Undercover Billionaire: A forbidden Cinderella cruise ship romance Read online

  “Tools of the trade.”

  He took the cup off the saucer, placed the umbrella on it and sipped at his tea in silence for a long moments. Heat radiated from his body and Kelsey was conscious of how close they were as the peppermint from his tea joined the bouquet of aromas playing havoc with her senses.

  “Do you...get them very often?” Her voice was tentative as it broke the silence.

  He cradled the cup in his lap. “I used to, not so much anymore.”

  “Have you had them investigated? Sometimes they’re more than just a headache, you know?”

  As soon as the words were out, Kelsey wanted to bite her tongue. Nice one, Kels. Why not imply the man has a brain tumour?

  “I mean...I didn’t mean anything serious like a...” Bloody hell, don’t say the T word! “It could just be you need... glasses or something simple.”

  Oh, Jesus. Shut up, already!

  His black eyes sought and held hers for a moment and then he chuckled, his beautiful mouth parting. Kelsey blinked as the noise poured over her skin like warm oil. Sadly, it didn’t last.

  “I was in an accident three years ago. It’s a residual thing from that.”

  “Oh God...I’m sorry. Were you badly hurt?”

  “Not really.” He stared into his tea. “I was lucky.”

  He raised the cup to his lips obscuring half his face but not the trace of bitterness that had laced the word lucky. It was stark in the profound silence.

  Clearly, there was more to that story. Was that why his eyes were so sad?

  She inspected his profile as he drank, looking for answers but his face was a mask. And it wasn’t any of her business. He was a passenger for fucks sake. She’d returned his wallet and helped him out when he’d been unwell. She’d fulfilled her duties as a member of the Hellenic Spirit’s crew.

  Gold star for her. Now get out!

  “Well...” She placed the umbrella on the tea tray and handed him the empty saucer. “I best be off, if you’re sure you’re okay.”

  The tea cup rattled against the saucer. Those dark eyes slid once again to hers and locked tight. “Yes, thank you.” His gaze slipped to her mouth with a laser like focus.

  Kelsey suddenly realised how close they were, their arms and thighs only inches apart. Her breath hitched and her hand shook a little as she concentrated on inhaling. She’d been with guys who could excite her with a look but never with one who could interfere with her ability to breathe.

  Who made her feel like there wasn’t enough air.

  “It wasn’t any trouble.”

  Her voice sounded weird. High and strange, like she’d been sucking on helium. Not the usual husky quality. And still, he stared at her mouth and every pulse point in Kelsey’s body started to throb. Her nipples hardened. Her belly tightened. Heat radiated from his thigh to hers, sliding up her leg. All the way up.

  She really, really should leave.

  “Maybe,” he murmured. “Still...”

  Kelsey waited for him to continue, to finish what he’d been about to say but he didn’t. He just kept staring at her mouth, the sound of his breathing growing rougher and rougher, thicker and thicker, until it rubbed against her exposed flesh like a velvet glove.

  He kissed her then, his mouth swift as it breached the distance between them, his lips pressed hot against hers. Not moving, just pressing. Not hard but not light either.

  Firm.

  Pressing and pressing. Not opening or shifting to take the kiss deeper. Not attempting to touch her. Just pressing. And breathing – hard and fast. Sucking air in and out of his nostrils in swift, harsh respirations, like he was struggling to keep himself in check.

  Or struggling against some kind of internal demons.

  Kelsey’s pulse hammered at her temples and beat a wild tango between her legs as she tried to compute myriad sensations coursing through her body. How perfectly his mouth fitted against hers, how her erogenous zones had lit up like a pinball machine, how his loud, crazy breathing was a bigger turn on than everything else put together.

  How she was kissing a virtual stranger. A near naked virtual stranger. In his cabin. At her work.

  A passenger.

  Her sex tingled and her body pulsed at a primal level. The kind that made a lot of women stupid.

  But Kelsey had used up her quota of stupid.

  Tearing her mouth away, she jumped to her feet, stumbling back two steps, dragging in oxygen. “I...can’t,” she muttered.

  “Christe!” He shoved a hand in his hair as he stood, placing the cup and saucer on the tray before holding up his hands in a placatory manner. “I’m sorry.”

  Kelsey shook her head, a wild unchecked thrill zinging through her body at the sight of his big, almost naked body. “It’s against the rules to...”

  Fuck the passengers was what she wanted to say because god knew she wanted to push Ari George onto his bed and ride him like a pogo stick.

  “We’re not supposed to fraternise.”

  “Of course. Theé. Of course.”

  Christe... Theé...Kelsey realised absently the passenger she’d just gotten waaay too close to, was Greek.

  “Please, forgive me,” he continued. “I...don’t know what came over me. It was unforgiveable.”

  He shoved his hands on his hips drawing her gaze downwards again. To what lay under the towel. The light might have been low but there was no mistaking the state of his arousal or the fact the man was packing some serious dick.

  “I don’t do this,” she said dragging her gaze back to his face. Kelsey wasn’t a rule breaker. And she needed this job. She had financial responsibilities. “Some staff do cross that line, but not me. I’ve never done this.”

  She had no idea why she felt the need to convince him. Given he’d kissed her she didn’t think he’d report the incident. Maybe she was just trying to convince herself? Convince her body it didn’t need what he had under that towel.

  “I believe you,” he said, as he sunk down on the bed behind him. “It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.” He propped his elbows on his knees, leaned forward at the hips and cradled his face into his palms. “You should go.”

  If Kelsey had been in her right mind his dismissal might have rankled. Right now she was glad for the out as she turned on her heel and fled the cabin.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ari woke several hours later to pitch black. Momentarily disorientated, the slight fuzziness behind his eyes reminded him of his migraine and the rest came flooding back.

  Kelsey. The wallet. The kiss...

  Groping for the light switch he flicked it on, shutting his eyes against the intrusion even though it was still only the dim glow from earlier. Opening his eyes he let his vision adjust before rolling his head to the side, his gaze falling on the yellow cocktail umbrella sitting next to his wallet.

  He’d grabbed it up on his way back to bed and placed it on the bedside table, its paper canopy open wide and almost transparent. He picked it up again now, twirling it slowly, smiling as he remembered Kelsey.

  Normally he’d see something like this and think of Talia.

  But not now. He wasn’t thinking about his dead wife right now, he was thinking about the woman who had decorated both his whiskey glass and his tea cup with a bright bit of kitsch, her green eyes dancing.

  And that felt all kinds of wrong. The umbrella was a ridiculous piece of...whimsy and it shouldn’t be making him smile. He’d kissed another woman - that should be making him ill. The first woman since his wife had died.

  Well...technically, not the first.

  He had picked up a woman in the bar of his Edinburgh conference hotel and gone back to her room two months after Talia’s death. But that had been...a desperate attempt to think about something – anything – other than his crushing loss and he hadn’t exactly crowned himself in glory.

  Despite wanting – needing – to forget about Talia for a just a little while, he hadn’t been able to go through with it. She hadn’t smelled the sa
me or felt the same and Ari had realised he wasn’t forgetting, he was pretending and that wasn’t fair to the poor woman who’d put herself out there. He’d left the room, disgusted with himself and checked out of the hotel immediately.

  But what had happened with Kelsey earlier was worse. Because he hadn’t really wanted the woman in Edinburgh but he had wanted Kelsey.

  And that was like a hot fist to his gut.

  Maybe this was that moment people – the therapist he’d seen for a while and well meaning friends and family – talked about. The time heals all wounds moment. Because he hadn’t thought once about Talia. Not when he’d invited Kelsey into the room, not when she’d sat on the bed beside him, not when the urge to kiss her had come over him.

  Not when he had kissed her.

  Ari twirled the umbrella absently as he relived the moment again. He’d kissed her. He’d kissed her.

  Even now he couldn’t say what had come over him but his pulse had rushed through his ears and his chest had filled with the burning need to taste her mouth and suddenly his lips were landing on hers and it had been such a shock he’d been too stunned to move.

  He hadn’t ever thought this moment would come. The moment he’d desire another woman. He hadn’t sought it or expected it. In fact he’d been just fine without that aspect in his life.

  He’d been content knowing he’d had his one great love.

  But here it was – desire - and Ari didn’t know what to do with it. How could something he didn’t need or want, feel so good? How had the physical pain he’d felt sitting at the bar over his unexpected reaction to Kelsey’s perky friendliness have melted away so easily when they were sitting on his bed?

  Because it had been...easy. So easy.

  Ari’s heart seized in his chest at the thought and he tossed the umbrella in the bedside bin as if it had suddenly turned into a live snake. He wasn’t ready for that – to move on. He still felt...married. Logically he knew he wasn’t being unfaithful to Talia but wasn’t ready to replace her, either.

  Theo would be over the moon if he knew – not that Ari would ever disclose what had happened. But his family had been shoving women at him for the last two years, hoping they’d be some kind of antidote to his grief.

  Ari understood they were worried about him, concerned about his reclusiveness and fretting about how he’d withdrawn into his job, how he’d buried himself in numbers and spreadsheets instead of facing life. But they’d been his salvation during his blackest, bleakest days.

  Being productive, taking over the reigns as the Hermes Line CFO to drag the family’s ailing cruise ship enterprise back into the black, had given him a reason to get up every morning.

  A purpose.

  Speaking of which...Ari checked his phone for the time. Almost seven o’clock. It wasn’t surprising he’d slept for so long. Enduring a migraine was a physically exhausting experience for which sleep was the best cure.

  And he was on holiday.

  Well, officially, anyway. Unofficially, despite cocktail umbrellas and mind bending kisses, Ari was here to do a job. He was on the Hellenic spirit undercover to investigate why the ship that had once been the pride of the fleet was not only losing paying passengers and therefore money but having difficulty retaining staff.

  He’d suggested this scenario at the board meeting two weeks ago assuming the company would employ someone to undertake the comprehensive clandestine assessment. After all, secret passengers like secret shoppers, were tactics they’d employed before to assess passenger experience and keep crew on their toes.

  But then Theo had suggested Ari be the one. Ari had protested – all those fucking people - but, as Theo had been quick to point out, no one would do a more thorough, more targeted assessment than Ari because nobody knew the business better or took more pride in the ships and their profitability than Ari.

  Also, being the other Callisthenes son, the younger one – the one that didn’t appear every other week on the cover of a tabloid magazine or revel in being an international playboy - he could blend in without being recognised.

  Plus, you need a fucking holiday.

  The board - which consisted entirely of family members from his grandfather to his parents and assorted uncles, aunts and cousins - had nodded their heads at Theo’s irritable proclamation.

  Ordinarily, Ari would have told Theo to go screw himself, board meeting or not, but his brother had known just the right strings to pull. The Hellenic Spirit’s continued problems were a matter of personal pride for Ari. It was the only ship that hadn’t shown improvement since the measures he’d put in place across the entire fleet when he’d become the CFO.

  Staff turnover was high, customer satisfaction surveys were sub-par and three out of the last dozen cruises had seen outbreaks of gastro bugs. Not to mention the steady decline in numbers, this voyage being no exception.

  The Hellenic Spirit’s capacity was four thousand people – two thousand three hundred passengers and seventeen hundred crew. There were currently fifteen hundred passengers on board. That was a shortfall of eight hundred guests which was, in the long run, unsustainable.

  And he – or Ari George anyway - was here to undercover why.

  Ari roused himself, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He needed to get dressed for his seven-thirty dinner sitting and then he was going to spend a few hours checking out the casino.

  His gaze fell on the cocktail umbrella sitting in the bottom of the bin and an image of Kelsey rose unbidden. A slug of grief, dark and visceral, hit him square in the middle of his sternum and he scrambled for his mental cache of Talia images. The one on their wedding day with her smiling up at him like he hung the goddamn moon offered itself up and he grabbed on refusing to relinquish it as he pulled his gaze from the bin.

  Spotting his wallet he reached for it, suddenly remembering he’d yet to check the contents. He’d deliberately left it behind to see if it was returned to him and if so, if anything was taken. He’d put in enough money to be tempting but not raise questions about his level of wealth.

  He was supposed to be an ordinary Joe after all – not a multi millionaire heir to a Greek shipping line.

  Ari counted the money. Twice. Two hundred euro. He counted it again. There was twenty missing. A feeling of dread sunk to the pit of his stomach and his throat went tight.

  His guilt intensified.

  Had Kelsey taken it? Had she come here, smiled at him, sat with him, brought a fucking cocktail umbrella with her all while his twenty burnt a hole in her pocket?

  No. He couldn’t believe she’d steal, that she was some kind of player. Ari was usually a very good judge of character and Kelsey had struck him as genuine right from the getgo. He couldn’t believe it was her.

  Which left a different scenario. A light fingered passenger? The guy who’d been working the bar with her? Or another explanation? Ari made a note to check the CCTV footage at the end of the cruise. He’d left the wallet in plain sight so it should be easy to see who picked it up.

  He just prayed like hell it wasn’t Kelsey.

  He’d looked up her staff record when he’d returned to the cabin. She was an excellent employee, with a clean record and a rapid career trajectory. The kind of staff they’d had difficulty retaining on this ship. They needed more Kelsey’s.

  It was just after eleven when Kelsey made it back to the staff cabins. She’d worked the dining room from six until nine and the Aphrodite Lounge on deck fourteen, for the last two hours. All she wanted was a shower and to hit the sack until she had to be up at five thirty for the six am breakfast shift.

  And a little alone time to think about her earlier transgression. With a passenger! God...what had she been thinking? Going into his cabin. Sitting on his bed.

  Letting him kiss her.

  But there was, as usual, a shoving off party going on in the mess – a tradition for the first night of a cruise. Not that any of this lot needed an excuse to party. Put a thousand plus mostly twenty-something�
�s in a room with cheap booze and it was always five o’clock.

  “Kels!”

  Tiffany, her best friend, waved at her from across the room. Also from Australia, they’d both been recruited to the Hermes family in the same intake and had largely worked the same Mediterranean cruises. But where Kelsey had grown up in a city, loved the beach and saw her job as a means to an end, Tiffany had grown up on a cattle property in the middle of nowhere and saw cruising as a grand adventure far, far away from the heat, dust and flies.

  Tiffany was dark haired and curvy – big boned as she like to call herself – and worked in the casino. At the black jack table she was quiet and dignified, her hair pulled back into a sleek bun, her uniform fitting her like a glove. She was the whole Casino-Royale-elegant-sophisticated-croupier wet dream.

  But out of her uniform and away from the tables she held no air and graces. She was just a sheila from the cattle station who could muster cows, fix a fence, string a bunch of swear words together that would make a cowboy blush and drink a SAS officer under the table. She also, genuinely, didn’t give one fuck what people thought about her.

  Kelsey loved her. Everybody loved her.

  “Grab a beer,” Tiffany said, the quiet demure voice she used at the tables nowhere in sight. “Join us.”

  Kelsey nodded, resigning herself to one beer and headed towards the bar. “Hey Sivat.” She greeted the Malaysian bartender, warmly. He’d manned the staff bar on every one of her cruises. “A beer please.”

  “You look tired,” he said as he poured her drink. “I thought you were quitting this crazy lifestyle?”

  Kelsey laughed. “One more year, Sivat and I’m outta here.”

  She’d have recouped enough of the money her ratfink ex had stolen – an inheritance from her grandmother – by then. Enough to put a deposit on the Pelican Cove beach cottage her mother and her had been coveting for what felt like a million years.

  As Sivat handed the drink over, Andy sidled up and greeted her with a flirty smile.

  “Hey,” Kelsey said.