Vacation with a Commanding Stranger

‘Sixteen-hour days at times.’

‘Yes.’ Cecelia nodded.

‘And there’s an awful lot of travel,’ Luka said. ‘Though for all that the working week is hell, you do get every weekend off.’

She smiled a tight, slightly disbelieving smile.

‘You do,’ Luka said, as he read those full lips. ‘Come Friday night, the entire weekend is yours.’

‘Though I’m guessing I wouldn’t be out of here by five p.m.?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Usually around ten.’

So not really the entire weekend to herself, Cecelia thought as his black eyes scanned through her paperwork. ‘Why are you finishing up with Justin?’

‘Because I didn’t want to live in Dubai.’

‘I go there a lot,’ Luka said, ‘which would mean, by default, so would you.’

‘That’s fine. I just don’t want to live there,’ Cecelia said, and she knew, she just knew, he was alluding to the fact she had a fiancé whose needs would have impacted on her decision.

He was right.

Gordon wouldn’t consider it.

‘Do you speak Greek?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Cecelia said, suddenly hoping it was a prerequisite for the role and that this torture would therefore come to an end. It was torture because her stomach seemed to be folding in on itself and she all of a sudden could feel the weight of her breasts. She had never had such a violent reaction to another person, though of course it was one-sided.

Luka Kargas looked thoroughly bored.

‘Do you speak any other languages?’ he asked.

‘Some French,’ Cecelia said, even though she spoke it very well and had both lived and worked in France for a year.

Anyway, he didn’t want her French, whether a little or a lot of it, for he screwed up his nose.

Good, because Cecelia had now decided that she did not want this job.

She liked safe, and for very good reasons.

Cecelia liked her world ordered, and ten minutes alone with Luka Kargas had just rocked hers.

His black eyes were mesmerising and his brusque indifference had her re-crossing her legs.

Until this moment, sex had been a perfectly pleasant experience, if sometimes a bit of a chore.

Now, though, she sat across from a man who made her think of it.

Actually sit and think about torrid, impromptu sex at two p.m. on a Monday afternoon, and that could never do.

‘Ms Andrews…’

‘Cecelia,’ she corrected, but only because she didn’t want to sound like some uptight spinster.

And she wasn’t.

She was engaged to be married, and right now she found herself desperately trying to hold onto that thought.