance. It was her body wanting him, not her heart.
‘Stay there. I can make my own.’
She prepared the coffee in silence. Then sat down two chairs away from him, nursi
ng her mug in her hands. ‘I didn’t expect to find you here. Thought you’d be gone off to a meeting.’
‘It’s Saturday,’ he responded, with more of a grunt than words. Did he have a hangover? She hadn’t seen him drink more than a few glasses of wine.
‘Oh. Of course,’ she said. The last days seemed to have merged into each other with that feeling of a life that wasn’t quite real.
‘Lukas?’
‘Yes,’ he said, barely looking up.
‘If it’s Saturday, why are you working?’
Finally, he took his eyes from the screen. The dressing gown had fallen open to reveal rather more sculpted male chest than she felt able to deal with right now. She flushed and forced her eyes away as she remembered how good it had felt to be crushed against him while they were dancing. He had felt it too, she’d convinced herself. But she’d obviously been wrong—very wrong.
Too late she realised how intimate it seemed now, both of them in their dressing gowns drinking coffee. She should have gone back upstairs and changed. She had boxer shorts and a T-shirt under her dressing gown. His legs were bare, his chest was bare. What else was he wearing—or not?
‘Because I’m always working. Anyway, how do you know I’m working? I could be playing chess or reading the newspaper online.’
‘You could be, but you’re frowning so deeply it could only be work. What is it? A problem with the Tina deal?’
His frown deepened into a scowl. ‘Running a business like mine means problem-solving twenty-four-seven.’
‘That doesn’t leave much room for life.’
‘My work is my life; I’ve told you that. Every day is a work day for me.’
‘Even at Christmas?’
‘Why not? Christmas Day is just like any other day to me.’
She gasped. ‘You can’t mean that.’ His words would have counted as heresy in her family.
‘I most certainly do.’
‘I didn’t take you for a Scrooge.’
‘Humph,’ he muttered.
‘Actually, that grumpy noise did sound a lot like Scrooge. Though a bah, humbug would have been better.’
The ghost of a smile lightened his scowl. ‘You will not get me to say bah, humbug. Christmas is as big a deal in Greece as it is here. But not for me. My parents weren’t religious and Christmas was just another excuse for a round of parties. They gave the lavish presents, but there was never any real feeling in it.’
‘That’s such a shame. Even when you were a little boy?’
‘My English nanny did her best but she always went home for Christmas. I used to beg her to take me. One year my parents let me go with her and—’
‘They let their little boy go to a different country to stay with strangers?’ She didn’t try to disguise her shock.
He made the humph noise again. ‘My parents were the strangers. My nanny was more family to me than they ever were. They wanted to go on a cruise where a little boy would have been an inconvenience. That Christmas in her family’s very ordinary house in a suburb of Birmingham was the best I ever had. I still remember it. Sadly, never to be repeated.’
Ashleigh felt stunned by the image of the lonely little boy with dark hair and unhappy brown eyes, unwanted by his family at Christmas. But she knew Lukas would not respond well to pity. ‘My family has always made a big deal about Christmas. The tree. The presents. The dinner. Because my father is English, we always have the full-on traditional meal with all the trimmings—even in the sweltering heat of a Queensland summer.’
‘Christmas in summer? It doesn’t seem right.’
‘It doesn’t really, does it? The two winter Christmases we spent in Manchester were magic. But there’s something to be said for a hot Christmas too. My family has a swimming pool and some years we’d take our food outside and eat in the pool.’
‘You sound very close to your family.’ There was a note of wistfulness in his voice that grabbed at her heart.
‘I am.’
‘So why are you staying in London and not going home?’
Why would she go into detail about Dan’s infiltration of her family—and their disloyalty to her in encouraging it? Lukas wouldn’t want to hear all that; he’d probably find it boring. She’d give the easy answer. ‘Because I want to enjoy the full English Christmas experience. I’m just hoping it’s going to snow.’
‘It doesn’t often snow in London for Christmas.’ His voice was blunt, negative. Had his unhappy childhood squeezed out all the joy of Christmas? Now she felt sad, not just for the little boy but also for the adult Lukas. He deserved so much more. She wished she could be the person to give him the happiness and joy that would lift those dark shadows.
‘Well, I hope it will for me.’ She got up from the table. ‘Can I make you some breakfast?’
‘No, thank you.’ He pointed to the coffee. ‘That’s all I want.’ Everything he said, the way he kept his gaze on his screen, indicated he didn’t want more from her than their agreed upon charade. She should probably grab something from the fridge and take it back to her room. But her hours with Lukas were limited and she was not going to squander them—no matter his not so subtle message of leave me alone.
‘I’ll make toast for me.’
‘The toaster is—’ He paused. ‘I forgot. You know your way around the kitchen. Probably better than I do.’
‘Uh...yes.’ She still cringed at any reminder of her misdemeanour.
‘About that. The day you were out shopping, I contacted Clio at Maids in Chelsea and told her I needed your maid service full-time while I was in residence.’
‘You did? I haven’t had a chance to do much housework while I—’
‘I didn’t expect you to. You’ve been working for me in a different way. But Clio won’t be booking you for other assignments. Saves any messy explanations about what you’re doing here.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. She paused for a long moment—too long as it began to feel uncomfortable. ‘I know I’m here in your house under sufferance.’
He didn’t disagree.
‘And I’ll stay out of your way as much as I can. Christmas Day is next Friday. I’m a bridesmaid for a wedding on Wednesday. Well, it’s really a renewal of vows. My friend got married in secret when she was eighteen and didn’t have a proper wedding. But now—’
He made an impatient wave of his hand. ‘Okay. I get it.’ Then, seeming to realise how abrupt—even rude—he’d sounded, he said, ‘I’m sorry. Weddings hold no interest for me.’
His words came back to her: I never will marry. He was happy to be labelled a lone wolf. What was the point of even imagining there could ever be anything between them?
‘Okay,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘No wedding talk. But I’ll be out all day tomorrow doing bridesmaid duty.’
He nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘Any word from Tina?’
His deal with Tina was his only interest in her. Of course he didn’t want to hear about her friend’s ceremony—even if the bride was a countess and married to an earl. She was dying to tell someone about being Emma’s bridesmaid. But she couldn’t even call her best friend back in Bundaberg as she was yet another person annoyed with her for walking out on the wedding.
Lukas shook his head. ‘Tina doesn’t work on weekends if she can avoid it, she says.’
‘Like sensible people,’ Ashleigh said pointedly.
He did the humph thing again.
‘So I’m still playing my girlfriend role?’
‘Until I tell you otherwise,’ he said.
The kitchen ended in a wall of French windows looking out onto the garden. ‘Look at the beautiful day out there,’ she said, indicating the garden. ‘I’m told those clear blue skies aren’t the norm for London at this time of year. As your official pretend
girlfriend, I suggest you get outside and enjoy this crisp winter day instead of working all the time.’
‘That’s beyond the scope of your role,’ he growled.
She took a deep steadying breath. ‘Lukas, look at me, please.’
Grudgingly, he raised his head from his laptop. His dark brown eyes didn’t give anything away.
‘We get on well, don’t we?’ she said. ‘Perhaps it’s only the pretend versions of ourselves that get on but I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent with you. In spite of...of an awkward beginning. And unless you’re such a good actor you should be playing in the West End, I don’t think you’ve found my company objectionable.’
It certainly hadn’t seemed that way on the dance floor.
He frowned. ‘Where are you going with this?’
‘I’m finding this...awkward. Couldn’t we actually pretend to be friends in the time we have left in each other’s company? I mean, just between you and me. When we’re anywhere in public we can keep up the boyfriend/girlfriend thing until the deal with Tina is finalised. But when it’s just us, do we need to put barriers up? It’s the festive season. Each of us is on our own. London must surely be one of the most magical places in the world to be for Christmas. Can we enjoy some of it together? As...as friends?’
She knew she wanted so much more than that from him. It would be like a scrap thrown from the master’s table but at the moment she just wanted to grab any time with him—no matter the circumstances.
* * *
Lukas stared at her for such a long moment she started to shift from foot to foot in her crazy striped socks. He could see regret dim the astonishing blue of her eyes. Regret and rejection. He didn’t want her to feel that kind of pain.
He was being boorish to her. She didn’t deserve that just because he’d woken up irritable and out of sorts after a bad night’s sleep. Just because she’d made it clear last night that the surprising intimacy of the dance had just been part of the game he’d staged between them to fool Tina. When he’d found himself wanting so much more.
Greek Tycoon's Mistletoe Proposal Page 11
