One Summer Night: An Indecent Proposition / Beholden to the Throne / Hers For One Night Only?

Mid-afternoon, and not at all his usual time, her heart leapt when she saw that it was Zander. She answered with a smile, anticipating the summer of his words, except his tone was brusque, businesslike.

‘Could you pass on a message to Nico?’

‘Of course.’ She glanced at the clock and tried to work out the times. It must be four in the morning where Zander was.

‘I am going to be in Xanos next week. I fly in late Sunday and my schedule is very full, but if you can arrange a meeting with your boss, I have a small window at eight a.m. on Monday. We are moving into the next stage of the development in the coming weeks. I want to discuss with him, before the purchase goes ahead, our plans for that area. He might not be so keen and I don’t want him wasting my time later with petitions.’

‘I’ll let him know.’ She waited, waited for the conversation to change as it always did, to slip back to where they spoke about them—but it didn’t. Zander rang off and Charlotte rang Nico and relayed the message, but as she hung up, she felt like crying. Knew that once Zander met with Nico, her part in this would be over—that the brief escape his calls had bought would finally come to an end. When Nico rang a few moments later she had to force herself back into business mode.

‘How good are you with Greek planning permission laws?’

‘Are there such things?’ She smiled into the phone, but it faded as Nico spoke on.

‘Exactly. Anyway, I’ve got Paulo onto it, but I’m going to need you in Xanos next week.’

‘Me?’ Charlotte blinked and then wished she hadn’t for in that instant her mother wandered out to the hall; Charlotte walked briskly, catching Amanda as she fiddled with the catch on the front door.

‘Do you really need me there?’ It wasn’t a no, but it was as close as she dared.

‘I wouldn’t ask otherwise. I’d like you to visit a couple of homes for me, go through some records …’ Since Nico had found out he was adopted, Charlotte had been helping him to find his birth mother, but it had all been through telephone calls and online. She had chosen not to tell him about her problems with her own mother: PAs dealt with their boss’s problems, not the other way around. He’d asked her to join him in Xanos a couple of months ago, but that had just been for a day. The carer she had hired had informed her on her return that her mother required too high a level of care. For any future trips Amanda would need to be cared for in a home. ‘Is there a problem?’ She knew he was frowning. Nico was not a man used to hearing the word ‘no’, and certainly not from his PA.

‘Of course not.’ Charlotte swallowed. ‘I just need to sort out a few things at this end, but I’ll do my best to be there on Monday.’

‘Actually …’ Nico sounded distracted. ‘If you can get in earlier, perhaps the weekend, we can go over a few things. Book in at Ravels and ring me when you get here.’

‘Sure,’ Charlotte said to thin air, for Nico had already rung off. She had to speak to him when she saw him, had to somehow tell her formidable boss that travel was practically impossible. But what if he insisted? Charlotte closed her eyes at the prospect. She needed this job, needed the wage, needed the flexibility working from home provided—maybe she would have to factor in an occasional trip.

She already had a list of nursing homes drawn up. Charlotte had visited several, riddled with guilt each and every time, for her mother had, on her diagnosis, pleaded with Charlotte to never put her in a home. Now she rang them, asking if there were any respite beds available, her anxiety increasing as she worked her way through the list and each time the response was the same. Far more notice was required.

Finally she found one. A resident had died overnight, and there was a spot available. It felt wrong to be relieved, wrong to be packing up her mother’s things, wrong to be driving a distressed Amanda to the place she dreaded most in the world.

‘It’s just for a few days, Mum.’

‘Please …’ Amanda sobbed. ‘Please don’t leave me. Please.’

‘I have to go to work, Mum.’ Charlotte was crying too. ‘I promise, it’s just for a little while.’

All it felt was wrong—to sit in the chair at the beauty parlour and be waxed and manicured, to have foils put in her thick blonde hair. Wrong to think of her mother sobbing in a home as she transformed herself back into the glamorous flight attendant Nico had hired.

But there was a flutter of excitement there too as she pulled out her old wardrobe and packed in her efficient way.

And there was that pit-in-the-stomach thrill as she drove the familiar route to Heathrow airport, saw the jets coming in and heard the high-pitched roar as they took off.

And then, as she sat in her seat, as the plane lifted off the ground and up to the sky, as she looked at the flight attendant facing her and wished she could be her, there was that moment at take-off she would forever adore, the surreal moment where the plane seemed to quiet and you gathered your thoughts. And only then did it actually dawn on her.

She was going to meet Zander.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_847528b6-9bc4-507e-8971-9a1998584615)

ATHENS had been as grey as London, but flying towards Xanos it was as if the clocks had been rewound to autumn. Certainly it would not be as warm as the summer, but the sky was as blue, as was the ocean, and Xanos lay stretched out in the distance, a vivid tapestry of greens and browns. The vineyards laced the mountains and the stunning hotel development stood on the foreshore, gorgeous buildings carved into the cliff side, glittering blue infinity pools that matched the blue jewel of the ocean. She could not wait to land, to sink her feet in the golden sands and to drink in Xanos.

The seaplane came in, not beside the small jetty her boss craved to own but to the newly built, rather more sophisticated one. A ramp made disembarking far easier than it had been the last time Charlotte had visited Xanos, and because anyone who stayed at Ravels must be someone, though she would have loved to, she was not expected to make the short walk from the jetty to the hotel. Instead, she was swallowed by a huge car and driven the short distance into the development, escorted to check in and told that her bags would be taken straight to her room.

Usually she was not intimated by grand surroundings. She had worked long enough with the airline and later with Nico to sample fine hotels and luxury travel, but, though she did her best not to show it, Charlotte found this hotel somewhat overwhelming. Some of the guests who moved through the foyer she recognised from the magazines she devoured. A huge elevator was situated beside a grand staircase, separated by a fountain. There were lavish floral displays at every turn, wealth and opulence in every view; it was hard to believe the hotel had just been in operation for a few short months.

Checking in went smoothly; there was a message from Paulo, Nico’s lawyer in Greece, asking her to contact him, and Charlotte declined the receptionist’s offer of a booking in the restaurant. She would rather eat alone in her room. Swipe card in hand, she wandered through the hotel, not quite brave enough to have a drink at the bar; instead, she headed for her room, bouncing on the huge king-sized bed and revelling for a guilty moment in the feeling that tonight she would not have to sleep with one ear open in case her mother awoke, that she had a little time to herself.

Still, she was here to work, so she rang Nico and got his voicemail. She told him she had arrived and then she rang Paulo too.

‘I’m unable to get hold of Nico,’ Paulo said. ‘I want to speak with him before this meeting on Monday.’

‘I’ve just left a message.’

‘Well, if you do get hold of him, make sure he speaks with me. He says that he doesn’t want me present on Monday, but I don’t want him speaking with this developer without me—he’s bad news.’

‘Really?’ Normally she would not pursue the conversation, would simply pass the message on, but she was far too interested in the elusive Zander, too curious about the voice she had heard on the end of the phone, to let the opportunity to know more pass by. ‘Zander certainly seems inflexible, but …’

Paulo said something in Greek that Charlotte couldn’t decipher and then he translated. ‘It’s a saying here on Xanos—this man is someone who would sell their own mother to the highest bidder. Nico needs to watch out—make sure you have him ring me.’

Paulo was always cautious, Charlotte told herself as she hung up the phone. It was his job to be cautious, she consoled herself. Anyway, she was spending far too much time thinking about a man she had never even met, a man she had spoken to only on the phone, but she didn’t want him to be a man like the one Paulo was describing. She wanted him to be every bit as gorgeous as the one she had secretly imagined.

Charlotte stepped out onto the balcony; she could hear a couple from the suite beside her, though couldn’t see them because of privacy walls, but their conversation was so exotic and glamorous it was heaven to eavesdrop while she looked out to the beach, to the azure water and gorgeous sands. For a moment she almost felt back in her old life, except there were no colleagues to meet up with, no one to explore the island with, no one to lie with her by the pool, as so often she had.

An uneasy feeling seemed to pool in her throat, tasting of bitterness and martyrdom—the food she had been fed by her mother throughout her childhood. And that was the very last thing she wanted.

She needed to think, really think about her future, and even if the neighboring conversation was intriguing, the beach beckoned more and Charlotte headed inside. She pulled on a simple shift dress, light cardigan and sandals, wanting to catch the last of the evening sun.

Still, even though she was miles from home, even though it was a relief to have a night to herself and the secret pleasure of finally coming face to face with Zander on Monday, as she walked along the golden sands of Xanos, her thoughts turned to her mum. Amanda would have loved it here. Their yearly holidays through Charlotte’s childhood were perhaps her most treasured of memories, for it was the only time she had ever really seen her mother happy; the only time Amanda had seemed at peace instead of bitter about the career she had forgone and the lover who, when Amanda had found out she was pregnant, had spurned her instead of facing up to his responsibilities.

How could Charlotte do it to her—put her in a home because it made life easier? Even all these years on, Charlotte nursed guilt for her childish selfishness, for the way she had idolised her absent father, not aware of the sacrifices her mother had made. Oh, the rows and tears that had come from her brought a sting of shame today. But once a year they had cast it aside, walked along Camber Sands or Beachy Head and, without fail, her mother would buy an extra portion of fries each evening, a ten-minute indulgence where they’d feed the seagulls and laugh and whoop as the gathered birds went wild.

There was Nico.

She looked up from her dreams and saw reality: her boss skimming stones in the water. It caught her by surprise, why she could not fathom for Nico lived here now—just along from this stretch of beach was his private residence. Something about him made her start. There was purpose to him, not idle relaxation as his wrist flicked the smooth, flat stones but an anger almost. She carried on walking, though she considered turning around, pretending she hadn’t seen him, for so dark were his features, so deep his concentration, she wondered if he and his wife Constantine had just had a row. Still, it would be worse if he saw her turning and thought she was ignoring him, and she did need to pass Paulo’s message on so, pretending she had not noticed his dark mood, she walked purposefully towards him, smiling as she called his name.

‘Nico!’ she called. ‘I’ve been trying to ring you …’ And then he turned around and her breath held in her lungs as she realised that, though he looked like him, though it surely was him, somehow the man that had turned to her call was not Nico. She could not explain it; the only thing she could liken it to was, years ago, as a small child she had lost her mother in a department store and a few panicked minutes later had rushed towards the familiar beige coat and tugged on it, had looked up at her mum and recoiled as she’d realised that it was not her, that the eyes that frowned at her had not been her mother’s. The feeling was back, was there in her chest now, as her familiar greeting was met with a stranger’s stare. ‘Sorry.’ She walked backwards for a few steps. ‘My mistake …’

She wanted to turn and run, it was her first instinct, she wanted to run, for her head was a mass of jumbled thoughts, but instead she walked quickly, desperate to get back to the hotel, to think, to talk to Nico, to find out just what the hell was going on.

‘Slow down.’ His footsteps were muffled by the sand, but still she heard them, could feel him as he drew closer, jumped with the shock of contact as his hand closed around her shoulder and spun her around. ‘Why are you running?’

She turned to eyes that were black, blacker than Nico’s, to a face that appeared in every detail to come from the same canvas as Nico’s except the brush had been dipped in an ink that was darker; the hand that had created this masterpiece just a touch heavier than the one that had made the other. His hair was longer, his bone structure more severe, but it was his mouth that drew her eyes for a second, a mouth that was heavy and sensual, with beautifully white teeth that smiled a smile that contradicted the bore of his gaze.

‘I made a mistake …’ She was far too confused to think logically. ‘I thought you were someone else.’

‘You thought I was Nico?’ This was so not how he had planned it. Zander knew he had taken a risk walking on the beach, but being cooped in the hotel was driving him crazy. At the last minute he had changed his plans and flown in early, but it had been a mistake, for already there was a buzz at the hotel. He had checked in under a different name, wanting to see how the hotel ran when the staff were unaware the owner was in residence, but the curious looks told him that Nico was a regular. From the way this woman had approached, the fact she had been trying to ring Nico, Zander knew he had only moments to act to prevent his cover being blown. He wanted his moment on Monday, wanted to see Nico’s reaction at first hand, and now he had to convince this woman, this stranger, not to tell him. Somehow he had to win her trust quickly, which was no trouble at all for a man like Zander, who could have any woman eating out of his hand in a matter of moments.

He smiled but his heart was not in it, though surely not a soul on earth could tell, for he had for so long perfected his routine. He looked deep into her eyes and focused on the glittering blue and his hand that was still on her wrist held her more loosely now, but the pulse that leaped beneath his fingers told him that she was in shock and it raced again when next he spoke.