What will she look like when she’s dressed properly? Groomed properly?
He felt his masculine interest pique, a memory flickering of those hints of potential beauty behind her drab appearance, her luminous grey-green eyes. Her figure was good, even in the cheap jeans and sweatshirt...enticingly slender, yet full-breasted...
He snapped his thoughts away. They were inappropriate. He felt sorry for her—that was all. Nothing else.
He headed off for his dinner, resolutely putting her out of his mind.
* * *
Rosalie sighed luxuriously. This was bliss—bliss! And it had been ever since she’d slid the key card down the lock and stepped inside her hotel room.
What a room!
A vast bed, satin curtains, an armchair and a table, a massive wall-hung TV—and an en suite bathroom to die for! She’d tossed her bag down on the bed, kicked off her worn trainers and danced around in sheer glee. Then she’d sunk down on the huge soft bed and opened the leather brochure describing the hotel’s facilities.
Moments later she’d been lifting the house phone...making a lengthy—a very lengthy—booking in the spa, to be cleansed and pampered to within an inch of her life! Wraps, facials, manicure, pedicure, haircut, massage...the lot!
Now, hours later, with all the fatigue and the aches and pains of her overworked body vanished, her skin like satin and her hair like silk, she was propped up against the pillows on her huge bed, idly surfing her way through the vast array of channels on the TV. She was replete from the gourmet meal delivered by Room Service, picking at delicious chocolates and polishing off a half-bottle of white wine from the minibar.
Heaven—just heaven!
To think that this morning I woke and had no idea at all I’d be ending the day like this!
And she’d be flying off tomorrow to meet the father she had never known...
Wonder and joy flooded through her—and then a twist of grief.
Oh, Mum—if only you could have lived to enjoy this, too! To know that the man you fell for so many years ago finally discovered us again...
She lifted her glass, emotions full within her. As she set it back on the bedside table a rap on the door sounded. She started, then realised it must be Room Service, back to collect the dinner trolley.
Levering herself off the bed, she padded to the door in her complimentary bathrobe and slippers, opening it without thinking.
It wasn’t Room Service. It was Alexandros Lakaris.
* * *
Xandros had been in two minds as to whether to check on Stavros’s daughter on his return from his dinner or just leave her be. A reluctantly acknowledged sense of responsibility had led him to do the former. However much the girl was nothing to do with him, he’d plucked her out of her familiar surroundings and deposited her here, in what was obviously a totally alien environment for her. He’d better just make sure she was okay, and not doing anything stupid.
Like opening her hotel room door to anyone who knocked.
‘You should have checked who it was before opening the door,’ he reprimanded her.
For a second he thought he saw her eyes widen at seeing him. Then it was gone.
‘I thought you were Room Service,’ came the unconcerned answer. ‘Anyway, what do you want?’
She sounded offhand, as if she couldn’t care less.
‘I wanted to make sure you were all right,’ he replied evenly, keeping a tight rein on his annoyance at this indifference to his concern for her.
‘I’m fine,’ she answered. ‘In fact—blissful!’
Her offhand manner vanished as she said the word, her face lighting in a smile for which there was only one word.
Radiant.
Xandros’s breath caught. His eyes focussed sharply as he realised it was not just her smile that was making his breath catch. She had quite definitely undergone a whole bunch of beauty treatments...