Page 12 of Greek's Temporary Cinderella

‘I’m tired,’ she announced. ‘I don’t want to walk any further.’

She hadn’t wanted to walk at all, but she’d been too dazed, too passive, to do anything else.

‘All right. I’ll see you back to your apartment.’

He summoned a taxi and she sank into it, closing her eyes. She could not bear to see Leandros. Yet his presence dominated her. She knew he was only a few centimetres away from her...that she would only have to reach out her hand to take his...to feel his fingers mesh with hers as they once had.

Anguish filled her suddenly, flooding her with the sheer misery of it all.

I loved him, and I left him.

And what they’d had so briefly in their lives—what she’d willingly, wantonly destroyed—could never, never come back...

He didn’t speak to her again, and she was glad, keeping her eyes shut, terrified that tears might come. Tears he would think deliberate, artificial...manipulative.

At the shabby apartment block the taxi drew up at the kerb, and she stumbled out.

‘Eliana—’

Now he spoke. Demanding she halt. She did, unwillingly turning back as he leant towards her from his seat.

‘You haven’t given me your mobile number.’

She stared at him blankly. Of course she hadn’t. A look of irritation flashed across his strong features, and then he was reaching inside his jacket pocket, taking out a card case, removing a card and holding it purposefully out to her.

‘Take it,’ he said. ‘And text me your number. Then I’ll give you the flight details.’

He was still holding the business card out to her.

Nervelessly, knowing she shouldn’t, but doing it all the same, she took it. Then she turned silently away.

She could barely stay upright. The shock of the whole evening was catching up with her, and she had to get inside—get away, get out of his presence.

She heard him pull the car door closed, speak to the driver, give the name of the city’s best hotel. Heard the taxi move off. Then numbly, dumbly, his card burning her fingers as if it were a hot coal, she went inside the apartment block, trudged up the stairs as if a weight were on her back. She was barely able to function.

She got herself inside her studio, collapsed down on the bed.

And just lay there. For a long, long while.

Anguish consuming her.

CHAPTER FOUR

LEANDROS LAY SLEEPLESS on his bed at the hotel. On the other side of the city was Eliana...

He was still shocked by the brutal reality of just how low she had sunk. The cramped, run-down studio flat, the whole shabby apartment block in the back end of town—was that really what she had come down to?

Well, he could get her out of there. Lift her back up to something more like the life she had once lived.

He frowned. Why had she not bitten his hand off when he’d made her his offer? Did she have anything better in mind? His expression hardened. Well, if she did, she wouldn’t be getting it from him. He’d been totally upfront with her—she wasn’t going to get the chance to have any illusions about what he was offering.

And there was nothing sordid about what he was offering. He wanted an affair with her, a temporary liaison that would give them something each of them wanted. She got a ticket out of that dump of an apartment, and he—well, he got what had been getting under his skin ever since that damn night in Athens all those weeks ago.

He stared, hands behind his head, up at the ceiling of his hotel room, but what he was seeing was not that. It was the image of Eliana, sitting opposite him at the taverna, without a scrap of make-up, in those chain store clothes, her hair pulled starkly off her face—and yet with the same unforgettable beauty that she had always possessed.

His mind slipped further back...back to that holiday he’d reminded her of, their week in Crete. Happiness had consumed him. He’d stepped into another world, with Eliana at his side. The week had been magical—and intensely frustrating too. For her kisses had been an incitement for so much more—and yet she had always drawn back. His only consolation—and it brought a twist to his mouth even now—was the fact that she had found it as hard to draw back from him as he had from her. She’d wanted him—and he’d done his damnedest to show her just how much he wanted her! Done his damnedest to show her just how much she wanted him in return even as, breathless and bemused, she’d pulled away from his embrace in the shadows of that quiet cobbled street in the old part of Chania, where their hotel—a converted merchant’s mansion—had lain a few metres beyond.

‘Let me come to your room tonight...’ His voice had been husky as he’d moved to reach for her again.

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