CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

T HAT THOUGHT WAS still front and centre in his head the following morning when he strode down the aisle of his private jet and he felt a ripple of satisfaction as he saw Sydney. She was sitting in one of the cream leather seats, that gorgeous dark red hair pulled up into one of those half-up, half-down hairstyles with a darker red ribbon, her face determinedly turned towards the window.

But she knew he was there. He could tell by the slight stiffening of her shoulders.

No doubt she was annoyed with him because he had deliberately kept her waiting for just under an hour, only rolling out of bed when Stefan, the driver he’d sent to collect Sydney, had called to let him know they had arrived at the airfield.

‘Sorry, darling. I completely forgot the time,’ he lied.

Now she looked up at him, slowly, reluctantly, like a prisoner of war greeting her captor, and he felt a sting of wounded pride because, yes, the alternative was being arrested but, still, he was Tiger McIntyre. Most women fell over their high heels to catch his eye but this one looked at him as if he were something that had crawled out from under a rock.

He dropped down into the seat beside her, enjoying the glint in her narrowed eyes as she moved her legs away in one seamless motion. It was a challenge he couldn’t resist and he caught her hand and lifted it to his mouth, feeling immense satisfaction as he felt her surprise and then anger. Payback, he thought, for the day before. For the night he’d spent tossing restlessly in his bed thanks to the memory of her soft curves and small, stunned face intruding on his sleep.

It was a new experience for him, this incessant pulse of hunger, and one that wasn’t restricted to his dreams, he realised as she angled her body away from his and his eyes followed the movement hungrily. He gritted his teeth. He had no idea why she affected him so. She was a thief and a liar and had yet to show any remorse. By rights he should despise her, and yet he couldn’t remember feeling so out of control with a woman.

It was one of the reasons he’d kept her waiting. To prove that he was the one in charge of both the situation and himself. Unlike his father, he was not going to be buffeted about by his fascination for some random woman.

‘I’ll make it up to you,’ he murmured.

‘No need,’ she said, smiling stiffly. ‘I was perfectly happy sitting here on my own.’

‘That’s what I love about you. Any other woman would be bitching about having to wait but you turn it into a positive,’ he said softly.

‘Excuse me, Mr McIntyre, Ms Truitt.’ It was Carole, one of the stewards. ‘If you could put your seat belts on?’

‘Of course.’ Letting go of Sydney’s hand, he watched her buckle up, liking how the movement made her red hair shimmer beneath the overhead lights.

His pulse gave a jerk as the jet began to rumble down the runway. This was it. He could still stop this. And he should stop it. Sydney Truitt was bad news and trouble all tied up with a bow, metaphorically and literally.

Of their own accord, his eyes flicked to the bow on the back of her head, because all he wanted to do was tug that ribbon loose. Maybe then she would try to kiss him again as she had yesterday, he thought, watching her pale fingers tighten around the armrest as the plane lifted away from the ground.

And just like that, it was too late to do anything.

Twenty minutes later they were at cruising altitude and it was clear that any assumption that this arrangement would be happening on his terms was looking a tad premature.

Yes , Sydney smiled warmly at the stewards and answered their questions in that husky, precise way of hers that he seemed to find so fascinating, but the moment they were unobserved, she would retreat back into silence and present that profile of hers to him like a queen on a coin instead of the thief and the liar that she was.

‘Are you hungry?’ He didn’t wait for her answer, just inclined his head slightly towards the hovering air steward. ‘Good morning, Adam. I’d like three eggs, sunny side up, four rashers of bacon and an espresso to follow, and Ms Truitt will have the same. Aside from the coffee,’ he added. ‘She prefers an americano.’

Sydney’s head jerked up and he thought she was going to say she wasn’t hungry or that she didn’t eat bacon or eggs, but instead she stared at him, two small lines furrowing her smooth forehead. ‘How do you know how I drink my coffee?’

He shrugged. ‘Intuition.’

That was a lie.

After she’d delivered his lunch and they’d had that strangely charged encounter, he had found his gaze drawn to her again and again throughout the afternoon. At one point he had wandered casually over to stand by the glass so that he could watch her return from the coffee run, her face scrunched with concentration as she made her way across the office. Even at that distance he could tell the contents of the cups from their height and colour and she had distributed the tall, skinny lattes in their cream beakers to her colleagues but kept the shorter black beaker containing an americano for herself.

‘Intuition?’ She stared at him suspiciously, not sure whether to believe him or not.

But why did it matter if she did or didn’t? He’d never cared before what other people thought about him. With a father like his he’d had to force himself not to care, which was not easy when Gerry McIntyre was the punchline of so many jokes.

Tiger felt his jaw tighten. But he’d had the last laugh.

Taking on the name callers, calling out each and every person who thought he was as weak and dupable as his father and making it painfully and unquestionably clear to them that was not the case.

He had never looked back. But then there was no reason to do so. Everything behind him was lost or wrecked. His mother had died before he could remember her, then his grandmother had followed less than a year later. Now his father was dead too and his childhood home was a derelict shell.

All that remained was the business, and that would have gone too if he hadn’t single-handedly turned it around. It hadn’t been easy. On the contrary, he had earned his stripes. It was during that period of his life that he had cemented both his nickname and his reputation for ruthlessness, despatching his rivals with a speed and savagery that had left him prowling the corporate jungle almost alone so that now he was free to make the rules, not just bend them to his will.

And as the apex predator he had got used to a lot of scraping and sycophancy.

That had changed yesterday when he had generously offered this tightly wound woman sitting beside him the opportunity to be his ‘girlfriend’ for a week and instead of biting off his hand she had more or less told him to shove his offer where the sun didn’t shine.

Such a thing had never happened before. Only, instead of hurling her to the wolves, he had doubled down, astonished and intrigued by her defiance and by the pale curve of her jaw as she’d lifted her chin to meet his gaze, because, truly, it was so alien for anyone to talk to him in that way. Which was no doubt the reason she had this effect on him.

Gauzy rays of early morning sunlight were slanting through the window onto Sydney’s face and, taking that as permission to follow, he let his gaze move over her features.

She was undeniably beautiful with that red hair, dark like damp fox fur, curling over her collarbone and that matching flush of colour on those cut-glass cheekbones. The soft pink bow of her mouth was nothing short of perfection.

But instead of yesterday’s office armour she was wearing black gingham capri pants, a white blouse flecked with tiny yellow flowers and low-heeled taupe-coloured sandals. His gaze steadied on her toenails, which were painted a soft, pale pink. Smart-casual, he’d said, and she was definitely erring towards the more casual end of smart-casual, but she was all the more luminous and fascinating for that.

‘Have you been to Italy before?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘But you have been on a plane?’ he persisted, suddenly remembering how she had clutched the armrest during take-off.

‘Yes, of course. But I’ve never been to Europe.’ She gave him a light gleam of a smile that knocked him sideways until he realised that she was smiling at Carole, who had arrived to tell them that their food was ready.

As he sat down at the table, his pulse skipped a beat as he realised that it was the first time he had eaten breakfast with a woman on his own since his grandmother died.

Like everything he did, that was a conscious decision.

He knew most people would think that dining together was the most intimate of meals and it was in the sense that fine food, low lighting and alcohol could and often did lead to sex.

But for him, sex was an end in itself. It might happen more than once. It usually did, he conceded. And then afterwards, he got up, ostensibly to shower because showering gave him a reason to get out of bed, then got dressed and left because staying over could suggest, not unreasonably, a desire to take things to the next level and he had never wanted to do that. Never wanted there to be any confusion about the kind of relationship he was offering, which was mutually satisfying but always impermanent. Sharing breakfast with a woman would simply be a humbling reminder of the mistake he’d made, the risk he’d taken. So, breakfast à deux was never an option.

His eyes moved to the woman beside him. But of course, Sydney was different. He had to eat with her so it didn’t count. And anyway, it wasn’t real. This was role-play with the added benefit that he was not just starring in but directing the production. This was nothing like one of his father’s affairs, because there was absolutely no risk whatsoever that he would end up marrying her.

‘You must have been to Vegas.’ Every second person at the test plant in California seemed to have visited Sin City, either for stag or hen dos or as a consolation prize after a messy divorce.

‘Vegas?’ Something flickered across her face, an expression he couldn’t quite place. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, I went there once.’

She glanced past his shoulder almost as if she was bored by the conversation, which was another new sensation for him. Or at least one that he couldn’t remember happening since first grade.

Sydney felt everything inside her tip and roll sideways as if she were a capsizing boat. A shiver ran over her skin.

She had been to Las Vegas once, but she never allowed herself to think about it. Not because what happened in Vegas, stayed in Vegas. But because who would want to remember the place where they made the biggest mistake of their life?

It was hard to remember it now. So much time had passed. Mostly, though, it hurt to remember the girl she’d been back then. Younger, yes, but also full of hope for a future that would be different from the kind of life all other Truitts in living memory had led. She would have a husband with a steady job. A partner with principles and a clarity of purpose.

Her fingers pressed against the smooth, pale, puckered skin on her arm. Unfortunately, his purpose had not been to cherish and honour her but to ‘correct’ her deficiencies. It had taken a month after their wedding before he’d had his first meltdown and thrown his plate across the kitchen because she’d put condiments on the table.

She felt Tiger’s steady gaze on her face and realised that she had no idea how much time had passed since she had spoken or even if he had replied.

Fortunately, Carole returned at that moment to serve their food and she was able to legitimately turn away from him.

The rest of the flight passed surprisingly quickly. She had been slightly concerned that Tiger would want to keep on sharpening his claws on her, but, perhaps because he had eaten, he merely made a profuse and completely insincere apology and then opened his laptop and worked for the rest of the flight.

He worked hard. Harris Carver was right about that. Although that didn’t absolve him of all his rule-breaking and entitlement.

Still, it was a relief not to be the focus of that dark gold gaze that saw things she needed to keep hidden. Instead, she watched a film, read some of her book and wondered after roughly every third page how his ‘real’ girlfriends put up with being treated in such a cavalier fashion.

Money probably. But then she was only doing this because she needed something from him too. So how was she different from them?

Nibbling her thumbnail, she listed off all the ways she could think of. Firstly, there was no actual relationship. No trust. No history. No hopes. They didn’t even like each other and obviously there was no intimacy.

Her pulse stalled, her memory rewinding like a car spinning on black ice to that moment in his office when she’d almost kissed him.

She hadn’t forgotten it. She had tried to, of course, but it seemed to have burned itself into her brain. Thankfully, it was probably a common enough occurrence for Tiger to have dismissed it from his mind but, glancing up, she felt a different shiver scamper through her body. Instead of looking at the laptop screen, he was staring at her in that intent way of his, his pupils flickering. Was he remembering it too?

It didn’t matter one way or the other, she told herself firmly.

She couldn’t change the past. She knew that better than anyone. But you could choose how to live your life, make decisions about which risks were worth taking and which would be avoided, and kissing Tiger fell unequivocally in the second category.

An hour later, the jet landed with barely a shudder on the runway at the private airfield on the Italian mainland.

There was a car waiting for them on the runway and she knew there was a bridge across the lagoon so she had assumed that they would drive into the city but, after twenty minutes, the driver turned off the main road and she saw the shimmer of water.

‘What’s happening?’

Tiger glanced over at her. ‘We’re swapping onto a boat.’

As explanations went it was minimal but there was no time to question him further. The car had already come to a stop, and now the driver was opening the door. It was a short walk to a covered jetty and then Tiger was helping her into a glossy, wooden speedboat.

He sat down beside her, letting his leg graze against hers in a way that was without doubt deliberate, but she was tired now. It had been a long day and the air was cool and his thigh was warm so she could reasonably allow herself to stay where she was. Leaning back against the plush leather upholstery, she watched eagerly for her first glimpse of Venice.

All she knew about the city was from the movies and it felt odd seeing a place so familiar for the first time rising out of the water. But even at night and at a distance it was mesmerisingly beautiful.

‘Come si sente suo cugino, Angelo? Ben preparato, spero?’

She blinked as Tiger leaned forward and began speaking fast, fluent Italian to the driver. He caught sight of her expression, and his mouth curved up at one corner.

‘His cousin is taking part in the gondolino race this year. I was just asking him if he was feeling ready.’

Tiger talking to the driver of the boat in Italian was distracting enough but when that was combined with the way his hair was being blown in the wind and the glint in his eyes, it was a moment before she realised that the city was fading into the distance.

Her heart thudded against her ribs. ‘What’s happening? Is there a problem?’

Dropping back down onto the seat beside her, he shook his head. ‘No problem.’

‘But surely the hotel is that way.’

‘What hotel?’

She blinked. ‘The hotel we’re staying at.’

‘We’re not staying in a hotel. I don’t like the crowds and, besides, I have a villa here.’ His mouth did that curving thing again and she felt it thump through her in time to her heart as he corrected himself. ‘Not here in the city. It’s on one of the other islands in the lagoon.’

Sydney stared at him, her head spinning. She had assumed, wrongly it turned out, that they would be staying in a hotel surrounded by staff and other guests. But that wasn’t the case because he had a villa.

Of course he did.

And there was not much point in worrying about it now, she thought as the speedboat accelerated. Finally, the driver shouted something over his shoulder and the boat slowed to a crawl. Her heart gave a thump as Tiger turned towards her and said softly, ‘Just remember, you’re my girlfriend and you’re madly in love with me.’

There was no right response to that statement, or none that she could think of, but she didn’t need to, because they were pulling up alongside a wooden jetty that lit up as they got closer. A young man wearing smart shorts and a black polo shirt stepped forward to pick up their cases.

‘ Bentornato , Signor McIntyre, e benvenuti , Signorina Truitt. I hope you had a pleasant journey.’

Tiger took her hand again to help her off the boat and this time he didn’t let go, but she was expecting that. It was incredibly quiet after the thump of the boat, but it was quieter even than that. Almost as if this were a desert island, not a playground for wealthy tourists.

They were walking so swiftly that she had only the briefest glimpse of the villa—large, three storeys, with lots of arched windows—and then they were inside and a middle-aged woman with sleek dark hair stepped forward to greet them.

‘This is Silvana. She doesn’t speak much English. Most of the staff don’t. It means I have to practise my Italian.’

‘What about the other tourists? Are they just Italian?’

‘There are no other tourists. This is my island.’

Of course it was.

He was walking as he talked and she let him lead her upstairs. ‘You can have the guided tour tomorrow, but this is our room,’ he added, so casually that it took a moment for the implication of his words to hit home.

And then everything lurched inside her.

Sydney’s eyes narrowed and Tiger felt the air sharpen between them.

‘Our room?’ She frowned.

‘Yes, darling. Our room,’ he repeated. Yet another thing he had never had to do before. He sensed rather than saw Silvana turn. Moments later he heard the door click shut.

‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ Sydney snapped, her soft mouth curving into a snarl that revealed small white even teeth. She tugged her hand free, her body rigid with fury and outrage.

‘I could ask you the same thing,’ he said mildly, and with what was an admirable amount of restraint given that they were alone and he knew exactly what it felt like to feel her body against his.

‘Meaning?’ Her hands curled into fists by her sides.

‘You’re supposed to be my girlfriend, remember?’

‘Only in public.’ She waved her hand wildly to encompass all four corners of the room. ‘We’re not in public here.’

‘You and I have a deal,’ he said, adopting a soothing tone that was designed to do the opposite of soothe. Because, frankly, why was he having to explain himself? Again? ‘I gave you a choice and the choice you made was obviously going to include us sharing a room. Surely you understood that?’

Her hands clenched and unclenched by her sides.

‘Why obviously? We’ve only just started seeing one another. Maybe I have strict parents so I’ve insisted on separate rooms?’

Separate rooms? For a moment he was stunned by her suggestion. It had literally never happened before, and in this instance, it couldn’t.

The reason she was here, the only reason in fact, was so that he would have a partner. Having a beautiful woman on his arm was part of his brand. Like the watch he wore and the handmade suits and even his nickname. It was his armour. All of it was designed to intimidate, to discourage people from getting too close, because everyone had their own agenda, particularly women.

He switched his gaze to Sydney’s face. ‘And what exactly do you imagine everyone is going to think about that?’

‘Exactly what you tell them to think, I expect,’ she said, and he felt the huskiness in her voice pulse in all the wrong places. ‘After all, the only opinion that matters on that subject, on any subject, is yours. And it’s not just an opinion, is it, Mr McIntyre?’ She lifted his chin. ‘It’s more of a directive.’

He laughed then. Partly to cover up his astonishment at being bested by her because, damn, she was smart, and she was right too, even though it pained him to admit it. And partly, and this was even more astonishing, because he was enjoying himself.

In the space of forty-eight hours she had ignored and interrupted him, defied and challenged him and now she was making him laugh.

He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had done that.

Not because he didn’t find things amusing. Despite what most people thought, he had a sense of humour, but laughing meant you were relaxed, and being relaxed would require him on some level to let down his guard and he had never done that with any woman because there was a risk that he might turn into his father if he did so.

But Sydney was different. This ‘relationship’ was different. He didn’t have to worry about things getting out of hand or being misinterpreted. They had a deal, and so he could relax.

Which must be why this felt more real than any of the so-called relationships he’d had in the past.

And maybe him laughing like that caught her off guard or perhaps it was just the sudden break in the tension between them, but her mouth was pulling at the corner and he was suddenly desperate to see the smile that was trying to break free.

‘That’s how it works,’ he agreed, and he had that same sudden intense need to touch her just as he’d had back in his office. He reached out to touch her face—

Her eyes snapped wide open, and she took an unsteady step back, and for a moment she just stared at him in the taut silence that filled the room.

‘Unless,’ she said at last, her voice a light taunt, ‘you were simply bragging. Or projecting. Is that why you suggested this charade? Because you’re not the man you pretend to be?’

He wasn’t enjoying himself now. Her words had hit home.

Which was ironic, as he hadn’t had a home since he was four years old when his grandmother had died and he’d moved back to live with his father. From then he had felt like a guest, and often not a welcome one. His heart thumped against his ribs. But Gerry had been oblivious because Gerry had recently fallen in love again. So Tiger had decided that he wanted no part of love. That love was blind, and it was dangerous.

But now this woman, this thief, this imposter, had got past his carefully constructed walls. And he had let her, invited her in no less. He felt a rush of fury with himself, but mostly with Sydney for turning him into a stranger. For making him feel like the kind of stupid, susceptible man he’d sworn never to become.

‘You’re getting confused, Sierra ,’ he said coolly. ‘You see, I’m perfectly clear about who I am. But maybe I didn’t make it clear enough to you, so let me rectify that right now.’

Reaching into his trouser pocket, he pulled out the flash drive and held it up between his fingers.

‘I am the man standing between you and a long prison sentence. So if I say jump, you jump. Real high. And you keep on jumping until I say stop.’

Silence.

‘Do you like threatening people?’ she said finally.

No, he thought, his chest pinching as he stared down at her. She looked as though she was bracing herself just as she had in his office and he didn’t like how that made him feel. Didn’t like that he was making her feel that way.

It didn’t help that those clothes made her look younger than she had yesterday. He might even have said vulnerable, if her chin hadn’t tilted up pugnaciously.

It was enough to make him come to his senses.

‘Do you like stealing?’ he countered, severe suddenly, although he was far more distracted by the flags of colour on her cheeks than was sensible.

Another silence.

Damn it. He glanced round the bedroom, his spine taut with frustration. This was not what he had imagined. Then again, he hadn’t actually given much thought to how it would work in reality, just signed off on the concept.

‘I’m not sure what you were expecting to happen.’

‘Don’t do that.’ Her voice was hoarse when she answered and her eyes shimmered with a heat that he wanted to immerse himself in. ‘Don’t try to make me out to be the problem here. This was your idea. You’re not going to make me responsible for your lack of forward planning.’

He stared at her, his teeth on edge. It wasn’t lack of forward planning that had brought them to this moment, but arrogance and past experience. To put it another way, he couldn’t remember the last time a woman had not wanted to share his bed because there had never been one.

‘Look, the bed is big enough that we don’t have to interact.’

His body tensed painfully as his brain began to offer up a slideshow of several possible permutations of what interacting with Sydney might look like.

‘It’s not just the size of the bed. It’s the fact that you’ll be in it. There isn’t going to be an “interaction” of that sort between us.’ Wide brown eyes accompanied that dismissive statement, but the sudden splashes of high colour on her cheeks told a different story and he remembered that shimmering, explosive moment they’d shared in his office back in New York.

She was stubborn, almost as stubborn as he was. She was also out of her depth and she didn’t have his stamina for fighting her corner. More importantly, he could see her pulse hammering against the pale skin on her throat and that glitter in her eyes.

‘Nothing is going to happen. Unless you want it to,’ he added, because he could still remember her soft, stunned gaze and the way her fingers had splayed against his arm. And he was also arrogant enough to assume that she would be no different from any other women in his life.

Her pupils flared. ‘Then I hope you enjoy waiting because I will never want you.’

Wrong, he thought, and he wanted to prove that, to yank her against him and finish what had started in his office. Instead, he took a step closer, close enough that he could see her pulse fluttering down her throat.

‘And I hope you enjoy sleeping on the right side of the bed, but if you don’t, then I’m afraid you’ll have to choose between the floor, the couch or the bathtub because while you’re here with me, this is your bedroom, and this subject is now closed.’

She stared up at him in silence, and he felt a tick of irritation.

‘Right, I suggest we go and get something to eat.’ What now? He broke off, frowning as she shook her head.

‘I don’t want anything to eat. I’m tired. I want to go to sleep.’

‘You can’t go to sleep,’ he said impatiently. ‘It’s only four p.m. in New York. Plus, you’ve missed a meal.’

‘I don’t care.’ There was strain in her voice now but with that same storm in her eyes as before. ‘I want to go to sleep.’

‘Fine. Have it your way. Just don’t blame me when you wake up and can’t get back to sleep, because that’s what will happen. And when it does, I suggest you think long and hard about how you’re going to make this arrangement between us work. Unless, of course, you’d prefer to take your chances with the police, which, frankly, I wouldn’t recommend, but given you seem determined to do the opposite of whatever I suggest, knock yourself out.’

Sydney held her breath as Tiger spun round and stalked past her, and the walls shuddered as he slammed the door behind him, and then it was over. He was gone.

She was alone.

She was shaking inside. Not from fear any more, although it was not fear of him but of the idea of sharing a bed with a stranger. Now, though, she felt frustrated. He was impossible. Unreasonable. Thoughtless. And she was stupid for thinking this could ever work.

And for not thinking about the possible sleeping arrangements for their week together. How had she not thought about that?

Mainly because back in New York, and even on the way over to the island, she had been trying so hard to believe that none of this was happening that she hadn’t allowed herself to think that far. Her eyes fixed on the bed. Because if she’d thought about ‘this’ she would never have been able to do what was needed.

As she stared at the bed, her mouth felt suddenly dry. It was a very big bed but the idea of sharing it with Tiger made her heart thud painfully hard inside her chest. What did he wear in bed? And what if they moved while they were sleeping and ended up touching?

That moment in his office reared up inside her, shimmering bright and tactile, and she was flushed with the heat of it, skin tingling, breasts aching and heavy. No, she thought, her pulse scrambling for a footing. That wasn’t real. Whatever she had felt then was just a combination of gravity and panic and proximity.

Wasn’t it?

And then, quite suddenly, she felt tired, the have-to-sit-down-before-I-fall-down kind of tired that made thinking impossible. She needed to sleep, and now, and, walking over to the bed, she pulled back the cover and climbed in, her eyes closing like shutters as her brain powered down to silence.

Tiger had been right, Sydney thought four hours later as she woke in the darkness and stared blearily at the time on her phone screen. It was three a.m.

Three a.m. here but nine p.m. in New York, which was no doubt why she had never felt more wide awake. Or hungrier.

Except that wasn’t true. There had been frequent days with Noah when food had been a privilege, not a right.

But Noah wasn’t here. Nor was Tiger. She had known that maybe even before her eyes had snapped open. Which must mean he had decided to sleep in another room. She felt what must be relief only it felt oddly almost like disappointment. Or hunger, she told herself firmly as her stomach rumbled loudly. She reached over to switch on the bedside lamp and she sat up, blinking into the light.

Why was she so hungry? They had eaten lunch and had cakes and coffee in the afternoon, but not enough, apparently.

Maybe a glass of water might help. Her throat tightened because she didn’t want to do that. Having a glass of water would mean accepting that food was not an option. It would mean that Noah was still inside her head, controlling her, crushing her, and that wasn’t an option either.

She wasn’t some cowed prisoner; she was Tiger McIntyre’s girlfriend. Or at least that was what everyone believed.

Heart pounding, she threw back the covers and realised she was still fully clothed. Her bags had been unpacked and the contents neatly placed in the walk-in wardrobe. Ignoring the beautiful shirts hanging from the rail, she found the T-shirt she wore to sleep in, stripped, then pulled it over her head.

Back in the bedroom, she picked up the luxurious, quilted bathrobe that was artistically draped over a beautiful linen-covered armchair. It felt glorious, she thought as she wrapped the belt tightly around her waist, soft and thick but light, like being enveloped in a cloud.

The next step was to go downstairs and, not giving herself time to think, she stalked across the room and opened the door. There was nobody there. Obviously, because it was three o’clock in the morning, but there were table lamps lit and she made her way downstairs.

Having not had the ‘tour’, she had no idea where the kitchen was, but it was the first room she found, which seemed like a good sign. There was no sign of a fridge, but then a house this big would surely have a larder.

It did.

Sydney stared around the regimented rows of condiments and snacks and jars of pasta and flour and grains. Her stomach rumbled appreciatively. It was an Aladdin’s cave of food, teeming with every possible ingredient and treat.

And there was a cavernous fridge. Tentatively, she pulled on the handle. Oh, goodness, it had a door within a door so that you could see inside without opening it. She licked her lips as her eyes snagged on a plate of salad with tomatoes and bread and olives.

This would be perfect, she thought, opening the second door to retrieve the dish, then shutting the fridge doors and turning—

She gasped and almost dropped the plate.

Tiger was standing there, laptop in hand, his body blocking the doorway to the larder. ‘You know, this is becoming a habit with you. First you try to steal my IP, now you’re taking my panzanella.’