From Dirt to Diamonds

No other reason. Absolutely no other reason.

As she walked after him into the suite she stopped dead, gazing round, mouth dropping open. So this was how the rich lived! The place was like some kind of apartment, with rooms opening off a lounge that had a balcony on one side and a dining table in a huge alcove. Two huge sofas faced each other across an acre of coffee table.

‘Sit down and wait.’

The voice was indifferent, assuming obedience. She did as she was told, still looking around her, and then her eyes went to him without her volition, watching as he extracted some papers from a briefcase, setting them down upon the dining table and standing to look through them. He started to make phone calls in a foreign language. It didn’t sound like anything she’d heard before, so maybe it was Greek—the guy was Greek, the model who’d told her about him downstairs had said. Greek—and loaded.

And not just with money.

Kat found herself looking at him. Staring at him.

He might be an arrogant s.o.b, but she knew exactly how he was getting away with it. With looks like his—all that height and toughness and hard, planed features and dark, measuring eyes, plus that magnetic Mediterranean appeal with his olive skin tone and sable hair and that indefinable aura of being ‘foreign’—he must have women slavering for him!

Oh, not her. No chance. Because she didn’t slaver over any man, and never would. But she could still feel her nerves jangling, and she didn’t like it. Didn’t like it one bit. Every impulse told her to jump to her feet and run, but she had to sit there, like a good little girl, because this man—however much her made her hackles rise—could give her the job she craved.

Her eyes flashed momentarily. But I’m still not kow-towing to him! He can take the job and stuff it before I do that!

She set her jaw, forcing her eyes away from where he stood, looking as if he owned the place. Which he might very well do, she realized. He was stuck giving orders in Greek, or whatever it was, down the phone. Her eyes went back to looking over this room where the rich folk hung out, taking it all in—the décor, the furniture, the deep carpets, the vast bouquet of flowers on the sideboard. All the trappings of luxury that a man as rich as Mr Big took for granted every moment of his gilded life.

A world away from her own life.

Well, she would never get to this level—she knew that—but then she didn’t want to. Didn’t need to. All she needed was something a lot better than she had—a clean, nicely furnished flat, not the squalid, mouldering bedsit she was holed up in now, and enough money coming in for her not to be cold in winter and watching every penny every minute of the day. Something that was hers and hers alone—a decent life.

And one day she’d have it. One day—

Her focus snapped back to the present. The phone calls had stopped, and he slid the phone away in his inside jacket pocket, coming across to sit down opposite her in an armchair. He’d helped himself to a drink from somewhere, but wasn’t offering her one, she noticed. Just as well. She wouldn’t have touched it.

He hooked one leg over his knee and relaxed back into his seat, holding his glass in his hand. His eyes rested on her.

Kat made her face expressionless. She was learning how to do that.

‘So …’ said Angelos Petrakos. His voice was deep, but with hardly a trace of accent, she realised, only the clipped, curt tones of a posh Englishman—a million miles away from the London voice she spoke with. ‘Shall I hire you, or not?’

Kat’s expression didn’t change. Was she supposed to answer, or just sit there like a dummy? She chose to answer. It was probably the wrong thing to do, but sitting voiceless was more than she could make herself do.

‘No point asking me,’ said Kat. ‘I’m just the meat.’ Her voice was deadpan.

‘Meat?’ The word fell into the space, ready frozen.

She tightened her mouth. ‘Clothes horse. Dress rack. Dummy. AKA body. AKA meat.’

His eyes seemed to narrow minutely. ‘You have a problem with that?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s what modelling’s all about,’ she answered.

‘But you object?’ The voice was sardonic.

‘Not if I get paid. And if I don’t get any hassle,’ she added pointedly.

For a moment he did not answer. Then the dark eyes narrowed again. For a moment Kat felt she was skating on thin ice—very thin ice—that might suddenly crack, disastrously, and send her plunging down into dark, drowning water …

Then it was gone.

‘And if … hassle… were part of the deal?’

For answer, Kat held up a single finger, her face expressionless.

Angelos’s eyes flickered to it, then back to the girl’s face. Why was he doing this? He had no intention of sleeping with her. His assessment was purely professional. But something made him say, his tone suddenly dulcet, ‘You might find it enjoyable—’

‘And you,’ Kat retorted sweetly, ‘might find the attempt painful.’

For a second, the barest portion of one, she felt the ice give an ominous crack. As if he might actually find her answer amusing. Then the hard features hardened even more, and he simply levelled upon her a glance that crushed her like an insect.

Oh, God, thought Kat. My big mouth.

But Angelos Petrakos was reaching for his mobile phone. It was answered instantly. He didn’t look at her. ‘Add Kat Jones to the shoot,’ he said.

She stared, eyes widening. Then elation soared through her.

A moment later it dissipated. Those sharp dark eyes were back on her again.

‘Provisionally,’ said Angelos Petrakos.

She looked at him warily. ‘What’s that mean?’ she asked. She sounded blunter than she’d meant to, but her nerves were jangling for a hundred reasons which had a lot more to do with the hard-featured face of the man with the power to hire her than the job he was dangling in front of her.

‘It means,’ he answered, ‘that I want to check whether you can behave appropriately. Fit in. I don’t tolerate,’ he said cuttingly, ‘attitude.’

Kat bit her lip. She could feel herself doing it. Forcing herself to do it.

‘Exactly,’ said Angelos Petrakos, a mordant expression in his night-dark eyes. Then, abruptly, he got to his feet. ‘If you have any engagements for this evening, cancel them.’

She stared. Wariness radiated instantly from her again, like a beacon switch thrown to high. He saw it—just as he’d seen her forcing herself to bite her lip.

‘I’m taking you to dinner,’ he enunciated. ‘There will be a considerable amount of socialising in Monte Carlo. The other girls will find it easy. You need practice,’ he told her coolly. ‘If, that is, you are to go at all.’

CHAPTER THREE

KAT had got the message, loud and clear. She was on trial. And, whilst one part of her wanted to tell him what he could do with his ‘provisional’ offer, the other side of her brain managed to hold down that predictable but destructive reaction.

The trouble was, she realized, as she stiffly and selfconsciously followed Angelos Petrakos down in the lift to the hotel restaurant with determined docility, that trying to behave ‘appropriately’—she mentally gave the patronising term a vicious nip—for going to Monte Carlo was being impeded by the very man who was judging her behaviour. Because as she jerkily took her place opposite him in the ultra-swanky restaurant—all dim lights and designer seating and damask linen—the tension she felt was not just because of her surroundings—or the fact this job depended on her behaviour, but predominantly and overwhelmingly because spending any time at all in the man’s company was stringing her nerves out like wires.

She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want a bevy of waiters hovering around, flicking out napkins, proffering water, bread, menus, so that she didn’t know what to do or what to take or what to say. And she didn’t want to open a huge leatherbound menu and stare blankly at the entire thing, written in French, not understanding a word of it. It made her feel like a fool, and she resented it. And the man who was putting her through it. Above all she didn’t want to be anywhere near him.

Because—well, just because. That was good enough, wasn’t it? she told herself aggrievedly. She didn’t have to say she didn’t like the way his strong features made her want to look at them, even though they damn well shouldn’t have, or the way his dark, glinting eyes seemed to flick over her like a blade and do things to her that they shouldn’t, or the way his handmade suit eased across his broad shoulders and the silk slash of a tie accentuated his aura of Mr Big, so that everyone flunkeyed around him and he didn’t even notice it.

‘Chosen what you want yet?’ His voice was cool as he addressed her.

She pressed her lips together. ‘I don’t know. I can’t read it. It’s in French.’