A Bride At His Bidding. Michelle Smart

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СКАЧАТЬ minute please,’ he said in the deep, quick, sharply staccato voice she remembered from their one telephone conversation instigated by Andreas five years ago.

      Carrie’s sister and Andreas’s niece had been weekly boarders and roommates at school together. Their friendship had deepened and soon they had wanted to spend weekends and holidays together too. Andreas had phoned Carrie to agree on some ground rules. They had found much to agree on. It helped that they had both been in the same position, both of them the sole carers of their vulnerable teenage charges. After that one conversation, they would text message each other to confirm if Natalia was due at Carrie’s for the weekend or if Violet was due at Andreas’s. It had become a rhythm in Carrie’s life, right until Andreas had engineered Violet’s expulsion.

      Finally, he looked up from his computer, pushed his chair back and got to his feet. The sheer size and power of the man was as starkly apparent as it had been when he had swept past her three years ago.

      ‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Dunwoody.’

      She stared at the huge hand extending towards her and forced herself to lean forward and take it. Large, warm tapered fingers covered hers as he shook her hand briskly before letting go.

      ‘Take a seat,’ he commanded amicably, sitting back down and picking up a thin pile of papers from his desk.

      The skin on her hand buzzed where he’d clasped it and she fought the urge to rub it against her thigh as she took the seat he’d directed her to, and expelled the tiniest sigh of relief.

      There had been only a teeny ounce of doubt he wouldn’t recognise her. Physically she’d changed a lot since that one fleeting glance three years ago outside the headmistress’s office, when his light brown eyes had lasered her with such ferocity she had recoiled. Stress alone had made her lose three stone since then, which had altered her facial features as well as her body shape. She’d long stopped her quest for the perfect shade of blonde hair and reverted to her natural brown colour.

      If Andreas had the slightest idea of who she really was, she would not be there. She wouldn’t have got past the initial application.

      It hadn’t seemed feasible that he would recognise her or her name but she had learned through five years of her job to take nothing for granted.

      Light brown thoughtful eyes studied her rather than the paperwork in his hand, which she guessed was a copy of her job application, and she fought hard against the flush of colour crawling over her skin. When she finally forced herself to meet his gaze, the raw masculinity staring back at her intensified the flush, enflaming her bones, taking her so unawares that for a moment her mind emptied of everything but the rapid tattoo of her heart reverberating in her ears.

      Carrie swallowed, desperate for moisture in her parched throat, desperate to suck air into lungs that had closed in on themselves. Whatever kind of a man Andreas was, there was no denying that he was divine to look at. He had thick dark brown hair sun-kissed on the tips, barely tamed to flop onto a gently lined forehead, cheekbones you could ski down, a chiselled square jaw already dark with stubble and a sharp nose with a slight bend on the bridge. Deeply tanned and weather-beaten, he looked every one of his thirty-seven years.

      He was the most overtly virile and handsome man she’d ever laid eyes on.

      Then he gave her a crooked grin.

      It was like being smiled at by the big bad wolf the moment before he ate Grandma.

      ‘Congratulations on making it to the final shortlist,’ he said in his impeccable English. Carrie knew, as she knew so much about this man, that he’d learned English at school in his Greek homeland and then perfected it at his American university. He spoke the language with true fluency, firing the words out so quickly his accent sounded like a musical cadence to her ears. ‘I will be honest and tell you that you are my preferred candidate.’

      She was taken aback. ‘I am?’

      His eyes sparkled. ‘Before I go into more detail about my requirements, there are things I wish to know about you.’

      She attempted to hide her fear with a smile that didn’t want to form on her frozen cheeks.

      Had he spotted the holes in her résumé?

      After a moment of silence that seemed to echo between them she got her paper-dry throat to work. ‘What do you want to know?’

      ‘References and application forms only give a narrow perspective on a person. If I give you the job then we will spend a lot of time together. You will be my right hand in my domestic life. You will be privy to my most intimate secrets. So, Miss Dunwoody...may I call you Caroline?’

      She nodded faintly. The only person who had ever called her Caroline had been her mother but she hadn’t made her name sing as Andreas did. Even as it occurred to her, that struck Carrie as an odd thought to have.

      ‘Caroline. If I give you the job I need to trust you and trust that we’ll be able to work well together.’ His relaxed frame, the musical staccato of his voice and the amusement enlivening his handsome features all worked together to reassure her that her ruse had worked but the scent of danger still lingered.

      Her instincts were telling her to take her bag and coat and leave this office right now.

      ‘Are you married or do you have a partner?’ he continued. ‘I ask because if you do, you should know you will be spending a lot of time apart from them. Your personal life must be conducted in your own time and you won’t have much of that.’

      ‘I have no significant other.’ She never had and never would. Men could not be trusted. She’d learned that before she’d reached double digits.

      ‘Children?’

      She shook her head, immediately thinking of Violet, who she loved as much as if she’d given birth to her.

      ‘Any other dependants? Dogs, cats, goldfish?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Good. I make no apologies. I am a demanding employer and this job is a twenty-four-seven one. What did Debbie tell you about it in the preliminary interview?’

      ‘That it entails the day-to-day running of your homes.’

      His head tilted and his face grew thoughtful. ‘That is how the job is advertised but you should know it is more about the day-to-day running of me. My domestic PA does oversee the running of my homes but they’re not expected to do any of the manual chores themselves—I employ other domestic staff for that. I work long and demanding hours. When I am at home I like to live in comfort and I want all my needs and comforts met by someone who is capable of turning their hand to anything, without argument. I need someone on hand to tend to all my personal needs—pour my drinks, prepare my clothing for me, make sure a towel is on hand if I do any physical activity, that kind of thing.’

      It wasn’t a domestic PA the man wanted, Carrie thought in mute outrage as she listened to his seductive voice, it was a slave.

      ‘In return, I offer a very generous salary.’ He mentioned a figure that made her blink, it being four times what she earned at the newspaper.

      She imagined that any genuine applicant would bite his hand off for it. It was an extortionate amount of money for what was essentially СКАЧАТЬ