The Virgin's Proposition Read online

  A few people had picked up their conversations again. But most were still watching him. Talking about him, too, no doubt. Some nodded to him, spoke to him, and he spared them a faint smile, a quick nod. But he didn’t stop, and as he moved he scanned the room as if he were looking for someone.

  And then his gaze lit on her.

  Their eyes locked, and Anny was trapped in the green magic of his eyes.

  It seemed to take a lifetime before she could muster her good sense and years of regal breeding and drag her gaze away. Deliberately she consulted her watch, made a point of studying it intently, allowed her impatience full rein. It was better than looking at him—staring like a besotted teenager at his craggy hard compelling face.

  Where in heaven’s name was Gerard, anyway?

  She looked up desperately—and found herself staring straight into Demetrios Savas’s face.

  He was close enough to touch. Close enough that she could see tiny gold flecks in those impossibly green eyes, and pick out a few individual grey whiskers in rough dark stubble on his cheeks and jaw.

  She opened her mouth. No sound came out.

  “Sorry,” he said to her, a rueful smile touching his lips. “Didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

  Me? she wanted to say, swallowing her serene princess smile. Surely not.

  But before she could say a thing, he wrapped an arm around her and drew her into his, then pressed hard warm lips to hers.

  Anny’s ears buzzed. Her knees wobbled. Her lips parted. For an instant she thought his tongue touched hers!

  Her eyes snapped open to stare, astonished, into his.

  “Thanks for waiting.” His voice was the warm rough baritone she’d heard in movies and on television. As she stared in silent amazement, he kept an arm around her waist, tucked her firmly against him and walked her briskly with him toward the shops at the far end of the lobby. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Demetrios didn’t know who she was.

  He didn’t care. She was obviously waiting for someone—he’d seen her scanning the room almost the moment he’d walked in—and she looked like the sort of woman who wouldn’t make a fuss.

  Not fussing was at the top of his list of desirable female attributes at the moment. And amid all the preening peacocks she stood out like a beacon.

  Her understated appearance and neat dark upswept hair would have screamed practical, sensible, unflappable, and calm if they had been capable of screaming anything.

  As it was, they spoke calmly of a woman of quiet composed sanity. One of the hotel concierge staff, probably. Or a tour guide waiting for her group. Or, hell, for all he knew, a Cub Scout den mother. In other words, she was all the things that people in the movie industry generally were not.

  And she was, whether she knew it or not, going to be his salvation. She was going to get him out of the Ritz before he lost his temper or his sanity or did something he would no doubt seriously regret. In her proper dark blue skirt and casual but tailored cream-colored jacket, she looked like exactly the sort of steady unflappable professional woman he needed to pull this off.

  He had his arm around her as he walked her straight down the center of the room. It was as if they were parting the seas as they went. Eyes widened. Murmurs began. He ignored them.

  In her ear he said, “Do you know how to get out of here?” Even as he spoke, he realized she might not even speak English. This was France, after all.

  But she didn’t disappoint him. She didn’t stumble as he steered her along, but kept pace with him easily, turning her head toward him just enough so that he could see a smile on her face. She had just the barest hint of an accent when she said, “Of course.”

  He smiled, then, too. It was probably the first real smile he’d managed all day.

  “Lead the way,” he murmured and, while to casual observers it would appear that he was directing their movements, he was in fact following her. The murmurs in the room seemed to grow in volume and intensity as they passed.

  “Ignore them,” he said.

  She did, still smiling as they walked. His savior seemed to know exactly where she was going. Either that or she was used to being picked up by strange men in hotel lobbies and had a designated spot for doing away with them. She led him through a set of doors and down another long corridor. Then they passed some offices, went through a storeroom and a delivery reception area and at last, when she pushed open one more door, came to stand on the pavement outside the back of the hotel.

  Demetrios took a deep breath—and heard the door lock with a decisive click behind them.

  He grimaced. “And now you can’t get back in. Sorry. Really. But thank you. You saved my life.”

  “I doubt that.” But she was smiling as she said it.

  “My professional life,” he qualified, giving her a weary smile in return. He raked fingers through his hair. “It’s been a hellish day. And it was just about to get a whole lot worse.”

  She gave him a speculatively raised brow, but made no comment other than to say, “Well, then I’m glad to have been of service.”

  “Are you?” That surprised him because she actually sounded glad and not annoyed, which she had every right to be. “You were waiting for someone.”

  “That’s why you picked me.” She said it matter-of-factly and that surprised him, too.

  But he grinned at her astute evaluation of the situation. “It’s called improvisation. I’m Demetrios, by the way.”

  “I know.”

  Yes, he supposed she did.

  If there was one thing he’d figured out in the past forty-eight hours it was that he might have fallen off the face of the earth for the past two years, but no one seemed to have forgotten who he was.

  In the industry, that was good. Distributors he wanted to talk to didn’t close their doors to him. But the paparazzi’s long memory he could have done without. They’d swarmed over him the moment they’d seen his face. The groupies had, too.

  “What’d you expect?” his brother Theo had said sardonically. He’d dropped by Demetrios’s hotel room unannounced this morning en route sailing from Spain to Santorini. He’d grinned unsympathetically. “They all want to be the one to assuage your sorrow.”

  Demetrios had known that coming to Cannes would be a madhouse, but he’d told himself he could manage. And he would be able to if all the women he met were like this one.

  “Demetrios Savas in person,” she mused now, a smile touching her lips as she studied him with deep blue eyes. She looked friendly and mildly curious, but nothing more, thank God.

  “At least you’re not giddy with excitement about it,” he said drily with a self-deprecating grin.

  “I might be.” A dimple appeared in her left cheek when her smile widened. “Maybe I’m just hiding it well.”

  “Keep right on hiding it. Please.”

  She laughed at that, and he liked her laugh, too. It was warm and friendly and somehow it made her seem even prettier. She was a pretty girl. A wholesome sort of girl. Nothing theatrical or glitzy about her. Fresh and friendly with the sort of flawless complexion that cosmetic companies would kill for.

  “Are you a model?” he asked, suddenly realizing she could be. And why not? She could have been waiting for an agent. A rep. It made sense. And some of them could contrive to look fresh and wholesome.

  God knew Lissa had.

  But this woman actually looked surprised at his question. “A model? No. Not at all. Do I look like one?” She laughed then, as if it were the least likely thing she could think of.

  “You could be,” he told her.

  “Really?” She looked sceptical, then shrugged “Well, thank you. I think.” She dimpled again as she smiled at him.

  “I just meant you’re beautiful. It was a compliment. Do you work for the hotel then?”

  “Beautiful?” That seemed to surprise her, too. But she didn’t dwell on it. “No, I don’t work there. Do I look like I could do that, too?” The smile that played at the
corners of her mouth made him grin.

  “You look…hospitable. Casually professional.” His gaze slid over her more slowly this time, taking in the neat upswept dark brown hair and the creamy complexion with its less-is-more makeup before moving on to the curves beneath the tastefully tailored jacket and skirt, the smooth, slender tanned legs, the toes peeking out from her sandals. “Attractive,” he said. “Approachable.”

  “Approachable?”

  “I approached,” he pointed out.

  “You make me sound like a streetwalker.” But she didn’t sound offended, just amused.

  But Demetrios shook his head. “Never. You’re not wearing enough makeup. And the clothes are all wrong.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  They smiled at each other again, and quite suddenly Demetrios felt as if he were waking up from a bad dream.

  He’d been in it so long—dragged down and fighting his way back—that it seemed as if it would be all he’d ever know for the rest of his life.

  But right now, just this instant, he felt alive. And he realized that he had smiled more—really honestly smiled—in the past five minutes than he had in the past three years.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Anny.”

  Anny. A plain name. A first name. No last name. Usually women were falling all over themselves to give him their full names, the story of their lives, and, most importantly, their phone numbers.

  “Just Anny?” he queried lightly.

  “Chamion.” She seemed almost reluctant to tell him. That was refreshing.

  “Anny Chamion.” He liked the sound of it. Simple. But a little exotic. “You’re French?”

  “My mother was French.”

  “And you speak English perfectly.”

  “I went to university in the States. Well, I went to Oxford first. But I went to graduate school in California. At Berkeley. I still am, really. I’m working on my dissertation.”

  “So, you’re a…scholar?”

  She didn’t look like any scholar he’d ever met. No pencils in her hair. There was nothing distracted or ivory towerish about her. He knew all about scholarly single-mindedness. His brother George was a scholar—a physicist.

  “You’re not a physicist?” he said accusingly.

  She laughed. “Afraid not. I’m an archaeologist.”

  He grinned. “Raiders of the Lost Ark? My brothers and I used to watch that over and over.”

  Anny nodded, her eyes were smiling. Then she shrugged wryly. “The ‘real’ thing isn’t quite so exciting.”

  “No Nazis and gun battles?”

  “Not many snakes, either. And not a single dashing young Harrison Ford. I’m working on my dissertation right now—on cave paintings. No excitement there, either. But I like it. I’ve done the research. It’s just a matter of getting it all organized and down on paper.”

  “Getting stuff down on paper isn’t always easy.” It had been perhaps the hardest part of the past couple of years, mostly because it required that he be alone with his thoughts.

  “You’re writing a dissertation?”

  “A screenplay,” he said. “I wrote one. Now I’m starting another. It’s hard work.”

  “All that creativity would be exhausting. I couldn’t do it,” she said with admiration.

  “I couldn’t write a dissertation.” He should just thank her and say goodbye. But he liked her. She was sane, normal, sensible, smart. Not a starlet. Not even remotely. It was nice to be with someone unrelated to the movie business. Unrelated to the hoopla and glitz. Down-to-earth. He was oddly reluctant to simply walk away.

  “Have dinner with me,” he said abruptly.

  Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened. Then it closed.

  Practically every other woman in Cannes, Demetrios thought grimly, would have said yes ten times over by now.

  Not Anny Chamion. She looked rueful, then gave him a polite shake of the head. “I would love to, but I’m afraid I really was waiting for someone in the hotel.”

  Of course she had been.

  “And I just shanghaied you without giving a damn.” He grimaced. “Sorry. I just thought it would be nice to find a little hole-in-the-wall place, hide out for a while. Have a nice meal. Some conversation. I forgot I’d kidnapped you under false pretenses.”

  She laughed. “It’s all right. He was late.”

  He. Of course she was waiting for a man. And what difference did it make?

  “Right,” he said briskly. “Thanks for the rescue, Anny Chamion. I didn’t offend Mona Tremayne because of you.”

  “The actress?” She looked startled. “You were escaping from her?”

  “Not her. Her daughter. Rhiannon. She’s a little…persistent.” She’d been following him around since yesterday morning, telling him she’d make him forget.

  Anny raised her brows. “I see.”

  “She’s a nice girl. A bit intense. Immature.” And way too determined. “I don’t want to tell her to get lost. I’d like to work with her mother again…”

  “It was truly a diplomatic maneuver.”

  He nodded. “But I’m sorry if I messed something up for you.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She held out a hand in farewell, and he took it, held it. Her fingers were soft and smooth and warm. He ran his thumb over them.

  “I kissed you before,” he reminded her.

  “Ah, but you didn’t know me then.”

  “Still—” It surprised him how much he wanted to do it again.

  But before he could make his move, she jerked, surprised, and stuck her hand into the pocket of her jacket.

  “My phone,” she said apologetically, taking it out and glancing at the ID. “I wouldn’t answer it. It’s rude. I’m so sorry. It’s—” She waved a hand toward the hotel from which they’d come. “I need to get this.”

  Because it was obviously from the man she’d been waiting for. His mouth twisted, but he shrugged equably. “Of course. No problem. It’s been—”

  He stopped because he couldn’t find the right word. What had it been? A pleasure? Yes, it had been. And real. It had been “real.” For the first time in three years he’d felt, for a few brief moments, as if he had solid ground under his feet. He squeezed her hand, then leaned in and kissed her firmly on the mouth. “Thank you, Anny Chamion.”

  Her eyes widened in shock.

  He smiled. Then for good measure, he kissed her again, and enjoyed every moment of it, pleased, he supposed, that he hadn’t entirely lost his touch.

  The phone vibrated in her hand long and hard before she had the presence of mind to answer it in rapid French.

  Demetrios didn’t wait. He gave her a quick salute, pulled dark glasses out of his pocket, stuck them on his face, then turned and headed down the street. He had gone less than a block when he heard the sound of quick footsteps running after him.

  Oh, hell. Was there no getting away from Rhiannon Tremayne?

  He badly wanted Mona for a part in his next picture. To get her, he couldn’t alienate her high-strung, high-maintenance, highly spoiled daughter. But he was tired, he was edgy and, having the sweet taste of Anny Chamion on his lips, he didn’t relish being thrown to the jackals again. He spun around to tell her so—in the politest possible terms.

  “I seem to have the evening free.” It was Anny smiling, that dimple creasing her cheek again as she fell into step beside him. “So I wondered, is that dinner invitation still open?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  PRINCESSES DIDN’T INVITE themselves out to dinner!

  They didn’t say no one minute and run after a man to say yes the next. But she’d been given a reprieve, hadn’t she? The phone call had been from Gerard, who was going straight to Paris to get a good night’s sleep before his flight to Montreal.

  “I’ll see you on my way back,” he’d said. “Next week. We need to talk.”

  Anny had never understood what people thought they were doing on the phone if not talking, but
she said politely, “Of course. I’ll look forward to seeing you then.”

  She hung up almost before Gerard could say goodbye, because if she didn’t start running now, she might lose sight of Demetrios when he reached the corner. She’d never run after a man in her life. And she knew perfectly well she shouldn’t be chasing one now.

  But how often did Demetrios Savas invite her out to dinner—at the very moment her prince decided not to show up?

  If that didn’t confirm the universe’s benevolence, what did?

  Besides, it was only dinner, after all. A meal. An hour or two.

  But with Demetrios Savas. The fulfillment of a youthful dream. How many women got invited to dinner by the man whose poster they’d had on the wall at age eighteen?

  As a tribute to that idealistic dreamy girl, Anny couldn’t not do it.

  He spun around as she reached him, his jaw tight, his eyes hard. It was that same fierce look that had made his name a household word when he’d played rough-edged bad-ass spy Luke St. Angier on American television seven or eight years ago.

  Anny stopped dead.

  Then at the sight of her, the muscles in his jaw eased. And she was, quite suddenly, rewarded by the very grin that had had thousands—no, millions—of girls and women and little old ladies falling at his feet.

  “Anny.” Her name on his lips sent her heart to hammering. “Change your mind?” he asked with just the right hopeful note.

  “If you don’t mind.” She wasn’t sure if her breathlessness was due to the man in front of her who was, admittedly, pretty breathtaking, or to her own sudden out-of-character seizing of the moment.

  “Mind?” Demetrios’s memorable grin broadened. “As if. So?” He cocked his head. “Yes?”

  “I don’t want to presume,” she said as demurely as possible.

  “Go ahead and presume.” He grinned as he glanced around the busy street scene. Then his grin faded as he realized how many people were beginning to notice him. One of a gaggle of teenage girls pointed in their direction. Another gave a tiny high-pitched scream, and instantly they cut across the street to head his way.