His Mistress for a Million by Trish Morey Page A

inches when his palm slammed it shut. ‘You’re wrong!’
    She turned to protest but the words sizzled and burned in the heat she saw coming from his eyes. ‘How much will it take, then? How much do you want? I thought you didn’t care about money, but you’re just like the rest, one whiff and you want more. You’re just a better actress. Which tells me you’re exactly the woman I need.
    ‘So how much, sweet, talented Cleo? How much to secure your services for a month? One hundred thousand clearly isn’t enough, so let’s say we double it. Two hundred thousand pounds. Four hundred thousand of your dollars. Would that be enough?’
    The numbers went whirling around her brain, so big they didn’t mean anything, so enormous she couldn’t get a grip on them. Four hundred thousand dollars for a month of pretending to be Andreas’ companion? Was she nuts to even think about giving that up? She could go home, pay back her nanna, pay for repairs to the farm’s leaking roof that her mother always complained about but there was never enough money to repair, and she’d still have enough left over to buy a place of her own.
    More than that, she’d be able to go home and hold her head up high. And for once, just once in her life, she didn’t have to be a loser.
    But could she do it? Could she pretend to be this man’s lover and all that entailed and simply walk away in the end?
    She shook her head trying to work it all out. She truly didn’t know. If she just had some time to think it all out. ‘Andreas, I—’
    ‘Five hundred thousand pounds! One million of your dollars. Will that be enough to sway your mind?’
    She gasped. ‘You have to be kidding. That’s an obscene amount of money.’
    ‘Not if it gets me what I want. And I want you, Cleo. Say yes.’
    She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, only one note of clarity spearing through the fog of her brain.
    One million dollars.
    How could she walk away from that? It was unthinkable, unimaginable, like winning the lottery or scooping the pools. And she’d even get to live on Santorini for a whole month, the island she’d longed to visit, the island Kurt had only talked about visiting for a day or two. Wasn’t that some kind of justice? She licked her lips, once more feeling her hold on the world slipping, swaying. ‘Just for a month, you say?’
    The corners of his mouth turned up. ‘Maybe even less if you play your cards right.’
    ‘But definitely no sex. Just pretending. Is that right?’
    A shadow passed across his eyes and was just as quickly gone. ‘If that’s the way you want it.’
    ‘That’s exactly the way I want it. No sex. And in one month I go home.’
    ‘No questions asked. First class. All expenses paid.’
    She swallowed against a throat that felt tight and dry andagainst a fear that he might soon discover he was making the mistake of his life and she’d be booted out with the week. ‘I don’t know if I’m the right person for the job.’
    He slipped the pack from her shoulder and dropped it on the ground beside them before she’d noticed, relieving her of the weight on her back, but not even touching the fear in her gut. ‘You’ll be perfect. Any other questions?’
    She shook her head. How could she expect him to make sense of anything going on in her mind when she couldn’t unscramble it herself? ‘No. Um, at least…No, I don’t think so.’
    He smiled then, as he curved one hand around her neck, his fingers warm and gentle on her skin and yet setting her flesh alight. ‘Then what say we seal this deal with a kiss?’
    She gasped and looked up at him in shock. That message cleared a way through the fog in her brain as if it had been shot from a cannon. ‘We could always just shake hands.’
    ‘We could,’ he agreed, both hands weaving their magic behind her head, his thumbs tracing the line of her jaw while he studied her face. ‘But given we will no doubt have to get used to at least this, we might as well start