Chapter 2

HE LOOKED AT HER as though he wanted to say something else, to unburden himself or ask her a burning question. She waited, breath held for no reason she could think of.

"What do you think of this place?" He asked with a hint of bitterness in his voice that she didn't understand.

Her eyes swept across the room. What could she say to that? It was the last word in sophisticated luxury, from the plush carpet to the subtle paint colours, the gold light fittings. There was even a baby grand piano in the library. Of a hotel suite. Just in case the guests were on the road and got a fervent need to start tinkling the ivories.

But then, her eyes dropped properly to the carpet and she saw an enormous crimson stain. At first, she mistook it for blood and—courtesy of watching way too many late night police procedural shows when she was feeding baby Harper—she wondered if this ridiculously handsome guy was actually some kind of axe-murderer. But with a quick reattachment to reality, she recognized it for what it actually was: wine.

Wine in the super expensive, premium quality wool carpets.

Wine that was going to cost him a fortune if it didn't get out right away.

She wasn't a housekeeper, but she was so much more. Anyone who worked on this level was expected to move heaven and earth for the guests, to do whatever was required, and it was clear that this guest needed the red wine out of the carpet. Her manager would be furious.

"Sir, there seems to be a stain over there," she said, gently, wary of making it sound like it was his fault. "Do you mind if I take a look at it?"

His features darkened into a thundercloud. "Leave it."

"I'm afraid I can't," she responded, moving to the mark and crouching down. "It's hotel policy. Any damage has to be reported straight away." She touched the wine: it was still wet. Good. There was a chance it might lift. "It won't take me long."

"Fine," he reached for a chip, shrugging. "But I wouldn't worry. I'd already accepted that I'd have to replace it."

She dipped her head forward to hide her gasp. Imagine having such money at one's disposal! She couldn't even imagine. What comfort that must bring, to know that no matter what, you could just pay to fix any mistake, no problems.

Skye had lost sleep over her debt, her bills, the hole she'd found herself in.

Not this guy.

"Don't worry. It still might come to that," she responded after she'd got the whisper of injustice under control. She stood with an unconscious elegance, moving to the bathroom. The smell of him in here was even stronger. The mirror had the last remnants of steam, hinting at a not-too-long-ago shower, and a towel had been messily draped over the hook. She ignored it, reaching for a cache of fresh towels and carrying them out with her.

In the hallway outside the bathroom, she called down to concierge, requesting a cleaning kit for the carpets be sent up. This wasn't the first time she'd had to work her magic with an emergency repair, but it had never been quite such a large stain, nor treated with such casual indifference as by this guest.

She hung up the phone and pressed a towel into the carpet, pushing down on it with her hand to soak up as much of the wine as she could. A satisfying red appeared. Good.

"You don't have to do that." Now there was irritation in his voice and when she looked up, it was to see him coming out from behind the kitchen.

"Actually, I do," she said, unaware of the way her bottom perched in the air, so round and taut. "It's literally in my job description."

"It's my fault," he muttered, crouching down opposite her and pressing his hand just to the left of her own. "It's my responsibility to fix it."

"Your solution was to replace the carpet."

"So?"

"That's a bit drastic, isn't it?"

His response was to move his hand, pressing harder, releasing more wine.

Skye couldn't help looking at him. Up close, she noticed things she hadn't at first, like the hint of freckles on his cheeks, or the slightest breath of gold in amongst his dark hair, as though he'd spent the summer in sunny, exotic locations, doing sunny, billionaire things like watersports and getting a tan at beachside bars.

"Perhaps I'm in a drastic mood?"

His features had a harshness though that belied her last supposition. He didn't seem like someone who'd just chill out in a bar. He seemed like someone wound tighter than a spring.

"This is a lot of carpet," she pointed out. "Seems stupid to replace it when the stain is just a foot or so in diameter." Her eyes widened at what she'd just said. "Not that I'm calling you stupid, sir."

"Leandro," he said, his name almost like a curse, so she didn't understand it at first. "My name is Leandro," he clarified. "Don't call me sir."

"Also, part of the job description," she responded, a small smile on her pink lips. She was surprised. Not that she smiled, but to discover that she wanted him to smile back. It wasn't her job to cheer him up, but she felt the ripples of his mood and knew—despite not knowing him at all—that something had happened to him, something bad.

"And what else?" He asked, pausing to move the towel aside, and replacing it with a fresh one. The stain was already looking a lot better. The doorbell rang and Skye jolted. She'd forgotten the cleaning kit.

She stood quickly, taking in the sight of the guest on his hands and knees, blotting up the stain, then moved to the food that had been left to cool on the kitchen bench.

"Sir, you need to stop now. Eat your dinner. Drink your whisky. I've got this."

He tossed her a slightly dismissive glance then kept blotting.

When she opened the door, it was to see a housekeeping team with a bucket of supplies. She knew that she should let them in and allow them to deal with the stain, but she was strangely protective of this guest, and the vulnerability she sensed in him. It was ridiculous, because alongside that vulnerability she also felt a sense of command and strength that made him seem almost unbreakable.

He was a contradiction.

Instead of opening the door wider to admit the team, she took the bucket, thanked them, and closed the door.

Leandro lifted his eyes and watched her the whole way back across the carpet and there was something in the intensity of his gaze that made her pulse go haywire. Heat began to fizz in her toes and spread upwards, burning her from the inside out.

"Reinforcements," she said a little shakily, holding the products aloft. "But I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist you stop now, sir. I really can't have a guest doing this kind of thing."

"Are guests not allowed to get their hands dirty?"

"Definitely not."

"Even with their own mess?"

"I'm not here to blame," she said with a small shrug.

"And do you often have to clean up after people…" His eyes narrowed. "What is your name?"

Her tongue felt thick and heavy in her mouth. This was the most conversation she'd ever had with someone staying in the hotel. She usually interacted as little as possible; that's how she liked it. But Leandro was different. There was something about him that seemed so human, so normal, despite his obvious wealth and stature.

"Skye," she answered eventually, sinking back to her knees in a move that was a total miscalculation, because she aimed wrong and was way closer to him than she'd meant to be. "And yes. That's my job."

"You're not a housekeeper."

"No, but things like this happen more often than you can imagine. If I see them and can help, I do," she responded with a wry twist of her lips. "I really don't mind."

They worked in silence, but it was not companionable. Skye was too aware of his closeness, of the fact that he didn't move away from her, and she didn't shift away from him. She was aware of the way his breath sounded as it emerged from his parted lips, of the way his hand moved in a rhythmic method over the floor, until each press of their hands ceased to bring up any more liquid.

"Okay, time for this," she said, her voice emerging like a husk of its usual self. She reached into the bucket and removed the magical spray they kept for just such occasions. In Skye's experience, this product had managed to remove just about anything from the carpet. She thought with distaste of the time a superstar actress had brought her toddler to stay and the toddler had decided to decorate the place with mommy's collection of lipsticks and the actress had thought it was adorable so had allowed it to continue. Some things had been easier to replace than attempt to repair—like the plush white sofas—but by and large, this spray had worked wonders, even then.

Skye looked at the bottle with a frown. "You'd better stand back. I don't know what's in this, but going by how effective it is, it's probably full of things like bleach. I'd rather not ruin your clothes."

"Stop worrying about me," he growled, reaching for the spray, his fingers brushing hers as he took it from her hand.

She gasped a little, surprised by his determination, surprised by the fireworks that had been set off in her bloodstream. Their eyes connected and the world seemed to tilt sideways, so much so she half-wondered if there was an earthquake trembling.

His lips tugged into a small frown, but he didn't move.

"You're very beautiful." He said it conversationally, dispassionately, as though he was simply observing a fact, but nonetheless, her heart sped up.

She blinked away, the compliment one she rarely welcomed. "The carpet," she reminded him, wondering at her urge to say something else back to him. Like, ‘you are too'.

"You must get told that all the time."

Her smile was wry. She didn't answer. If she told him that yes, she was, it would run the risk of sounding immodest. What she wanted to say to him was that she was sick of hearing it. Sick of the way her looks had ruined her life. It was one of the first things Jay had said to her, something he'd never been able to stop saying to her, something that had eventually come to be like a form of torture for him. He had become so convinced that she was being hit on by all and sundry that he couldn't bear to let her out of his sight. He'd hated that men looked when she walked down the street, hated that she got flirted with by random guys in coffee shops. His jealousy had become the bane of her life.

"But you don't like it."

Her eyes zipped back to Leandro's. "How do you know that?"

"You're very beautiful and very expressive. Your eyes are telling me everything you wish to keep secret."

"Everything?" She repeated, in a panic. Her pulse skyrocketed at the very idea that this guy might be able to see just how hard she was finding it to concentrate on anything other than his stunningly symmetrical face, his strong, masculine body.

"Everything," he growled, and her heart skipped a beat. Her cheeks flushed pink.

"The carpet," she whispered, like an incantation, a plea to return to sanity and common sense.

"Screw the carpet," he muttered, and then he was leaning all the way forward, his lips brushing hers in the simplest, smallest gesture of an inquiry. Not a kiss, so much as a question: may I kiss you?

The answer was no. Or it should have been no. He was a guest. An expensive, handsome, successful, rich guest, and it was completely forbidden for Skye to be up here getting kissed by him. Completely forbidden. Plus, she could taste whisky and wine on his breath. He'd obviously been drinking, but she hadn't. He had an excuse, she didn't.

Not to mention, Skye didn't do things like this. Skye didn't let random men kiss her. She was so guarded with this stuff, so careful. That had been true even beforeJay, but afterwards, she'd become so much more careful. Because now she had Harper to think about, and Jay's ever-present threat that he'd sue for custody if he thought she was seeing someone else.

He"d done everything he could to make sure that his control over her life continued, despite the fact they'd broken up more than two years earlier.

She needed to say no.

But her mind and body were in a state of total disconnect. Something had snapped inside of her, and she was struggling to remember anything of who she was and what she wanted.

"Skye?" His voice was imperious. Demanding. It sent hot shivers down her spine. Her eyes widened. It was impossible to mistake what he was asking.

Think of your job. Your debt. Your pride.

But something wild and hungry was spinning inside of Skye. The last man to kiss her had been Jay. She shuddered to remember the way she'd hated that, his thick lips against hers, his kisses had become something she'd dreaded. He'd controlled so much of her life, and she'd let him, and she was still letting him call the shots.

Well, what if she didn't? What if right here, right now, she let this guest kiss her properly. Only she would know, but it would bring her one step closer to removing Jay's power over her. Her breath snagged in her throat a little and she nodded once, a quick, urgent gesture, because having made this decision, she wanted him to kiss her before she lost her nerve completely.

And she didn't need to ask twice. On the hint of a groan, he brought himself closer again, this time, kissing her in a way that was far more answer than question, his lips mashing to hers as his tongue pressed into her mouth, and his body came further forward, powerful, just as she'd known it would be. She tasted wine in his mouth and briefly wondered if he'd had too much to drink for her to be doing this, but he didn't seem drunk. He just tasted wonderfully of spices and fruit, and when he moved his body again, she did likewise, shifting first to kneel fully, their upper bodies entwined and then, at his subtle shifting, repositioning her legs so she could flop backwards onto the carpet, never once breaking the kiss.

She'd thought yawning was unprofessional. Well, this was something else. And then, she did it. She pulled away just enough to say, "No one can know about this."

Guilt flushed through her. Because nothing said ‘something you won't regret' like a plea for secrecy.

"No problems," he muttered, kissing her once more, this time, his whole body came down on hers, so he was all hard planes and too-bigness against her soft curves, his hands positioned on either side of her at first before one hand moved to her hips, his fingers fanned wide as he connected with her.

She shivered, a tingle of longing running over her body. The kiss felt like something dangerous and explosive, needs she couldn't explain and had never really known seemed to be completely overtaking her.

The last time she'd been with Jay had been the night Harper had been conceived. She knew because for a long time before and a long time after, she'd resisted sleeping with him. She'd known even then that they were breaking up. But that weekend had been like a crack into the past, his smiles like something from the beginning of their relationship, and the hope she'd nurtured that maybe, just maybe, he'd changed, had ended up with Skye letting her guard down. They'd had sex. He hadn't changed. And worse, she'd ended up pregnant.

Oh, she didn't regret Harper. Not for one single, tiny second. How could she? But Skye wasn't the only one who'd realized things between them were all but over. Jay had known it too, and he'd wanted it not to be the case. So much so, she was almost certain he'd screwed with her birth control. She didn't know how, but she didn't buy his explanation that ‘these things happened'. Going from the way he'd arranged every aspect of her life to keep her under his control, it just made sense that he'd done that too.

Had he thought it would make her stay?

He'd been wrong.

So wrong.

The idea of bringing a child into his orbit had been the trigger that had finally forced her to leave. She'd put up with so much—too much—but no way could she put a child through his sadistic, bullying, emotionally manipulative BS.

"You taste so good," Leandro muttered, almost complaining. It might have been a funny thing to say, but she didn't think so. She'd just been thinking the same thing. She wrenched her mouth free again.

"I don't do this kind of thing," she said honestly, urgently, her heart pounding against her rib cage, her generous breasts straining against the expensive cotton of her work shirt. "I really mean it. No one can know."

"And I really mean it: I am not going to tell anyone." His nostrils flared. And despite the fact she could feel his desire for her quite clearly, he lifted up further. "We don't have to do anything, bella. You're in charge."

Something shifted inside of her. It was as if he'd found the magical key to unlock her deepest-held desires, her biggest needs. Needs that were way beyond the physical. With Jay, she'd never been in charge. Not even in the beginning. He'd chosen the restaurants, he'd selected the days, times, and he'd made it all seem—or maybe she'd imagined it to be—romantic. That behaviour had a name, and a whole psychopathy, she just didn't know it back then.

Love Bombing.

Beware: anyone who seems too good to be true definitely is.

But Leandro was putting the ball in her court, letting her decide what she wanted, and damn it if that wasn't the biggest aphrodisiac of all.

"I don't have long," she said again, surprised she could think so logically at all. "My job…"

"Not a problem," he reassured her, and at the time, she'd thought he meant he didn't intend to take long. She wasn't even bothered by that. Suddenly, she had an urgent, desperate need to be with a man other than Jay, to overwrite her experiences with that man, to start living outside of the box he'd managed to fold her into.

Was this about revenge? Maybe a bit. Maybe a lot. But it was also about Skye reclaiming something that should have been hers all along: autonomy.

She was her own person.

A living, breathing woman who, before Jay, had thought of herself as smart and independent. She could have one night of passionate, meaningless sex without the whole world falling apart.

And so she smiled, a dazzlingly beautiful smile that was so full of certainty, it overcame every doubt either of them might have had, if they'd been thinking more clearly. When they kissed now, it was more than just a kiss. It was a promise.

His mouth ran over hers, his tongue tangling with hers, whilst his hands explored her body, every inch of her, through the fabric of her clothes until that wasn't good enough and he had to touch her. Rushing but careful, he undid the buttons of her shirt, groaning as he pushed it off her to reveal her flat stomach and curved breasts contained by a soft lace bra.

He swore, but didn't pause in his exploration of her body, his hands pushing down her skirt, her underwear, somehow disposing of her sensible flat black shoes with the super soft soles at the same time, so she was naked except for the bra. He came back to it with eyes that were hooded and cheeks slashed a dark colour, and he spoke in Italian, making her wish she'd paid more attention in grade school lessons. Then again, going from his tone, she didn't think any of the words he spoke would have been taught to kids.

His hands curved around her breasts, his breath hissing from his lips as he slid them out of the cups, his eyes locked to her curves before he dropped his dark head forward and took one nipple in his mouth, rolling it with his tongue.

Ecstasy exploded inside of her. She'd had no idea her body could react to something as simple as her nipples being touched and pulled and tasted, but the more he did all of the above, the more her stomach was flooded with fireworks and the heat between her legs became almost unbearable.

"Please," she cried out, her voice just a husk in the room, a throb of desire that came from the very centre of her being. "Please, please," she whimpered again, biting into her lip as he transferred his mouth to her other breast, and then brought a hand between her legs, finding her sex and stroking it slowly at first, torturously slowly, testing her, teasing her, and then moving more quickly, until her cries became louder and faster and more high-pitched with euphoria. And then he stopped, stayed perfectly still, and her next cry was more of a sob because she'd been so close to coming and wanted to, so badly.

"Open the damn door, Leo, or I'll get someone to do it for me."

Leandro's cheeks were still flushed, his body was tight, everything between them hung in a state of suspended animation. But the beautiful bubble their passion had created, the bubble that had somehow sucked Skye in and made her think this was all okay, was beginning to pop. Someone was here. At the door to the room.

She yelped, shaking her head a little. "No one can know," she groaned, and worse, this was a woman's voice. She knew her own situation, but she had no idea about this man's. What if he was married? Engaged? Dating someone? The last thing she needed was to get in the middle of someone else's failing relationship.

"Oh, God," she lifted a hand to her forehead.

"Stay here," he commanded, but she shook her head.

"No. No way."

He reached for his trousers and pulled them up over his bare body, but his arousal made it hard to do the zip. He turned his back a minute, waiting to lose the physical evidence of what they'd been about to do, and Skye took the opportunity to dress as quickly as she could, shoveling her breasts back into the bra, stuffing her arms into the shirt and hoping she fed the right buttons into the adjacent holes. Her underpants were underneath the sofa—she ignored them. There was no time. Leo was already moving towards the door. She yelped again, pulled the skirt up, stuffed her shirt into it, and was conscious of him turning to look at her, his eyes nodding towards the bathroom, indicating she could wait there.

But if she hid, she'd be trapped for as long as this conversation—or whatever—took. So she shook her head tersely, held one finger in the air indicating he should wait, and then pressed her feet into shoes. Her hands were unsteady as she quickly sunk to the carpet, the scene of their almost crime, and found the discarded bottle of chemicals. She sprayed it quickly, her face pale as she worked.

What had she almost just done?

Not the sex part, but the sleeping with a guest of the hotel in the hotel part. Her job meant way too much to her. Not only was it relatively well paid, she got to work with rich celebrities who tipped generously and the tips alone were all going into Harper's college fund. Her boss was understanding of Skye's parenting demands, sympathetic to the fact she was a single mother. She liked her job, she liked the conditions. There was no way she could lose it.

She kept her head lowered, patting the carpet gingerly with the towel, watching as the chemicals seemed to be bringing the wine situation under control, doing her level best not to look at the man she'd just been begging to make love to her.