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Cleo’s face was beet red and she dropped her head, knowing that she would never take the risk of having to hug a hot-water bottle to ease cramps in his radius. Long fingers tipped up her chin to meet her troubled blue eyes, and without warning, he kissed her breathless. A piercing surge of sweet heat arrowed through her quivering body, setting her alight wherever it touched. That quickly, she ached shamelessly, wanting what she couldn’t have, reliving their last encounter with every sense thrumming and her body throbbing.
‘I’ll call you,’ Ari told her as he saw her right to the door of the building where she lived.
She floated into bed that night feeling as light as a breeze and resolved not to sink into negative ‘what if?’ thoughts that would make her feel as though she were doing something wrong. It was an insane attraction and it wouldn’t last for ever—she knew that...Of courseshe did. Maybe she would never hear from Ari again. There were no guarantees in her future, but she could live with that, couldn’t she?
Ari called the following day to tell her that his meeting with his niece was scheduled for the Thursday afternoon. Cleo rearranged her shift to make herself available, agreeing to work that night instead, and Ari picked her up. He looked tense, his lean, dark features taut.
‘Why are you stressing about this?’ Cleo asked him quietly. ‘All you need to do is smile and be gentle and unthreatening.’
Ari settled troubled dark golden eyes on her and his lips took on a wry curve. ‘I’m stressing because I really don’t know where I’m going with this and I’m not used to that. I like to plan ahead.’
‘Stop trying to conquer the mountain before you even start climbing,’ Cleo told him. ‘You can’t pre-plan everything. Maybe you’re just curious to see your brother’s child. I don’t think that’s a sin if that’s all it is. She’s a baby. You’re not harming her by visiting her one time.’
‘I hope not,’ Ari breathed as the limousine filtered to a halt outside a bleak municipal building.
An older woman greeted them in the reception area and discussed her role as the baby’s caseworker. Ari introduced Cleo as his girlfriend, which disconcerted her. His girlfriend... Was she really? Or had that merely been a convenient label to excuse her presence? They were shown into a meeting room and invited to sit down. Impervious to that suggestion, Ari paced restlessly in front of the window until another woman arrived with a baby in her arms. Ari strode eagerly forward to get a first look at his niece. Not wishing to muscle in, Cleo remained seated. Ari sat down beside her and the baby was handed to him.
Lucinda was tiny but her eyes were bright and huge in her tiny face. As Cleo finally got a proper look at the baby, she was betrayed into an exclamation. ‘Ari...she’s got your eyes!’
And it was true. Lucinda had eyes just like Ari, a golden mixture of browns, heavily fringed with black lashes that matched the wayward strands on her little head.
‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘I’ve seen a photo of my brother and we looked alike. The Stefanos genes seem to be strong.’
Keen to angle his thoughts in a more positive direction and away from the premature death of his half-brother, Cleo murmured, ‘She’s a very pretty baby.’
‘And so she should be,’ the social worker chimed in. ‘I believe her mother was a model and quite a looker before substance abuse destroyed her career.’
‘Would you like to hold her?’ Ari asked.
Cleo swallowed hard and opened her arms. The baby was a slight, warm weight curled into her arm and gazed up at her with Ari’s tawny eyes. ‘She’s beautiful,’ she whispered.
‘She doesn’t cry much,’ the foster parent proffered. ‘But she likes her bottles.’
‘She probably became used to her cries not getting a response,’ the social worker opined. ‘She is gaining weight steadily, though, and getting stronger.’
As the little rosebud mouth opened, Cleo gently rocked the child to soothe her again. The long lashes drooped and a thready little sigh sounded. Ari reclaimed his niece with visible awkwardness and sat in silence gazing down at her. A few minutes later, he passed the child back to the foster parent and, after organising a further meeting with the social worker, they returned to the limousine.
‘What do you think you will do?’ Cleo asked.
‘I believe that I will try to adopt her. She deserves a loving home... I only hope that I can provide that,’ Ari murmured tautly. ‘Do you want to join me for dinner now?’
‘No, drop me off at the bar, please. I’m working tonight. I swapped shifts so that I could come with you this afternoon,’ Cleo explained.
Ari sighed but, contrary to her expectations, he made no critical comment. ‘I’ll see you at the weekend,’ he told her.
But indeed, Cleo saw him much sooner than that. Someone hammered on the door before nine the next morning. Ella had already left for her classes and Cleo clambered up with a groan, straightened her pyjamas and hurried down to answer it. The last person she was expecting to see was Ari Stefanos, who shook a newspaper in her startled face and strode in past her.
‘I trusted you!’ he shot at her in furious condemnation.
Cleo leant back against the door to close it and stared at him. Unlike her, he was fully dressed, all designer chic in a silver-grey fitted suit, dark grey tie and shadow striped shirt. He looked drop-dead gorgeous from the gleaming black crown of his head to the toes of his hand-stitched shoes. But his expression was murderous. He was pale below his bronzed complexion, his eyes were dark and as hard as iron, his mouth compressed and his hard jawline heavily shadowed with stubble as if he had not yet shaved.
‘What did you say...about trusting me?’ Cleo prompted, because she was only just beginning to wake up properly. ‘And what are you doing here this early in the day?’
Ari slammed the newspaper down on the breakfast bar of the tiny galley kitchen for emphasis. ‘I’m here aboutthis!’ he stressed with savage distaste.
He could never recall being in such a rage before, and a bitter sense of betrayal ran hot as a lava flow through his veins. His suspicions had zeroed in on Cleo first because it was so rare for him to share confidences with another individual. He had trusted her and she had let him down. Why hadn’t he kept his own counsel? Why had he put his faith in a complete stranger? He had never before taken a risk like that.Thee mou, what quality did she have that had contrived to come between him and his wits? Had his libido persuaded him that she was a safe harbour for his secrets? The suspicion that he could be that basic, that stupid, outraged his pride.
Cleo padded closer in her bare feet and picked out the headline in the colourful tabloid newspaper that evidently had Ari breathing fire.
