The Billionaire′s Trophy
The Billionaire's Trophy
LYNNE GRAHAM
On his arm… What is his intern’s photo doing on an escort website?Bastian Christou doesn’t know if he’s more surprised by her double life or her stunning photo – she’s kept those curves well hidden! He has an ex-fiancée to keep at bay, and Emmie Marshall might just be the best armour money can buy. And in his bed?Emmie is outraged when Bastian, her uncompromising boss, confronts her. She had no idea her photo was online.But his cheque’s been cashed and he’s come to collect his prize… A weekend in Greece. With her. Alone.Their relationship might be fake, but Emmie’s trepidation is all too real!‘Fast-paced and always dramatic, another 5* for Lynne!’ – Alex, 37, Shropshire www.lynnegraham.com
‘I realised that you were the perfect match for my requirements,’ Bastian fielded with characteristic cool. ‘However, if you don’t want to do it return the fee and we’ll say no more about it.’
Bastian strolled forward, his lean, darkly handsome features infuriatingly calm and assured. He was disturbingly graceful in motion, with not a visible ounce of tension in his big powerful frame as he stepped unexpectedly into her space.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ Emmie gasped, overpowered by his proximity and totally disconcerted by his behaviour.
‘Maybe I want to see what I was paying for,’ Bastian said succinctly, indifferent to whether or not he caused offence. After all, wasn’t he hiring her to do a job?
‘You haven’t bought me…you can’t buy what isn’t for sale!’ Emmie flung back at him in fierce rejection.
‘Yet I’ve still managed to buy your time for the whole of one weekend.’ Bastian savoured the fact, dark eyes glittering golden as hot sunlight below level black brows.
A BRIDE FOR A BILLIONAIRE
The men who have everything finally meet their match!
The Marshall sisters have carved their own way in the world for as long as they can remember. So if some arrogant billionaire thinks he can sweep in and whisk them off their stilettos he’s got another think coming!
It will take more than a private jet and a wallet full of cash to win over these feisty, determined women. Luckily these men enjoy a challenge, and they have more than their bank accounts going for them!
Read Kat Marshall’s story in
A RICH MAN’S WHIM May 2013
Read Sapphire Marshall’s story in
THE SHEIKH’S PRIZE June 2013
This month read
Emerald Marshall’s story in
THE BILLIONAIRE’S TROPHY
About the Author
LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon
reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.
Recent titles by the same author:
THE SHEIKH’S PRIZE (A Bride for a Billionaire)
A RICH MAN’S WHIM (A Bride for a Billionaire)
A RING TO SECURE HIS HEIR
UNLOCKING HER INNOCENCE
Did you know these are also available as eBooks?Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
The Billionaire’s Trophy
Lynne Graham
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
SEBASTIANO CHRISTOU, KNOWN as Bastian to his many friends and acquaintances, studied the huge emerald ring in his hand with seething frustration blazing in his dark golden eyes, his lean darkly handsome features settling into forbidding lines of hauteur. He was holding the Christou betrothal ring, which had, until very recently, adorned the hand of his intended wife, Lilah Siannas.
Ironically, Lilah had not voiced a single word of reproach concerning the terms of the pre-nup agreement presented to her lawyer. Instead, while leaving the pre-nup unsigned, Lilah had become irritatingly unavailable and distant but her burning resentment had ultimately triumphed, culminating in her public statement that the engagement was over and the wedding cancelled. And ever since then Lilah had been noisily painting the town red in the company of a good-looking toyboy millionaire.
Bastian was well aware that Lilah was throwing down a gauntlet she expected him to pick up. He was supposed to be jealous: yet he was not. He was supposed to feel foolish: but he did not. He was supposed to want her so much that he would forget about the pre-nup: only he did not. No, Lilah was playing a losing game for Bastian would never marry a woman without first securing his wealth with a pre-nup agreement. That was a lesson learned well at his grandfather’s knee.
His father had married four times and his three incredibly expensive divorces had decimated the Christou family fortune. Bastian’s grandfather had taught his grandson that love was unnecessary in a successful marriage and that shared goals and principles were more important. Bastian had never been in love but he had often been in lust. Lilah, a tiny exquisite brunette, had excited his need to chase and possess but he had never kidded himself that he loved her. Indeed before he proposed, he had evaluated Lilah’s worth much as though she were an investment. He had recognised the advantage of their similar backgrounds; he had admired her unemotional outlook, excellent education and her skills as a society hostess. But, as he now grimly reminded himself, he had seriously underestimated the strength and pulling power of his fiancée’s avarice.
Bastian thrust the ring back in its case and put it in the safe, angry at the months he had wasted on Lilah, a woman demonstrably unfit to be his wife. He was thirty years old, more than ready to marry and have a family, bored with casual affairs. He had not realised that finding a wife would be such a challenge and he was already wondering how the hell he was supposed to avoid a scene at his sister, Nessa’s wedding in two weeks’ time because Lilah was one of Nessa’s bridesmaids. Lilah would be outraged when Bastian didn’t, at least, try to win her back. She would relish being the focus of all eyes at the wedding and would delight even more in a confrontation, but Bastian did not want his baby sister to be embarrassed or upset on her special day. The only way of avoiding that danger would be for him to arrive with another woman on his arm, for Lilah was too proud to overlook such a statement.
But at this late stage where on earth would he find another woman to act as his partner throughout a weekend of family festivities? A woman who wouldn’t try to trap him into a relationship and who wouldn’t read more than he meant into his invitation? A woman nonetheless capable of pretending to be intimately involved with him, for nothing less would keep Lilah at a distance. Did such a perfect woman exist?
‘Bastian…?’ He spun round as one of his directors strode in with a laptop beneath his arm. ‘I’ve got something amusing to show you—are you in the mood?’
Bastian was not in the mood but Guy Babington was a good friend and he forced a smile to his hard mouth. ‘Always,’ he encouraged.
Guy opened the laptop on the desk and spun it round to display the screen to Bastian. ‘There…recognise her?’
Bastian studied the photo of a stunning blonde with bright blue eyes in a party dress. She was laughing into the camera. ‘No…should I?’
‘Take another look,’ Guy urged. ‘Believe it or not, she works for you.’
‘No way…I would’ve noticed her,’ Bastian instantly declared because she was such a beauty. ‘What’s her picture doing on the Internet? Are you on Facebook?’
Amused, Guy shook his head. ‘I’m on a website advertising a business called Exclusive Companions. It’s an escort agency for professionals, very exclusive,’ he said, rolling his eyes suggestively.
Bastian frowned, his sensual mouth curling a little with distaste. ‘Do you use escorts?’
‘I wouldn’t mind using this blonde,’ Guy confided, ducking the question with a lascivious look.
Bastian elevated an ebony brow. ‘You said she worked for me—’
‘She does—as an intern on a three-month placement on this floor. Emmie…she does research for your PA.’
Astonishment gripped Bastian as he turned his attention back to the screen. ‘That’s Emmie?’ he queried in disbelief, mentally flicking up an image of the young woman as she looked at work: hair tied back, specs anchored on her nose, dowdy clothes. Still frowning, Bastian zeroed his attention in on the dark mole on the centre of the blonde’s cheek as he recalled that the intern had the same beauty mark in the identical place. ‘Diavelos…that is her! She’s actually moonlighting as an escort?’
‘Evidently…but what I’d really like to know is why she dresses to look like the ugly duckling when she comes into work here,’ Guy confided.
‘Her name is Emerald according to the site…’
Sebastiano flipped open his own computer and hit several buttons to access the list of his staff. Yes, it wasn’t Emmie short for Emily or Emma as most people would assume; her true name was indeed Emerald. So, weird and unbelievable as it seemed to him, it was the same woman.
‘Doesn’t she clean up amazingly well?’ Guy chuckled lecherously.
Bastian would not have described the intern as an ugly duckling although he had to admit that on the few occasions she had been around him she had thoroughly irritated him.
‘Sugar is bad for your teeth,’ she had told him when she handed him his coffee, strong and sweet the way he liked it.
‘Manners maketh man,’ she had quipped when he strode through a door ahead of her and they almost collided in the doorway.
But he had noticed that, even clad in the ubiquitous black tights, she had incredibly long legs, the sort a man thought about wrapping round his waist. An escort, he ruminated thoughtfully, a woman whose company was available for hire. If she cleaned up as well as she did in that photo, she would make a very presentable piece of arm candy and, after all, it would be in her own best interests to meet his expectations. Possibly she wasn’t fully aware of the terms of her temporary employment, one condition of which specified that she must do nothing to bring the company into disrepute. And working a lucrative sideline as an escort for rich men definitely didn’t fit the bill of acceptability. He had never used an escort service before, nor would he have considered doing so in normal circumstances, but for this particular occasion he liked the idea of a woman he could hire to accompany him to his sister’s wedding. He would not have to ask anyone for a favour, nor would he have to pretend an interest in a woman that he didn’t feel anything for and there would be no room for misunderstandings in such an arrangement: he would pay Exclusive Companions and she would deliver the act he told her to deliver. In fact the more he thought about it, the more he liked that idea; she would be as much under his control as a robot.
Emmie swallowed back a yawn with difficulty while Bastian Christou’s PA, Marie, gave her exhaustive details on the company she wanted her to research. Her hand unwittingly rubbed at her aching leg, which always bothered her when she was on her feet too much. Her right leg had been badly injured in a car crash when she was twelve and for years afterwards Emmie had been disabled, initially forced to use a wheelchair and only later recovering sufficiently to get around on crutches. Indeed, without experimental surgery she would never have walked unaided again and so grateful was she still for that surgery that she always shrugged off the occasional ache as unworthy of note or fuss.
Unfortunately, her tiredness made concentration a virtual impossibility and, not for the first time, Emmie marvelled that she had ever believed that an unpaid internship would be the perfect solution to her unemployment crisis. After months working a temporary dead-end job in the local library, Emmie had been willing to try anything to get her career out of the doldrums. She had jumped, however, from the frying pan straight into the fire. Although she had several friends working for no money to gain some experience for their all-important CVs they were all, without exception, still in receipt of parental financial support.
Emmie was rather less fortunate in that field. Although she had an excellent business degree the economic downturn meant there were few graduate jobs and the few that there were went to applicants with the skills and practical know-how that were only attainable from actual employment. After countless unsuccessful applications, Emmie had known that she needed work experience to improve her chances and she had initially been ecstatic when she got through a tough assessment centre and first won the internship at Christou Holdings, one of the most aggressive and successful software companies in London.
Never having lived in the city as an independent adult, she had not initially appreciated what a challenge it would be simply to make ends meet. And then, her estranged mother, Odette, had got in touch out of the blue and had offered Emmie her spare room and Emmie had snatched gratefully at the opportunity for cheap lodgings without which she could not have hoped to accept the job. It had not once occurred to her that Odette might have an ulterior motive in inviting her to stay. Naively, Emmie had simply been eager for the opportunity to get to know the mother she had last seen when she was twelve years old. From that age Emmie and her two siblings had been raised by her eldest sister, Kat, in the Lake District and, although she had recognised Kat’s dismay when she learned of the London scheme and Emmie’s plan to live with their mother, Kat had not interfered and had merely warned her sibling that Odette could be ‘difficult’. Well, the word difficult didn’t begin to cover the problems she was having, Emmie reflected heavily, hoping that she wasn’t in for yet another long-running row when she got home later.
Her first unsettling discovery after moving in with Odette had been the disturbing revelation that her mother made her very comfortable living through an Internet-based escort agency. The even bigger shock that followed had been Odette’s firm conviction that Emmie should join her list of escorts and earn her keep that way. When Emmie had refused and had instead taken on waitressing work five nights a week, Odette had been furious and, even though Emmie was handing over every penny of her meagre earnings to her mother, Odette was still angry and dissatisfied with her daughter.
Perhaps the most upsetting experience of all for Emmie had been the dawning awareness that her mother didn’t love her, cherished no fond wish to get to know her better and certainly didn’t regret having left her to her sister’s care at twelve years old. That learning curve had been steep and painful and had made Emmie appreciate that she had gone to live with her mother in the hope of reviving a relationship that had only ever existed in her own imagination. Sadly, Odette was not the maternal type. Her children were simply the by-products of relationships that had gone wrong and it honestly seemed as though Odette had never managed to form an attachment to any of her daughters.
‘Ah, Marie…’ a familiar dark accented drawl pronounced from the doorway. ‘The meeting is about to start. Emmie can take the minutes for us.’
Emmie spun round, faint colour blooming in her cheeks as she focused on Bastian Christou’s tall powerful frame. The Greek entrepreneur was a popular choice for profiles in leading business publications and she had read all about him long before she came to work for him. He took a brilliant photograph but was even more eye-catching in the flesh, where his height and breadth and the gleaming luxuriance of the ruthlessly cropped black hair that framed his lean, darkly handsome features were disturbingly noticeable even in a crowd. Of course he was taller than most men, something Emmie tended to notice because she was five feet nine inches tall but he topped her by a comfortable six inches. In truth he had the charisma and looks that no woman could ignore, added to a sun-kissed complexion the shade of dulled gold and the perfectly formed features of a fallen angel. His mother, she had read, had been a famous Italian film star and he looked exactly like her, right down to the burnished dark eyes that were currently engaged in roaming over her as though she were edible and he were starving. Startled by that analogy and the intensity of his continuing appraisal, Emmie tensed and jerked her chin up while throwing him a look of frowning enquiry, for he had never looked at her in that way before. Perhaps his reaction was an illustration of the strange mood that Marie had warned her that her boss was in, doubtless fallout from the broken engagement that nobody had yet dared to mention in his presence, she reasoned uncertainly.
‘Of course,’ Marie responded equably. A slender, efficient brunette in her early forties, she rose from her seat to follow her boss back out of the office.
Bastian surveyed his quarry, Emmie, and wondered what her first smile would look like. He was accustomed to women smiling at him, not at all accustomed to one scowling and challenging him with her head tilted at a scornfully unimpressed angle. Yet there was something familiar about her, some quality that nagged at him, making him feel that he must have seen her or met her before somewhere. That niggling awareness irritated him, for he was well aware that she did not move in his social circles but indeed hailed from some hayseed background in the north. Unless, of course, he thought abruptly, he had previously come across her when she was acting as an escort to someone he knew…Now that was a genuine possibility, he acknowledged with distaste, wondering what on earth she was doing getting involved in such a seedy way of life at her age. Or was he being naïve? Beautiful women could reap rich rewards and an enviable lifestyle from such pursuits. Indeed if she was to meet the right rich man and marry him, she could set herself up for life.
Bastian had learned at a young age that most such women used their beauty like a commodity, expecting it to work for them and win them special treatment. His own mother had belonged to that group. Why should Emmie Marshall be any different? He watched her take notes during the meeting, noting the faint dark shadows circling her eyes and the translucent quality of her skin. He did not think he had ever seen skin that perfect on anyone other than a child. She propped her chin on an upturned hand, head at a slant that defined her slender neck and delicate jawline. A fine strand of corn-gold hair had escaped from her ponytail to trail across her cheekbone. He marvelled that he hadn’t noticed the quality of her looks sooner. But then the loose shirts and trailing mid-length skirts she wore with the specs provided an off-putting disguise and the attention had to linger to note that soft, full pink mouth with its delicious pout and very slight hint of an overbite, and appreciate that the eyes behind the unattractive spectacles were a truly dazzling bright blue. In some astonishment, Bastian registered that he was developing a hard-on while he imagined those pillowy lips pouting just for his benefit. And for how many others had she performed that arousing trick as part of her escort duties? he asked himself grimly, squashing his arousal at source, for while he never bedded innocents he had an innate aversion to sex being traded for a price. And he already knew what her price was, didn’t he?
‘Emerald’s rarely available. She’s very much in demand,’ the voice at the other end of the phone had informed him smoothly when he phoned the escort agency. ‘I can offer you Jasmine or—’
‘It has to be Emerald,’ he had countered. ‘She’s the only one I want. I’ll make it very well worth her while to choose me as a client.’
And then Bastian had negotiated, a skill at which he excelled, and he had learned once again—had he ever doubted it?—that for the right price he could have anything he wanted, including the rarely available and already fully booked Emerald currently falling asleep across the table from him. He had bought her services for the weekend and he had paid an enormous price for the privilege. It amused him that she evidently had not the slightest idea of the fact and yet he marvelled that any woman could so irresponsibly sell her time and attention to strangers, who might abuse her trust. Her curling lashes were down on her cheekbones, her slim shoulders drooping as she sank lower into her seat. He stretched out a long leg below the table, found her feet and nudged them sharply with the toe of one shoe. She jolted awake again, her wide startled blue eyes flying straight to him in dismay, her full lips parting, cheeks reddening with embarrassment. He wondered who she had entertained the night before and whether sex had figured. Nine out of ten men would expect sex for what he had paid for her services. He wondered how she would feel about that and how he felt about that…no, never, no way was he going there, he thought in disgust.
Emmie collided slap-bang-crash with smouldering dark golden eyes that reminded her of a tiger’s eyes and that fast her ability to breathe vanished while a humming warmth prickled and then pulsed between her legs. Shock rippled through her in reaction to that sexual response, for it had been a long time since she had felt like that. Emmie was wary and seldom reacted to attractive men, having found them invariably vain and self-serving. She was very picky, so picky she had yet to choose a first lover, although she had come very close to losing her virginity at university when she fell in love. Of course that relationship had gone pear-shaped the instant Toby looked at her and said, ‘I can’t believe I’m going to bed with a girl the living image of Sapphire…’
Wham, that astonishing admission had hit Emmie right where it hurt, crushing her confidence and her faith in the love he had pledged. Being the sister of a world-famous supermodel and, even worse, her identical twin had often made Emmie feel as though she had no identity or individuality of her own. Time after time men had made her feel like an imperfect copy or stand-in for her flawless sister and the resemblance between the two women was so strong that, to sidestep that humiliating association being made, Emmie generally played down her best assets and avoided her twin’s company. Now she wondered what it was about Bastian Christou that got to her. Lashes cloaking her gaze, she studied him, her heart beating very fast. Why had he looked at her like that? All right, his engagement was over and he was supposedly a free agent again, but what was he playing at? Men didn’t, as a rule, see beyond the plain, unflattering clothing she wore. And his former fiancée was as different from Emmie in appearance as to be almost another species, being tiny, dark and glittery rather like a manic fairy, Emmie recalled from her one fleeting glimpse of the imperious little Greek socialite. Lifting her chin, Emmie gazed steadily back at him.
Reluctant amusement rippled through Bastian’s powerful frame. She had nerve and he liked that; he liked that very much.
‘In my office—five minutes,’ he told her coolly, thrusting back his chair and rising to his full intimidating height.
‘He must want to check the minutes. I hope you kept pace,’ Marie commented. ‘At one point there, I was afraid you might be falling asleep.’
Emmie winced. ‘It was a possibility…’ Until your boss kicked me awake. The awareness that Bastian Christou had noticed that she was dropping off made her want to cringe and she wondered if that was what he wanted to speak to her about. After all he had never bothered to speak to her before except in passing and he channelled any instructions through Marie.
‘Is there no way you can chuck in the waitressing?’ Marie enquired in an undertone.
‘Sadly not, but I do have only another few weeks to go here,’ Emmie pointed out, relieved she had chosen to be honest with the older woman about the fact that she was working two jobs to survive.
‘I hope the long hours you’re working to do this pay off,’ Marie retorted wryly.
And from the tone of that remark, Emmie gathered that Marie saw little prospect of her being offered a full-time position with the company. In truth Emmie hadn’t really expected the internship to lead to a permanent job but naturally she had hoped to be proven wrong in that assessment. She knew that it was much more likely that another unpaid intern would be offered the position she had vacated. Why should employers take on extra staff and pay them when they could get young eager workers for nothing?
Emmie walked into Bastian’s office for the first time and glanced around, taking in the cool contemporary furnishings and artworks, the almost palpable opulence of a décor where no expense had been spared. But then Bastian Christou had no need to count the cost of anything. A genius in the field of software development and an exceptional businessman, he had single-handedly built an international company out of the best-selling program he had developed before he even left university and had become an enormously wealthy man while still very young.
‘Close the door,’ he told her, his deep voice setting up a vibration along her spine. He was a very masculine man and it had nothing to do with his physical size. Raw masculinity was etched in his hard bone structure, shrewd eyes and the authority and assurance with which he spoke. Although he was always perfectly groomed there was nothing metrosexual about him. One had only to see Bastian Christou with his sleeves rolled up on his strong forearms, his tie torn off and collar unbuttoned to show a slice of bronzed flesh to know that he was all male in a way so few men still dared to be.
Emmie pressed the door shut and turned back, a shiver of disconcerting awareness filtering through her tall, slender length as she met his keen, intelligent eyes. Beautiful eyes, she thought absently, as arrestingly bright as starlight in that strong face. Her body betrayed her instantly as if, having found the chink in her armour with this one man, it had forced that tiny loophole into a dangerous crack, for her breasts stirred and swelled heavily within her bra so that it felt tight and uncomfortable. Her colour fluctuated as her nipples stung into straining peaks and suddenly she was as tongue-tied as an awkward adolescent.
‘Miss Marshall,’ Bastian drawled, tracking her every change of expression. ‘Or may I call you Emmie?’
‘Emmie’s fine,’ she muttered at the height of a drawn-in breath.
‘Or do you prefer Emerald?’
Taken aback by that rare use of her baptismal name, Emmie hovered uncertainly. ‘I don’t use that name…’
‘You…don’t?’ A winged ebony brow climbed as though she had surprised him and when he bent his head over the laptop on the desk, it was a relief for her to have a moment to catch her breath again while watching the light from the window behind her gleam over the glossy sheen of his luxuriant black hair.
Catching herself on that thought, she didn’t know what was wrong with her and only wished she could kick her brain back into gear. Yes, he was a good-looking guy but that didn’t impress her, it being her experience that handsome men were usually very aware that they were handsome and invariably offended if a woman didn’t react with admiration. Not that Bastian Christou struck her as belonging to that category, she acknowledged grudgingly. She was of such minuscule importance on his scale that she was sure he couldn’t care less how she reacted to him. No, it was her own self and her pride that were affronted by her breathless, nervous state in his presence. A grown woman didn’t lose her ability to reason around an attractive man, at least not if she expected to be taken seriously as an employee in an executive office that was still very much a man’s world.
‘No, I don’t use that name…never have,’ Emmie proclaimed with a strained smile, recalling that he could only have got that name from her job application because she only employed it when officialdom required it. Perhaps it had lingered on his mind because it was unusual.
Bastian Christou looked up with a slight smile and inexplicably that smile of his suddenly chilled Emmie to her bone marrow. ‘But that’s not quite true, is it?’
Frozen there in front of his desk, Emmie blinked rapidly, unnerved by the ESP promptings that were warning her of a threat when there was no possible threat that she could see. ‘Sorry?’ she questioned uncertainly, having lost the thread of the conversation.
‘It’s untrue that you don’t use the name Emerald,’ Bastian declared, swivelling his laptop round for her to view what was on the screen.
Emmie’s soft mouth fell wide when she saw the picture he was referring to, shock and disbelief vibrating through her from head to toe because she could not imagine how a personal photograph of hers could have ended up on the Internet for anyone to see. It had been taken at her graduation party on one of the very rare occasions when she dressed up and threw caution to the wind and the photo was still in her digital camera…or at least she had thought it was. ‘What’s this? Where did you find that photo?’ she gasped strickenly.
‘On the website belonging to the Exclusive Companions escort agency,’ Bastian confided, noting that she had turned as white as a sheet at his admission and experiencing an entirely unexpected pang of conscience because she contrived to appear genuinely shattered by his discovery. Of course, he reasoned, that merely proved that she had the useful skill of being a good actress in a challenging situation.
‘Exclusive C-Companions?’ Emmie stammered, for it was her mother’s business and she knew that her photograph could not have been uploaded to that website without her mother’s involvement. She was absolutely appalled and stared fixedly at that colourful image with a sinking heart. How on earth could Odette do that to her? Her mother knew she wanted no involvement with her business. ‘How did you find this?’
‘Not because I was visiting the website,’ Bastian asserted with dry emphasis. ‘Someone else who works here drew it to my attention.’
Nausea curled in her sensitive tummy. Who else knew? How many people? Inwardly she cringed in embarrassment. Who else was now convinced that she worked as an escort outside office hours? My goodness, was everyone she worked with talking about this behind her back? Humiliation clawed at her and she cursed the day she had moved in with her mother. What on earth was her picture doing on the website when she didn’t work as an escort? But who on earth would ever believe that now?
‘It is you, isn’t it?’ Bastian Christou pressed.
In silence, Emmie gritted her teeth and nodded agreement, unable to see how she could lie on that score. ‘But it’s not what you think—’
‘Allow me to know what to think,’ Bastian Christou murmured, smooth as glass.
‘It’s none of your business!’ Emmie told him, her mortification yielding to a sudden rush of resentment.
‘I’m afraid it is my business,’ Bastian countered levelly. ‘Your employment contract with this company states that you’re not allowed to do anything which might bring the company into disrepute and I’m afraid that advertising yourself on the Internet as an escort would fall within that category.’
Emmie lost colour. She could not believe that a foolish action of her mother’s might have put her job at risk, but she could also understand that it was an association that any employer might consider distasteful and suspect. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ she said flatly, her full lips compressing with determination.
‘How will you deal with it?’ Bastian asked, glittering dark eyes pinned to her with growing curiosity, his attention lingering on that soft full mouth. He wanted to rip off the spectacles and tug her hair out of that ugly ponytail and see her beauty as nature had intended it to be seen: that mane of golden hair, clear, flawless skin and glorious eyes. When most women went to great lengths to look the best they could, why the hell did she hide her beauty as though it were something to be ashamed of? And then unveil that beauty to be an escort? Had she been afraid from the start that someone in the office might recognise that photo and realise she was leading a double life? It was the only explanation he could see that made sense of such a disguise.
‘I’ll have the photo taken down from the website. It shouldn’t be there,’ she declared defensively. ‘I don’t actually work as an escort—’
‘But clearly you have a connection to the agency,’ Bastian pointed out, amused by her vehemence, her eagerness to persuade him that he had somehow misunderstood. She had little hope of getting far with that objective when he had so recently booked and paid for her services, he conceded grimly.
Emmie squirmed, determined not to admit the degrading truth that her connection to the escort agency was through her mother. ‘I promise you that I’ll deal with it and that photo will be taken down as soon as I can get it organised.’
‘If you’re tied into an employment contract with the agency it won’t be that simple a matter,’ Bastian warned her and he pushed a business card across the desk towards her. ‘Feel free to contact this lawyer if you need advice or assistance on that score.’
‘There is no contract. I told you…I don’t work as an escort,’ Emmie repeated doggedly, her colour high because she knew he didn’t believe her and she didn’t really blame him for that when her photo was on the website for all to see. She was mortified by the entire conversation but surprised that he was offering her a legal contact who could help her cut ties that didn’t actually exist. Fortunately, the only tie Emmie had to Exclusive Companions was her blood tie to her manipulative mother.
‘Tell me, why isn’t the HR department dealing with this?’ she queried.
‘I felt the issue needed to be dealt with immediately and without spreading the news round the office.’
Exerting self-control, Emmie clenched her teeth together. ‘Thanks. I appreciate that,’ she felt forced to say with very real gratitude.
‘Take the rest of the day off to handle this business,’ Bastian advised, further surprising her with his consideration. ‘I’ll clear it with Marie.’
Thoroughly disconcerted by that generous suggestion, Emmie stiffened, but she was very grateful for the chance to go straight home and confront her mother about what she had done as it was scarcely something she could ignore.
‘A stitch in time saves nine,’ Emmie muttered shakily, taut with rage and embarrassment and frustration that she could not clear her own name but, on another level, very grateful to have discovered that her face was on that website, so that she could demand it be removed forthwith.
Bastian elevated a satiric brow. ‘Another one of your funny little homilies?’
‘I was talking to myself,’ Emmie breathed curtly, flushing slightly because she had picked up the habit of uttering proverbs when she was a child and tended to blurt them out mindlessly when she was nervous or apprehensive.
So far, so good, Bastian reflected cynically when she had left his office, having reacted exactly as he had expected her to and engaged in a frantic cover-up. Even so, she would get that photo down from the site and cut her ties to the agency, which would perfectly suit his requirements. He had no desire for anyone to discover that he was keeping company with an escort and once she was removed from the site there would be less risk of that happening.
CHAPTER TWO
ODETTE WAS USING her laptop in her elegant lounge when Emmie entered the apartment. Her mother was a tall woman in her fifties with the same classic blonde looks that had raised Saffy, Emmie’s twin sister, to supermodel status and universal acclaim.
‘My word, you’re home early…did the old office sweatshop burn down?’ the older woman commented flippantly.
Emmie’s face was already flushed by the speed with which she had walked from the bus but now her slender hands clenched as anger rose inside her. ‘You put my photo on your website without my permission,’ she accused.
Impervious to her daughter’s tension, Odette lifted and dropped a slim shoulder, her unconcern patent. ‘Photos of very beautiful girls improve business. Lots of my clients have phoned asking specially for you and I simply say you’re already booked—but if you weren’t so stubborn, you could be making a fortune.’
‘You must have taken that photo from my camera.’ Emmie was disconcerted by her mother’s lack of reaction to her accusation.
Odette’s blue eyes, so like her daughter’s, were cold as a winter sky. ‘Yes. I can’t see why that should be a problem—’
‘You…can’t? But you know that I don’t want any involvement in your business—’
‘Although you’re quite happy to live off my earnings from running an escort agency!’ Odette sliced back with stinging effect.
Emmie reddened. ‘That’s not true. I’m not living off you. I give you everything I earn from waitressing—’
Odette lifted a scornful brow. ‘Which amounts to peanuts!’ she exclaimed. ‘If I rented out that room, I could be making three times as much for it. Instead I decided to be generous and help you out with your career. Is this all the thanks I get for it?’
Emmie hovered uncomfortably. ‘You know I’m grateful, but I still want that photo taken down from the site. I’m not an escort and I don’t want people thinking that I am—’
Odette settled resentful blue eyes on her. ‘My girls aren’t prostitutes. I’ve told you that before. They are companions, professional companions, guaranteed to be presentable and pleasant. Sex isn’t included in the package.’
‘As far as you know,’ Emmie added jerkily. ‘You don’t know how your escorts behave if a man asks for something more and is willing to pay for it—’
Odette rose gracefully upright. ‘No, I don’t,’ she conceded. ‘I’m not their keeper or their mother,’ she said. ‘I’m only the manager who takes the bookings and runs credit and character checks on the clients. Why are you so prudish and suspicious of my business, Emmie? The girls on my books are educated middle-class young women, who want to make a decent income. Some of them are paying their way through college…’
‘I’m not condemning their choices, I’m only saying that it’s not a choice I would make,’ Emmie declared, lifting her head high and wondering why she was feeling so guilty and ungrateful. ‘Will you take down that photo right now, please?’
‘You’re making such a fuss about nothing,’ Odette complained. ‘You wouldn’t think twice about posting that photo on one of those social networking sites you use—’
‘That’s different. You must take that photo down and remove any mention of me from the site,’ Emmie reiterated. ‘Whether you accept it or not, being associated with an escort site is damaging to my reputation, and have you even thought about what it could do to Saffy’s reputation? The embarrassment this could cause her?’
‘What the heck has Saffy got to do with this?’ her mother demanded tartly.
‘My face is her face, or have you forgotten that we’re identical twins?’ Emmie retorted impatiently, wishing the older woman would stop trying to play dumb when she was as wily as a box of ferrets. ‘Saffy would go spare about this if she found out—’
Odette was unmoved. ‘And why should that bother you? She’s already made a fortune out of her face and body. She’s got a lot more wit than you have but, let’s face it, according to what Topsy has told me, you and your twin are not exactly close.’
Emmie stiffened at that reference to her youngest sister, who had taken to occasionally visiting their mother and had no doubt innocently let slip personal details that Odette would happily use against her daughters if it suited her to do so. ‘Saffy and I may not be close but I wouldn’t do anything to harm her or her career,’ she proffered tautly. ‘And I certainly wouldn’t want to embarrass her the way I was embarrassed when someone showed me my photo on your website today. I’m really upset about this—please tell me you’ll take the photo down now…’
Odette expelled her breath on an irritable hiss, her annoyance palpable. ‘I will—if it really means that much to you—’
‘It does. Thank you,’ Emmie pronounced stiltedly, realising in frustration that she had said nothing that she intended to say and that once again Odette had contrived to talk her down and act as the victim rather than the perpetrator. Her mother had not even apologised for stealing that photo and using it on her website, she reflected in frustration as she walked towards her bedroom to get changed for her shift at the café where she worked weeknights. But then, another voice reminded her grimly, she could not really afford to have a no-holds-barred row with her mother while Odette was allowing her to occupy her spare room. Accepting favours always came with a price.
‘Unfortunately, it’s no longer quite as simple as that,’ Odette remarked softly.
Emmie spun round in confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’ve already taken a booking for you—’
Emmie was stunned into momentary silence. ‘How can you have taken a booking for me when I don’t work as an escort for you?’ she asked drily.
‘The client offered me so much money, I agreed,’ her mother admitted without shame or embarrassment. ‘I need the money and, let’s be frank, so do you.’
‘Well, you’re just going to have to give the money right back again!’ Emmie shot back at her mother in angry disbelief. ‘I’m not for hire!’
‘He’s a businessman. He sent a contract over by courier and I signed it on your behalf—’
‘But that can’t be legally binding when I don’t work for you!’ Emmie protested.
‘How are you going to prove that you don’t work for me when your profile is on the website?’ Odette enquired dulcetly.
At that suggestion of outright blackmail, Emmie went rigid. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. Return his money—’
Odette pushed her laptop aside and stood up. ‘It’s not that simple. I had outstanding bills and I’ve paid them. There’s still a healthy cut of that money set aside for you—’
‘I don’t want it!’ Emmie flung back at her furiously. ‘I’m not going to be forced into acting as an escort so that you can make money out of me…It’s not going to happen!’
‘But I have no way of paying the money back,’ her mother declared.
‘That’s not my problem,’ Emmie stated curtly. ‘Although I had no idea you had financial problems—’
‘It’s a tough world out there and an escort is a luxury. This guy’s young, rich and handsome, so you can’t complain on that score,’ Odette told her with derision.
‘I don’t care…I’m not doing it, not for you, not for anyone!’
‘Let me tell you just how much he was willing to pay to take you abroad for a weekend,’ Odette urged thinly and she mentioned a figure of thousands of pounds that shocked Emmie rigid, for there was a much greater sum of money involved than she could ever have imagined.
‘Odette…’ Emmie said shakily. ‘It doesn’t matter what he paid you or what you signed. You can’t sell me or my time like a product. I’m not for sale, and after the number of arguments we’ve had on this subject, I can’t believe that you went ahead and accepted a booking for me knowing how I felt about the idea.’
The older woman settled icy blue eyes on her defiant daughter. ‘You owe me, Emmie, and I intend to collect.’
‘How do I owe you?’ Emmie prompted painfully. ‘You never bothered with me from the age of twelve. You never visited or wrote or phoned or even paid towards my upkeep—’
‘I had a hard time surviving. And you were all quite happy living with your sister, Kat,’ Odette argued tautly. ‘But when it really mattered, I was still there for you—’
Emmie’s facial muscles were locked tight with self-discipline. ‘And when was that?’
‘When you needed surgery for your damaged leg. When you were desperate to walk again, I came through for you,’ her mother declared impressively.
Emmie was knocked sideways by that announcement. ‘You’re saying that you paid for the surgery I had on my leg?’ She gasped in shock.
‘Where did you think Kat got the money from?’ her mother enquired drily.
Emmie was too distraught at what she had been told to continue reasoning with her unrepentant parent. She changed for her shift at the café and went to work in a daze. Was it true that Odette had paid for her surgery? It was a supreme irony that as a teenager it had not even occurred to Emmie to wonder where her oldest sister, Kat, had got the cash to pay for Emmie’s private surgery abroad. Even though Emmie was now in her twenties it had never occurred to her to ask, an oversight that now struck her as unforgivably obtuse and selfish. Emmie knew how much that surgery had meant to her at the time, how desperately she had craved the normality and the independence of no longer needing assistance in almost everything she did. She was dumbfounded by the assurance that her mother had paid to make her deepest wish come true.
While she served meals and drinks that evening, her mind was lost on another plane. Her sister, Saffy, had never overcome her guilt that she had not been injured in that same crash and she had been fiercely protective of her injured twin in the aftermath. Saffy had never understood that the continual presence of her physical perfection and glowing health had only made Emmie all the more aware of what she had lost. Emmie’s teenaged experience of infirmity had been wretched and she had often been depressed. People had continually looked away from the awkward gait caused by her disability, embarrassed by her, embarrassed for her, pitying, avoiding her as if her brain might be as damaged as her body. At the same time Saffy, blonde, beautiful, sporty and gregarious, had been the most popular girl in school. Emmie hadn’t resented her twin and she hadn’t been jealous either, but that was when she had learned to hate the wounding comparisons that people made between the two girls, one so perfect, the other so physically flawed. Those feelings had been compounded from early childhood by Odette’s resentful attitude to having had twins when she had only wanted one child. Even worse, Emmie had proved to be a heavy responsibility, underweight when born and often ill afterwards, a sickly child continually requiring extra care and attention. Emmie was always painfully aware that in those days Odette had found caring for her too heavy a responsibility.
Her mother was in bed when Emmie got home and although it was a relief not to have to face the older woman again Emmie was still in turmoil. Odette might once have been a neglectful parent but that costly surgery had transformed Emmie’s life, not least giving her her freedom and independence back. If her mother had paid for that operation, Emmie did owe her a debt. But surely that didn’t mean she was honour bound to perform escort duties for some stranger? Hadn’t Odette said ‘a weekend abroad’? My goodness, could such an arrangement be any more bizarre or dangerous? A whole weekend out of the country? He could be a white slaver and she might never be heard of again.
‘I’d like to see that contract,’ Emmie told her mother staunchly over breakfast, determined not to let her emotions take control of her again. She needed a solution and another argument would be counter-productive.
A couple of minutes later, Odette passed her a slim document. Emmie glanced down it and leafed to the last page to see the signature and what she saw there astonished her. Sebastiano Christou! How was that possible? How could Emmie’s boss be the man who had booked her as an escort? The same boss who had informed her that her supposed second career as an escort ran contrary to company policy? Emmie was so enraged by the sight of that particular name that she was vaguely surprised steam didn’t pump from her ears. She stuffed the contract into her bag. ‘I’ll handle this,’ she told the older woman tautly.
Evidently having expected more of a reaction from her, her mother said, ‘Aren’t you surprised by the identity of the client?’
‘Should I be?’
‘You do work for the guy—’
‘Oh, so you’re aware of that?’ Emmie fielded thinly.
‘Of course I am. It puts a whole new spin on office romance,’ Odette remarked mockingly.
‘Believe me,’ Emmie declared as she stood up, ‘there’s nothing romantic about this situation.’
Rage was powering Emmie like adrenalin by the time she reached the office. Bastian Christou was a complete hypocrite. Unbelievably, the same guy who had paid a ridiculous sum for her services as an escort had dared to warn her that her working in such a role threatened to bring his company into disrepute. But at least now she knew why he had been looking at her so oddly, doubtless imagining that if she worked as an escort she was a much more sexually exciting and adventurous personality than she appeared on the surface. Well, we’ll just see about that, Emmie reflected, furiously gritting her teeth together.
‘Mr Christou and I discussed a private matter yesterday and I need to see him as soon as possible to update him on…er, a recent development,’ Emmie informed Marie.
Her eyes carefully veiled, Bastian’s PA passed no comment and swept up her phone.
‘Go on ahead,’ she urged then, before adding, ‘Be careful, Emmie—’
‘Careful?’ Emmie queried, glancing back over her shoulder.
‘Before Lilah, Bastian had a bad track record with women,’ his PA murmured warningly.
Her face flaming at the type of development that the other woman so obviously suspected, Emmie knocked on the office door and entered. Bastian surveyed her from his stance by the window, his arrogant dark head set at a questioning angle, his brilliant eyes narrowed. Emmie dug the contract from her bag and slapped it down on the desk top in explanation.
‘So, you know,’ Bastian remarked evenly, not one whit perturbed by her aggressive body language.
‘And now it’s time for you to know that it’s not on, not happening in this lifetime!’ Emmie specified with emphatic bite. ‘But what I really can’t believe is that you talked of how my photo on that website could bring your company into disrepute and then you went ahead and booked me!’
‘I realised that you were the perfect match for my requirements,’ Bastian fielded with characteristic cool, noting that with that pink warming her cheeks and her animated expression she was glowingly alive, like a candle that had suddenly been lit for the first time. ‘However, if you don’t want to do it, return the fee and we’ll say no more about it.’
Return the fee? Consternation at that practical suggestion filtered through Emmie’s anger because she didn’t have a penny in the world, indeed still had an overdraft on her bank account from her student days. Odette had admitted to having already spent some of the money and Emmie had no way of replacing it, nor was she naïve enough to believe that she had a prayer of persuading her materialistic mother to hand over what remained of that cash. ‘I can’t believe that you can still look me in the eye…’ she said with scorn, side-stepping the money issue.
Bastian strolled forward, lean, darkly handsome features infuriatingly calm and assured. He was disturbingly graceful in motion, not a visible ounce of tension in his big powerful frame as he stepped unexpectedly into her space and without warning whisked the spectacles off her nose to examine them. ‘These are clear glass…what do you wear them for?’
‘Give me those back!’ Emmie snapped, fit to be tied at his cheek.
With a sardonic laugh, Bastian tossed them aside and reached instead for the clip pinning her thick hair to the back of her head.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ Emmie gasped, overpowered by his proximity and totally disconcerted by his bold approach.
The clip went the same way as the spectacles and released the heavy golden fall of her hair round her taut shoulders. ‘Maybe I wanted to see what I was paying for,’ Bastian said succinctly, indifferent to whether or not he caused offence. After all, wasn’t he hiring her to do a job? Why should he pussyfoot around her sensibilities?
Rampant disbelief gripped Emmie as she focused on his devastating face, struggling to block out the hard male beauty of his bronzed features, refusing to acknowledge it when he was being so objectionable. ‘How dare you?’ she snapped furiously.
‘It’s the truth even if you don’t like it,’ Bastian countered drily, watching her dark pupils dilate in a betraying sign of sexual awareness, emphasising the incredible blue of her eyes all the more. Even up close, she was dazzling, skin luminous, eyes bright, mouth sugar-pink and luscious. Raw hunger pulsed at his groin, the kick of instant and intense arousal taking him by surprise. Yes, she was very beautiful but he was accustomed to beautiful women and repulsed by those who sought payment for their attention. Unfortunately the natural repugnance he had expected to feel around her wasn’t working as the barrier he had hoped it would.
‘You haven’t bought me…you can’t buy what isn’t for sale!’ Emmie flung back at him in fierce rejection, reacting to the maddening buzz in the atmosphere that was firing a sensation of uneasy warmth between her thighs and unnerving her.
‘Yet I’ve still managed to buy your time for the whole of one weekend.’ Bastian savoured the fact, dark eyes glittering golden as hot sunlight below level black brows.
‘No…no way!’
‘Then return the fee and we’ll forget about the arrangement,’ Bastian responded lazily again. ‘I’m not in the market for an unwilling escort. In the wrong frame of mind you would be useless to me.’
Emmie backed away from him, pausing to scoop up the clip and the spectacles he had carelessly abandoned on his desk. He was forcing her to accept unwelcome facts. Of course he wanted the money back if she wasn’t prepared to deliver the service he had booked and she wasn’t able to return his wretched money to him! It put her between a rock and a hard place and frustration roared through her. Had Odette won their battle so easily? She could deny all connection to her mother’s escort agency and leave Bastian Christou to pursue the return of the money he had paid, but that would undoubtedly plunge Odette into serious legal and financial trouble. And the woman who had financed the surgery that had given Emmie the opportunity to live a normal able-bodied life again deserved better than that from her, Emmie conceded reluctantly. the gift of that life-enhancing surgery truly was a debt that could never be repaid.
‘Why the disguise?’ Bastian enquired indolently. ‘Are you afraid of being recognised in the day job?’
Emmie went pink again. ‘Something like that.’
She couldn’t tell him the truth, had never told anyone the truth. When Saffy’s face had gone global and her twin was constantly pictured in the media, Emmie had no longer felt that her face was her own. Even more awkwardly, people had started mistaking her for Saffy in the street and it had got embarrassing: strangers approaching her asking for autographs and photos, men coming on to her, people getting angry and abusive when she insisted that she wasn’t the famous Sapphire because they didn’t believe her. The attention had mortified and intimidated her, making her feel like a fake copy of her famous sister, incapable of satisfying people’s expectations. She had always been a very private person and could never have put herself on show as her sibling had done to make a living in front of the cameras. She had never had that kind of confidence in her face and body.
Bastian relaxed back against the side of his desk. ‘If you make a good job of the role I have for you I’ll pay you a bonus,’ he told her smoothly. ‘This is very much a business arrangement, not a pleasure trip.’
Emmie wondered if this was what he always did when a woman became difficult: offer her more money, clothes, jewellery, whatever? Did he often use his wealth as a bribe?
‘Are you in the habit of using an escort service?’ Emmie enquired flatly.
‘You will be the first…and the last,’ he informed her grimly.
‘And why didn’t you tell me what you’d done when you spoke to me yesterday about the photo on the website? Wasn’t that complete hypocrisy?’ she asked him drily again.
‘Common sense. If I take you to my sister’s wedding, I naturally don’t want your escort identity to still be visible online,’ he pointed out coolly. ‘And I’m not a hypocrite. What You see is what you get. I’m a very forthright guy.’
‘Your sister’s wedding? You want me to accompany you to a family occasion?’ Emmie prompted in surprise.
‘I don’t want anything to take the gloss off my sister, Nessa’s big day,’ Bastian admitted. ‘Seeing me with you will persuade her that I have moved on from my broken engagement and that will make Nessa happy. She’s a very soft-hearted soul. And as my ex is one of her bridesmaids, it will be more comfortable for everyone present if I have a partner of my own.’
‘One of her bridesmaids?’ Emmie grimaced at the concept. ‘Sticky—’
‘But less so with you on my arm,’ he confirmed. ‘May I assume that you will be accompanying me to my home in Greece?’
Emmie gulped at the prospect, thinking frantically about how she could possibly repay the fee he had paid, knowing that, short of a lottery win, she could not. There was no way out, no convenient escape route. What was one weekend to be spent in the company of family and wedding guests? It sounded innocent, safe. She swallowed hard and then nodded in surrender, curling lashes lowering over her angry gaze.
‘All that remains is the provision of suitable clothing for you to wear over the weekend,’ Bastian remarked.
‘That won’t be necessary—’
‘It will be,’ Bastian contradicted, derisive eyes dropping to scan her loose shirt and ill-fitting skirt. ‘I’ll organise a stylist and personal shopper to furnish you with what you will require. Naturally I’ll cover the bills. I have your phone number. I’ll text you with the details.’
Emmie swallowed hard, dislike and resentment combining in a tangled knot of defiance inside her. He was treating her like an inanimate object to be correctly packaged for public show. He saw her as an escort, a woman for hire and, even though she told herself that she was doing this for her mother’s benefit and to repay a debt, it was an utterly humiliating process and not an experience that she would forget in a hurry.
CHAPTER THREE
OUT OF THE corner of her eye, Emmie saw heads turning as she walked through the airport. She was mentally offering up a prayer that that would be all the attention she attracted when a man with a camera stepped right into her path. ‘Stop right there, Sapphire!’
Head high, face expressionless, Emmie sidestepped him, not even bothering to pause and contradict his assumption that she was her sister because she had learned that people and the paparazzi in particular refused to credit that she was not who they thought she was. After all, a photo of Sapphire was worth a lot of money and no pap ever wanted to admit that he had made a mistake. Dressed as she was in designer gear, Emmie knew there was even less chance than usual of anyone believing that she was not her twin. The mini wardrobe of new garments packed into the sleek case she was wheeling was not bargain-basement fare by anyone’s standards. Indeed Emmie had never in her life worn such expensive clothing and, ironically, knowing that she looked her best had lifted her confidence. That acknowledged, however, the prospect of a weekend at the Christou family home still had her nerves leaping about like jumping beans. There was a tight hard knot of anxiety in her abdomen as well, for nothing she had since learned about the Greek billionaire had eased her misgivings in the slightest.
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LYNNE GRAHAM
On his arm… What is his intern’s photo doing on an escort website?Bastian Christou doesn’t know if he’s more surprised by her double life or her stunning photo – she’s kept those curves well hidden! He has an ex-fiancée to keep at bay, and Emmie Marshall might just be the best armour money can buy. And in his bed?Emmie is outraged when Bastian, her uncompromising boss, confronts her. She had no idea her photo was online.But his cheque’s been cashed and he’s come to collect his prize… A weekend in Greece. With her. Alone.Their relationship might be fake, but Emmie’s trepidation is all too real!‘Fast-paced and always dramatic, another 5* for Lynne!’ – Alex, 37, Shropshire www.lynnegraham.com
‘I realised that you were the perfect match for my requirements,’ Bastian fielded with characteristic cool. ‘However, if you don’t want to do it return the fee and we’ll say no more about it.’
Bastian strolled forward, his lean, darkly handsome features infuriatingly calm and assured. He was disturbingly graceful in motion, with not a visible ounce of tension in his big powerful frame as he stepped unexpectedly into her space.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ Emmie gasped, overpowered by his proximity and totally disconcerted by his behaviour.
‘Maybe I want to see what I was paying for,’ Bastian said succinctly, indifferent to whether or not he caused offence. After all, wasn’t he hiring her to do a job?
‘You haven’t bought me…you can’t buy what isn’t for sale!’ Emmie flung back at him in fierce rejection.
‘Yet I’ve still managed to buy your time for the whole of one weekend.’ Bastian savoured the fact, dark eyes glittering golden as hot sunlight below level black brows.
A BRIDE FOR A BILLIONAIRE
The men who have everything finally meet their match!
The Marshall sisters have carved their own way in the world for as long as they can remember. So if some arrogant billionaire thinks he can sweep in and whisk them off their stilettos he’s got another think coming!
It will take more than a private jet and a wallet full of cash to win over these feisty, determined women. Luckily these men enjoy a challenge, and they have more than their bank accounts going for them!
Read Kat Marshall’s story in
A RICH MAN’S WHIM May 2013
Read Sapphire Marshall’s story in
THE SHEIKH’S PRIZE June 2013
This month read
Emerald Marshall’s story in
THE BILLIONAIRE’S TROPHY
About the Author
LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon
reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.
Recent titles by the same author:
THE SHEIKH’S PRIZE (A Bride for a Billionaire)
A RICH MAN’S WHIM (A Bride for a Billionaire)
A RING TO SECURE HIS HEIR
UNLOCKING HER INNOCENCE
Did you know these are also available as eBooks?Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
The Billionaire’s Trophy
Lynne Graham
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
SEBASTIANO CHRISTOU, KNOWN as Bastian to his many friends and acquaintances, studied the huge emerald ring in his hand with seething frustration blazing in his dark golden eyes, his lean darkly handsome features settling into forbidding lines of hauteur. He was holding the Christou betrothal ring, which had, until very recently, adorned the hand of his intended wife, Lilah Siannas.
Ironically, Lilah had not voiced a single word of reproach concerning the terms of the pre-nup agreement presented to her lawyer. Instead, while leaving the pre-nup unsigned, Lilah had become irritatingly unavailable and distant but her burning resentment had ultimately triumphed, culminating in her public statement that the engagement was over and the wedding cancelled. And ever since then Lilah had been noisily painting the town red in the company of a good-looking toyboy millionaire.
Bastian was well aware that Lilah was throwing down a gauntlet she expected him to pick up. He was supposed to be jealous: yet he was not. He was supposed to feel foolish: but he did not. He was supposed to want her so much that he would forget about the pre-nup: only he did not. No, Lilah was playing a losing game for Bastian would never marry a woman without first securing his wealth with a pre-nup agreement. That was a lesson learned well at his grandfather’s knee.
His father had married four times and his three incredibly expensive divorces had decimated the Christou family fortune. Bastian’s grandfather had taught his grandson that love was unnecessary in a successful marriage and that shared goals and principles were more important. Bastian had never been in love but he had often been in lust. Lilah, a tiny exquisite brunette, had excited his need to chase and possess but he had never kidded himself that he loved her. Indeed before he proposed, he had evaluated Lilah’s worth much as though she were an investment. He had recognised the advantage of their similar backgrounds; he had admired her unemotional outlook, excellent education and her skills as a society hostess. But, as he now grimly reminded himself, he had seriously underestimated the strength and pulling power of his fiancée’s avarice.
Bastian thrust the ring back in its case and put it in the safe, angry at the months he had wasted on Lilah, a woman demonstrably unfit to be his wife. He was thirty years old, more than ready to marry and have a family, bored with casual affairs. He had not realised that finding a wife would be such a challenge and he was already wondering how the hell he was supposed to avoid a scene at his sister, Nessa’s wedding in two weeks’ time because Lilah was one of Nessa’s bridesmaids. Lilah would be outraged when Bastian didn’t, at least, try to win her back. She would relish being the focus of all eyes at the wedding and would delight even more in a confrontation, but Bastian did not want his baby sister to be embarrassed or upset on her special day. The only way of avoiding that danger would be for him to arrive with another woman on his arm, for Lilah was too proud to overlook such a statement.
But at this late stage where on earth would he find another woman to act as his partner throughout a weekend of family festivities? A woman who wouldn’t try to trap him into a relationship and who wouldn’t read more than he meant into his invitation? A woman nonetheless capable of pretending to be intimately involved with him, for nothing less would keep Lilah at a distance. Did such a perfect woman exist?
‘Bastian…?’ He spun round as one of his directors strode in with a laptop beneath his arm. ‘I’ve got something amusing to show you—are you in the mood?’
Bastian was not in the mood but Guy Babington was a good friend and he forced a smile to his hard mouth. ‘Always,’ he encouraged.
Guy opened the laptop on the desk and spun it round to display the screen to Bastian. ‘There…recognise her?’
Bastian studied the photo of a stunning blonde with bright blue eyes in a party dress. She was laughing into the camera. ‘No…should I?’
‘Take another look,’ Guy urged. ‘Believe it or not, she works for you.’
‘No way…I would’ve noticed her,’ Bastian instantly declared because she was such a beauty. ‘What’s her picture doing on the Internet? Are you on Facebook?’
Amused, Guy shook his head. ‘I’m on a website advertising a business called Exclusive Companions. It’s an escort agency for professionals, very exclusive,’ he said, rolling his eyes suggestively.
Bastian frowned, his sensual mouth curling a little with distaste. ‘Do you use escorts?’
‘I wouldn’t mind using this blonde,’ Guy confided, ducking the question with a lascivious look.
Bastian elevated an ebony brow. ‘You said she worked for me—’
‘She does—as an intern on a three-month placement on this floor. Emmie…she does research for your PA.’
Astonishment gripped Bastian as he turned his attention back to the screen. ‘That’s Emmie?’ he queried in disbelief, mentally flicking up an image of the young woman as she looked at work: hair tied back, specs anchored on her nose, dowdy clothes. Still frowning, Bastian zeroed his attention in on the dark mole on the centre of the blonde’s cheek as he recalled that the intern had the same beauty mark in the identical place. ‘Diavelos…that is her! She’s actually moonlighting as an escort?’
‘Evidently…but what I’d really like to know is why she dresses to look like the ugly duckling when she comes into work here,’ Guy confided.
‘Her name is Emerald according to the site…’
Sebastiano flipped open his own computer and hit several buttons to access the list of his staff. Yes, it wasn’t Emmie short for Emily or Emma as most people would assume; her true name was indeed Emerald. So, weird and unbelievable as it seemed to him, it was the same woman.
‘Doesn’t she clean up amazingly well?’ Guy chuckled lecherously.
Bastian would not have described the intern as an ugly duckling although he had to admit that on the few occasions she had been around him she had thoroughly irritated him.
‘Sugar is bad for your teeth,’ she had told him when she handed him his coffee, strong and sweet the way he liked it.
‘Manners maketh man,’ she had quipped when he strode through a door ahead of her and they almost collided in the doorway.
But he had noticed that, even clad in the ubiquitous black tights, she had incredibly long legs, the sort a man thought about wrapping round his waist. An escort, he ruminated thoughtfully, a woman whose company was available for hire. If she cleaned up as well as she did in that photo, she would make a very presentable piece of arm candy and, after all, it would be in her own best interests to meet his expectations. Possibly she wasn’t fully aware of the terms of her temporary employment, one condition of which specified that she must do nothing to bring the company into disrepute. And working a lucrative sideline as an escort for rich men definitely didn’t fit the bill of acceptability. He had never used an escort service before, nor would he have considered doing so in normal circumstances, but for this particular occasion he liked the idea of a woman he could hire to accompany him to his sister’s wedding. He would not have to ask anyone for a favour, nor would he have to pretend an interest in a woman that he didn’t feel anything for and there would be no room for misunderstandings in such an arrangement: he would pay Exclusive Companions and she would deliver the act he told her to deliver. In fact the more he thought about it, the more he liked that idea; she would be as much under his control as a robot.
Emmie swallowed back a yawn with difficulty while Bastian Christou’s PA, Marie, gave her exhaustive details on the company she wanted her to research. Her hand unwittingly rubbed at her aching leg, which always bothered her when she was on her feet too much. Her right leg had been badly injured in a car crash when she was twelve and for years afterwards Emmie had been disabled, initially forced to use a wheelchair and only later recovering sufficiently to get around on crutches. Indeed, without experimental surgery she would never have walked unaided again and so grateful was she still for that surgery that she always shrugged off the occasional ache as unworthy of note or fuss.
Unfortunately, her tiredness made concentration a virtual impossibility and, not for the first time, Emmie marvelled that she had ever believed that an unpaid internship would be the perfect solution to her unemployment crisis. After months working a temporary dead-end job in the local library, Emmie had been willing to try anything to get her career out of the doldrums. She had jumped, however, from the frying pan straight into the fire. Although she had several friends working for no money to gain some experience for their all-important CVs they were all, without exception, still in receipt of parental financial support.
Emmie was rather less fortunate in that field. Although she had an excellent business degree the economic downturn meant there were few graduate jobs and the few that there were went to applicants with the skills and practical know-how that were only attainable from actual employment. After countless unsuccessful applications, Emmie had known that she needed work experience to improve her chances and she had initially been ecstatic when she got through a tough assessment centre and first won the internship at Christou Holdings, one of the most aggressive and successful software companies in London.
Never having lived in the city as an independent adult, she had not initially appreciated what a challenge it would be simply to make ends meet. And then, her estranged mother, Odette, had got in touch out of the blue and had offered Emmie her spare room and Emmie had snatched gratefully at the opportunity for cheap lodgings without which she could not have hoped to accept the job. It had not once occurred to her that Odette might have an ulterior motive in inviting her to stay. Naively, Emmie had simply been eager for the opportunity to get to know the mother she had last seen when she was twelve years old. From that age Emmie and her two siblings had been raised by her eldest sister, Kat, in the Lake District and, although she had recognised Kat’s dismay when she learned of the London scheme and Emmie’s plan to live with their mother, Kat had not interfered and had merely warned her sibling that Odette could be ‘difficult’. Well, the word difficult didn’t begin to cover the problems she was having, Emmie reflected heavily, hoping that she wasn’t in for yet another long-running row when she got home later.
Her first unsettling discovery after moving in with Odette had been the disturbing revelation that her mother made her very comfortable living through an Internet-based escort agency. The even bigger shock that followed had been Odette’s firm conviction that Emmie should join her list of escorts and earn her keep that way. When Emmie had refused and had instead taken on waitressing work five nights a week, Odette had been furious and, even though Emmie was handing over every penny of her meagre earnings to her mother, Odette was still angry and dissatisfied with her daughter.
Perhaps the most upsetting experience of all for Emmie had been the dawning awareness that her mother didn’t love her, cherished no fond wish to get to know her better and certainly didn’t regret having left her to her sister’s care at twelve years old. That learning curve had been steep and painful and had made Emmie appreciate that she had gone to live with her mother in the hope of reviving a relationship that had only ever existed in her own imagination. Sadly, Odette was not the maternal type. Her children were simply the by-products of relationships that had gone wrong and it honestly seemed as though Odette had never managed to form an attachment to any of her daughters.
‘Ah, Marie…’ a familiar dark accented drawl pronounced from the doorway. ‘The meeting is about to start. Emmie can take the minutes for us.’
Emmie spun round, faint colour blooming in her cheeks as she focused on Bastian Christou’s tall powerful frame. The Greek entrepreneur was a popular choice for profiles in leading business publications and she had read all about him long before she came to work for him. He took a brilliant photograph but was even more eye-catching in the flesh, where his height and breadth and the gleaming luxuriance of the ruthlessly cropped black hair that framed his lean, darkly handsome features were disturbingly noticeable even in a crowd. Of course he was taller than most men, something Emmie tended to notice because she was five feet nine inches tall but he topped her by a comfortable six inches. In truth he had the charisma and looks that no woman could ignore, added to a sun-kissed complexion the shade of dulled gold and the perfectly formed features of a fallen angel. His mother, she had read, had been a famous Italian film star and he looked exactly like her, right down to the burnished dark eyes that were currently engaged in roaming over her as though she were edible and he were starving. Startled by that analogy and the intensity of his continuing appraisal, Emmie tensed and jerked her chin up while throwing him a look of frowning enquiry, for he had never looked at her in that way before. Perhaps his reaction was an illustration of the strange mood that Marie had warned her that her boss was in, doubtless fallout from the broken engagement that nobody had yet dared to mention in his presence, she reasoned uncertainly.
‘Of course,’ Marie responded equably. A slender, efficient brunette in her early forties, she rose from her seat to follow her boss back out of the office.
Bastian surveyed his quarry, Emmie, and wondered what her first smile would look like. He was accustomed to women smiling at him, not at all accustomed to one scowling and challenging him with her head tilted at a scornfully unimpressed angle. Yet there was something familiar about her, some quality that nagged at him, making him feel that he must have seen her or met her before somewhere. That niggling awareness irritated him, for he was well aware that she did not move in his social circles but indeed hailed from some hayseed background in the north. Unless, of course, he thought abruptly, he had previously come across her when she was acting as an escort to someone he knew…Now that was a genuine possibility, he acknowledged with distaste, wondering what on earth she was doing getting involved in such a seedy way of life at her age. Or was he being naïve? Beautiful women could reap rich rewards and an enviable lifestyle from such pursuits. Indeed if she was to meet the right rich man and marry him, she could set herself up for life.
Bastian had learned at a young age that most such women used their beauty like a commodity, expecting it to work for them and win them special treatment. His own mother had belonged to that group. Why should Emmie Marshall be any different? He watched her take notes during the meeting, noting the faint dark shadows circling her eyes and the translucent quality of her skin. He did not think he had ever seen skin that perfect on anyone other than a child. She propped her chin on an upturned hand, head at a slant that defined her slender neck and delicate jawline. A fine strand of corn-gold hair had escaped from her ponytail to trail across her cheekbone. He marvelled that he hadn’t noticed the quality of her looks sooner. But then the loose shirts and trailing mid-length skirts she wore with the specs provided an off-putting disguise and the attention had to linger to note that soft, full pink mouth with its delicious pout and very slight hint of an overbite, and appreciate that the eyes behind the unattractive spectacles were a truly dazzling bright blue. In some astonishment, Bastian registered that he was developing a hard-on while he imagined those pillowy lips pouting just for his benefit. And for how many others had she performed that arousing trick as part of her escort duties? he asked himself grimly, squashing his arousal at source, for while he never bedded innocents he had an innate aversion to sex being traded for a price. And he already knew what her price was, didn’t he?
‘Emerald’s rarely available. She’s very much in demand,’ the voice at the other end of the phone had informed him smoothly when he phoned the escort agency. ‘I can offer you Jasmine or—’
‘It has to be Emerald,’ he had countered. ‘She’s the only one I want. I’ll make it very well worth her while to choose me as a client.’
And then Bastian had negotiated, a skill at which he excelled, and he had learned once again—had he ever doubted it?—that for the right price he could have anything he wanted, including the rarely available and already fully booked Emerald currently falling asleep across the table from him. He had bought her services for the weekend and he had paid an enormous price for the privilege. It amused him that she evidently had not the slightest idea of the fact and yet he marvelled that any woman could so irresponsibly sell her time and attention to strangers, who might abuse her trust. Her curling lashes were down on her cheekbones, her slim shoulders drooping as she sank lower into her seat. He stretched out a long leg below the table, found her feet and nudged them sharply with the toe of one shoe. She jolted awake again, her wide startled blue eyes flying straight to him in dismay, her full lips parting, cheeks reddening with embarrassment. He wondered who she had entertained the night before and whether sex had figured. Nine out of ten men would expect sex for what he had paid for her services. He wondered how she would feel about that and how he felt about that…no, never, no way was he going there, he thought in disgust.
Emmie collided slap-bang-crash with smouldering dark golden eyes that reminded her of a tiger’s eyes and that fast her ability to breathe vanished while a humming warmth prickled and then pulsed between her legs. Shock rippled through her in reaction to that sexual response, for it had been a long time since she had felt like that. Emmie was wary and seldom reacted to attractive men, having found them invariably vain and self-serving. She was very picky, so picky she had yet to choose a first lover, although she had come very close to losing her virginity at university when she fell in love. Of course that relationship had gone pear-shaped the instant Toby looked at her and said, ‘I can’t believe I’m going to bed with a girl the living image of Sapphire…’
Wham, that astonishing admission had hit Emmie right where it hurt, crushing her confidence and her faith in the love he had pledged. Being the sister of a world-famous supermodel and, even worse, her identical twin had often made Emmie feel as though she had no identity or individuality of her own. Time after time men had made her feel like an imperfect copy or stand-in for her flawless sister and the resemblance between the two women was so strong that, to sidestep that humiliating association being made, Emmie generally played down her best assets and avoided her twin’s company. Now she wondered what it was about Bastian Christou that got to her. Lashes cloaking her gaze, she studied him, her heart beating very fast. Why had he looked at her like that? All right, his engagement was over and he was supposedly a free agent again, but what was he playing at? Men didn’t, as a rule, see beyond the plain, unflattering clothing she wore. And his former fiancée was as different from Emmie in appearance as to be almost another species, being tiny, dark and glittery rather like a manic fairy, Emmie recalled from her one fleeting glimpse of the imperious little Greek socialite. Lifting her chin, Emmie gazed steadily back at him.
Reluctant amusement rippled through Bastian’s powerful frame. She had nerve and he liked that; he liked that very much.
‘In my office—five minutes,’ he told her coolly, thrusting back his chair and rising to his full intimidating height.
‘He must want to check the minutes. I hope you kept pace,’ Marie commented. ‘At one point there, I was afraid you might be falling asleep.’
Emmie winced. ‘It was a possibility…’ Until your boss kicked me awake. The awareness that Bastian Christou had noticed that she was dropping off made her want to cringe and she wondered if that was what he wanted to speak to her about. After all he had never bothered to speak to her before except in passing and he channelled any instructions through Marie.
‘Is there no way you can chuck in the waitressing?’ Marie enquired in an undertone.
‘Sadly not, but I do have only another few weeks to go here,’ Emmie pointed out, relieved she had chosen to be honest with the older woman about the fact that she was working two jobs to survive.
‘I hope the long hours you’re working to do this pay off,’ Marie retorted wryly.
And from the tone of that remark, Emmie gathered that Marie saw little prospect of her being offered a full-time position with the company. In truth Emmie hadn’t really expected the internship to lead to a permanent job but naturally she had hoped to be proven wrong in that assessment. She knew that it was much more likely that another unpaid intern would be offered the position she had vacated. Why should employers take on extra staff and pay them when they could get young eager workers for nothing?
Emmie walked into Bastian’s office for the first time and glanced around, taking in the cool contemporary furnishings and artworks, the almost palpable opulence of a décor where no expense had been spared. But then Bastian Christou had no need to count the cost of anything. A genius in the field of software development and an exceptional businessman, he had single-handedly built an international company out of the best-selling program he had developed before he even left university and had become an enormously wealthy man while still very young.
‘Close the door,’ he told her, his deep voice setting up a vibration along her spine. He was a very masculine man and it had nothing to do with his physical size. Raw masculinity was etched in his hard bone structure, shrewd eyes and the authority and assurance with which he spoke. Although he was always perfectly groomed there was nothing metrosexual about him. One had only to see Bastian Christou with his sleeves rolled up on his strong forearms, his tie torn off and collar unbuttoned to show a slice of bronzed flesh to know that he was all male in a way so few men still dared to be.
Emmie pressed the door shut and turned back, a shiver of disconcerting awareness filtering through her tall, slender length as she met his keen, intelligent eyes. Beautiful eyes, she thought absently, as arrestingly bright as starlight in that strong face. Her body betrayed her instantly as if, having found the chink in her armour with this one man, it had forced that tiny loophole into a dangerous crack, for her breasts stirred and swelled heavily within her bra so that it felt tight and uncomfortable. Her colour fluctuated as her nipples stung into straining peaks and suddenly she was as tongue-tied as an awkward adolescent.
‘Miss Marshall,’ Bastian drawled, tracking her every change of expression. ‘Or may I call you Emmie?’
‘Emmie’s fine,’ she muttered at the height of a drawn-in breath.
‘Or do you prefer Emerald?’
Taken aback by that rare use of her baptismal name, Emmie hovered uncertainly. ‘I don’t use that name…’
‘You…don’t?’ A winged ebony brow climbed as though she had surprised him and when he bent his head over the laptop on the desk, it was a relief for her to have a moment to catch her breath again while watching the light from the window behind her gleam over the glossy sheen of his luxuriant black hair.
Catching herself on that thought, she didn’t know what was wrong with her and only wished she could kick her brain back into gear. Yes, he was a good-looking guy but that didn’t impress her, it being her experience that handsome men were usually very aware that they were handsome and invariably offended if a woman didn’t react with admiration. Not that Bastian Christou struck her as belonging to that category, she acknowledged grudgingly. She was of such minuscule importance on his scale that she was sure he couldn’t care less how she reacted to him. No, it was her own self and her pride that were affronted by her breathless, nervous state in his presence. A grown woman didn’t lose her ability to reason around an attractive man, at least not if she expected to be taken seriously as an employee in an executive office that was still very much a man’s world.
‘No, I don’t use that name…never have,’ Emmie proclaimed with a strained smile, recalling that he could only have got that name from her job application because she only employed it when officialdom required it. Perhaps it had lingered on his mind because it was unusual.
Bastian Christou looked up with a slight smile and inexplicably that smile of his suddenly chilled Emmie to her bone marrow. ‘But that’s not quite true, is it?’
Frozen there in front of his desk, Emmie blinked rapidly, unnerved by the ESP promptings that were warning her of a threat when there was no possible threat that she could see. ‘Sorry?’ she questioned uncertainly, having lost the thread of the conversation.
‘It’s untrue that you don’t use the name Emerald,’ Bastian declared, swivelling his laptop round for her to view what was on the screen.
Emmie’s soft mouth fell wide when she saw the picture he was referring to, shock and disbelief vibrating through her from head to toe because she could not imagine how a personal photograph of hers could have ended up on the Internet for anyone to see. It had been taken at her graduation party on one of the very rare occasions when she dressed up and threw caution to the wind and the photo was still in her digital camera…or at least she had thought it was. ‘What’s this? Where did you find that photo?’ she gasped strickenly.
‘On the website belonging to the Exclusive Companions escort agency,’ Bastian confided, noting that she had turned as white as a sheet at his admission and experiencing an entirely unexpected pang of conscience because she contrived to appear genuinely shattered by his discovery. Of course, he reasoned, that merely proved that she had the useful skill of being a good actress in a challenging situation.
‘Exclusive C-Companions?’ Emmie stammered, for it was her mother’s business and she knew that her photograph could not have been uploaded to that website without her mother’s involvement. She was absolutely appalled and stared fixedly at that colourful image with a sinking heart. How on earth could Odette do that to her? Her mother knew she wanted no involvement with her business. ‘How did you find this?’
‘Not because I was visiting the website,’ Bastian asserted with dry emphasis. ‘Someone else who works here drew it to my attention.’
Nausea curled in her sensitive tummy. Who else knew? How many people? Inwardly she cringed in embarrassment. Who else was now convinced that she worked as an escort outside office hours? My goodness, was everyone she worked with talking about this behind her back? Humiliation clawed at her and she cursed the day she had moved in with her mother. What on earth was her picture doing on the website when she didn’t work as an escort? But who on earth would ever believe that now?
‘It is you, isn’t it?’ Bastian Christou pressed.
In silence, Emmie gritted her teeth and nodded agreement, unable to see how she could lie on that score. ‘But it’s not what you think—’
‘Allow me to know what to think,’ Bastian Christou murmured, smooth as glass.
‘It’s none of your business!’ Emmie told him, her mortification yielding to a sudden rush of resentment.
‘I’m afraid it is my business,’ Bastian countered levelly. ‘Your employment contract with this company states that you’re not allowed to do anything which might bring the company into disrepute and I’m afraid that advertising yourself on the Internet as an escort would fall within that category.’
Emmie lost colour. She could not believe that a foolish action of her mother’s might have put her job at risk, but she could also understand that it was an association that any employer might consider distasteful and suspect. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ she said flatly, her full lips compressing with determination.
‘How will you deal with it?’ Bastian asked, glittering dark eyes pinned to her with growing curiosity, his attention lingering on that soft full mouth. He wanted to rip off the spectacles and tug her hair out of that ugly ponytail and see her beauty as nature had intended it to be seen: that mane of golden hair, clear, flawless skin and glorious eyes. When most women went to great lengths to look the best they could, why the hell did she hide her beauty as though it were something to be ashamed of? And then unveil that beauty to be an escort? Had she been afraid from the start that someone in the office might recognise that photo and realise she was leading a double life? It was the only explanation he could see that made sense of such a disguise.
‘I’ll have the photo taken down from the website. It shouldn’t be there,’ she declared defensively. ‘I don’t actually work as an escort—’
‘But clearly you have a connection to the agency,’ Bastian pointed out, amused by her vehemence, her eagerness to persuade him that he had somehow misunderstood. She had little hope of getting far with that objective when he had so recently booked and paid for her services, he conceded grimly.
Emmie squirmed, determined not to admit the degrading truth that her connection to the escort agency was through her mother. ‘I promise you that I’ll deal with it and that photo will be taken down as soon as I can get it organised.’
‘If you’re tied into an employment contract with the agency it won’t be that simple a matter,’ Bastian warned her and he pushed a business card across the desk towards her. ‘Feel free to contact this lawyer if you need advice or assistance on that score.’
‘There is no contract. I told you…I don’t work as an escort,’ Emmie repeated doggedly, her colour high because she knew he didn’t believe her and she didn’t really blame him for that when her photo was on the website for all to see. She was mortified by the entire conversation but surprised that he was offering her a legal contact who could help her cut ties that didn’t actually exist. Fortunately, the only tie Emmie had to Exclusive Companions was her blood tie to her manipulative mother.
‘Tell me, why isn’t the HR department dealing with this?’ she queried.
‘I felt the issue needed to be dealt with immediately and without spreading the news round the office.’
Exerting self-control, Emmie clenched her teeth together. ‘Thanks. I appreciate that,’ she felt forced to say with very real gratitude.
‘Take the rest of the day off to handle this business,’ Bastian advised, further surprising her with his consideration. ‘I’ll clear it with Marie.’
Thoroughly disconcerted by that generous suggestion, Emmie stiffened, but she was very grateful for the chance to go straight home and confront her mother about what she had done as it was scarcely something she could ignore.
‘A stitch in time saves nine,’ Emmie muttered shakily, taut with rage and embarrassment and frustration that she could not clear her own name but, on another level, very grateful to have discovered that her face was on that website, so that she could demand it be removed forthwith.
Bastian elevated a satiric brow. ‘Another one of your funny little homilies?’
‘I was talking to myself,’ Emmie breathed curtly, flushing slightly because she had picked up the habit of uttering proverbs when she was a child and tended to blurt them out mindlessly when she was nervous or apprehensive.
So far, so good, Bastian reflected cynically when she had left his office, having reacted exactly as he had expected her to and engaged in a frantic cover-up. Even so, she would get that photo down from the site and cut her ties to the agency, which would perfectly suit his requirements. He had no desire for anyone to discover that he was keeping company with an escort and once she was removed from the site there would be less risk of that happening.
CHAPTER TWO
ODETTE WAS USING her laptop in her elegant lounge when Emmie entered the apartment. Her mother was a tall woman in her fifties with the same classic blonde looks that had raised Saffy, Emmie’s twin sister, to supermodel status and universal acclaim.
‘My word, you’re home early…did the old office sweatshop burn down?’ the older woman commented flippantly.
Emmie’s face was already flushed by the speed with which she had walked from the bus but now her slender hands clenched as anger rose inside her. ‘You put my photo on your website without my permission,’ she accused.
Impervious to her daughter’s tension, Odette lifted and dropped a slim shoulder, her unconcern patent. ‘Photos of very beautiful girls improve business. Lots of my clients have phoned asking specially for you and I simply say you’re already booked—but if you weren’t so stubborn, you could be making a fortune.’
‘You must have taken that photo from my camera.’ Emmie was disconcerted by her mother’s lack of reaction to her accusation.
Odette’s blue eyes, so like her daughter’s, were cold as a winter sky. ‘Yes. I can’t see why that should be a problem—’
‘You…can’t? But you know that I don’t want any involvement in your business—’
‘Although you’re quite happy to live off my earnings from running an escort agency!’ Odette sliced back with stinging effect.
Emmie reddened. ‘That’s not true. I’m not living off you. I give you everything I earn from waitressing—’
Odette lifted a scornful brow. ‘Which amounts to peanuts!’ she exclaimed. ‘If I rented out that room, I could be making three times as much for it. Instead I decided to be generous and help you out with your career. Is this all the thanks I get for it?’
Emmie hovered uncomfortably. ‘You know I’m grateful, but I still want that photo taken down from the site. I’m not an escort and I don’t want people thinking that I am—’
Odette settled resentful blue eyes on her. ‘My girls aren’t prostitutes. I’ve told you that before. They are companions, professional companions, guaranteed to be presentable and pleasant. Sex isn’t included in the package.’
‘As far as you know,’ Emmie added jerkily. ‘You don’t know how your escorts behave if a man asks for something more and is willing to pay for it—’
Odette rose gracefully upright. ‘No, I don’t,’ she conceded. ‘I’m not their keeper or their mother,’ she said. ‘I’m only the manager who takes the bookings and runs credit and character checks on the clients. Why are you so prudish and suspicious of my business, Emmie? The girls on my books are educated middle-class young women, who want to make a decent income. Some of them are paying their way through college…’
‘I’m not condemning their choices, I’m only saying that it’s not a choice I would make,’ Emmie declared, lifting her head high and wondering why she was feeling so guilty and ungrateful. ‘Will you take down that photo right now, please?’
‘You’re making such a fuss about nothing,’ Odette complained. ‘You wouldn’t think twice about posting that photo on one of those social networking sites you use—’
‘That’s different. You must take that photo down and remove any mention of me from the site,’ Emmie reiterated. ‘Whether you accept it or not, being associated with an escort site is damaging to my reputation, and have you even thought about what it could do to Saffy’s reputation? The embarrassment this could cause her?’
‘What the heck has Saffy got to do with this?’ her mother demanded tartly.
‘My face is her face, or have you forgotten that we’re identical twins?’ Emmie retorted impatiently, wishing the older woman would stop trying to play dumb when she was as wily as a box of ferrets. ‘Saffy would go spare about this if she found out—’
Odette was unmoved. ‘And why should that bother you? She’s already made a fortune out of her face and body. She’s got a lot more wit than you have but, let’s face it, according to what Topsy has told me, you and your twin are not exactly close.’
Emmie stiffened at that reference to her youngest sister, who had taken to occasionally visiting their mother and had no doubt innocently let slip personal details that Odette would happily use against her daughters if it suited her to do so. ‘Saffy and I may not be close but I wouldn’t do anything to harm her or her career,’ she proffered tautly. ‘And I certainly wouldn’t want to embarrass her the way I was embarrassed when someone showed me my photo on your website today. I’m really upset about this—please tell me you’ll take the photo down now…’
Odette expelled her breath on an irritable hiss, her annoyance palpable. ‘I will—if it really means that much to you—’
‘It does. Thank you,’ Emmie pronounced stiltedly, realising in frustration that she had said nothing that she intended to say and that once again Odette had contrived to talk her down and act as the victim rather than the perpetrator. Her mother had not even apologised for stealing that photo and using it on her website, she reflected in frustration as she walked towards her bedroom to get changed for her shift at the café where she worked weeknights. But then, another voice reminded her grimly, she could not really afford to have a no-holds-barred row with her mother while Odette was allowing her to occupy her spare room. Accepting favours always came with a price.
‘Unfortunately, it’s no longer quite as simple as that,’ Odette remarked softly.
Emmie spun round in confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’ve already taken a booking for you—’
Emmie was stunned into momentary silence. ‘How can you have taken a booking for me when I don’t work as an escort for you?’ she asked drily.
‘The client offered me so much money, I agreed,’ her mother admitted without shame or embarrassment. ‘I need the money and, let’s be frank, so do you.’
‘Well, you’re just going to have to give the money right back again!’ Emmie shot back at her mother in angry disbelief. ‘I’m not for hire!’
‘He’s a businessman. He sent a contract over by courier and I signed it on your behalf—’
‘But that can’t be legally binding when I don’t work for you!’ Emmie protested.
‘How are you going to prove that you don’t work for me when your profile is on the website?’ Odette enquired dulcetly.
At that suggestion of outright blackmail, Emmie went rigid. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. Return his money—’
Odette pushed her laptop aside and stood up. ‘It’s not that simple. I had outstanding bills and I’ve paid them. There’s still a healthy cut of that money set aside for you—’
‘I don’t want it!’ Emmie flung back at her furiously. ‘I’m not going to be forced into acting as an escort so that you can make money out of me…It’s not going to happen!’
‘But I have no way of paying the money back,’ her mother declared.
‘That’s not my problem,’ Emmie stated curtly. ‘Although I had no idea you had financial problems—’
‘It’s a tough world out there and an escort is a luxury. This guy’s young, rich and handsome, so you can’t complain on that score,’ Odette told her with derision.
‘I don’t care…I’m not doing it, not for you, not for anyone!’
‘Let me tell you just how much he was willing to pay to take you abroad for a weekend,’ Odette urged thinly and she mentioned a figure of thousands of pounds that shocked Emmie rigid, for there was a much greater sum of money involved than she could ever have imagined.
‘Odette…’ Emmie said shakily. ‘It doesn’t matter what he paid you or what you signed. You can’t sell me or my time like a product. I’m not for sale, and after the number of arguments we’ve had on this subject, I can’t believe that you went ahead and accepted a booking for me knowing how I felt about the idea.’
The older woman settled icy blue eyes on her defiant daughter. ‘You owe me, Emmie, and I intend to collect.’
‘How do I owe you?’ Emmie prompted painfully. ‘You never bothered with me from the age of twelve. You never visited or wrote or phoned or even paid towards my upkeep—’
‘I had a hard time surviving. And you were all quite happy living with your sister, Kat,’ Odette argued tautly. ‘But when it really mattered, I was still there for you—’
Emmie’s facial muscles were locked tight with self-discipline. ‘And when was that?’
‘When you needed surgery for your damaged leg. When you were desperate to walk again, I came through for you,’ her mother declared impressively.
Emmie was knocked sideways by that announcement. ‘You’re saying that you paid for the surgery I had on my leg?’ She gasped in shock.
‘Where did you think Kat got the money from?’ her mother enquired drily.
Emmie was too distraught at what she had been told to continue reasoning with her unrepentant parent. She changed for her shift at the café and went to work in a daze. Was it true that Odette had paid for her surgery? It was a supreme irony that as a teenager it had not even occurred to Emmie to wonder where her oldest sister, Kat, had got the cash to pay for Emmie’s private surgery abroad. Even though Emmie was now in her twenties it had never occurred to her to ask, an oversight that now struck her as unforgivably obtuse and selfish. Emmie knew how much that surgery had meant to her at the time, how desperately she had craved the normality and the independence of no longer needing assistance in almost everything she did. She was dumbfounded by the assurance that her mother had paid to make her deepest wish come true.
While she served meals and drinks that evening, her mind was lost on another plane. Her sister, Saffy, had never overcome her guilt that she had not been injured in that same crash and she had been fiercely protective of her injured twin in the aftermath. Saffy had never understood that the continual presence of her physical perfection and glowing health had only made Emmie all the more aware of what she had lost. Emmie’s teenaged experience of infirmity had been wretched and she had often been depressed. People had continually looked away from the awkward gait caused by her disability, embarrassed by her, embarrassed for her, pitying, avoiding her as if her brain might be as damaged as her body. At the same time Saffy, blonde, beautiful, sporty and gregarious, had been the most popular girl in school. Emmie hadn’t resented her twin and she hadn’t been jealous either, but that was when she had learned to hate the wounding comparisons that people made between the two girls, one so perfect, the other so physically flawed. Those feelings had been compounded from early childhood by Odette’s resentful attitude to having had twins when she had only wanted one child. Even worse, Emmie had proved to be a heavy responsibility, underweight when born and often ill afterwards, a sickly child continually requiring extra care and attention. Emmie was always painfully aware that in those days Odette had found caring for her too heavy a responsibility.
Her mother was in bed when Emmie got home and although it was a relief not to have to face the older woman again Emmie was still in turmoil. Odette might once have been a neglectful parent but that costly surgery had transformed Emmie’s life, not least giving her her freedom and independence back. If her mother had paid for that operation, Emmie did owe her a debt. But surely that didn’t mean she was honour bound to perform escort duties for some stranger? Hadn’t Odette said ‘a weekend abroad’? My goodness, could such an arrangement be any more bizarre or dangerous? A whole weekend out of the country? He could be a white slaver and she might never be heard of again.
‘I’d like to see that contract,’ Emmie told her mother staunchly over breakfast, determined not to let her emotions take control of her again. She needed a solution and another argument would be counter-productive.
A couple of minutes later, Odette passed her a slim document. Emmie glanced down it and leafed to the last page to see the signature and what she saw there astonished her. Sebastiano Christou! How was that possible? How could Emmie’s boss be the man who had booked her as an escort? The same boss who had informed her that her supposed second career as an escort ran contrary to company policy? Emmie was so enraged by the sight of that particular name that she was vaguely surprised steam didn’t pump from her ears. She stuffed the contract into her bag. ‘I’ll handle this,’ she told the older woman tautly.
Evidently having expected more of a reaction from her, her mother said, ‘Aren’t you surprised by the identity of the client?’
‘Should I be?’
‘You do work for the guy—’
‘Oh, so you’re aware of that?’ Emmie fielded thinly.
‘Of course I am. It puts a whole new spin on office romance,’ Odette remarked mockingly.
‘Believe me,’ Emmie declared as she stood up, ‘there’s nothing romantic about this situation.’
Rage was powering Emmie like adrenalin by the time she reached the office. Bastian Christou was a complete hypocrite. Unbelievably, the same guy who had paid a ridiculous sum for her services as an escort had dared to warn her that her working in such a role threatened to bring his company into disrepute. But at least now she knew why he had been looking at her so oddly, doubtless imagining that if she worked as an escort she was a much more sexually exciting and adventurous personality than she appeared on the surface. Well, we’ll just see about that, Emmie reflected, furiously gritting her teeth together.
‘Mr Christou and I discussed a private matter yesterday and I need to see him as soon as possible to update him on…er, a recent development,’ Emmie informed Marie.
Her eyes carefully veiled, Bastian’s PA passed no comment and swept up her phone.
‘Go on ahead,’ she urged then, before adding, ‘Be careful, Emmie—’
‘Careful?’ Emmie queried, glancing back over her shoulder.
‘Before Lilah, Bastian had a bad track record with women,’ his PA murmured warningly.
Her face flaming at the type of development that the other woman so obviously suspected, Emmie knocked on the office door and entered. Bastian surveyed her from his stance by the window, his arrogant dark head set at a questioning angle, his brilliant eyes narrowed. Emmie dug the contract from her bag and slapped it down on the desk top in explanation.
‘So, you know,’ Bastian remarked evenly, not one whit perturbed by her aggressive body language.
‘And now it’s time for you to know that it’s not on, not happening in this lifetime!’ Emmie specified with emphatic bite. ‘But what I really can’t believe is that you talked of how my photo on that website could bring your company into disrepute and then you went ahead and booked me!’
‘I realised that you were the perfect match for my requirements,’ Bastian fielded with characteristic cool, noting that with that pink warming her cheeks and her animated expression she was glowingly alive, like a candle that had suddenly been lit for the first time. ‘However, if you don’t want to do it, return the fee and we’ll say no more about it.’
Return the fee? Consternation at that practical suggestion filtered through Emmie’s anger because she didn’t have a penny in the world, indeed still had an overdraft on her bank account from her student days. Odette had admitted to having already spent some of the money and Emmie had no way of replacing it, nor was she naïve enough to believe that she had a prayer of persuading her materialistic mother to hand over what remained of that cash. ‘I can’t believe that you can still look me in the eye…’ she said with scorn, side-stepping the money issue.
Bastian strolled forward, lean, darkly handsome features infuriatingly calm and assured. He was disturbingly graceful in motion, not a visible ounce of tension in his big powerful frame as he stepped unexpectedly into her space and without warning whisked the spectacles off her nose to examine them. ‘These are clear glass…what do you wear them for?’
‘Give me those back!’ Emmie snapped, fit to be tied at his cheek.
With a sardonic laugh, Bastian tossed them aside and reached instead for the clip pinning her thick hair to the back of her head.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ Emmie gasped, overpowered by his proximity and totally disconcerted by his bold approach.
The clip went the same way as the spectacles and released the heavy golden fall of her hair round her taut shoulders. ‘Maybe I wanted to see what I was paying for,’ Bastian said succinctly, indifferent to whether or not he caused offence. After all, wasn’t he hiring her to do a job? Why should he pussyfoot around her sensibilities?
Rampant disbelief gripped Emmie as she focused on his devastating face, struggling to block out the hard male beauty of his bronzed features, refusing to acknowledge it when he was being so objectionable. ‘How dare you?’ she snapped furiously.
‘It’s the truth even if you don’t like it,’ Bastian countered drily, watching her dark pupils dilate in a betraying sign of sexual awareness, emphasising the incredible blue of her eyes all the more. Even up close, she was dazzling, skin luminous, eyes bright, mouth sugar-pink and luscious. Raw hunger pulsed at his groin, the kick of instant and intense arousal taking him by surprise. Yes, she was very beautiful but he was accustomed to beautiful women and repulsed by those who sought payment for their attention. Unfortunately the natural repugnance he had expected to feel around her wasn’t working as the barrier he had hoped it would.
‘You haven’t bought me…you can’t buy what isn’t for sale!’ Emmie flung back at him in fierce rejection, reacting to the maddening buzz in the atmosphere that was firing a sensation of uneasy warmth between her thighs and unnerving her.
‘Yet I’ve still managed to buy your time for the whole of one weekend.’ Bastian savoured the fact, dark eyes glittering golden as hot sunlight below level black brows.
‘No…no way!’
‘Then return the fee and we’ll forget about the arrangement,’ Bastian responded lazily again. ‘I’m not in the market for an unwilling escort. In the wrong frame of mind you would be useless to me.’
Emmie backed away from him, pausing to scoop up the clip and the spectacles he had carelessly abandoned on his desk. He was forcing her to accept unwelcome facts. Of course he wanted the money back if she wasn’t prepared to deliver the service he had booked and she wasn’t able to return his wretched money to him! It put her between a rock and a hard place and frustration roared through her. Had Odette won their battle so easily? She could deny all connection to her mother’s escort agency and leave Bastian Christou to pursue the return of the money he had paid, but that would undoubtedly plunge Odette into serious legal and financial trouble. And the woman who had financed the surgery that had given Emmie the opportunity to live a normal able-bodied life again deserved better than that from her, Emmie conceded reluctantly. the gift of that life-enhancing surgery truly was a debt that could never be repaid.
‘Why the disguise?’ Bastian enquired indolently. ‘Are you afraid of being recognised in the day job?’
Emmie went pink again. ‘Something like that.’
She couldn’t tell him the truth, had never told anyone the truth. When Saffy’s face had gone global and her twin was constantly pictured in the media, Emmie had no longer felt that her face was her own. Even more awkwardly, people had started mistaking her for Saffy in the street and it had got embarrassing: strangers approaching her asking for autographs and photos, men coming on to her, people getting angry and abusive when she insisted that she wasn’t the famous Sapphire because they didn’t believe her. The attention had mortified and intimidated her, making her feel like a fake copy of her famous sister, incapable of satisfying people’s expectations. She had always been a very private person and could never have put herself on show as her sibling had done to make a living in front of the cameras. She had never had that kind of confidence in her face and body.
Bastian relaxed back against the side of his desk. ‘If you make a good job of the role I have for you I’ll pay you a bonus,’ he told her smoothly. ‘This is very much a business arrangement, not a pleasure trip.’
Emmie wondered if this was what he always did when a woman became difficult: offer her more money, clothes, jewellery, whatever? Did he often use his wealth as a bribe?
‘Are you in the habit of using an escort service?’ Emmie enquired flatly.
‘You will be the first…and the last,’ he informed her grimly.
‘And why didn’t you tell me what you’d done when you spoke to me yesterday about the photo on the website? Wasn’t that complete hypocrisy?’ she asked him drily again.
‘Common sense. If I take you to my sister’s wedding, I naturally don’t want your escort identity to still be visible online,’ he pointed out coolly. ‘And I’m not a hypocrite. What You see is what you get. I’m a very forthright guy.’
‘Your sister’s wedding? You want me to accompany you to a family occasion?’ Emmie prompted in surprise.
‘I don’t want anything to take the gloss off my sister, Nessa’s big day,’ Bastian admitted. ‘Seeing me with you will persuade her that I have moved on from my broken engagement and that will make Nessa happy. She’s a very soft-hearted soul. And as my ex is one of her bridesmaids, it will be more comfortable for everyone present if I have a partner of my own.’
‘One of her bridesmaids?’ Emmie grimaced at the concept. ‘Sticky—’
‘But less so with you on my arm,’ he confirmed. ‘May I assume that you will be accompanying me to my home in Greece?’
Emmie gulped at the prospect, thinking frantically about how she could possibly repay the fee he had paid, knowing that, short of a lottery win, she could not. There was no way out, no convenient escape route. What was one weekend to be spent in the company of family and wedding guests? It sounded innocent, safe. She swallowed hard and then nodded in surrender, curling lashes lowering over her angry gaze.
‘All that remains is the provision of suitable clothing for you to wear over the weekend,’ Bastian remarked.
‘That won’t be necessary—’
‘It will be,’ Bastian contradicted, derisive eyes dropping to scan her loose shirt and ill-fitting skirt. ‘I’ll organise a stylist and personal shopper to furnish you with what you will require. Naturally I’ll cover the bills. I have your phone number. I’ll text you with the details.’
Emmie swallowed hard, dislike and resentment combining in a tangled knot of defiance inside her. He was treating her like an inanimate object to be correctly packaged for public show. He saw her as an escort, a woman for hire and, even though she told herself that she was doing this for her mother’s benefit and to repay a debt, it was an utterly humiliating process and not an experience that she would forget in a hurry.
CHAPTER THREE
OUT OF THE corner of her eye, Emmie saw heads turning as she walked through the airport. She was mentally offering up a prayer that that would be all the attention she attracted when a man with a camera stepped right into her path. ‘Stop right there, Sapphire!’
Head high, face expressionless, Emmie sidestepped him, not even bothering to pause and contradict his assumption that she was her sister because she had learned that people and the paparazzi in particular refused to credit that she was not who they thought she was. After all, a photo of Sapphire was worth a lot of money and no pap ever wanted to admit that he had made a mistake. Dressed as she was in designer gear, Emmie knew there was even less chance than usual of anyone believing that she was not her twin. The mini wardrobe of new garments packed into the sleek case she was wheeling was not bargain-basement fare by anyone’s standards. Indeed Emmie had never in her life worn such expensive clothing and, ironically, knowing that she looked her best had lifted her confidence. That acknowledged, however, the prospect of a weekend at the Christou family home still had her nerves leaping about like jumping beans. There was a tight hard knot of anxiety in her abdomen as well, for nothing she had since learned about the Greek billionaire had eased her misgivings in the slightest.
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Линн Грэхем
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: On his arm… What is his intern’s photo doing on an escort website?Bastian Christou doesn’t know if he’s more surprised by her double life or her stunning photo – she’s kept those curves well hidden! He has an ex-fiancée to keep at bay, and Emmie Marshall might just be the best armour money can buy. And in his bed?Emmie is outraged when Bastian, her uncompromising boss, confronts her. She had no idea her photo was online.But his cheque’s been cashed and he’s come to collect his prize… A weekend in Greece. With her. Alone.Their relationship might be fake, but Emmie’s trepidation is all too real!‘Fast-paced and always dramatic, another 5* for Lynne!’ – Alex, 37, Shropshire www.lynnegraham.com