* * *
By the end of the next three days, Jasmine was ready to throttle Dmitri with her very hands. And more than annoyed with herself for being a naive idiot.
She had woken up long past midday, feeling as if a speeding bus had run her down. Her body was a mass of bruises from being tackled by the giant brute, her neck ached from sleeping at an awkward angle for so long on the chaise longue, which she kicked out of a perverse anger when she was up, and of course, her foot hurt because of that.
The worst was the feeling of being caged in the sophisticated but deafeningly silent hotel suite. What had seemed so secure in the dark of the dawn now felt like a jail that cut her off from the rest of the world.
Looking out of the French windows, she had seen the bustle of Bond Street and yet, she felt worlds away.
She hadn’t minded it so much the first day, having spent two hours soaking in the decadent marble tub. Not even when the hotel physician and a nurse had arrived, on the orders of Mr. Karegas of course, to ensure Ms. Douglas suffered no ill effects after the stress of her previous day.
Not when she had been served a five-course meal with as much aplomb as if she were the queen.
In fact, she had been impressed and softened and whatnot by the time she’d finished her chocolate-dipped strawberries and mint tea. Even convinced herself that she had been extremely stupid in not coming to Dmitri for help sooner.
By the evening of the second day, she was ready to hitch herself up on the prestigious artwork and climb the walls.
So dressed again in her freshly laundered old jeans and one of Dmitri’s Savile Row dress shirts—she couldn’t bear to even look at her old sweater—she had stepped out of the suite and found a hulking giant following her down the corridor and into the lift.
He had appeared by her side as she waited for the doorman, his hand on her wrist sending a current of fury through her.
“You’re not to leave the premises of the hotel, miss,” he had replied when she had glared at him. “Mr. Karegas ordered that you stay put until he’s sure you’re safe,” he had said with a repressive shudder.
Flushing as if she had been caught out being particularly naughty, she had mumbled off something and dutifully headed back into the room. Only later had she realized that Dmitri had practically made her a prisoner.
Even then, she had warmed up, so devoid of basic security her life had been.
So she had waited, over the next day and another day. Patiently and with even a growing sense of gratitude and warmth, her gullible, ever-ready-to-succumb-to-temptation mind painting pictures of their blossoming friendship.
Until she had surfed the channels and seen the latest tabloid channel report.
Dmitri Karegas was living it up at the illustrious bachelor party he was throwing his best friend and business partner of years, Stavros Sporades.
Hadn’t Leah said she was Stavros’s wife?
The feature went on to talk about the world-famous strip club, the hundred different champagnes that had been served, a burlesque show that apparently was the raciest thing ever and the sexiest, the most raucous bachelors from the world attending, including a Hollywood movie star, a sheikh from the middle east and a Japanese media mogul...and Dmitri Karegas.
Stavros, the supposed groom, Jasmine realized, was conspicuously absent.
Somehow, she had a hard time imagining that austere, almost forbidding man giving in to the kind of excesses that would go on at the party that feature boasted about.
Because her job had given her ample exposure to it, especially when she had waitressed at a private party once, too terrified of taking on her usual duties.
Drinks, dancing, women...and Dmitri, with his reputation for a voracious sexual appetite in the middle of it all...
Her gut heaved so violently at the very thought that she pressed her hand to it...
What the hell was wrong with her? She was acting as if they were...
No, she wouldn’t even think it.
Two photos of the party had been leaked through the usual social media sites.
One showed two buxom blondes—really there was no other way to describe the décolletage of the two women—corralling him on either side, holding their empty champagne flutes aloft while Dmitri popped the cork open with a thousand-kilowatt smile for the flashing camera bulbs.
The second one was a close-up of him, a grainy shot clicked with a cell phone camera. Those hauntingly beautiful eyes of his held a smirk...a challenge? A chasm of emptiness that she wished she understood...
Did no one else get glimpses of the man she did? It felt as if only she could see beneath the mask he wore to the real man.