shouldn’t have come back to The Chatsfield, he acknowledged as he headed to the rooftop pool for a swim. He shouldn’t have thought he could handle the memories, the emotions. Sighing, he stripped off his suit in the men’s changing room and headed into the pool area.
The Chatsfield’s swimming pool was one of the highlights of the hotel, an Olympic-size pool on the roof, glassed in on all sides, with a panoramic view of the city. Swimming laps had always been one way Ben liked to relax, to burn off the excess emotion and stress.
The pool was thankfully empty at this late hour, and Ben could see the city stretching out in every direction, sparkling under the night sky. He could make out the Bellevue Palace as well as the iconic Victory Column, and the dark expanse of the Tiergarten now covered in a thin dusting of snow. He’d never been to Berlin before now, and he didn’t think he was going to have much time to see the sights during the two weeks he was here.
Not that he cared. He just wanted to get back to France. To his life.
And if Spencer asks you to open restaurants in all the Chatsfield hotels?
It was a question that had dogged Ben since he’d made the demand of his brother because the truth was he wasn’t even sure he wanted to open restaurants in all of the hotels. He didn’t need the money or the publicity, and the thought of linking himself so closely to The Chatsfields—and to the Chatsfield family—made his gut churn.
You couldn’t go back. Ever. Even if you wanted to.
But did he want to?
Shoving the question aside, Ben dove into the pool. The water felt cool and refreshing and his head started to clear. The tension between his shoulder blades loosened and he did a couple of laps before flipping onto his back and staring up at the domed ceiling as he let his mind empty out.
A door squeaked open and Ben lifted his head from the water; he could only see a pair of trim ankles and curvy calves coming towards the pool. Someone had clearly had the same idea as he had.
He flipped back onto his stomach and started to swim towards the edge. His fifteen minutes of relaxation were clearly over.
He was about a metre from the pool’s side when he saw something in his peripheral vision, too late for him to do anything about it, and then he felt the breath leave his body in a rush as the female guest who had just entered the pool area dove straight into him.
* * *
Olivia felt as if she’d just dived into concrete. Stars danced through her dazed mind and she let out an undignified shriek, her head pounding from the impact, before arms clasped her shoulders like bands of iron.
‘Do you always,’ a familiar, masculine voice asked in disgust, ‘leap before you look?’
Olivia blinked the water from her eyes and shook her wet hair from her face. And stared into the angry, arrogant face of Ben Chatsfield.
His eyes blazed and his cheeks were slashed with colour and for a moment, her mind still dazed, Olivia thought he looked like some ancient water god emerging from the sea, water dripping off his perfectly formed pecs.
Then sanity returned and she started to sputter.
‘I didn’t see anyone in the pool,’ she said, and her sputtering erupted into a coughing fit. She’d swallowed several mouthfuls of pool water when she’d made contact with Ben Chatsfield’s chest.
A chest that was now pressed alarmingly close to hers. Ben was still gripping her by the shoulders, their legs tangled together in the water. Her heart was thudding from the shock of the encounter, and something else as well.
Something she had no intention of acknowledging. In any case, she was coughing too much to say or even think anything.
Ben muttered something under his breath and with one arm under her armpits and across her breasts he started towing her to the side of the pool as if she were unconscious.
‘Just a second...’ she began, and started coughing again.
He hauled himself up onto the pool’s ledge and then unceremoniously hauled her up next to him. She lay slumped against him, his arm around her shoulders, as she attempted to cough up a lung.
Thankfully her coughing finally subsided and she drew in several agonised but much needed breaths. ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled. ‘I must have swallowed some pool water.’
‘Must have,’ Ben agreed tonelessly, and Olivia wondered why, out of all the people in the hotel, she had to dive straight into Ben Chatsfield.
She looked up at him, tried not to notice the water droplets that clung to his eyelashes and his chin...and his chest. Her gaze dropped down of its own accord and she swallowed hard at the sight of Ben Chatsfield’s well-toned six-pack. Nice.
Okay, looking up again. She smiled weakly and Ben smiled back, a cold curving of his mouth that told her she was so busted. Well, fine. A girl could look.
‘What did you mean, do I always leap before I look?’ she demanded, his words coming back to her rather belatedly.
‘Exactly that. You dived into a pool without checking if someone was swimming in it.’
‘I didn’t see you,’ she snapped.
‘Because you didn’t look.’
All right, maybe she hadn’t looked. She’d been tired and distracted and pretty darn grumpy because the first day of the festival had basically sucked. Two interviews cancelled, another reporter claiming she wasn’t interesting enough because her role in the film that was going to be her big breakthrough wasn’t yet confirmed, and she’d learned that twelve of her thirty-two lines had been cut from Blue Skies Forever, the indie film that was being shown at the festival.
And so she hadn’t done all her Girl Scout safety checks before jumping into the pool. Whatever.
‘I meant,’ she asked Ben now, ‘what you meant when you said always. As if you had experience of me jumping you in the pool before.’ Too late she realised what she’d said. ‘I mean, jumping on you.’
‘I know what you meant,’ Ben answered, and Olivia wanted to slap that knowing smirk right off his face. Or maybe kiss him. Both, probably, one after the other. Not good. Ben was out of her league, in a whole lot of ways.
She edged away from him and after a tiny pause Ben slipped his arm from her shoulders. She shivered, and then wished she hadn’t.
‘I said always,’ Ben told her, ‘because you pretty much leaped before you looked yesterday, when you came into my office with all your guns blazing, having made the assumption that I put you in that room on purpose.’
Olivia folded her arms across her chest. She had just remembered that she was wearing a skimpy hot-pink bikini. She’d forgotten to pack a normal swimsuit for exercise, because she’d been so focused on clothes she would be seen in. The wardrobe of a future Hollywood star.
‘I think it was a fair assumption to make,’ she told Ben coolly. ‘In fact, I’m far from convinced that you didn’t do it on purpose.’
Temper flared in Ben’s eyes, quickly tamped down, but even angry, especially angry, he looked hot. ‘Of course you are.’
‘Now what is that supposed to mean?’ she demanded, straightening in affront even as attraction jolted her insides in little lightning streaks. Ben slipped back into the pool, turning to face her with eyes that blazed and a mouth twisted downwards in derision.
‘Just that you’re exactly what you look and sound like, Miss Harrington. A high-maintenance, shallow, self-important wannabe celebrity. And so naturally you would think that the world revolves around you and your family, when in fact I couldn’t care less about the Harringtons, much less which room one of them is put in, in a hotel I’m only managing for two weeks. Goodnight.’
And with