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As the first arrival in the losers’ corner, Cleo gritted her teeth on a snarky reply and compressed her lips, saying stiffly, ‘Thank you. I’ll head back to the hotel to change.’
Ari leant down to her level from his great height. ‘I promise you... I’ll cover those bullies in paint!’ he murmured fiercely.
‘Don’t exert yourself on my account, Mr Stefanos,’ Cleo remarked thinly as she walked away. ‘After all, it’s only a game...’
Ari snatched in a sudden sustaining breath, incredulous at her insouciant gall, and he stood there for several taut seconds watching her disappear from view, defiance in every line of her shapely, sexy body. The natural sway of her hips stole his masculine attention. He gritted his teeth and swung away, furious at the fact that she evoked a visceral sexual response from him. She was an employee. Such a reaction was unacceptable.
Still furious, Cleo stomped back to the hotel and straight into the shower, unhappy until she had rinsed the last speck of paint from her body. Faint pink circles of bruising marked her arms, her neck, her legs and stomach. It was her own fault for not wearing thicker clothing and for not taking advantage of the extra protective gear on offer in the equipment shed out of a fear of looking naff. Now she was suffering from an attitude adjustment and a growing retrospective horror about her unfortunate encounter with Ari Stefanos.
Talk about a clash of opinions! She shouldn’t have been arguing with anyone in the game, considering that she was the most junior member of staff on the retreat. She couldn’t afford to foolishly offend anyone higher up the ladder than she was...and what had she done? Only attracted the wrong kind of attention to herselfagainwith the boss! She winced as she donned her swimsuit and got dressed again. Ironically, she was no longer in the right mood to try out a paddleboard following her unfortunate experience with the paintballing. But Ari Stefanos was truly the most infuriating guy! So bossy, so confident and bold in his conviction that only his way was the right way and, while Cleo had never considered herself a rule-breaker, his strictures had made her madder than a hornet.
In the end she decided the encounter didn’t much matter in the scheme of things because she had probably already given him the very worst possible impression of herself and her talents on her very first day at work. No point crying over spilt milk, she told herself firmly, reminding herself that at least nobody else had witnessed their exchange of words.
Consoled by that reflection, she went downstairs to an obligatory first-aid class and accompanied Lily’s group into lunch. Everyone talked about what a beautiful day it was to go out on the lake. Cleo’s spirits lifted when one of the women insisted that you didn’t need to be especially fit to succeed at paddleboarding. Words like ‘slow’ and ‘peaceful’ increased her optimism as she clambered awkwardly into a wetsuit in the changing rooms. They all helped each other do up the back zips and there was much laughter as they added the life jackets and compared their bulky images.
Ari almost smiled when he saw Cleo walking down to the edge of the lake with her friends. There was nothing sexy about Cleo in her current apparel. Indeed, Ari felt wondrously safe looking at her, and he told himself that he had imagined his former response to her. The instructor stood on the wooden pier to see everyone safely disposed onto their boards. Cleo stepped onto the board like someone stepping onto hot coals, an oddly frozen expression on her face as though she was forcing herself to do something she didn’t want to do.
As she used the oar to push away from the pier, it caught on something, jerked and fell from her hand, and she immediately lurched off balance. For a split second, Ari glimpsed the sheer terror on her face, and then he was instinctively moving forward because the instructor had already moved away while he adjusted someone’s life jacket for them. Cleo plunged face first into the water with a tremendous splash and scrabbled frantically for the board. Ari recognised the pure panic in her reaction and the ineptness of her flailing hands. The board was right beside her, but she seemed to be too alarmed actually to see it. Someone was laughing, but Ari had already seen more than enough. He dropped down into the water beside her and grabbed her, lifting her above the water with easy strength.
‘Relax, the water is barely a couple of metres deep at this point—’
‘I’m not a couple of metres tall!’ Cleo gasped, spitting out lake water in disgust. ‘I’ll drown at that depth—’
‘No swimmer could drown in water this shallow,’ Ari informed her forcefully, capturing her flailing hands. ‘And calm down... You’re not in any danger—’
‘Ican’tswim!’ Cleo hissed in a desperate undertone. ‘I know I’ve got the jacket on and I’m sorry, but I’m very nervous—’
Ari dealt her an arrested appraisal. He lifted her up onto the side of the pier and hauled himself bodily up beside her. ‘You can’t swim? You actually went out on the water without being able to swim?’ he demanded in a rising crescendo of incredulity.
‘I’ve got a life jacket on,’ Cleo protested.
‘Have you a death wish? The minute you hit the water you panicked! Have you any idea how many people drown because they panic?’ he raked down at her wrathfully.
‘I wasn’t likely to drown unless someone deliberately held me down under the water!’ Cleo slung back at him in furious denial. ‘And while you may not be my biggest fan, I doubt if you were about to do that—’
‘You’re an absolute bloody idiot and you should stay away from water!’ Ari flamed back at her, dark eyes brilliant with anger, kissable mouth hard as granite. ‘What you did was stupidly dangerous!’
Alerted by his wrathful volume, every eye in their vicinity had now turned to them, and Cleo cringed. She was shivering with cold and the aftermath of fright. Ari Stefanos was standing over her in a rage and it was too much to be borne in the mood she was in. Cleo swallowed the lump in her throat, but her stricken eyes still flooded with tears of hurt and mortification.
A woman broke the horrible silence in which everyone on shore had fallen quiet and hurried forward to wrap a large towel round Cleo. ‘Let me take you back to the hotel,’ she urged. ‘You’ve had a shock.’
‘Thank you, Mel,’ Ari breathed in a compressed undertone. ‘But I’ll take care of Cleo.’
CHAPTER TWO
CLEOSCRAMBLEDAWKWARDLYupright and, because she felt shaky, she removed the life jacket very slowly while breathing in deep.
‘Let me help you... You’re swaying,’ Ari murmured, scooping her up into his arms and striding away from the pier before she could object to his high-handed behaviour.
‘I’ll be fine when I get back to my room,’ Cleo insisted tightly, shivering within the damp towel and closing her eyes to envision a blissfully warm shower and privacy. ‘But I hate you...’
Ari released his breath on an audible hiss because he was well aware that he had screwed up. ‘I kind of hate me too at this moment.’
Eyes wide with surprise, Cleo turned her head to really look at him as he settled her down into the front seat of an open-topped buggy. ‘You disrespected me... You humiliated me,’ she condemned thinly.
‘It was an overreaction and I apologise. I saw my twin sister drown when I was a child. It...er...upsets me when people take risks in the water, but I shouldn’t have taken that out on you,’ he breathed, taking a split-second decision to drive on past the hotel sooner than face the challenge of escorting a wet, distressed and tear-stained woman through a busy reception area.
Cleo was stunned by that very private admission. Curiosity had made her look him up on the internet and that information about his sister had not appeared in his history. Of course, what she had read had related to his education, his business prowess and his sex life, which had been encyclopaedically covered. All his exes had struck her as being of a particular type: tall glitzy brunettes, socialites and models, spiced with the occasional up-and-coming actress.
