Page 21 of Greek's Temporary Cinderella

But as she sat up in bed, wearing the Victorian-style nightdress that she had worn long ago as a teenager, the soft mattress a world away from the lumpy bed in her studio apartment, propped up on luxuriant pillows, she thought maybe Persuasion had not been a good choice. Jane Austen’s heroine had ruined her own life over the lack of money. Turning down the man who’d loved her.

She got a second chance, though.

Bleakness sat in her eyes. Second chances did not always come.

They can’t for me. Leandros only wants closure—nothing else.

And so did she. Surely that was all she wanted? All that it was sane for her to want?

Wearily, she dropped the book, shut her eyes. She had committed herself to this—to being here in Paris with Leandros—but the more she faced the actual implications of what was going to happen now that she was here, the more tangled she became, emotions meshing and twisting, troubling and tormenting.

She gave a start—that was the door of the Résidence opening. She heard Leandros moving around...heard, she thought, the clink of a glass, then the sound of his bedroom door opening. Then silence.

For a long, endless moment she just went on lying there. Her heart was beating fast in her chest, she could feel it. Emotions, tangled and tormenting, twisted inside her. Wanting and not wanting. Not wanting and wanting...

Wanting...

Leandros was here—so close, a mere room away. Leandros who, for six long years, had been impossibly out of reach, impossibly distant. Leandros from whom, six years ago, she had walked away. And now... Oh, now he was back in her life—for whatever dark reason, whatever bitter purpose... He was here now, and so was she...

So close—so very, very close...

Leandros.

His name cried out in her head.

Without any consciousness of what she was doing, letting some impulse direct her—some impulse she could not repress, could not deny—and with her heart still beating audibly within her, the breath stopping in her throat, she felt herself slide out of bed. Set her feet on the floor. Cross the room. Open the door...step through it.

On leaden feet, impelled by the guilt that had consumed her for six bitter years, and impelled by so much more...by those tangled, twisting, tormented emotions...she headed towards the door of Leandros’s own bedroom.

It opened with a click, and she stepped inside.

Leandros was reading. The bedside lamp was sufficient to illuminate the text of the international business journal he was attempting to look at. Attempting was the only word that was appropriate. He couldn’t focus on the contents. His thoughts were all over the place.

Correction—they are in one place only...

The bedroom next to his.

She was there. Eliana. Real, live and no fantasy. No dream. No long-lost yearning.

So go to her.

The words were in his head, in his will—but he was resisting them. Yes, he’d brought her here to Paris for precisely the purpose that was now urging him on, but with his head—if not, alas, his body—he knew that now was not the right time. Tonight it had been a formal dinner, tomorrow he had his client appointment—he wanted all business affairs out of the way before he turned his focus on Eliana.

And there was another reason too. He wanted to give her time. Oh, she deserved no consideration, but he would allow it her all the same. He would treat her well—whether she deserved it or not.

He forced his gaze back on to the article he was attempting to read. He wished he felt sleepy, at least, not as if this edgy restlessness was possessing him.

And then, as his eyes glazed over yet again, not seeing the text, he heard his bedroom door open.

Immediately, his gaze flashed upwards, pulse leaping.

It was Eliana. Standing in the doorway.

And Leandros’s blood leapt again.

Eliana forced herself forward. Her feet felt like blocks of lead, and her heart was thudding in her chest at the thought of what she was doing. But she made herself pad forward.

Leandros’s gaze had lifted from his magazine and gone straight to her—eyes fixed on her like lasers. She felt her cheeks flush, then whiten, as her own gaze took in, instantly, the fact that he was sitting in bed, bedclothes casually drawn over his lower half, his torso bare. Smooth, muscled, lightly tanned, lithe and powerful...

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