When She Fell for the Billionaire(13)
Luc swore quietly. He recognized the man and knowing how the old stronzo operated, there was nothing accidental about the situation. The old man mumbled something he couldn’t make out and Sabrina smiled in response. This time the old man appeared dumbstruck for a few seconds.
Her smile. It was heart-stopping. Another peculiar English word he understood now. Sabrina Connelly was very bad for his vital organs. Except for one which strained against his pants at the mere sight of her.
He watched her for several minutes, enthralled against his will. The light from the massive chandelier overhead bounced off her hair. Her face had an unguarded expression, so different from this morning at the beach. How could she look so naïve and yet be so…calculating?
A passing hotel staff greeted him and interrupted his study. He nodded in acknowledgement and strode to break up Sabrina’s tête-à-tête with the tycoon. It was time to stake his claim.
She must have sensed his approach because she looked up and turned around slightly. Her smile froze.
“Here is your date now,” the old man said in heavily accented English. His dark eyes were twinkling beneath bushy gray eyebrows. Luca had a feeling the crafty old man knew he had been observing them for quite some time.
Her cheeks turned pink, and Luca was again amazed at her ability to blush. If it weren’t for the fact that she was flirting with another man while waiting for him, he would be convinced she was some shy miss.
“Thanks for keeping her company, Mr. Theodorou,” Luca addressed the man politely. The wily old man noted the coolness in his tone and smirked. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted Sabrina’s slight start of surprise that he knew the man. “I was a bit delayed due to a business call.”
“Never keep a beautiful woman waiting,” Mr. Theodorou admonished lightly with a wag of his knobby finger, “or someone else might snatch her up.”
“I think it’s the other way around. She might snatch someone else up¸” he said, his eyes slanting to Sabrina, who was attracting all male eyes in the vicinity.
Her brow furrowed at his statement.
“As I can’t run,” Theodorou gestured to his wheelchair and flashed Sabrina a besotted smile, “you’ll find I’m very easy to catch, my dear.”
“Only if you want to be caught, I’m sure,” Sabrina replied charmingly, turning her attention back to her new admirer.
The Greek tycoon’s booming laugh resounded in the lobby, at odds with his frail-looking body. “Not only beautiful but witty, too.”
“Are you trying to steal my date under my nose, sir?” Luca said with just the right tone of amusement.
The old man grinned widely. “Do you want to be stolen, Miss Connelly?”
She appeared to give the question some consideration. Was she really going to ditch him in favor of Theodorou, who was as rich as the proverbial Croesius? Luca felt his stomach turning at the thought.
“Can I let you know after our first date?”
Witch! She hadn’t looked at him once since that first moment he had arrived, but here she was flirting brazenly with another man.
“Anytime, my dear, anytime.” The tycoon swiveled his head and looked up at him. “It was nice talking to you, Argenti. I hope to see you around. And you Miss Connelly, be sure to let me know how it turns out.” Theodorou nodded to the silent man in a suit standing a polite distance away. The bodyguard approached the old man and started pushing his wheelchair towards the lobby exit.
“You sure know how to spot them,” Luca murmured after the old man was safely out of earshot.
She frowned, looking puzzled. His lips curled in sardonic amusement.
Luca had done more research on Sabrina Connelly. There had been a photo of her leaving the back exit of the house of the longtime married Hollywood producer while his actress wife was away on a film shoot. The man was twice her age. The next day, the wife filed for divorce and cited ‘a gold-digging third party bitch’ as the reason for the separation.
It galled him to the core that he was attracted to her still, even after knowing she was the kind of woman he despised. It was the same kind of social climbing puttana who had destroyed his parents’ “ideal” marriage a year ago and rocked his faith in the institution. Luca’s dislike for gold diggers was personal. However, for Sabrina Connelly, he was making an exception.
She had him hooked. He’d let her reel him in, made sure she enjoyed her catch for a few days, then he’d jump back into the sea, free as the day before he’d met her. He was disgusted with himself for making fish analogies.
“Excuse me?”
She was pretending she didn’t know whom she had been talking to? Very well. Luca would play along. Just as long as he never forgot what kind of woman she really was, he saw no harm in participating in this harmless charade.