A Bride At His Bidding. Michelle Smart
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she’d had to force down into her cramped stomach, had been provided throughout the flight by Andreas’s cabin crew.
He shrugged. ‘If you need anything before morning I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding it. I assume the kitchen functions as a normal kitchen.’
‘You assume?’
He pulled a face. ‘I employ staff so I don’t have to do these chores for myself.’
‘When was the last time you used a kitchen?’ she asked before she could stop herself. Somehow, she doubted Andreas welcomed his domestic employees questioning him.
Her doubt proved wrong.
‘In my university days in America—I studied at MIT—I discovered I was a terrible cook so I got a job working as a waiter in an Italian restaurant where they were always happy to feed me. I’ve not cooked for myself since.’
‘An Italian restaurant?’
‘There were no decent Greek restaurants where I lived then. There was a tapas bar but they didn’t do breakfast so I opted for the Italian one.’
His long legs powered on gracefully up the cantilevered stairs to the first floor. Carrie hurried behind him, smothering a yawn. All the travelling on top of minimal sleep had exhausted her.
‘My room.’ Andreas pushed open a door to reveal a bedroom equal in size to the kitchen, containing everything a spoiled billionaire could need. Carrie hung back, reluctant to enter until he beckoned her inside with the crook of his finger and the hint of a gleam in his piercing light brown eyes. ‘Don’t be shy, Caroline. You need to become familiar with my room.’
Familiar with it? All she could see was the enormous carved bed heaped with pillows, and her imagination immediately stripped Andreas bare and pictured him sliding with that masculine grace she’d never seen on another man between the navy satin sheets.
She clenched her teeth together, trying to blink the image away and pretend the rush of blood she could feel pumping around her was not connected to it.
She’d never imagined a man naked before and it disturbed her that she should have such unwelcome thoughts about this particular man.
There was such a sensuous potency about him. It was there in his every move, his every breath, his every word, and all it did was add to her growing sense of danger.
Sheesh, she really, really needed some sleep.
‘What other staff work here?’ she asked. Once she knew where everyone was she would stop feeling as if she’d been trapped in a gilded cage that only Andreas had the key to.
Everything had happened so quickly and smoothly that day that there hadn’t been time for her misgivings to do more than squeak at her but now, here, standing in Andreas’s bedroom in his secret home in the middle of the night, those misgivings were shouting loudly.
‘I inherited most of the staff from the previous owners. The grounds are managed by Enrique and his eldest son. Enrique’s wife Sheryl and a couple of her friends take care of all the cleaning. Between them they know everything there is to know about the house and the peninsular and the Seychelles itself.’
‘Where are the staff quarters?’
‘There aren’t any. Brendan and his assistant live in a cottage on the grounds but the others all live on the main island.’
Another chime of alarm rang in her ears. ‘So who actually lives in the house?’
Surely she had misunderstood something. Surely she wouldn’t be the only person living under this roof with him while they were there?
‘We do. You and me.’
‘Just you and me?’
‘Yes.’ His eyes seemed to do more than merely sparkle. They smouldered. His nostrils flared as he added, ‘While we’re on this beautiful spot of paradise, the night time belongs to you and me alone.’
ANDREAS ENJOYED CARRIE’S attempt to hide her horror at this clearly unwelcome revelation.
‘I bought this place as a getaway from the world so it’s run in a more relaxed way than my other homes,’ he said. ‘As long as I have someone close at hand to take care of my needs, I don’t need much else and that, matia mou, is why you are here. Consider it an easy breaking-in for you. The house runs itself so you can dedicate your time here to me and we can get to know each other properly in the process.’
The colour drained from her face, her hazel eyes widening.
Understandable, he thought lazily. Carrie wouldn’t want him delving into her life with probing questions that would put her on the spot. She wouldn’t want to trip herself up with easily forgotten lies.
He admired that, through the tumult of emotions flickering through her eyes, her composure didn’t waver. If he were ignorant of her true identity he doubted he would have noticed anything amiss. If he didn’t know the truth he would assume she was a naturally quiet, self-contained woman.
He looked forward to seeing how far he could push her before she cracked and the real Carrie emerged.
‘Now for your room. You will find it adequately appointed.’ But not as adequately as Rochelle’s had been. She was being put in a much different room from the one his former Domestic PA had enjoyed. Rochelle’s room had been located at the other end of the house so she could have her privacy.
He didn’t intend for Carrie, this cuckoo in his nest, this spy, to have any privacy during her interlude in his life. Her duties would be of the kind he would never dream of imposing on a proper employee.
Andreas turned the handle of a door in the middle of the left-hand wall of his room. It opened into a much smaller, adjoining room.
He spread a hand out. ‘See? You have everything you need. A bed, a dressing table, wardrobe and your own bathroom.’ But no television or other form of entertainment. Andreas intended to be Carrie’s only source of entertainment while she was here.
The colour that stained her cheeks this time was definitely of the angry variety but she kept it in check to ask with only the slightest tremor, ‘My room adjoins yours?’
‘How would you take care of my needs if you were on the other side of the house? The previous owners used this room as a nursery. I admit it’s rather small—it was designed for a small child before they went into a proper room of their own—but I can assure you it’s perfectly adequate.’ Adequate for a baby or toddler. Barely adequate for a fully grown woman, even one as slender as Carrie. He’d intended to turn it into another dressing room and was glad he hadn’t got around to organising it.
‘Where’s the lock?’
‘There isn’t one so it will be nice and easy for you to come and go between our rooms.’ He winked. ‘But do not worry. I am a gentleman and only enter a lady’s bedroom when invited.’
And should she be tempted to enter his room without invitation, which she undoubtedly would seeing as her whole purpose for being here was to snoop, then the microscopic cameras he’d had installed in his bedroom and throughout the house would monitor her every movement.
He’d intended to bug her room too with voice-activated cameras but had talked himself out of it. There was a line a person should never cross and bugging a lady’s bedroom, even a journalistic spy like this one, was firmly on the wrong side of it. Now that he’d spent the day in such close confines to her, he was doubly glad he hadn’t crossed that line.
Carrie had an allure about her that played to his senses like a finely tuned violin.
She also had eyes that looked bruised from exhaustion.
‘I can see you’re tired. Is there anything