The Mills & Boon Stars Collection. Cathy Williams

by Bastien’s stunning good looks, she had been infinitely more fascinated by his strong personality, and the seemingly offbeat way his brain worked. That same night she’d sat up late, looking Bastien up on the internet, and the sheer number of women she’d seen pictured with him had shaken her almost as much as his reputation for being a womaniser. Bastien Zikos slept around and he was faithless.

      At first Lilah had been appalled by what she had discovered, but there had also been an oddly soothing element to those revelations. After all, what she had found out only emphasised that she could never have any kind of liaison with Bastien: he didn’t do relationships...and she didn’t do one-night stands.

      Sinking back to the present, Lilah was dismayed to register that her eyes were swimming with tears. She blinked them back and freshened up, writing off her far too emotional frame of mind to the shocks Bastien had dealt her. She hated the way that Bastien always got to her—cutting through her common sense and reserve like a machete to make his forceful point.

      ‘You were a long time upstairs with the boss,’ Julie commented as Lilah dropped back behind her desk.

      ‘Mr Zikos wanted to discuss his plans for the business,’ she said awkwardly.

      ‘Oh...wow!’ Julie gushed, fixing wide, speculative eyes on Lilah’s flushed and taut face. ‘You mean he’s planning to keep Moore Components open? He’s not just going to sell up?’

      Lilah cursed her loose tongue. ‘No, his selling up is a possibility too,’ she backtracked hastily, fearful of setting off a round of rumours that would raise false hopes. ‘I don’t think he’s actually made a final decision yet.’

      With a regretful sigh, Julie returned to work. But Lilah found that she could not concentrate for longer than thirty seconds. Aftershocks from her meeting with Bastien were still quaking through her.

      He might as well have taken the moon down from the sky and offered it to her, she reflected in a daze. Her family were suffering—just like everybody else caught up in the crash of Moore Components. The little half-brother and half-sister so dear to Lilah’s heart no longer had a garden to play in, and their more elaborate toys had been disposed of because there was no room for such things in Lilah’s little house. Her father was suffering from depression and taking medication. The day the factory had closed the bottom had dropped out of his world. Without work, without his business, Robert Moore simply didn’t know what to do with himself.

      Lilah blinked back stinging tears. In spite of the troubled years, when her parents had been unhappily married, Lilah still loved her father very much. She had only been eleven years old when her mother had died very suddenly from an aneurysm. Her father had been very much there for her while she was grieving, but he was also a very hard worker, who had soon returned to work, slaving eighteen hours a day to build up his business.

      Now, shorn of his once generous income and humbled, he felt less of a man—and at his age, with a failed business under his belt, who was likely to employ him? Although Lilah had told herself that she shouldn’t be thinking about it, she could not resist picturing her father returning to work with a new spring in his step.

      She blanked out the thought.

      Was she really prepared to become a mistress?

      Bastien’s sex slave?

      An extraordinary little chirrup of excitement twisted through Lilah and she was seriously embarrassed for herself. She was pretty sure Bastien wouldn’t be expecting a virgin. But what did that matter? It was not as though she was seriously considering his sordid options, was it?

      Still mentally far removed from work, she sank back two years again into her memories and recalled the flowers Bastien had sent her the morning after that family dinner and her rejection of what little he’d had to offer her. He had shown up on her doorstep the following evening as well, displaying a persistence that had taxed her patience. When he had tried to persuade her to join him that night for dinner she had lost her temper with him.

      Why had she lost her temper?

      Remembering why, Lilah paled and then flushed a painful pink. Utterly mesmerised by Bastien, she had already started falling for him. Being rudely confronted with the reality that he was a stud, who only wanted her for sex, had been hurtful and demeaning. That was why she had lost her temper. She had been angry with herself because somehow he had contrived to tempt her with that single erotically charged kiss and had made her question her own values. She had resented his power over her and she had flung her knowledge of his bad reputation in his teeth and called him a man whore.

      Lilah was still secretly cringing from that memory as she walked home after work. Attacking Bastien had been wrong. He was what he was, and she was what she was. They were very different people. Insulting him had been ill-mannered, pointless and immature. His dark eyes had glittered like black ice, the rage in his stunning gaze filling her with fright. But he had done nothing, said nothing. He had simply turned on his heel and got back into his opulent limousine to drive away.

      A few weeks later an unexpected gift had arrived for her at work. She had unwrapped an almost exact replica of the seahorse pendant Bastien had won at auction. The only difference between it and the original was that the new piece lacked the engraved initial As on the back. Only Bastien could have had it made for her and sent it to her. That he had given the pendant to her in spite of the way she had spoken to him had shocked Lilah, and made her feel as if she didn’t know Bastien Zikos at all. She had asked herself then if she had imagined that dark fury in his eyes.

      But now Lilah knew for a fact that she had not imagined Bastien’s rage, and she suspected that what she was being subjected to was ‘payback time’ in his parlance.

       CHAPTER THREE

      IN THE MIDDLE of the night, tossing and turning without sleep, Lilah crept out of bed and went downstairs to make herself a cup of tea.

      Vickie was already there, seated at the kitchen table. ‘Great minds, eh?’ she framed round a huge yawn.

      ‘You couldn’t sleep either?’ Lilah stated the obvious.

      ‘It’s the constant worrying that keeps me awake,’ her father’s wife opined ruefully while Lilah boiled the kettle. ‘Some of the parents I was talking to at Ben’s school said Bastien Zikos was at Moore Components today... I was surprised you hadn’t mentioned it.’

      Lilah stiffened defensively. ‘I didn’t see the point.’

      ‘I hate asking you this...but I was thinking...maybe if you get the chance you could ask Bastien if he has an opening for your father anywhere?’ Vickie said hopefully.

      Lilah reddened. ‘If I get the chance,’ she echoed, feeling incredibly guilty for not telling the truth.

      Bastien had been right on that score. No one would thank her for telling a truth that no one wanted to hear. And the truth was that she could wave a magic wand and fix everything for everybody. How could she live with that knowledge and stand by doing nothing? How could she live with seeing her father slumped in a chair, staring into space? It was all very well to be furious with Bastien, to take offence and walk out. but at the end of the day she had to be practical. He had, after all, offered her a miracle.

       Everything back the way it was.

      Hanging on to her virginity at all costs seemed a little pathetic in such dire circumstances, didn’t it? And, whether she liked it or not, she had always been attracted to Bastien. How could she hold out and justify herself when so many positive outcomes would result from her agreement? Bastien’s interest in her would be short-lived as well: his past history spoke for him. He never stayed long with a woman. She would get her life back again quickly and probably never come back home, she acknowledged unhappily. When Bastien got bored with her she would look for a job in London and make a fresh start.

      * * *

      Lilah dressed for work with more care than