The Silver Bride

She was hiding behind the door, Rowan.' 'Look, it may have looked like I was hiding behind the door,' Stella argued in growing desperation.

'But why would I be hiding? Does that make sense? I'm just a cleaner. I can see I made a mistake coming in here, and I'm sorry.

I'll get out right now—' Without warning, a large brown hand stretched out to close round her narrow wrist and halt her backward drift towards the door.

'You're not going anywhere. What's your name?' 'Stella...I mean, Eleanor Caroline ...what are you doing?' she gasped. But it was too late.

Dior Harlequin had already tugged lose the scarf she had tied around her head. Her silvery pale hair fell around her shoulders in tumbled disarray. He towered over her, easily six foot three.

Feeling threatened by his sheer size, Stella gazed up at him, green eyes locking into fathomless black. Her tummy clenched as if she had dropped from a height, the oddest sensation of dizziness making her head swim and her knees shiver.

His frowning appraisal had become an outright smoldering stare of s.e.x.u.a.l assessment.

'You don't look like any cleaner I've ever met,' he finally breathed in a roughened, accented undertone. 'You meet a lot?' Stella heard herself ask foolishly, but then she had been thrown way off balance by what she had seen in his eyes.

That age-old overs.e.xed male to the female reaction she despised. 'Stella...there is an Eleanor Caroline on the maintenance roster,' the older man he had referred to as Rowan cut in flatly. 'But she's supposed to be working on level eight, and Security hasn't cleared her for this floor.

I'll have her supervisor sent up to identify her.' As the other man relayed that data, the Greek tycoon's hard, dark features tautened.

'No. Get off that phone now. The fewer people who know about this intrusion the better.' Releasing her wrist, he stepped back to swing out a swivel chair. 'Take a seat, Stella.' 'But I—' 'Sit!' he emphasized as if he was dealing with a puppy in dire need of basic training.

Her teeth locking together at that style of address, Stella dropped down, her slim back rigid but her heartbeat still racing. So she had walked in where she shouldn't have. She had apologized.

she had all but groveled, she reflected resentfully. So why the continuing fuss? 'Perhaps you'd care to explain what you're doing on this floor?

Why you came into this particular office and why you chose to stay and eavesdrop behind a door?' Dior Harlequin spelt out with harsh exactitude.

The silence simmered. Momentarily, Stella wondered if bursting into tears would get her off the hook. She met those hard green eyes and her heart skipped a startled beat.

With Dior Harlequin already behaving as if she had committed a criminal offense, honesty now seemed the wisest and safest course. 'I've been having a bit of a problem with this bloke who works late on level eight,' Stella admitted with fierce reluctance. 'What sort of problem?' Rowan prompted.

Dior Harlequin let his intense dark gaze roam with bold intimacy over Stella's small tense figure, lingering at length on the tilted thrust of her b.r.e.a.s.ts defined by the overall and the slender perfection of her legs.