His Mistress for a Million

‘That’s one thing I always liked about you, Darius. You never did waste your time on small talk. No “how are you?” No “have a nice day”.’

‘I get the impression you didn’t come here for small talk.’

‘Touché,’ Andreas conceded as he circled the room, absently taking inventory, enjoying the exchange much more than he’d expected. ‘I have to admit, you weren’t easy to find. You were good at covering your tracks in South America. Very good. The last we heard of you was in Mexico before the trail went cold.’ Andreas looked up at the high basement window where the sleet was leaving trails of slush down the grimy glass before he turned back. ‘And to think you could still be back there enjoying the sunshine. Nobody expected you’d be fool enough to show your face in Europe again.’

A glimmer of resentment flared in Darius’ eyes, and his lip curled into a snarl. The hungry dog was out of its kennel. ‘Maybe I got sick of beans.’

‘The way I hear it, you ran out of money. Lost most of it on bad business deals and flashy women.’ Andreas leaned over and picked up the form guide sitting on the desk. ‘Gambled away the rest. All that money, Darius. All those millions. And this—’ he waved his hand around him ‘—is what you’re reduced to.’

Darius glowered, his eyes making no apology in their assessment of his visitor’s cashmere coat and hand stitched shoes, a tinge of green now colouring his features. ‘Looks like you’ve done all right for yourself though.’

No thanks to you!

Andreas’ hands clenched and unclenched at his sides while he tried to remember his commitment not to tear the man apart. A deep breath later and he could once again manage a civil tone. ‘You’ve got a problem with that?’

‘Is that why you came here, then? To gloat?’ He sneered, swinging a hand around the shabby office. ‘To see me reduced to this? Okay, you’ve seen me. Happy now? Isn’t that what they say—success is the best revenge?’

‘Ah, now that’s where they’re wrong.’ This time Andreas didn’t restrain himself, but allowed the smile he’d been headed for ever since he’d set foot in this rat trap. ‘Success is nowhere near the best revenge.’

The old man’s eyes narrowed warily as he leaned forward in his chair, the fear back once more. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Andreas pulled the folded sheaf of papers from inside his coat pocket. ‘This,’ he said, unfolding them so that the other man could see what he was holding. ‘This is the best revenge.’

And Andreas watched the blood drain from the other man’s face as he recognised the finance papers he’d signed barely a week ago.

‘Did you even read the small print, Darius? Didn’t you wonder why someone would offer you money on this dump you call a hotel on such easy terms?’

The older man swallowed, his eyes once more afraid.

‘Did you not suspect there would be a catch?’

Darius looked sick, his skin grey.

Andreas smiled again. ‘I’m the catch. That finance company is one of mine. I lent you that money, Darius, and I’m calling in the debt. Now.’

‘You can’t…You can’t do that. I don’t have that kind of money lying around.’

He flung the pages in Darius’ direction. ‘I can do it, all right. See for yourself. But if you can’t pay me back today, you’re in default on the loan. And you know what that means.’

‘No! You know there’s no way…’ But still Darius scrabbled through the pages, his eyes scanning the document for an out, squinting hard when they came across the clause that proved Andreas right, widening as he looked up with the knowledge that he’d been beaten. ‘You can’t do this to me. It’s no better than theft.’

‘You’d know all about theft, Darius, but whatever you call it this hotel is now mine. And it’s closing. Today.’

The shocked look on Darius’ face was his reward. The man looked as if he’d been sucker punched.

Oh, yes, Andreas thought, revenge was sweet, especially when it had been such a long time coming.

Chapter Two

ROCK bottom.

Cleo Taylor was so there.

Her head ached, her bruised shin stung where the vacuum cleaner had banged into it, and three weeks into this job she was exhausted, both mentally and physically. And at barely five o’clock in the afternoon, all she wanted to do was sleep.

She dropped the machine at the foot of her bed and sank down onto the narrow stretcher, the springs that woke her every time she rolled over at night noisily protesting her presence.

Karma. It had to be karma.

How many people had tried to warn her? How many had urged her to be careful and not to rush in? And how many of those people had she suspected of being jealous of her because she’d found love in the unlikeliest of places, in an Internet chat room with a man halfway around the world?

Too many.

Oh, yes, if there was a price to pay for naivety, for blindly charging headlong for a fall, she was well and truly paying it.

And no one would say she didn’t deserve everything that was happening to her. She’d been so stupid believing Kurt, stupid to believe the stories he’d spun, stupid to believe that he loved her.

So pathetically naïve to trust him with both her heart and with her nanna’s money.

And all she’d achieved was to spectacularly prove the award she’d been given in high school from the girls whose company she’d craved, but who never were and who would never be her friends.

Cleo Taylor, girl most likely to fail.

Wouldn’t they just love to see her now?

A barrage of sleet splattered against the tiny louvred window high above the bed and she shivered. So much for spring.

Reluctantly she thought about dragging herself from the rudimentary bed but there was no way she wanted to meet that man in the hallway again. She shuddered, remembering the ice-cold way his eyes—dark pits of eyes set in a slate-hard face—had raked over her and then disregarded her in the same instant without even an acknowledgment, as if she was some kind of low-life, before imperiously passing by. She’d shrunk back in-stinctively, her own greeting dying on her lips.

It wasn’t just that he looked so out of place, so wrong for the surroundings, but the look of such a tall, powerful man sweeping through the low-ceilinged space seemed wrong, as if there wasn’t enough space and he needed more. He hadn’t just occupied the space, he’d consumed it.

And then he’d swept past, all cashmere coat, the smell of rain and the hint of cologne the likes of which she’d never smelt in this place, and she’d never felt more like the low-life he’d taken her to be.

But she had to get up. She couldn’t afford to fall asleep yet, even though she’d been up since five to do the breakfasts and it had taken until four to clean the last room. She reeked of stale beer and her uniform was filthy, courtesy of the group of partying students who’d been in residence in the room next door for the last three nights.

She hated cleaning that room! It was damp and dark, the tiny en suite prone to mould and the drains smelling like a swamp, and if she hadn’t already known how low she’d sunk that room announced it in spades. The students had left it filthy, with beds looking as if they’d been torn apart, rubbish spilling from bins over the floor, and an entire stack of empty takeaway boxes and beer bottles artfully arranged in one corner all the way from the floor to the low ceiling. ‘Leaning Tower of Pizza,’ someone had scrawled on the side of one the boxes, and it had leant, so much so that it was a wonder it hadn’t already collapsed with the vibrations from the nearby tube.

It had been waiting for her to do that. Bottles and pizza boxes raining down on her, showering her with their dregs.

No wonder he’d looked at her as if she were some kind of scum. After the day she’d had, she felt like it.

She dragged herself from the bed and plucked her towel off a hook and her bag of toiletries, ready to head to the first-floor bathroom. What did she care what some stranger she’d never see again thought? In ten minutes she’d be showered, tucked up in bed and fast asleep. That was all she cared about at the moment.

The bright side, she told herself, giving thanks to her nanna as she ascended the stairs and saw rain lashing against the glazing of the ground-floor door, was that she had a roof over her head and she didn’t have to go out in today’s weather.

“There’s always a silver lining”, her nanna used to tell her, rocking her on her lap when she was just a tiny child and had skinned her knees, or when she’d started school and the other girls had picked on her because her mother had made her school uniform by hand and it had shown. Even though her family was dirt poor and sometimes it had been hard to find, there’d always been something she’d been able to cling to, a bright side somewhere, something she’d been able to give thanks for.

Almost always.