Virgin's Sweet Rebellion

She was a beautiful woman, he had to acknowledge, although it was the kind of shiny, polished beauty that made him cynical. Too manufactured. Too fake. And after all the lies he’d swallowed in his past, he didn’t like fake anything.

Still, shiny, brown hair in carefully tousled locks that reached to the middle of her back. Big brown eyes. A dynamite figure, all willowy grace, encased in a jewel-green shift dress and high heels that drew Ben’s reluctant admiration to her long, trim legs, and the tempting curve of her calves.

He yanked his gaze upwards and it fell on her butt. That was nice too. Up again, and he finally made contact with her shoulder blades as she marched ahead of him. Good. He’d keep his eyes trained there.

She stabbed the button for the lift with one French manicured fingernail, her body quivering with tension as they waited for it to arrive.

‘When did you arrive in Berlin?’ he asked, deciding solicitude was his best bet. Not that anything would impress this kind of high-maintenance woman, but at least he would have tried.

She turned to give him an icy stare. ‘About an hour ago. I’ve been flying all night, Mr Chatsfield.’

And that was his problem how? Ben gave her a smile of bland equanimity. At least he hoped it was, and not the sneer he felt in his soul. ‘Please, call me Ben.’

She didn’t respond.

Thankfully the lift arrived and they stepped inside. At the last second before the doors closed a blowsy blonde woman in a bright pink designer tracksuit and sparkly high-tops squeezed in. She gave an obviously fake double take as she registered Olivia.

‘Olivia. I didn’t know you were coming to the festival.’ Insincerity dripped from the woman’s words and next to him Ben felt Olivia Harrington stiffen. After only a second she forced herself to relax, gave the woman what looked like a genuine smile but Ben knew in his gut was false.

‘Amber. So nice to see you. Yes, I’m here. I have a role in Blue Skies Forever. The indie film?’

‘Oh, right.’ The woman, this Amber wrinkled her nose. ‘A walk-on part?’

‘A supporting role,’ Olivia corrected, her smile not slipping so much as a millimetre. The lift doors pinged and she stepped past Amber her head held high. ‘See you around, I’m sure.’

So she was an actress. Ben eyed her thoughtfully as she walked down the thickly carpeted hall, her chin lifted defiantly, her shoulders thrown back. It didn’t really surprise him, he decided. She certainly had a flare for the dramatic. And actresses, he acknowledged, tended to be high maintenance, difficult and fake. Olivia had already shown she was all three. No, he wasn’t surprised at all.

She took him down another hall, this one narrower than the hotel’s main corridors, and then through a fire door that had Ben frowning. He didn’t think there were any guest bedrooms in this part of the building. It was staff accommodation and storage.

‘Here we are,’ she announced sunnily, and with a deliberate flourish she produced her old-fashioned key—not one of the hotel’s signature key cards—and unlocked the door to her room. Ben stepped inside, his shoulder brushing Olivia’s because the room was that small.

It really was a broom cupboard. Or close enough to one.

‘Would you call this appalling?’ she asked with acid sweetness. She pointed to the rumpled, stained bed. ‘I don’t think the sheets have been changed in, oh, maybe a year? Plus the minibar has been raided, and there’s no en-suite bathroom despite the fact that The Chatsfield’s standard rooms are all meant to have them.’ She whirled around to face him, her hands on her hips, her body, and in particular her breasts, quite close to his own anatomy. The room was small.

Ben held his ground, conscious of the way her hair had brushed his cheek when she’d whirled around, and how even after a thirteen-hour flight she smelled like strawberries. And vanilla.

He took a deep breath, kept his voice even and his gaze on her furious face. ‘I’m sorry. Clearly there’s been a mistake.’

‘A mistake? You’re going to pretend putting me in this—this sty was a mistake?’

Fury, all too familiar a feeling, spiked. All right, she was pretty, but what was her problem? She seemed determined to get the most mileage out of what clearly had to be an accident.

‘Yes, a mistake,’ he answered, all solicitude gone from his voice. ‘You don’t actually think someone would intentionally put a guest in a room like this?’

She planted her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowed to chocolate-brown slits. ‘That’s exactly what I think, Ben.’

He stared at her, first incredulous, then scornful. ‘You think I put you in this room because you’re a Harrington?’