Read Online His Mistress for a Million by Trish Morey - Free Book Online Page A

much as he expected she’d be perfect for his purposes, the contracts needn’t be signed until he’d made absolutely certain.
    He pushed open the door to the bedroom to let her know their meal had arrived and found the room in darkness, lit onlywith the light spilling in from the room behind. And there she lay, looking tiny in the big wide bed, her flannelette pyjamas buttoned almost all the way up to her neck like a suit of armour with the quilt pulled up almost as high, and that damned Princess mask hiding her eyes.
    The blood in his veins heated to boiling point. She was sleeping? He’d just agreed to pay her a million dollars and she was sleeping as if it were no big deal and she could start earning her money tomorrow?
    He was just about to rip the damn mask off when she stirred on a sigh and settled back into the mattress, her breathing so slow and regular that he paused, remembering.
    She’d been asleep when his staff had woken her hours ago, he recalled, after being awake since the very early hours, the shadows under her eyes underlining her exhaustion. Maybe he should give those shadows a chance to clear and give the makeover experts a fighting chance to turn her into the woman he needed her to be?
    Maybe he should just back out of here and let her sleep?
    And maybe he should just climb right in there with her and make the most of his money? She’d said she didn’t want sex but he’d never known a woman to turn him down. That she’d been so adamant grated.
    There was a knock at the door outside. Housekeeping, no doubt, come to make up the sofa bed, and he turned and pulled the door closed behind him.
    He had no need to take any woman. He had an entire month. She would come to him; he knew it.

Chapter Six
    I T WAS a strange dream, where people faded in and out of focus, the girls from school with their taunts of loser, her half-brothers hugging the father who looked on her as excess baggage, and Kurt laughing at her, his white chest quivering with the vibrations. From somewhere Cleo could hear the sound of her nanna telling her to look for the silver lining. She spun around trying to find the source of her voice, trying to pull her from the shadows and hang onto her message and drown out the chorus behind her, when a different shape emerged from the mist, tall and broad and arrogantly self-assured.
    “I’m scared.” It was her voice, even though she’d not said a word, and she wanted to run, tempted to turn back to the mocking chorus behind her, back to the world she knew and understood so well, back to the familiar, but her legs were like lead and she couldn’t move and he kept right on coming until he stood head and shoulders above her. And he smiled, all dark eyes and gleaming white teeth. ‘You should be,’ and then he’d dipped his head to kiss her and she heard nothing but the buzzing in her ears and the pounding of her heart, and from somewhere in the shadows, the sound of her nanna’s voice.
    ‘Rise and shine.’ The words made no sense until the blowto her rump, cushioned with the thick quilt but enough to bring her to consciousness with a jump. ‘You’ve got a busy morning.’
    The alarm on the bedside table alongside snapped off and she drank in the scent of bed-warmed flesh. His bed-warmed flesh . So the alarm was the buzzing in her ears? But what was causing the fizzing in her blood?
    She sat up and pushed her mask above her eyes, and then, remembering his comment about dressing like a clown, swiped it from her head. A moment later she wished she’d kept it on. He was naked. Unashamedly naked as he strode to the wardrobe and pulled out a robe. Too late she averted her eyes and, oh, my . She felt the blush rise like a tide as the truth sank in—he was huge! Only to have the blush deepen with the next wayward thought.
    And if he looks that big now?
    She swallowed, pulling her legs up like a shield, wondering why she should be suddenly tingling down there . How big he could be had