Free Magnate's Make-Believe Mistress by Bronwyn Jameson Page A

floor-to-ceiling drop of voile curtaining before withdrawing her hand. “Are we allowed to touch?” she asked.
    â€œEverything,” Crash replied dryly, “except the Renoir.”
    â€œYou’re kidding me.” Chessie peered at the painting over the fireplace, then made a strangled sound. “You’re not! Far out.” She whirled around. “And those pictures in the drawing room…They’re originals, aren’t they?”
    â€œYou want to take a closer look?”
    Chessie’s eyes boggled, and Isabelle waved them off. Not that she wasn’t interested in art, just not as passionately engrossed as her sister. And she was keen on talking to Cristo before he left for his country estate. He’d mentioned that to Crash earlier; he had to check that his beloved horse was recovering as well as his staff had promised. But despite this impatience, he’d noticed her worried frown and invited her to track him down after she had settled in.
    Crash had pointed out his rooms on the first floor, and on her way down Isabelle chewed over the notion of ever settling in at this house. Artwork by the masters hung on every wall. The thick carpet runners that muffled her footsteps were works of art in themselves.
    This world of million-dollar decorating makeovers and chauffeured limousines and private jets he copiloted…this was the world of Cristiano Verón and, she imagined, Hugh Harrington.
    It was a world the Browne sisters worked in, not a world they lived in.
    The only way she could pretend to settle in was as a working employee—not a token one—and only after she knew when Cristo planned to approach Harrington. She’d not had a chance to broach the question since that night in Melbourne. Caught up in the logistics of packing and leaving so swiftly, then in the travel with Chessie at her side, she’d not had a minute alone with Cristo. Now she would.
    Hand fisted to knock, she hesitated just long enough to pray that she’d chosen the right door. Sitting room, not bedroom. The knock-knock of her heart resonated as loudly as her knuckles on the thick timber door.
    It opened immediately, as if she’d caught him on his way out. Except he couldn’t be—not unless he’d chosen to go out on a chilly London evening wearing nothing but a pair of jeans and the phone pressed to his ear. Beyond the impressive breadth of his bare-skinned shoulders, beneath the thickly muscled arm with which he held the door ajar, she could see a bed.
    A big, broad bed smothered in a deep chocolate spread. It looked like velvet. It looked like him.
    Her gaze rocketed from the bed to his face. There was something in his hooded gaze, a glimmer of heat and of predatory satisfaction, an invitation to come into his lair and do more than talk. Suddenly she was no longer tired; she was wide awake, alive with the tingle of anticipation and the whisper of danger.
    Wrong door, she reminded herself with a snap to attention. Wrong bed, wrong tingles and absolutely the wrong man.
    Â 
    Cristo was expecting her, but not this soon—he’d barely had time for a quick shower, let alone to finish dressing—and not at his bedroom door. Not that he minded. Any interruption from this phone call was welcome. When the interruption was Isabelle Browne with her hair a loose tumble of honeyed curls and her eyes wide and warm and taken aback, it was even more welcome.
    â€œI will call you back,” he said into the phone, cutting off Vivi’s rant about the wedding caterer. “I have company.”
    His company stood on the wrong side of the threshold, shaking her head and mouthing something about coming back later. Cristo held the door wider. “Are you coming in or not?”
    â€œNot if I’m interrupting.”
    â€œYou can always help.” He lifted one unclothed shoulder to indicate his meaning.
    For the briefest of moments, her gaze drifted with the notion,