the skirt flared out in a mermaid style down to the floor. Around her neck she wore a matching blue velvet choker with a diamanté decoration. Her hair was caught up at the sides with silver clasps and rippled down her back in silky waves.
He had a mental image of her lying on the bed wearing only the velvet choker, her creamy skin and luscious curves displayed for his delectation. Desire ran hot and urgent through his veins and he was tempted to turn his vision into reality.
Perhaps Ava could read his mind. ‘I don’t know why you booked a hotel suite with only one bedroom. The deal was for me to be your fake fiancée.’ She walked past him and picked up the phone. ‘I’m going to call reception and ask for a room of my own.’
Giannis crossed the room in two strides and snatched the receiver out of her hand. ‘If you do that, how long do you think it will take for a member of the hotel’s staff to reveal on social media that we don’t share a bed? We are supposed to be madly in love,’ he reminded her.
‘Did you assume I would be your convenient mistress for the next month? You’ve got a damned nerve,’ she snapped.
He considered proving to her that it had been a reasonable assumption to make. Sexual chemistry simmered between them and all it would take was one kiss, one touch, to cause a nuclear explosion. He watched her tongue dart out to moisten her lower lip and the beast inside him roared.
Somehow Giannis brought his raging hormones under control. What was important was that their ‘romance’ gained as much public exposure as possible so that Stefanos Markou believed he was a reformed character preparing to devote himself to marriage and family—the ideals that Stefanos believed in.
Throughout the day Giannis had asked himself why he was going to the lengths of pretending to be engaged, simply to tip a business opportunity in his favour. But the truth was that he needed Markou Shipping’s fleet of ships to enable him to expand his cruise line company into the river-cruising market. The ships could be refitted during the winter and be ready to take passengers early next summer, which would put TGE ahead of its main competitors.
‘We can sort out sleeping arrangements later,’ he told Ava. ‘The car is waiting to take us to the Louvre. Are you ready for our first performance, agápi mou?’
‘I am not your love.’
‘You are when we are out in public.’ He took hold of her arm and frowned when she flinched away from him. ‘You’ll have to do better than that if we are going to convince anyone that our relationship is genuine.’ Impatience flared in him at her mutinous expression. ‘We made a deal and I have carried out my side of it,’ he reminded her. ‘You told me that I would have to trust you, and I did. But perhaps I was a fool to believe your word?’
‘I am completely trustworthy,’ she said in a fierce voice. ‘I will pretend to be your fiancée. But why would anyone believe that you—a handsome billionaire playboy who has dated some of the world’s most beautiful women—have fallen in love with an ordinary, nothing special woman like me?’ She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. ‘What are we going to say if anyone asks how we met?’
He shrugged. ‘We’ll tell them the truth. We met at a dinner party and there was an immediate attraction between us. And, by the way, there is nothing ordinary about the way you look in that dress,’ he growled, his eyes fixed on her pert derrière encased in tight blue velvet when she turned around to check her appearance in the mirror.
‘Sexual attraction is not the same thing as falling in love,’ she muttered.
She was nervous, Giannis realised with a jolt of surprise. If he had been asked to describe Ava he would have said that she was determined and strong—he guessed she’d have to be in her job working with crime victims. But the faint tremor of her mouth revealed an unexpected vulnerability that he could not simply dismiss. For their fake engagement to be successful, he realised that he would have to win her confidence and earn her trust.
He lifted his hand to brush a stray tendril of hair off her face. ‘But mutual attraction is how all relationships begin, isn’t it?’ he said softly. ‘You meet someone and wham. At first there is a purely physical response, an alchemy which sparks desire. From those roots love might begin to grow and flourish.’ His jaw hardened as he thought of Caroline. ‘But it is just as likely to wither and die.’
‘Are you speaking from experience?’ Ava’s gentle tone pulled Giannis’s mind from the past and he stiffened when he saw something that looked worryingly like compassion in her grey eyes. If she knew the truth about him he was sure that her sympathy would fade as quickly as Caroline had fallen out of love with him.
For a fraction of a second he felt a crazy impulse to admit to Ava that sometimes when he saw a child of about four years old he felt an ache in his heart for the child he might have had. If Caroline hadn’t... No. He would not think of what she might have done. There was no point in torturing himself with the idea that Caroline had ended her inconvenient pregnancy after he had told her he’d been to prison. The possibility that his crass irresponsibility when he was nineteen had ultimately resulted in the loss of two lives was unbearable.
Ignoring Ava’s question, he walked across the room and opened the door. ‘We need to go,’ he told her curtly, and to his relief she preceded him out of the suite without saying another word.
* * *
Ava applauded the models as they sashayed down the runway in the magnificent Sculpture Hall of the Musée du Louvre. The venue of the fashion show was breathtaking, and the clothes worn by the impossibly slender models ranged from exquisite to frankly extraordinary. The collection by the Greek designer Kris Antoniadis brought delighted murmurs from the audience, and the fashion journalist sitting in the front row next to Ava endorsed Giannis’s prediction that Kris, as he was simply known, was the next big thing in the fashion world.
‘Of course Kris could not have got this far in his career without a wealthy sponsor,’ Diane Duberry, fashion editor of a women’s magazine, explained to Ava. ‘Giannis Gekas is regarded as a great philanthropist for his support of the Greek people during the country’s recent problems. He set up a charity which awards bursaries to young entrepreneurs trying to establish businesses in Greece. But I don’t know why I am telling you about Giannis when you must know everything about him.’
Diane looked at Giannis’s hand resting possessively on Ava’s knee, and then at the pink sapphire ring on Ava’s finger, and speculation gleamed in her eyes. ‘You succeeded where legions of other women have failed and tamed the tiger. Where did the two of you meet?’
‘Um...we were seated next to each other at a dinner party.’ Ava felt herself flush guiltily even though technically it was the truth.
‘Lucky you.’ Diane winked at her. ‘Who needs a dessert from the sweet trolley when a gorgeous Greek hunk is on the menu?’
Ava was saved from having to think of a reply when the compère of the fashion show came onto the stage and announced that the Young Designer award had been won by the Greek designer, Kris Antoniadis. Kris then appeared on the runway accompanied by models wearing dresses from his bridal collection.
Giannis stood up and drew Ava to her feet. ‘Showtime,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘Just smile and follow my lead.’
Without giving her a chance to protest, he slid his arm around her waist and whisked her up the steps and onto the runway, just as Kris was explaining to the audience how grateful he was to Giannis Gekas for supporting his career. There was more applause and brilliant flashes of light from camera flashes when Giannis stepped forwards, tugging Ava with him.
‘I cannot think of a better place to announce my engagement to my beautiful fiancée than in Paris, the world’s most romantic city,’ he told the audience. With a flourish he lifted Ava’s hand up to his mouth and pressed his lips to the pink sapphire heart on her finger.
He was a brilliant actor, she thought caustically. Her skin burned where his lips had brushed and she wanted to snatch her hand back and denounce their engagement as a