He lifted his eyes to her face, remembering the powerful way his body had reacted to her the other night and trying to tell himself that it had been a momentary aberration. Because she was plain. Ordinary. If he’d passed her in the street, he wouldn’t have given her a second glance. Her jeans weren’t particularly flattering and neither was her shirt. But her eyes looked like silver and wavy strands of pale hair were escaping from her ponytail and the ends were curling, so that in the harshness of the artificial light she looked as if she were surrounded by a faint blonde halo.
A halo. His mouth twisted. He couldn’t think of a less likely candidate for angelic status.
‘You sold your story,’ he accused.
‘I didn’t sell anything,’ she contradicted. ‘No money exchanged hands.’
‘So the journalist is clairvoyant, is that what you’re saying? She just guessed we were making out?’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not what I’m saying at all. She saw us. She was standing behind a tree having a cigarette and saw us kissing.’
‘You mean it was a set-up?’ he questioned, his tone flat.
‘Of course it wasn’t a set-up!’ She glared at him. ‘You think I deliberately arranged to get myself the sack? Rather a convoluted way to go about it, don’t you think? I think being caught dipping your fingers in the till is the more traditional way to go.’
He raised his eyebrows in disbelief. ‘So she just happened to be there—’
‘Yes!’ she interrupted angrily. ‘She did. She was a guest, staying at the hotel. And the next day she cornered me in the restaurant while I was serving her and there was no way I could have avoided talking to her.’
‘You still could have just said no comment when she started quizzing you,’ he accused. ‘You didn’t have to gush and call me a pussycat—to damage my business reputation and any credibility I’ve managed to build up. You didn’t have to disclose what you’d overheard when you’d clearly been listening in to my telephone conversation.’
‘How could I help but listen in, when you broke off to take a call in front of me?’
He glared at her. ‘What right did you have to repeat any of it?’
‘And what right do you have to come here, hurling all these accusations at me?’
‘You’re skirting round the issue. I asked you a question, Ellie. Are you going to answer it?’
There was an odd kind of silence before eventually she spoke.
‘She told me you had a girlfriend,’ she said.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘So you felt that gave you the right to gossip about me, knowing it might find its way into the press?’
‘How could I, when I didn’t know what her job was?’
‘You mean you’re just habitually indiscreet?’
‘Or that you’re just sexually incontinent?’
He sucked in an angry breath. ‘As it happens, I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment and if I did, then I certainly wouldn’t have been making out with you. You see, I place great store on loyalty, Ellie—in fact, I value it above everything else. While you, on the other hand, don’t seem to know the meaning of the word.’
Ellie was taken aback by the coldness in his eyes. She had made a mistake, yes—but it had been a genuine one. She hadn’t set out to deliberately tarnish his precious reputation.
‘Okay,’ she conceded. ‘I spoke about you when maybe I shouldn’t have done and, because of that, you’ve managed to get me the sack. I’d say we were quits now, wouldn’t you?’
He met her gaze.
‘Not quite,’ he said softly.
A shiver of something unknowable whispered over her skin as she stared at him. There was something unsettling in his eyes. Something distracting about the sudden tension in his hard body. She stared at him, knowing what he was planning to do and knowing it was wrong. So why didn’t she ask him to leave?
Because she couldn’t. She’d dreamed about just such a moment—playing it out in her mind, when it had been little more than a fantasy. She had wanted Alek Sarantos more than she had thought it possible to want anyone and that feeling hadn’t changed. If anything, it had grown even stronger. She could feel herself trembling as he reached out and hauled her against him. The angry expression on his face made it seem as if he was doing something he didn’t really want to do and she felt a brief flicker of rebellion. How dare he look that way? She told herself to pull away, but the need to have him kiss her again was dominating every other consideration. And maybe this was inevitable—like the thunder which had been rumbling all day through the heavy sky. Sooner or later you just knew the storm was going to break.