TAKE MY BREATH AWAY

          Nikolas Adamos glanced around him with irritation. It had been a mistake to come here. A mistake to indulge Angelica. He was only in London for a twenty-four-hour stop-over, and when he’d got out of the day-long meeting in the City and returned to his hotel suite, Nikolas had simply wanted to find her waiting for him.          Then, once they had made polite and empty inquiries about each other’s well-being, Nikolas would’ve done what his fundamental interest in Angelina was: have sex with her.          Instead, he had ended up in this overcrowded art gallery, bored rigid and surrounded by babbling idiots, among whom Angelica was doing her thing. At this moment, she was giving full descriptions of the art market and the financial worth of the artist on display.          He couldn’t have c

          She’d gone back to blabbing. The man lowered himself lithely into the seat next to her and reached for his seat belt with a fluid movement. He cast a frowning look at Cheryl.“My… what?”“Your girlfriend. The one I spiled the juice over…”          His eyes cleared.“She’s not my girlfriend.”          He said the word as if it were deeply alien to him like he just met the woman on the streets and decided to take her with him at the party. Something lifted in Cheryl. Something she knew was quite pointless, but it did all the same.          Wonderful! That bitchy snob hadn’t been his girlfriend. Still, it wouldn’t matter if she was, anyway!      

          The ‘somewhere quieter and private’ that Nikolas had promised was the dining room of his suite. Cheryl’s eyes had widened when she’d seen the view, but she had not objected or said anything, simply stared out over the river and the shore beyond.          Nikolas came up behind her. His hand rested lightly and very casually on her shoulder while explaining her the view. Through the thin material of her blouse, Cheryl felt warm beneath his touch. And since he felt her quite startled, Nikolas kept his contact brief.          He stepped away, feeling a wry smile tugging at his mouth as his eyes flickered over her rearview. She had called her uniform ‘stupid’. But Nikolas had another word for it and it wasn’t one he would use in front of her. Not without pushing her away

          Nikolas turned to glance at her again. She was leafing through a glossy magazine now, her head slightly bowed and her lovely profile exposed to him, and he let his eyes linger a moment. Yes, she was different indeed.          And not just in looks and style. In personality too. Cheryl was quiet, for a start. She didn’t try to talk to him, to make sophisticated conversation, or demands of him. She simply gave a fleeting smile, almost shy, her eyes only briefly meeting his, before drawing away as if she wasn’t sure whether to look at him. Nor did she seem, like all the other women he knew, to relish and revel in the attentions of other men.          All the women he had selected for his leisure hours had always known how prized they were and had taken it for granted that male eyes would be drawn to them. Cheryl was

          Nikolas brought his thoughts back to the present. In the meantime, he would enjoy taking her to ‘La Scala’ tomorrow night and enjoy even more seeing her in yet another exquisite evening gown.“Tomorrow,” he announced, “you must go and visit the boutiques on Via Montenapoleone. You’d find every single famous fashion designer shop there. Your mission will be to buy a gown suitable for the opera at the most important Italian opera houses.”“Really? Are we going to ‘La Scala’?” she exclaimed and, in her eyes, Nikolas could see pure joy.“Have you ever been there?” he asked.“Unfortunately, never… My father loved opera… A lot. This was one of his many dreams. He never saw it coming true,” she whispered and stopped.          This was t