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‘It was wrong. We both got carried away—’
‘I’m not a teenager and neither are you. I’m way past the age where I get carried away. We started out being inappropriate and then somehow it began feeling right andbeingright,’ Ari imparted with level emphasis, revealing far more than he usually did with a woman because everything felt different and new and fresh with Cleo.
‘How can something so absolutely wrong be right?’ Cleo demanded fiercely, reaching past him for the door handle.
Ari rested a lean brown hand down on hers to forestall her. ‘I can make it right. I can make it possible. I will find you employment somewhere else—’
It was the perfect solution, Ari reflected with satisfaction. They would no longer be working in the same place, which meant that he could cherish his rules of office conduct again. A voice in his brain queried that, even though he had already thoroughlybrokenhis own rules by getting intimate with an employee. But what was done was done, he ruminated, and he already knew that he didn’t want it to be only a casual hook-up. For the first time ever with a woman, he was willing to sign up for a repeat experience, and in the light of that, it would be infinitely wiser to move Cleo into another job.
‘No...you don’t get to do that and interfere!’ Cleo gasped, stricken. ‘I’m not like my mother... I won’t change my life or base my decisions on what some man wants!’
‘I’m not asking you to do that,’ Ari incised tautly as she ignored his attempt to reason with her and yanked the bedroom door open. ‘I’m only offering to remove any obstacles which you may feel prevent us from being together like this—’
Cleo stalked out onto the landing. ‘You’re crazy but you’re also my boss. I want to forget this happened and never have it mentioned again.’
‘That seems rather like overkill,’ Ari commented drily. ‘We’re young and single. We haven’t harmed anyone.’
‘Thanks for dinner,’ Cleo pronounced awkwardly.
‘Cleo...’Ari breathed in fierce frustration as her bare feet slapped down the wooden staircase, her golden curls a messy mop that glimmered in the fading daylight, her slender spine rigid in its rejection. The solid thud of the front door closing on her heels was the only answer he received.
Cleo didn’t trust herself to say another word, particularly when Ari had forcefully disagreed with every word she had said. But every inch of her rebelled against the secret sordid fling she believed he was offering her.My goodness.Had the sex beenthatgood on his terms?
CHAPTER THREE
ARIWASSTILLrecalling that exasperating conclusion with Cleo when his limousine dropped him off at his London Headquarters. He had been out of the country for five days, negotiating the purchase of an exclusive Portuguese beach resort that had unexpectedly come on the market. He hadn’t been able to contact Cleo because he didn’t have her phone number, and using his status to acquire that number had struck him as beneath his dignity. In any case, he was keen to believe that a few days to cool off would have put Cleo into a more reasonable frame of mind.
For that reason, Ari was taken aback to see a strange face presiding over the reception desk when he arrived on the top floor. ‘What happened to Cleo?’ he demanded of his PA, Mel, when his personal staff joined him in his office.
Everybody’s surprise that he should even ask that question about a junior staff member made him bite back further comment.
Mel shrugged. ‘She quit and the agency replaced her the next day with profuse apologies.’
Ari knew that he had much more important matters to handle than Cleo’s disappearance, but he also knew that workplace ethics would not, in this instance, stop him from discovering her address. He had an appointment with the family lawyer at lunchtime. Apparently, the private detective agency he had engaged had lodged a timely and pretty comprehensive report, although enquiries were still ongoing. Receiving information about his siblings was definitely something to look forward to, he reflected confidently.
By mid-afternoon, Ari’s sense of anticipation had died in receipt of a truckload of bad news. Indeed, he had learned things about his siblings’ lives that would most likely give him sleepless nights. One fact in particular had hit him very hard and he left the office mid-afternoon to seek out Cleo. He could not imagine discussing such personal stuff with any of his friends but, somehow, Cleo was in a different category in his mind. She had impressed him as practical rather than overly emotional and he liked that trait. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he was querying that immediate wish to discuss the situation with a woman he barely knew, but Ari was not accustomed to questioning his own decisions or to stifling urges that might impress some as unwise. Nor was he the sort of male who dwelt overlong on the mysteries of life and his connections to other people.
Cleo was tired. With her free hand she massaged the ache in her back, acknowledging that she had forgotten how exhausting bartending could be when it was busy. Mercifully, the rush was over, and she was thinking longingly of the end to her shift because her feet were killing her in the high heels she so rarely wore. But then she had had no choice because without the heels she wasn’t tall enough to reach for certain items.
The office temp agency had been furious with her for breaking her contract, but Cleo had no doubt that she had done what shehadto do when she resigned from Stefanos Enterprises. She was mortified by her own behaviour and it had been easier to leave than risk an even more complicated and embarrassing situation developing. And yet on another level, which she did not wish to examine, she was also grieving the reality that she would never see Ari Stefanos again, and feeling like that against all common sense just made her hate herself all the more!
After all, she had barely been a blip on Ari’s radar even to begin with. He had scarcely registered that she was female or indeed shown any sort of interest in her until events thrust them together and somehow—she didn’t honestly knowhow—they had ended up in bed. She should have said no. She was well aware that shecouldhave said no, because he had given her that opportunity, but she hadn’t and there was no denying that. She had made the wrong choice, putherselfout of a good job and a reference, and she could not find an excuse to hide behind.
When she glanced up and saw Ari Stefanos in front of the bar counter, she could not initially believe the evidence of her own eyes. ‘How did you find me?’ she croaked in horror.
‘Your flatmate—’
Her eyebrows airlifted. ‘You found out where I live?’ she condemned resentfully, because walking away from him had been a challenge and she was proud she had managed to do it. Ari seeking her out and showing up again was way more temptation than she needed and it felt very unfair. ‘That’s not...er...very professional, is it?’
Pleased with that sally, Cleo turned away to draw a beer for a customer and ignored him. But then Cleo didn’t need to look more than a second at Ari Stefanos to see him inside her head in all his perfection. Dark grey designer suit cut to outline every muscular angle and line of his tall, powerful body, a white-and-grey pinstripe shirt teamed with a royal-blue tie. Ari didn’t believe in dressing down for work and there were no casual-wear days in his offices. He was a formal guy, who laid down pretty demanding conservative rules to be followed in the workplace. Rules, however, that he had chosen to ignore in her case.
Sam, her current employer, stretched above her to retrieve a glass and murmured, ‘With your friend here, you can take your break now if you like.’
Cleo turned brick red at the concept of Ari Stefanos being any kind of a friend. He was more like a nuclear submarine who had sneaked up on her, blown her sky-high and destroyed her nice quiet life. But she supposed she had to speak to him, to act normally instead of angry and resentful, before he worked out that she had had a lowering sort of immature crush on him before they had become intimate. How humiliating would that be? He wasn’t stupid. He would soon guess too if she kept on behaving as though he were some serious threat instead of simply a man she had once slept with. ‘Thanks, Sam.’
‘Ari...’ she muttered, glancing up only to be ensnared by rich tawny eyes semi-veiled by black curling lashes, and her heart literally clenched in her chest. ‘Why are you here?’
‘When do you finish?’ he pressed, his keen gaze scanning the colourful geometric top she sported, the fitted skirt exposing her shapely legs, the strappy shoes accentuating her slender ankles. Hunger punched through him with raw vigour, disconcerting him because he had believed,genuinelybelieved, that some weird combination of reactions had coalesced in him at the retreat and made him act out of character. Only now he was looking again at Cleo in the flesh, the guinea-gold curls surrounding her heart-shaped face, the big blue eyes striving to avoid his, the delicate flush of her pale skin, and his response was almost instantaneous, setting up a throb of almost painful arousal.
