CHAPTER ONE
‘WHATCANIget you, sir?’ The barman dropped the cloth he had been pushing in a lacklustre fashion across the counter and stood straighter when he saw Dimitris. ‘I hope you don’t mind me mentioning that you look a lot like the celebrity chef Dimitris Kyriakou.’
‘I have been told there is a resemblance,’ Dimitris murmured drily. He had learned to live with the public recognition that fame had brought him, but this evening he was preoccupied and not inclined to chat to the barman. ‘Give me a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses, will you.’
‘Certainly, sir. If you are a hotel guest I can arrange for the champagne to be delivered to your room.’
‘I’ll take it with me.’ Dimitris smiled, but his eyes were hard. ‘I’m planning a little surprise.’ He masked his impatience while the barman placed two flutes on a tray, scooped ice into a bucket and took a bottle of champagne from the fridge.
‘Are you celebrating a special event?’ the young man asked chattily.
‘Something like that.’
If his sister Eleni’s suspicions about her fiancé were proved correct she had vowed to break off her engagement to Matt Collier. In Dimitris’s opinion it would be a cause for celebration. He’d made some discreet enquiries and learned that Collier had a reputation for cheating on his previous girlfriends.
Eleni deserved to marry a man who would be a faithful and loving husband. Dimitris felt a pang when he thought of his parents’ happy marriage before their lives were cut tragically short. He had agreed to help Eleni discover if Collier had a mistress because it was his duty to take care of his younger sister. After all, it was his fault that she had been orphaned when she was ten years old.
Dimitris was fourteen when their parents had been killed and Eleni had sustained life-changing injuries in a car accident. Amazingly he had escaped from the wreckage virtually unscathed. In the mirror behind the bar he could see the faint white line of the scar that ran down his cheek and was partially hidden by the dark stubble on his jaw.
Although his physical scar had faded he was still haunted by his guilt that he had been responsible for the accident. In the past eighteen years Eleni had undergone numerous operations and for a long time she’d had to use a wheelchair or walking stick. Pioneering surgery meant that she would be able to walk down the aisle unaided on her wedding day, in three weeks’ time, unless Dimitris found evidence that Eleni’s slick advertising executive fiancé was a cheat.

‘Matt has been acting strangely lately. I know it was an awful thing to do, but while he was in another room I looked at his phone and discovered that he has been in regular contact with a woman he calls S,’Eleni had sobbed.‘Matt told me he is going away at the weekend to play in a golf tournament, but his messages show that he has arranged to meet S at a hotel. I have to know the truth. You will help me, won’t you, Dimitris?’
Earlier, Dimitris had driven to the country house hotel a few miles out of London where Eleni’s fiancé had arranged a secret assignation. Collier’s car was in the car park and his phone messages to the mysteriousShad included a room number. Dimitris had endured a mediocre dinner at the hotel, hoping to spot Collier and his companion. But they hadn’t appeared in the dining room so he would have to implement Plan B.
He carried the tray with the champagne out of the bar and stepped into the lift.
‘I’m going to take a quick shower, baby. Don’t go anywhere!’ Matt winked at Savannah and she forced a smile, but her face clouded over as she watched him saunter into the bathroom.
She couldn’t go through with it. She could not sleep with Matt even though it was their third date, and everyone knew that the third date meant sex. It was one reason why she’d never got further than a second date in years. She’d disliked the pressure to rush into a sexual relationship. The truth was there had always been something missing when she’d dated other men and it hadn’t been a difficult decision not to see them again. With Matt she’d felt a spark of attraction, and his open, friendly nature had allowed her to relax her usual wariness.
She reminded herself that they were both single, consenting adults. So what was the problem? The hotel suite’s impersonal décor added to Savannah’s sense that what they were about to do was sordid rather than romantic. Perhaps she would have felt better if Matt had suggested they could spend their first night together at his flat. He’d told her that he owned an apartment in Canary Wharf, but the decorators were in and the place was a mess.
Matt had arranged for them to have a private dinner in the suite. It was a thoughtful gesture, but Savannah had felt too uptight to eat much. Now she was relieved to be alone, although it was a temporary reprieve. She wandered around the room and raked her fingers through her hair—an unconscious habit when she felt tense.
You are being idiotic, she told her reflection in the mirror.
She tried to reassure herself that it was natural to feel apprehensive about having sex after a long gap. She could list her previous sexual experiences on the back of a postage stamp, but once she got started she would be fine.
Getting undressed would be a start. Her dress was a slinky wraparound style. She never usually wore red, but she’d chosen the seductive scarlet dress to boost her confidence. It hadn’t worked and her fingers were unsteady as she untied the belt and the two sides of the dress fell open to reveal her black lace push-up bra, also new and bought in the hope that the sexy underwear would give her libido the wake-up call it needed.

Savannah cast her mind back to a couple of weeks ago when she’d met Matt Collier through her job as a food photographer. Her assignment had been to take pictures for an advertising campaign Matt had devised to promote a new tapas bar in Soho. She’d been drawn to his laid-back charm, and after the shoot it had seemed natural to stay on for a few drinks in the bar with him. In fact anything had been preferable to going home to face the dire financial situation her father had left behind.
Over dinner on their second date Matt had explained that his last relationship had ended a few months ago. Savannah had enjoyed his company and agreed to his suggestion to meet him at a hotel. Everything else in her life was going spectacularly wrong and she’d welcomed the distraction of a new relationship. Besides, she was twenty-eight and it was time she stopped hiding away from life.
‘No one does old-fashioned courtship any more,’ her agent and friend Bev had stated a few days ago when Savannah had confided that she was considering moving her relationship with Matt up a notch. ‘If you like this guy, go for it. From the sound of it your ex-fiancé was a jerk, and you need to get over him.’
Years ago Savannah had ended her engagement to Hugo when she’d realised that she wasn’t in love with him. Discovering that he had used her for his own nefarious reasons had been humiliating, but Hugo hadn’t broken her heart. That honour went to the man who still invaded her dreams ten years after he had cruelly rejected her. Thinking abouthimhad made her furious and she’d resolved to take Bev’s advice and give Matt a chance.
But when Matt had ushered her into the suite and she’d seen the king-size bed she’d had an attack of doubts, or nerves, maybe both. It was too soon, and she wasn’t ready to have a sexual relationship with someone she hardly knew. Maybe it was ridiculous to hope she would one day meet a man who made her heart pound and know she would willingly follow him to the ends of the earth. With a flash of clarity Savannah realised that she wasn’t prepared to settle for less.
She heard the sound of the shower and briefly considered making her escape while Matt was in the bathroom. Her conscience pricked that it would be unfair to run out on him. He was a nice guy and deserved to know that the problem was her, not him.
A knock on the door of the suite gave her hope that the hotel was on fire, although presumably the fire alarm would be ringing. With any luck a sinkhole had opened up on the driveway and the guests were being advised to evacuate the hotel. Whatever the reason, the interruption was perfectly timed and would give her a chance to explain to Matt that she had changed her mind about them becoming lovers.
Savannah hurried to open the door and belatedly remembered that the front of her dress was undone.
The lift stopped at the fourth floor and Dimitris walked down the corridor and knocked on the door of Room 402. ‘Room service.’