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Ari strode downstairs, his black hair still damp from the shower, and stared in surprise at Cleo, who was curled up in a ball on the sofa fast asleep. He studied her, struggling to identify what it was about her that roused his libido to such an extent. She wasn’t his style, and yet when she had turned those big blue eyes on him, lust had roared through him in a surge of heat that had left him thunderstruck. He breathed in slow and deep, steadying himself. Of course, that urge was not something he would ever succumb to, he reasoned confidently.
Ari was as organised and restrained in his sex life as he was in everything else. He had a select band of willing lovers in his life with whom he spent occasional casual nights and he had never had an exclusive relationship. Sex was a release from tension, a sporadic pastime, something enjoyable rather than exciting. Perhaps that was the secret of Cleo’s appeal, he mused. She excited him and he could not recall when a woman had last had that effect on him. Possibly actual excitement in that field had evaded him since he’d left the adolescent years behind.
Wry amusement tilted his mobile lips. He was well aware that he was spoiled in the female department, never being asked for anything more than he was willing to give because women wanted him to continue to call. He received endless invitations and selected only the most tempting from women he viewed as ‘suitable’. Cleo wasn’t and never would be suitable, he conceded calmly.
He was hungry. He swept up the phone and glanced at Cleo’s tumbled mop of guinea-gold curls over the back of the sofa. He would order dinner for her as well, make up for his outburst down by the lake by being sociable with an employee for a change. He was very much a loner, he acknowledged. But then he had been an only child born to two only children, so there never had been much of a family circle to enjoy, which was naturally why the family lawyer’s revelations had been so very intriguing.
Ari viewed his slumbering guest with amusement. There was something impossibly sweet about that innocent lack of intent. Women never fell asleep in Ari’s radius because they were invariably keen to utilise every possible moment to impress him. Certainly, he could not imagine any other woman he had ever met cheerfully telling him that she hated him, as Cleo had done without hesitation. She was outspoken, again not a quality he was accustomed to because people were not honest around him, not if there was the smallest risk that that honesty could offend or indicate anything that could prove to be personally prejudicial. Cleo didn’t guard her tongue or pay lip service to his position even as her employer.
As she shifted and stretched like a little cat in wakefulness, Ari leant over the sofa to say quietly, ‘I’m ordering dinner—’
‘Ah!’ Cleo squealed and shot off the sofa and upright, huge blue eyes locking to him in consternation. ‘You gave me a fright!’
‘My apologies... What would you like for dinner? Or should I ask what would younotlike?’
‘Dinner?’ Cleo gasped, backing away in apparent dismay, wide blue eyes pinned to him as though he were a ghost.
Ari was hugely entertained. ‘I’ll just order for you,’ he decided, lifting the phone to contact Reception and order steak with all the trimmings for two.
‘Why would you offer me dinner?’ Cleo framed as he replaced the phone again.
Ari gave her a slanting smile that unleashed butterflies in her already tense tummy. ‘I don’t know. Do you think it could be an attempt to make amends for being rude to you?’
‘That’s not necessary, Mr Stefanos,’ Cleo declared woodenly, her discomfiture unconcealed as she contemplated her bare toes digging into the plush luxury rug beneath her feet.
‘I think it is,’ Ari asserted. ‘So, sit back down and relax...’
He had to be joking on that front, Cleo thought, incredulous at the idea of sharing a meal with a billionaire, who was also her boss. Even so, if he was trying to be nice when he was so obviouslynota nice person on her terms, it would be mean of her to deny him the opportunity. Grudgingly, she sat down very stiffly in an armchair.
‘You’ve had a pretty rotten day of it,’ Ari pointed out quietly, determined not to smile at his recollections. ‘You got ambushed at the paintballing and you fell in the lake when you tried to go paddleboarding.’
Stony-faced at those unwelcome reminders of her lack of athletic talent and physical grace, Cleo nodded. ‘I’m not an outdoorsy person, but I like to give things a go—’
‘That’s an admirable trait,’ Ari remarked, thinking that she was about as ‘outdoorsy’ as an exotic plant plunged into the frost, but he was impressed that she had been willing to try.
‘Except when it comes to activities in the water,’ she dared to remind him of his opinion.
‘I may be in a minority, but I did think that your participation in those circumstances was dangerous and, worst of all, the experience gave you one hell of a fright,’ Ari told her drily, letting her know that he hadn’t changed his opinion of her daring in the slightest. ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’
‘Thank you.’ Cleo nodded again and tucked her restless hands between her thighs because she had never been more conscious of a man’s scrutiny. Those dark golden eyes that lit up his lean, darkly handsome features held her fast as glue.
Cleo watched him uncork a bottle of red wine and fill glasses, his every move smooth and dexterous, his polished assurance as much of a draw as his devastating good looks. Cleo had never met a male that confident and there was something oddly reassuring about that quality. ‘I suppose I should have panicked when I found the front door locked,’ she confided abruptly.
Ari glanced back at her with a raised brow of enquiry.
‘Locked in a house with a strange man...’ Cleo clarified in a belated attack of mortification because she could see that that aspect had not once crossed his mind. And why would it have? she asked herself ruefully. Women rarely wanted to escape from young, rich and very handsome men.
‘I’m sorry. It didn’t occur to me that you would wish to leave immediately,’ Ari countered, walking away from her and back to the door to replace the key that he had removed in an act of personal security that came to him as naturally as breathing. ‘There, it is possible for you to leave now whenever you like...’
In receipt of that demonstrative response, Cleo had turned as red as a ripe tomato while secretly cursing his decision to take her word so literally. She took a strong glug of her wine.
‘Is the wine okay?’
‘I don’t drink much, so I don’t have an opinion to offer,’ Cleo admitted tautly.
‘I thought everyone in your age group indulged,’ Ari remarked.
‘I don’t like the feeling of being out of control. I remember my mother...’ Just as she voiced those words, her lips compressed. ‘Sorry, you don’t want to hear about that—’
