Free His Mistress for a Million by Trish Morey

as she made a desperate bid for freedom, his thumb making lazy circles on her palm as he held her. ‘You don’t have to thank me for anything. We have a deal. You will act like a mistress and take what is offered you, and I will take what is offered to me. Understood?’
    Her hand was dwarfed by his, and so much paler now she’d lost her Aussie year-round tan, and the contrast seemed so much like the contrast between them. Andreas was strong and wealthy and darkly dangerous and she was broke and pale and reduced to making deals to survive. But did he really expect her to offer herself to him? He’d slept out here, the sofa bedstill unkempt, sheets and blankets littering the floor, but from the moment he’d awakened her this morning, with his unashamed display of his naked body and his thinly veiled comments, she’d had the sense that sex wasn’t far from his mind. With her? Surely not.
    She swallowed. ‘I’ll do my job in accordance with the terms of our contract. I can’t think what else I could possibly have to offer that would interest you.’
    ‘Exactly what I meant,’ he said, his words at odds with the look in his eyes as he let her go.
    The rest of the morning passed in a whirlwind. She was ferried down to the salon and secreted away in a private room where it seemed a dozen staff were fully employed in transforming her into someone worthy of being seen on Andreas’ arm. Nobody seemed to think it odd, or, at least, nobody made her feel that way and she wondered if Andreas had been right, that the staff were paid far too much to sit in judgement or to care about anything but the service they provided.
    Before long, their skilful hands had her relaxing so much that she didn’t care. How often did she have a treat like this? Never. She was determined to enjoy it.
    In no time it seemed her hair was transformed into a thousand tiny tinfoil packages. A manicure and pedicure followed, along with waxing and a treatment over her new colour before she relaxed into a facial. She felt like a new woman even before the hairdresser studied her, reading her newly coloured hair as a sculptor read the stone, before a make-up artist took her attention, leaving the hairdresser to perform his art.
    And finally they were finished. The team gathered around her smiling and waiting for her reaction, but she was too staggered to give one. In the mirror her once-mousy hair gleamed back at her in what looked like a dozen shades of copper toblonde to gold, the skilful cut using her natural wave for fullness while the artful layering somehow seemed to add inches to its length.
    And that was just her hair. The make-up artist had turned her eyes into those of a seductress, their blue colouring intensified, the shadows beneath banished, and a woman who had never been pretty felt beautiful for the first time in her life. Tears pricked her eyes and she bit down hard on her lip, trying not to cry, not wanting to ruin all their good work. ‘I can’t believe what you’ve all done, thank you so much.’ And to the make-up artist, she pointed to her eyes and asked, ‘Can you show me how to do this?’ and the girl nodded, her smile widening.
    ‘I’d love to. You have such extraordinary eyes to work with. You just have to make more of them. They were just lost in your face before.’
    Lost in her face? Or just lost? It could have been the story of her life. But a quick lesson later, Cleo was on her way back to the suite, armed with all the products and cosmetics she would need to reproduce the artists’ work.
    This time as she walked through the lobby towards the bank of lifts she didn’t cringe, didn’t expect Security to come running. She was still only clad in jeans and a casual top, but she held her head up high and moved with a confidence she’d never known. One or two heads turned as she passed, and it gave her an unfamiliar buzz. She couldn’t keep the smile from her face. Likewise she couldn’t wait to show Andreas the