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Scolding herself for her wandering thoughts, she concentrated instead on what he had just told her. Naturally, he would have been traumatised by the experience of seeing a sibling drown, and even she, who didn’t like him, could begin to understand and forgive what he had termed an overreaction. For the first time she recognised that Ari Stefanos, the gorgeous, wildly successful billionaire, was not omnipotent and, indeed, was as human and prone to errors of judgement as she could be.
Ari shot the buggy to a halt outside an opulent two-storeyed and balconied wooden cabin surrounded by trees and got out. ‘Come on. You’ll feel better once you have a shower and warm up—’
‘But why did you bring me here instead of back to the hotel?’ Cleo demanded, climbing out of the buggy at a much slower pace, an uncertain look on her heart-shaped face.
‘It’s more private.’ Ari raked lean brown fingers through his wind-tousled black hair in a gesture of frustration and gave her a rueful look. ‘You were crying. The hotel is very public.’
‘I’m not crying any more. It was just a momentary thing...caused by shock,’ Cleo pointed out defensively. She squelched up the steps to the front door and, in embarrassment, kicked her sodden footwear off to leave it outside before she stepped indoors barefoot.
‘There’s a shower through here,’ he told her, pushing open a door.
‘You didn’t think this through, did you?’ Cleo said uncomfortably. ‘I have no clothes to change into and I’ll need a hand to get out of the wetsuit.’
‘Trivial,’ Ari pronounced, tugging her forward and turning her round to attack the back zip of the wetsuit. ‘I’ll have our clothes brought here.’
He unzipped the suit, blunt fingertips grazing the smooth, soft skin of her back, and she shivered, shockingly aware of him. She tugged loose her locker key and spun round to hand it to him.
The confines of the bathroom suddenly seemed very small and tight, and breathing felt like a challenge when she glanced up uneasily to meet the lustrous dark gold of his black-lashed gaze. Those ridiculously lush long black lashes of his had gold tips, she thought crazily, locked there in stillness.
‘I suppose I should ask you to perform the same service for me,’ Ari murmured.
‘I suppose...unless you’re a natural contortionist,’ Cleo mumbled thickly through her dry mouth, ducking her head to move behind him and stand on tiptoe to reach the zip on the back of his suit. Every brain cell in her head felt as though it had died as a long slice of golden satin-smooth brown back showed through the parted edges.
Cleo backed off to the side and tugged at the sleeve of her suit to start removing it, reminding herself that she was wearing a perfectly respectable swimsuit underneath. Yet she was feeling as awkward as a woman forced to perform a strip in public.
Catching a glimpse of Cleo’s full rounded breasts cupped in smooth, stretchy material, her movements accentuating the luscious depth of her cleavage as she struggled with the sleeve, was not to be recommended, Ari decided when he went as hard as a rock, every libidinous instinct sparking instantaneously. In an effort to distract himself, he reached for the edge of her sleeve and gave it a sharp yank, enabling her to get one arm free.
‘Thanks,’ she said, warm colour blossoming in her cheeks as she began peeling her other arm free of the flexible fabric.
His wetsuit hung down round his waist, exposing a flawless bronzed masculine torso and the lean muscular perfection of sculpted abs and pecs. In her haste to draw back and put some space between them, she almost collided with him.
‘Not enough room in here for the two of us,’ Ari pointed out jerkily, backing away in turn to step back into the hallway. ‘I’ll sort out the clothes and leave them outside the door for you.’
‘Th-thanks,’ she heard herself stammer while still staring at him as if he had dropped down in front of her from the moon.
Her palms were sweating, her skin had come out in goosebumps and she was running out of oxygen. He was beautiful, like a glossy picture in a book and just as unreal and untouchable. An odd clenching sensation thrummed between her thighs and she knew what it was—oh, yes, she knew what it was, and it was absolutelynotanything she should be feeling around her employer. Her face burned hotter than ever.
‘Can you get out of that suit alone?’ Ari pressed in a roughened undertone.
‘Yes, of course,’ Cleo declared, hurriedly shutting the door, turning the lock, flinching in even deeper embarrassment when it made a noisy click.
But that instant when she had recognised just how powerfully she was attracted to Ari Stefanos had thrown her back in time to her first love, Dominic, and that could only send chills through her. She didn’t want to feel like that again about anyone! Dominic hadn’t been her boss or a colleague, though, just a salesman who came into the office occasionally. She had fallen for him like a ton of bricks, although with hindsight she reckoned it had only been an infatuation. He had been young, good-looking and full of easy banter. There had been nothing suspicious about him and, as far as was possible for her, she had checked him out before deciding to commit to their relationship and sleep with him. He would have become her first lover had his girlfriend not turned up on her doorstep clutching their toddler.
To be fair, Imogen hadn’t been nasty. She had just said, ‘Dominic does this... He gets bored with us and strays... But he always comes back again. It’s not your fault. He tells lies and he’s very convincing, but he will get bored with you too.’
And Cleo had realised to her horror that she had almost fallen into the same trap as her mother. Her mother had only been a convenient outlet for her father, who had also had another woman in his life. Cleo had been badly burned by the experience she had had with Dominic. The fear that she might place her trust unwisely in a man haunted her whenever she dated and made her very wary.
Irritated by thoughts of her less-than-successful dating past, Cleo managed to remove the wetsuit and her swimsuit and rummage for towels on the open shelves before she stepped into the shower.
The warm water combatted the shivers running through her. She shampooed her hair, thinking that she shouldn’t be feeling guilty when nothing had happened between her and Ari. Attraction was normal, but people didn’t always act on it, and in any case, she doubted very much that he was equally attracted to her. She had seen the sleek, expensively dressed and giraffe-legged females he dated on the internet, women with the kind of beauty that she had never had. On a good day in her very best clothes and all done up, she could shoot at being pretty, but she wasn’t distinctive or particularly sexy, and she didn’t have classic features.
Hehad classic features and yet that description severely understated the ability of his features to linger inside her head. She always wanted to stare at him, to linger with pleasure on the full curve of his lower lip, the clean-cut perfection of his angular jaw, the blue-black luxuriance of his hair and his spectacularly noticeable eyes.
Such reflections were ridiculously immature and foolish, she conceded as a knock sounded on the door and Ari informed her that her clothes had arrived. She wondered how he had achieved that miracle at such speed and she reckoned that it was probably something to do with the fact that he was very, very rich and people seemed to fall over themselves in their eagerness to please the very, very rich.
Wrapped in a towel, she opened the door and ducked back inside with her bag, quickly pulling on her jeans and long-sleeved top, regretting that she had worn her supposedly waterproof shoes down to the lake because now she had nothing else for her feet. Without her miracle styling spray that suppressed frizz, she would also have to leave her hair to dry naturally.
Cleo emerged into the silent hall and went straight for the front door to leave, but it was locked and the key had been removed. Rolling her eyes in frustration, she walked quietly down the hall into the large sitting room and sat down on a comfortable sofa to await the reappearance of her careless host. A wave of tiredness engulfed her because she hadn’t slept well the night before with Lily just across the room from her engaged in constant texting with her boyfriend.
