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‘I must earn my keep by attending to the family business. We have many customers, many suppliers, and some of them cannot be trusted. Given the chance, they will try to take advantage of us, so we must be vigilant. I know there is something amiss in this ledger, but no matter how many times I look, I cannot get to the bottom of it. Will you help me?’

‘I don’t know anything about business.’

‘But you know about numbers.’ He drew his hand across his face, suddenly looking younger than a man pushing thirty, though the strain he was under showed in his eyes.

‘What do you see around you?’

Shauna didn’t hesitate. ‘A lot of money and wealth.’

‘Nai.’ He nodded. ‘But this wealth, this money, all these beautiful things – we have worked for them, Shauna. People are jealous and too lazy to work for themselves. They think we do not deserve all this, but the truth is my father and his brothers have made many sacrifices for this – and I must protect my father’s interests and keep this business thriving for the generations that will come after us. We put our family first.’

‘It sounds almost like a family code.’ Shauna laughed.

There was no humour in Demetrios’s face when he replied, ‘It is a code. We live by it.’

‘Then I’ll help you, if I can.’

‘Let us concentrate.’

For the next hour or so, Shauna and Demetrius pored over the books together; Shauna found it disconcerting to be so close to him, but her interest in the problem and her tenacity soon kicked in. Eventually, her scrutiny paid off and she spotted a discrepancy.

‘These two figures don’t correspond.’ She pointed to a line in the ledger. ‘This company, Valma and Partners … The hours they worked for you don’t correspond to what they billed. According to my calculations, you should have been billed $6,400, but this invoice is for $64,000 dollars. That’s why the columns don’t tally.’

‘Those sneaky bastards!’ Demetrios thumped his fist on the desk. ‘The head of the company is one of my father’s oldest friends. You’d think he could be trusted, no? But this isn’t the first time we’ve been cheated by people we should be able to trust. That’s why we try to keep everything in the family.’ He was lost in thought for a moment, his brow creased in concentration. ‘My father will not like this.’

Shauna could see that it was a serious matter but she wasn’t sure how to respond. To her relief, Demetrios shook off his anger at the decption and said, ‘I must repay you for saving my company a lot of money. When we get to Ithos, I’m going to take you out myself in one of our boats. Then you will see the Ithos that I want you to see.’

Shauna felt a thrill at this, but couldn’t help thinking that, by the time they got to Ithos, she would have been forgotten. While he was genuinely grateful in the moment, he was a busy man and she was just a chambermaid, a helpful one who had just saved his family a lot of money, but a chambermaid all the same.

‘There’s nowhere quite like Ithos in the whole of the Greek Islands,’ he went on. ‘It is a jewel. It’s also my home.’ His eyes were distant for a moment.

Moved by his sudden quietness, she said softly, ‘It sounds as if you love it very much.’

‘I do. It’s the one place where I can be me.’

Shauna saw something in Demetrios then, a seriousness and honesty that his playboy persona belied, and it touched her. ‘I don’t think I know who me is,’ she said, wondering where her own candidness had come from.

‘One day you will, but first you must live a little, Sleeping Beauty.’ He looked at her then, holding her gaze, and Shauna felt her heart quicken. She was convinced that he was going to reach out to her, and it was all she could do not to touch him first. For a moment she thought of the underwear strewn across his bed and wondered what it would feel like if she were the one sharing that bed.

Then Demetrios dropped his gaze and reached for the satellite phone. ‘Now you must excuse me, I have calls to make. Thank you again, Shauna O’Brien, I can see you are an asset to the Theodosis Shipping Company.’

Shauna hunted for an ironic smirk behind that comment but was surprised to find only sincerity. He was already punching out a number on the telephone and, as she crept out, she could hear him talking animatedly in Greek. As she made her way to her cabin, she couldn’t stop thinking of Ithos and wondering what might await her there.

Chapter 6

The following day, Shauna found herself on duty in the master suite again. She half hoped that she would run into Demetrios, but he was nowhere to be seen so she tidied his suite quickly, noting with satisfaction that there was no sign of Normandie’s lingerie this time.

As she went about her work, her thoughts kept returning to Demetrios. Jeremy had said that Demetrios would be attending a party at the Grimaldi palace tonight. What Shauna wouldn’t give to be to be a fly on that opulent wall right this moment. She imagined Princess Grace sitting on a Louis XV chair in her enormous dressing room, flicking through a copy of Vogue distractedly while her maid paraded a series of glamorous and elegant gowns before her so she could select what she would wear later for the reception. Her seventeen-year-old wild-child daughter, Princess Stephanie, beautiful, tanned and tempestuous, would come running in, demanding her mother’s attention, and the business of tonight’s outfit would have to wait while her mother listened to Stephanie’s excited chatter. Perhaps they would be catching up on the latest gossip about the rich and powerful Monaco elite … or maybe they’d be planning a trip to watch John McEnroe play in the French Open, or to visit Elton John backstage at his latest concert …

She was startled from her daydream by the rumble of tyres down below on the jetty as a bright red Ferrari screeched to a halt. She stepped to look over the side of the yacht at the open-topped sports car. In the driving seat was the unmistakable Normandie and Demetrios was beside her. It was clear that all was not well. Shauna took a step back to avoid being seen. She knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, but she was afraid to draw attention to herself by moving. So she stayed rooted to the spot as their words drifted up.

‘You are a shit, Demetrios! How dare you treat me this way.’ Shauna could hear the anger in the girl’s voice, and she could sense that the girl was on the verge of tears.

‘You are exaggerating,’ Demetrios answered her, his own voice cool and unemotional.

‘I saw you with that little whore, you didn’t even try to hide it.’

‘Sofía Constantis is the daughter of one of my father’s business associates. Of course I must spend time with her – it is my duty to show her around Monaco while she is here.’