Chapter Two

       ROCK bottom.

      Cleo Taylor was so there.

      Her head ached, her bruised shin stung where the vacuum cleaner had banged into it, and three weeks into this job she was exhausted, both mentally and physically. And at barely five o’clock in the afternoon, all she wanted to do was sleep.

      She dropped the machine at the foot of her bed and sank down onto the narrow stretcher, the springs that woke her every time she rolled over at night noisily protesting her presence.

      Karma. It had to be karma.

      How many people had tried to warn her? How many had urged her to be careful and not to rush in? And how many of those people had she suspected of being jealous of her because she’d found love in the unlikeliest of places, in an Internet chat room with a man halfway around the world?

      Too many.

      Oh, yes, if there was a price to pay for naivety, for blindly charging headlong for a fall, she was well and truly paying it.

      And no one would say she didn’t deserve everything that was happening to her. She’d been so stupid believing Kurt, stupid to believe the stories he’d spun, stupid to believe that he loved her.

       So pathetically naïve to trust him with both her heart and with her nanna’s money.

      And all she’d achieved was to spectacularly prove the award she’d been given in high school from the girls whose company she’d craved, but who never were and who would never be her friends.

       Cleo Taylor, girl most likely to fail.

      Wouldn’t they just love to see her now?

      A barrage of sleet splattered against the tiny louvred window high above the bed and she shivered. So much for spring.

      Reluctantly she thought about dragging herself from the rudimentary bed but there was no way she wanted to meet that man in the hallway again. She shuddered, remembering the ice-cold way his eyes—dark pits of eyes set in a slate-hard face—had raked over her and then disregarded her in the same instant without even an acknowledgment, as if she was some kind of low-life, before imperiously passing by. She’d shrunk back in-stinctively, her own greeting dying on her lips.

      It wasn’t just that he looked so out of place, so wrong for the surroundings, but the look of such a tall, powerful man sweeping through the low-ceilinged space seemed wrong, as if there wasn’t enough space and he needed more. He hadn’t just occupied the space, he’d consumed it.

      And then he’d swept past, all cashmere coat, the smell of rain and the hint of cologne the likes of which she’d never smelt in this place, and she’d never felt more like the low-life he’d taken her to be.

      But she had to get up. She couldn’t afford to fall asleep yet, even though she’d been up since five to do the breakfasts and it had taken until four to clean the last room. She reeked of stale beer and her uniform was filthy, courtesy of the group of partying students who’d been in residence in the room next door for the last three nights.

      She hated cleaning that room! It was damp and dark, the tiny en suite prone to mould and the drains smelling like a swamp, and if she hadn’t already known how low she’d sunk that room announced it in spades. The students had left it filthy, with beds looking as if they’d been torn apart, rubbish spilling from bins over the floor, and an entire stack of empty takeaway boxes and beer bottles artfully arranged in one corner all the way from the floor to the low ceiling. ‘Leaning Tower of Pizza,’ someone had scrawled on the side of one the boxes, and it had leant, so much so that it was a wonder it hadn’t already collapsed with the vibrations from the nearby tube.

      It had been waiting for her to do that. Bottles and pizza boxes raining down on her, showering her with their dregs.

      No wonder he’d looked at her as if she were some kind of scum. After the day she’d had, she felt like it.

      She dragged herself from the bed and plucked her towel off a hook and her bag of toiletries, ready to head to the first-floor bathroom. What did she care what some stranger she’d never see again thought? In ten minutes she’d be showered, tucked up in bed and fast asleep. That was all she cared about at the moment.

      The bright side, she told herself, giving thanks to her nanna as she ascended the stairs and saw rain lashing against the glazing of the ground-floor door, was that she had a roof over her head and she didn’t have to go out in today’s weather.

      “There’s always a silver lining”, her nanna used to tell her, rocking her on her lap when she was just a tiny child and had skinned her knees, or when she’d started school and the other girls had picked on her because her mother had made her school uniform by hand and it had shown. Even though her family was dirt poor and sometimes it had been hard to find, there’d always been something she’d been able to cling to, a bright side somewhere, something she’d been able to give thanks for.

       Almost always.

      She sighed as the hot water in the shower finally kicked in and warmed her weary bones. A warm shower, a roof over her head and a bed with her name written on it. Things could always be worse.

      And come summer and the longer days, she’d have time to see something of the sights of London she’d promised herself before she went home. Not that there was any hurry. At the rate she was paid, after her board was deducted, it would be ages before she could even think about booking a return airfare to Australia. God, she’d been so stupid to trust Kurt with her money!

      A sudden pang of homesickness hit her halfway back down the stairs. Barely six weeks ago she’d left the tiny outback town of Kangaroo Crossing with such confidence, and now look at her. If only she could go home. If only she’d never left! She’d give anything to hug her mum and half-brothers again. She’d even find a smile for her stepfather if it came down to it. But when would that be? And how would she be able to face everyone when she did?

      She would be going home humiliated. A failure.

      The bright side, she urged herself, look at the bright side, as she pulled her eye mask down and snuggled under the covers, the cold rain lashing at her tiny window. She was warm and dry and she had at least ten hours’ sleep before she had to get up and do it all over again.

      ‘But you can’t close the hotel,’ Darius protested. ‘There are bookings. Guests!’

      ‘Who will be catered for, as will the staff we have on file from your finance application.’ Andreas snapped open his phone, made a quick call and slipped the phone back into his pocket. ‘I’m sure the guests won’t mind being transferred to the four-star hotel we’ve chosen to accommodate them in and you can be assured the employees will be paid a generous redundancy.’

      He cast a disdainful eye around the room. ‘I don’t foresee any complaints. And now I want you off the premises. I have staff coming in to take over and ensure the changeover is smooth. The hotel will be empty in two hours.’

      ‘And what about me?’ Darius demanded. ‘What am I supposed to do? You’re leaving me with nothing. Nothing!’

      Andreas slowly turned back, unable to stop his lips from forming into a sneer. ‘What about you? How many millions did you steal from my father? You happily walked away and left my family with nothing. What did you care about anyone else then? So why should I care about what happens to you? Just be grateful you’re able to walk out of here with your limbs intact after the way you betrayed my father.’

      A buzzer sounded,