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dump of a hotel three blocks from Victoria Station? Why buy it? There must be plenty of other hotels better suited to a posh outfit like yours.’
    And his eyes glistened and seemed to focus somewhere behind her and Cleo got the impression he didn’t even see her. ‘I had my reasons.’
    She shivered at his flat voice as if the temperature had just dropped twenty degrees. Whatever his reasons, Andreas Xenides struck her as a man you wouldn’t want to cross.
    Cleo looked away, wanting to shake off the chill, and was surprised to see how far they’d come. She’d expected a lift to another small hotel somewhere close by, as he’d intimated, but she could see now that the limousine was making its way towards Mayfair.
    His cell phone beeped and she was grateful he had a distraction. She was happy just to watch the busy streetscape, the iconic red double-decker buses, the black taxi cabs all jockeying for the same piece of bitumen and somehow all still moving. ‘Petra, I’m glad you called. Yes, I’m finished in London.’
    She wasn’t trying to listen to his call, but there was no way she couldn’t hear every word, especially when he made no attempt to lower his voice, and it was a relief when he dipped into his native language and she could no longer understand his words and she could just let the deep tones of his voice wash over her. When he spoke English his accent gave his words a rich Mediterranean flavour, a hint of the exotic, but when he spoke in Greek his voice took on another quality, onthe one hand somehow harsher, more earthy and passionate on the other.
    Much like Andreas himself, she imagined, because for all his civilised trappings, the cashmere coat and the chauffeur-driven limousine, she’d seen for herself that he could be harsh and abrupt, that he was used to making the rules and expecting people to play by them. And definitely passionate. Hadn’t he set her own body to prickly awareness with just one heated gaze?
    It made sense that a man like him would have a Petra or someone else waiting for him. He was bound to have a wife or a girlfriend, maybe even both; didn’t the rich and famous have their own rules? She looked around at the car’s plush interior, drinking in the buttery leather upholstery with her fingers and wanting to apologise to the pristine carpet for her tired boots. She gazed out of the tinted windows and caught the occupants of passing cars trying to peer in, looks of envy on their faces, and sighed, committing it all to memory. What would it be like to be one of the Petras of this world? To move in such circles and consider this all as normal?
    She smiled philosophically. This was not her world. Any minute now he’d drop her at the hotel to take up her new cleaning position and he’d be gone for ever, back to Petra or another, whoever and wherever she was.
    ‘We’re flying back tomorrow,’ she heard Andreas say, abruptly switching back to English. ‘Expect us around five.’
    Cleo wondered at the sudden change of language but continued peering out at the scenery outside her limousine’s windows, the magnificent park to their left, the lights from buildings and streetlamps making jagged patterns on the wet roads. Even on a dark, wet night the streets of London fascinated her. It was so different from the tiny town of Kangaroo Crossing, where the main street was dusty and almost desertedafter six at night. Here it was so vibrant and filled with life at whatever time of the day or night and she would never get sick of craning her neck for a look at the everyday sights here like Buckingham Palace, sights she’d only ever dreamed about one day seeing.
    ‘ Us , Petra?’ Andreas continued. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I should have mentioned. I’m bringing a friend.’
    Something about the way he said those last words made Cleo turn her head, some loaded quality that spoke of a message she didn’t quite understand. She didn’t mean to look right at him, she intended to swing her