A Deal with Demakis(22)

                Lexi could have kissed the woman. Feeling giddy with pleasure that she didn’t have to chance a heart attack again, she followed the uniformed staff and clicked Nikos’s number on her cell phone.

                “What is it, Ms. Nelson?” His irritated voice came on the other line. “I gave you my number in case of emergencies. Anything else you need, just ask the hotel reception and they will provide it for you.”

                The bubble of her excitement deflated with a tangible hiss. She licked her lips and forced herself to form the words. “The first floor suite...I... Thanks for remembering, Nikos.”

                Silence rumbled down the line, heavy, awkward and utterly embarrassing. “You’re doing it again, Ms. Nelson. Thinking that everyone else in the world is like you. They’re not. I need you alive right now. After that, climb fifty or a hundred floors, I don’t care.”

                “Why are we lolling around here when you were in such a rush to leave New York then?” she said tartly.

                “Because I have a meeting here which I had to postpone to come to get you.”

                And he disconnected the call.

                Lexi stared at her phone, her mouth hanging open. Suddenly she felt like the stupidest woman on the planet for calling him. Especially when he had dumped her unceremoniously in a strange city without so much as an explanation.

                She thumped her forehead with her phone, furious with herself. Fat good thanking him had done her. But neither did she believe him.

                He might be an arrogant, infuriating pain in the butt, but he had a heart, whatever he might like to think.

                Resolving to maintain a distance from him, she made her way toward the doorway that led to the stairs.

                * * *

                Pulling the edges of her robe together, Lexi stumbled out of the shower. Embarrassment, sheer fury, plain terror, cycled through her in a matter of seconds.

                Her robe clinging to her wet skin, she followed the six-foot French woman, who was utterly naked, into the lounge of the suite.

                “Where is Nikos?” the woman said in a delicious French accent.

                So that’s what this was about. “This is not Mr. Demakis’s suite,” Lexi managed, through the shock sputtering through her.

                The woman’s shoulders were thrown back, a perfectly manicured hand on her hip, not an inch of the confidence with which she had simply barged into the shower that Lexi had been occupying, had left Emmanuelle at realizing her mistake.

                Blinking, Lexi shook her head, the utter perfection of the woman’s body etched into her mind. She hurriedly looked around the lavish suite. The woman couldn’t have walked through the street and into the foyer naked, could she? Though with a body like hers, no one would blame her.

                Spotting a towel, Lexi threw it at her and continued her search again.

                She breathed in relief as her gaze fell on a small, silken red heap on the cream leather couch.

                She pulled it up just when the door to the suite opened and in walked the man she wanted to strangle. With a keycard in his hand as if he owned the hotel. “I don’t believe this. Is the whole world just allowed to barge into my suite?”

                His gaze moved from her face to the red silk dress in her hand and then toward Emmanuelle whose slender frame was hidden from the entrance.