Julia James - Summer Sins - Bedded, or Wedded? / Willingly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded / The Mediterranean Billionaire's Blackmail Bargain

Against her will the image formed in her mind of sable hair and dark eyes and a sculpted mouth.

‘LISSA, the manager wants you. In his office. Sharpish!’

Lissa swivelled her head from her cramped place at the vanity unit in the crowded dressing room that she and the other hostesses changed in. She had only just arrived, and was about to start on her make-up.

She frowned at the command, issued by one of the staff from the door.

‘What for?’

A shrug was her only answer, and with a sigh Lissa got to her feet again and made her way out of the dressing room. A couple of the other girls looked at her curiously.

The manager’s office overlooked the casino floor, which was currently thinly populated.

‘You wanted to see me?’ said Lissa. She was wary and tense. It was seldom good news when the manager wanted to see a hostess. It was usually to reprimand her for not having brought enough custom to the bar. Maybe, thought Lissa tightly, the manager thought she hadn’t got the rich Frenchman to buy enough last night.

Damn, she didn’t want to be reminded of him. She’d done her best all day, all through the long slog into the City, and the long, tedious hours working in the office her temping agency had currently assigned her to. All through the crowded rush-hour journey home, sardined in the Tube train with all the other commuters until they’d been disgorged at the South London underground station closest to her flat. And certainly all through the brief time she’d had at home before setting out for her evening’s work here at the casino.

The manager, short and rotund and far from pleasant, eyed her up. Lissa stood impassively.

‘Private hire,’ he told her. ‘You’re to go straight there. There’s a car waiting outside.’

Lissa stood very still.

‘I’m afraid I don’t do private hires,’ she said quietly. ‘I did make that clear when I started.’

The manager narrowed his small eyes.

‘You’re lucky I’m in a good mood. And you’re lucky you made a hit last night. The guy who’s booked you is that fancy Frog who dropped a ton at the tables. He’s paying premium price for you, so make sure you give value for money, all right?’

Lissa swallowed. So Xavier Lauran had not been the type to stoop to coming on to her last night after offering her a lift home? No, he was just the type who liked the euphemism of a ‘private hire.’

‘Maybe Tanya would—’ she ventured.

‘He’s booked you , all right? And you deliver—understand? Or you walk—permanently.’

Lissa understood. Schooling her face into immobility, she nodded and got out. She felt sickened, more than sickened. It just wasn’t something she’d thought of the man last night.

Somehow she got herself back downstairs again, picked up her things and left the casino.

Just as last night, the rain was coming down heavily. She shivered, but not because of the wet. She had just lost her job. She knew it. Knew the manager would sack her instantly as soon as he found out she had no intention whatsoever of accepting a ‘private hire.’ Worse, she wouldn’t even get the wages she was owed for this week’s work.

Anger and intense depression mingled venomously inside her. Avoiding the front of the casino, she made her way with rapid, urgent footsteps to the main road. At least there were plenty of buses at this time of night, and the Tube was still running. Another thought struck her. What reason could she give for getting home so early? She didn’t want to say she’d lost her job because she’d been offered one she wouldn’t take.

Well, she would think up something on the way home. She would have to. That was the least of her problems.

Acid still curdled in her stomach, and more than acid. Anger, gall and bitterness. More even than that. But she would not give it words. Instead she found other words.

Creep. Jerk. Slimeball.

She said them in her head, over and over again, pounding them down on the pavement with each hurrying step.

A car pulled on to the pavement ahead of her.

She recognised it instantly. Equally instantly she swerved out on to the roadway in automatic avoidance.

‘What are you doing?’

The voice was a demand, wanting an answer. She didn’t even look around.

He strode up to her, catching her arm as she tried to plunge through the traffic.

‘You’ll kill yourself!’

She tried to tear herself free, but he was strong, the grip around her forearm unyielding.

‘Let go of me, you total creep.’ She tugged again, just as ineffectually. Rain was streaming into her eyes.

‘Comment?’ The surprise in his voice snapped something in her. She wheeled on him.

‘I said let go of me, you creep! You pig! How dare you try and buy me like that? My God, I might work in that fleapit, but the only work I do is to get jerks like you to buy rip-off drinks. You’ve got no right to think I do anything else. So take your bloody “private hire” and—’

He said something in French. Abrupt. Basic. Very basic.

His grip tightened on her arm as she stood struggling at the kerbside behind his chauffeured car.

‘I do not know what you have been told, but clearly you have been misinformed.’

His voice was icy. Formal. Lissa glared round at him, anger still boiling in her—and still that unwanted awareness of him.

It was a mistake to look at him. Even as she did so she felt again the incredible blow that went right through her solar plexus. The streetlight etched the planes of his face, and the sudden hardness in them, in his eyes, sent an unwilling thrill of reaction through her.

She fought against it.

‘Oh, do me a favour,’ she threw at him scornfully. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday. When I get told that you’ve paid “premium price”—’ she emphasised that heavily ‘—for a “private hire”—’ she emphasised that even more heavily ‘—I don’t damn well need it spelt out in neon lights. Nor do I need the creep running the casino to spell it out for me that I either do it or get fired.’

The icy expression in his eyes changed suddenly. Devastatingly. Lissa felt her insides dissolve.

The grip on her arm loosened, but he did not relinquish her. Instead, he guided her up onto the safety of the pavement again.

‘Don’t—’ She hustled back at him, but he ignored her. Then he turned her to face him.

‘You take insult,’ he informed her, ‘where none is intended. At least not by me.’ He took a sharp breath. Something changed in his eyes as he looked down at her. Then they were veiled. He dropped her arm. She should have bolted, but she didn’t. She just stood there, in the pelting rain, blinking at him. She didn’t know why, but she did all the same.

‘I wanted to see you again,’ said Xavier Lauran.

Her face didn’t change, but something else did, deep inside. She went on blinking at him. Staring at him.

‘I wanted to see you again,’ he repeated—as if, she thought, he was confirming it to himself.

‘Why?’ Her question was blunt. Unforgiving.

There was a slight alteration in his features, a lift of his eyebrow.

‘Why? Because …’ he paused. ‘Because when I gave you a lift home yesterday night I …’ He fell silent a moment. Then he spoke again. ‘You were different,’ he said bluntly. ‘A quite different woman from the one you had been at the casino. A woman I wanted to see again.’

‘What for?’ she demanded witheringly. ‘Some “private hire” entertainment?’

‘For dinner,’ he answered simply.

Lissa blinked.

‘I wanted to invite you for dinner,’ said Xavier Lauran. ‘I knew you worked, and I did not know when your night off was. I have limited time in London, so I did not want to waste it. I phoned the casino and asked if it was possible to arrange, as you term it, a “private hire.” By that I meant that I would pay the casino for your time, so they would not lose out, and it would free you to accept my invitation to dinner.’