It was only since coming to Berlin, and meeting Ben, that she’d started feeling...unsettled. Lonely. And wasn’t that sad, that a couple of kisses and one semi-heartfelt conversation made her realise how isolated and empty her life really was?
Impatient with her own maudlin thoughts, she started to rise from the edge of the pool when a sharp, angry voice punctuated the silence of the pool area like the staccato fire of gunshots.
‘No, Spencer. That is not acceptable. When I agreed to manage this hotel, I did not agree to pimp myself out.’
Olivia froze by the side of the pool. She watched the door to the men’s changing room swing open hard and without thinking about what she was doing—there had, admittedly, been a lot of that lately—she dove behind a couple of stacked loungers.
Ben strode into the pool area, his cell phone clamped to his ear, his face thunderous. ‘You may have no problem prostituting yourself for this damn hotel,’ he snapped, ‘but I do.’
Olivia went rigid with shock and mortification as the meaning of his words penetrated the numb fog of her mind. Pimp himself out. Prostitute himself for the hotel. He was talking about her. About having to pretend to date her. Pretend to like her.
She closed her eyes, shame scorching through her. She knew she shouldn’t feel as humiliated and definitely not as hurt as she did. She’d known what had happened between her and Ben wasn’t real.
And yet that kiss. That conversation. Those had felt real. But had he just been playing a part? And she thought she was the one with an acting career.
Ben bit off a few more terse words, and then, to Olivia’s shock, he chucked the phone right at her head. No, actually, he was chucking it onto the sun lounger she was crouched behind, and it hit the soft plastic slats before sliding off and landing at her feet with a crunching kind of thud.
Oh, dear.
Ben let out a weary groan and started walking towards his phone. Olivia shrank back, but unfortunately there was nowhere left to shrink. It would be impossible for him not to see her, and that was going to make things very awkward. Again.
After a second of internal debate, she scooped up the phone and, as he came closer, she held it out to him with a smile. At least, she hoped it passed for a smile.
‘I think you dropped this.’
Ben’s jaw dropped and then his eyes narrowed. ‘Were you...hiding?’
‘Umm...’ She scrambled up to a standing position, so at least they were eye to eye. Almost. ‘No, of course not.’ He eyed her sceptically and she amended, ‘All right, so what if I was? It’s not like I was comparing you to a—a client!’
‘What?’
‘I mean, you know...’ She gestured helplessly. ‘You called yourself a prostitute, so that, by association, makes me, uh, a client. Or something.’ She was really starting to wish she had not started this idiotic conversation.
Ben shook his head slowly. ‘You thought I was talking about you on the phone to my brother?’
She stared at him, now really disconcerted. ‘Well...yes.’
His mouth tightened. ‘Not everything is about you, Olivia.’
‘That’s a completely unfair thing to say!’ she retorted, stung. ‘I’ve never acted like everything is about me.’
‘The mistake with your room?’
‘Oh, you would bring that up again.’
To her surprise, he relaxed, or maybe deflated, and shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. I can see how you’d think I’d been talking about you and our...relationship.’
Her self-righteous fury trickled away as she gazed at him. He looked tired and haggard and yet so unbearably sexy. Watching him she could remember exactly how he’d felt. How he’d tasted. She could almost imagine the slide of his lips on hers, the feel of his hands slipping under her top...
Okay. Time to stop that line of thinking. They’d already established that had been a mistake.
Although actually, now that she thought about it, they hadn’t said it was a mistake. They hadn’t really talked about it at all. They’d just moved on.
Sort of.
‘So if you weren’t talking about me, who—or rather, whom—are you pimping yourself out for?’
Ben’s expression hardened, eyes flaring as he raked a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up six ways to Sunday, and providing a painful twist to her insides. He was too sexy, too wild, too everything for his own good. And hers. ‘Caris Dowling,’ he said, and Olivia blinked.
‘Caris Dowling, the A-list actress who gets twenty million dollars per movie?’
‘That’s the one, I suppose.’
Okay, the spike of jealousy she felt was totally irrational. ‘So how did you snag her attention, hotshot?’