Page 8 of Cinderella's Fling with the Off-Limits Billionaire

HIS SISTER EMME HAD always had spectacularly bad timing, and this was no exception. Another five minutes and he would have been buried inside the blonde—Skye? —making love to her until he couldn’t even think about his parents, and how they’d been lying to him.

“What the hell has gotten into you?” she demanded, storming into the room and pausing mid-step when she realized they weren’t alone. Still, they’d gotten used to having an army of servants around the house growing up. But at the sight of his bare chest, her eyes narrowed, and she glanced from Skye to him with a look of dawning comprehension.

No one can know.

He’d promised her.

She’d been so earnest about it, and he wasn’t stupid enough to ignore his relative comfort in life. Where he was beholden to nobody and nothing, the same was very likely not true for a woman working in her kind of position.

He held up a hand to forestall whatever else Emme had been about to say and reached into his pocket for his wallet. It wasn’t there. He’d left it in the kitchen earlier. He crossed to it and withdrew a one hundred dollar bill at the same time he subtly folded it around a business card.

“Don’t worry about the carpet,” he muttered, stalking to Skye, painfully conscious that his cock was at her eye height when she blinked up at him. Damn it, hardness threatened to stir and it took all of Leandro’s willpower to resist it. “Send housekeeping up in the morning,” he said.

“The stain will set.”

“Then it sets.”

Her eyes flicked to Emme. Skye frowned and then nodded.

He held out the money; she glanced at it, paling.

“A tip,” he explained.

Was he imagining the sheen in her eyes? The hurt there too? Dear God, did she think this was some kind of payment for intimacy almost rendered?

His gut twisted and he wished his sister would get the hell out of there so he could explain properly, or better yet, finish what they’d started.

“I’ll leave this here and send housekeeping up in the morning.” She placed the spray on the nearest countertop, moving towards the room service trolley with the same graceful athleticism he’d just been witnessing up close.

“Good evening, sir. Ma’am.”

Emme’s arms were crossed over her chest, and it was only the fact his younger sister was watching him like a hawk that stopped him from staring at Skye’s delectable backside the whole way to the door. She had to back out of it with the trolley, and then it was her breasts he wanted to stare at. They were absolutely beautiful, but it was more than that: he couldn’t bring himself to look at her face and see the recriminations there.

“Tell me you’re not resorting to screwing hotel staff?” Emme muttered, reaching for a chip and chewing on it. “Cristo, Leandro, what’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing,” he snapped the lie. He wasn’t going to tell Emme or Max a damned thing about this until he’d had time to get his thoughts straight. Who he was, where he belonged, whether he still wanted to have anything to do with their damned family business, what he’d do if it wasn’t this?

“I did not screw her,” he said witheringly.

“Oh, really? Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“I think you should mind your own business.”

“She works for us. Do you have any idea what kind of Me Too problem we could have on our hands if it comes out that you banged the maid?”

“She works for the hotel chain we happen to own; I am not her boss.”

“So you were banging her?”

“Don’t speak like that.”

“Don’t you go lecturing me.”

“I didn’t sleep with her.”

“And if I hadn’t turned up?”

“She was here to deliver food, and clean up my mess,” he gestured to the carpet. Emme reached for another chip.

---