Virgin's Sweet Rebellion

‘Do you always,’ a familiar, masculine voice asked in disgust, ‘leap before you look?’

Olivia blinked the water from her eyes and shook her wet hair from her face. And stared into the angry, arrogant face of Ben Chatsfield.

His eyes blazed and his cheeks were slashed with colour and for a moment, her mind still dazed, Olivia thought he looked like some ancient water god emerging from the sea, water dripping off his perfectly formed pecs.

Then sanity returned and she started to sputter.

‘I didn’t see anyone in the pool,’ she said, and her sputtering erupted into a coughing fit. She’d swallowed several mouthfuls of pool water when she’d made contact with Ben Chatsfield’s chest.

A chest that was now pressed alarmingly close to hers. Ben was still gripping her by the shoulders, their legs tangled together in the water. Her heart was thudding from the shock of the encounter, and something else as well.

Something she had no intention of acknowledging. In any case, she was coughing too much to say or even think anything.

Ben muttered something under his breath and with one arm under her armpits and across her breasts he started towing her to the side of the pool as if she were unconscious.

‘Just a second...’ she began, and started coughing again.

He hauled himself up onto the pool’s ledge and then unceremoniously hauled her up next to him. She lay slumped against him, his arm around her shoulders, as she attempted to cough up a lung.

Thankfully her coughing finally subsided and she drew in several agonised but much needed breaths. ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled. ‘I must have swallowed some pool water.’

‘Must have,’ Ben agreed tonelessly, and Olivia wondered why, out of all the people in the hotel, she had to dive straight into Ben Chatsfield.

She looked up at him, tried not to notice the water droplets that clung to his eyelashes and his chin...and his chest. Her gaze dropped down of its own accord and she swallowed hard at the sight of Ben Chatsfield’s well-toned six-pack. Nice.

Okay, looking up again. She smiled weakly and Ben smiled back, a cold curving of his mouth that told her she was so busted. Well, fine. A girl could look.

‘What did you mean, do I always leap before I look?’ she demanded, his words coming back to her rather belatedly.

‘Exactly that. You dived into a pool without checking if someone was swimming in it.’

‘I didn’t see you,’ she snapped.

‘Because you didn’t look.’

All right, maybe she hadn’t looked. She’d been tired and distracted and pretty darn grumpy because the first day of the festival had basically sucked. Two interviews cancelled, another reporter claiming she wasn’t interesting enough because her role in the film that was going to be her big breakthrough wasn’t yet confirmed, and she’d learned that twelve of her thirty-two lines had been cut from Blue Skies Forever, the indie film that was being shown at the festival.

And so she hadn’t done all her Girl Scout safety checks before jumping into the pool. Whatever.

‘I meant,’ she asked Ben now, ‘what you meant when you said always. As if you had experience of me jumping you in the pool before.’ Too late she realised what she’d said. ‘I mean, jumping on you.’

‘I know what you meant,’ Ben answered, and Olivia wanted to slap that knowing smirk right off his face. Or maybe kiss him. Both, probably, one after the other. Not good. Ben was out of her league, in a whole lot of ways.

She edged away from him and after a tiny pause Ben slipped his arm from her shoulders. She shivered, and then wished she hadn’t.

‘I said always,’ Ben told her, ‘because you pretty much leaped before you looked yesterday, when you came into my office with all your guns blazing, having made the assumption that I put you in that room on purpose.’

Olivia folded her arms across her chest. She had just remembered that she was wearing a skimpy hot-pink bikini. She’d forgotten to pack a normal swimsuit for exercise, because she’d been so focused on clothes she would be seen in. The wardrobe of a future Hollywood star.

‘I think it was a fair assumption to make,’ she told Ben coolly. ‘In fact, I’m far from convinced that you didn’t do it on purpose.’

Temper flared in Ben’s eyes, quickly tamped down, but even angry, especially angry, he looked hot. ‘Of course you are.’

‘Now what is that supposed to mean?’ she demanded, straightening in affront even as attraction jolted her insides in little lightning streaks. Ben slipped back into the pool, turning to face her with eyes that blazed and a mouth twisted downwards in derision.

‘Just that you’re exactly what you look and sound like, Miss Harrington. A high-maintenance, shallow, self-important wannabe celebrity. And so naturally you would think that the world revolves around you and your family, when in fact I couldn’t care less about the Harringtons, much less which room one of them is put in, in a hotel I’m only managing for two weeks. Goodnight.’

And with her mouth hanging inelegantly open, Olivia could only stare as Ben swam away from her, his lithe body cutting quickly through the water. He hauled himself up on the other side of the pool and then strode into the men’s changing room, slamming the door behind him.

* * *

All right, he should not have said all of that. Any of that. Yet it had felt good to let a little of his anger out, even if a lot of it wasn’t directed at Olivia Harrington.

Ben closed his eyes as he stepped under the changing room’s shower and let the hot spray hit him full in the face.

Maybe he’d been a little unfair.

And Olivia Harrington was just the type of person to create a huge fuss about how she’d been treated. She could go to the papers and create an enormous brouhaha about it. The media would have a field day.

Ben leaned his head against the marble tile and swore. What had he been thinking?

Well, he hadn’t been thinking. He’d just been reacting—to the stress of his day and the nearness of Olivia Harrington, to the fact that he’d been able to see her nipples through the thin fabric of her bikini top, and to being back at The Chatsfield, struggling to keep from reverting to the boy he’d once been or the man he knew he really was.

All of it had made him speak without consulting his brain first. And while it had felt good at the time, he wasn’t so keen on the possible repercussions.

He could, he supposed, apologise. He doubted it would do much good but he ought to at least make the effort. Sighing, he switched off the shower and wrapped a towel around his waist. He dressed quickly in the workout shorts and T-shirt he’d worn to the pool and then went back in search of Olivia.

Unfortunately, when he entered the pool area, it was empty. Olivia Harrington was gone.

* * *

Olivia sat shivering on the edge of the pool as Ben’s words reverberated through her. Her mouth was still hanging open in shock. No one had ever talked to her like that before. Well, not since sixth grade, when she’d been bullied by a bunch of mean girls.

Not that a bit of name-calling had hurt her much back then. She’d been too focused on the far more consuming matter of her mother dying.

And as for now...well, sticks and stones, Olivia told herself firmly. Sticks and stones, that was all. She wasn’t going to be hurt by Ben Chatsfield’s scathing assessment of her, or the contempt she’d seen blazing in those hazel eyes.

And she wasn’t self-important. Or shallow. As for high maintenance, well, she was an actress. She did have an appearance to maintain. And wannabe...well, that was just plain insulting.

Her expression hardening, and her mouth thankfully closing, Olivia scrambled up from the edge of the pool and stalked towards the women’s changing room.

Okay, so maybe she’d overreacted a little about the room, she acknowledged as she showered and changed back into her clothes. But was she seriously meant to believe that it had been an accident? She doubted that such a tiny room was even on the reservation system. But Ben had given her a huge suite, and a night’s free accommodation, so...

She could be the bigger person here. She’d apologise to him for her accusation, and then give him a chance to apologize for all those insults. Tomorrow morning she’d graciously accept his grovelling, Olivia decided. She was looking forward to Ben offering her a little bit of the legendary Chatsfield customer service.

Just six hours later Olivia was up and ready to go, dressed to kill or at least to impress in a lavender dress with a cinched-in waist and flared skirt. She left her hair artfully tousled around her shoulders, spent half an hour on her understated make-up and wore a single silver bangle on her wrist, as well as the silver heart pendant she never took off; her mother had given it to her just before she’d died. She looked professional but pretty, and ready, Olivia hoped, to nail a day full of interviews as well as Berlin’s arctic February winds. She’d brought a matching coat, at any rate.

She managed to choke down some fruit and coffee—she forewent the traditional German breakfast of cold meats—and then went in search of Ben before she headed out for her first interview. It was just a little past seven in the morning, but Ben was already at his desk, already looking deliciously rumpled, one hand driven carelessly through his hair.

Olivia experienced a little pulse of attraction and squashed it firmly. She was going to apologise like the professional, non-shallow person she was, and then she was going to graciously accept his apology, and then she was going to move on and never think about Ben Chatsfield again.

‘Hello.’

He looked up from his computer, his hazel eyes narrowing to glints of grey-green as he registered her presence. ‘Please tell me there isn’t a problem with your suite.’

‘No, it’s completely amazing actually.’ She paused, unsure how to have an at least somewhat normal conversation with this man. He sat very still, but she still sensed that barely leashed energy and emotion emanating from him, and wondered at it. Okay, normal conversation. ‘I can’t believe that suite was available. I was under the impression that all the rooms were booked.’

Ben pressed his lips together and glanced back at his computer screen. ‘Not that one.’

Olivia straightened, gave him her well-practised I’d-like-to-thank-the-Academy smile. ‘Well, I came here to thank you, really, for letting me stay in it. I appreciate the effort you must have gone to, and I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions about why I had my original room. So thank you for addressing my concern.’ She kept smiling as she waited for his reciprocal apology.

Ben’s gaze flicked back to her for a millisecond. ‘You’re welcome.’ Olivia stared. That was it? No apologies for calling her shallow and self-important and wannabe? ‘I looked into the room confusion,’ he continued without taking his gaze from the computer screen, ‘and it seems that one of our newer reception staff gave your original room away to a rather intimidating guest. He put you in that room, thinking it had already been renovated. That wing of the hotel is undergoing renovations, but as you could see, they haven’t finished yet.’

‘Ah. Right.’ And that did seem like a believable excuse, Olivia supposed. So yes, she had overreacted. But so had he. Yet he obviously didn’t feel the need to apologise for his litany of insults last night.

And then, just when she was ready to consign Ben to permanent jerkdom, he said abruptly, one hand curling into a fist on top of his desk, ‘I’m sorry for losing my temper last night. It shouldn’t have happened. I certainly shouldn’t have insulted you. Please accept my apology.’ Each word was bitten out, and his expression was unaccountably grim. Olivia watched as he carefully, deliberately, unclenched his fist, palm flat against the desk.

‘Apology accepted.’ She managed a teasing smile. ‘Although that wannabe comment was completely uncalled for.’

To her surprise his mouth kicked up in a tiny, answering smile and the tension that had been keeping him so still seemed to flow out of him, at least a little. ‘I thought that might annoy you the most.’

‘Well spotted.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Were they actually flirting? It kind of felt like it, which was...weird. But also rather stimulating. ‘Just out of curiosity,’ she asked, ‘why did you have one of the largest suites in the hotel empty? I thought the hotel was fully booked. You didn’t kick anyone out on my account, did you?’

He hesitated, then said, ‘No.’

‘So it was empty?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Why do I feel like you’re not telling me something?’

He shrugged and then admitted tersely, ‘I was staying there.’

‘You were?’ Shock scorched through her, followed by a horrified remorse. She’d kicked Ben Chatsfield out of his room. ‘Where are you staying now?’

His sardonic gaze met hers. ‘Guess.’

The penny dropped with a clunk. ‘Not...’

‘I had the sheets changed, at least. But the hotel, as you noted yourself, is fully booked.’

She simply stared, utterly discomfited by his admission. He was staying in the broom cupboard? And he hadn’t even been going to mention it until she’d pressed. Now she really did feel self-important and high maintenance and all the rest of it, except wannabe, of course ‘Thank you,’ she said yet again, lamely, and Ben just stared at her with that inscrutable expression, his eyes reminding her of a tiger or a panther or some other wild and dangerous animal. Okay, enough with the fanciful thoughts. He was waiting, she realised, for her to go. And so she did, hightailing it out of his office with an unsettling mixture of relief and disappointment.

An hour later Olivia had managed, mostly, to put the whole episode with Ben Chatsfield out of her mind as she answered questions about the upcoming drama that was going to be her ticket to the A-list. She laughed, she chatted, she even winked once. All of it a performance, and one that she was doing remarkably well, if she did say so herself.

Then, just after she’d told a witty joke and let out a sparkling laugh, a reporter came back with, ‘Would you care to comment on your relationship with Benjamin Chatsfield?’

What the what?

The expression of laughing ease dropped from Olivia’s face like the mask it was as she stared at the woman from the entertainment website with whom she’d got on very well until this moment.

Her relationship with Benjamin Chatsfield? How on earth had the woman come up with that one? After an endless moment her brain finally stuttered into gear. ‘I don’t care to comment at this time,’ she said crisply. And wasn’t that an understatement. She didn’t have a relationship with Ben Chatsfield. How did this woman even know she’d spoken to Ben Chatsfield?

‘Not even on this photo?’ the woman asked with a smile that was starting to look smug. Olivia looked down at the newspaper she’d laid on the table, opened to a two-page spread of...

Oh, dear heaven.

How had someone seen them? And how had they looked so...intimate? Some paparazzi had captured them at just the right—or wrong—moment, with Ben’s hands on her shoulders, his face thrust close to hers, looking for all the world as if he were going to kiss her when in fact he’d been about to yell at her. Again.

And there were other photos...one of them sitting by the edge of the pool, Ben’s arm around her shoulders. She’d been recovering from a coughing fit but it looked...it looked as if they were cuddling.

And then the headline: Celebrity Chef Ben Chatsfield Gets Up Close and Personal with Starlet.

Starlet? They didn’t even know her name! She swallowed her pique and glanced back up at the smirking woman.

‘Like I said, no comment.’

Every interview she’d had scheduled that day was the same. Each reporter asked a few hurried questions about the upcoming film or her career, and then went for what they were really interested in.

Her relationship with celebrity chef Ben Chatsfield. Starlet she might be, but she’d been recognised.

Olivia kept up the ‘no comment’ line for five interviews, enduring smirks, chuckles and some pretty blatant innuendo. By late afternoon, when a jowly man from a tabloid her agent had insisted she grant an interview to asked her what she thought Ben Chatsfield saw in her, an insulting question if she’d ever heard one, she replied frostily, ‘The truth is Ben Chatsfield and I have been seeing each other since The Chatsfield tried to take over The Harrington.’ She gave him a glittering smile. ‘It’s a bit like Romeo and Juliet, don’t you think?’

And without waiting for a response, she stalked out of the room.

Her agent, Melissa, followed her with a click of stiletto heels. ‘Now that will get them talking,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘I didn’t know you were seeing Ben Chatsfield. That’s great press.’

Olivia kept her back to Melissa, unsure of the expression that would be on her face. Horror, probably. Or maybe hysteria. ‘I’m not,’ she said after a moment, her voice toneless.

‘What was that?’

‘I’m not seeing him!’ She whirled around, gave her agent what she hoped was an insouciant look. Come on, Olivia, play the devil-may-care ingénue. It’s just another role. ‘I just said that because the man was so odious.’

‘Oh.’ Melissa frowned, and Olivia let out a careless little laugh.

‘What? It’s just Hollywood gossip. Tomorrow they’ll move on to something else.’

‘Yes, but...’ Melissa was still frowning, and everything in Olivia prickled with annoyance—as well as a little alarm. She didn’t like seeing her agent look so...disapproving.

‘It’s not a big deal,’ she said, still trying for airy.

‘You just confirmed a relationship,’ Melissa pointed out. ‘So it’s not just gossip or rumour, Olivia. It’s a fact, confirmed by a primary source.’

‘Oh. Well.’ Her mind raced even as her face flushed. Why had she said such a stupid thing? She’d just been so fed up, being treated like Ben Chatsfield’s eye candy all day instead of an actress in her own right. No one had been interested in her upcoming film, just who they thought Ben Chatsfield was seeing. ‘I could explain,’ she suggested to Melissa. ‘Tell them I just said it because that reporter was so annoying...’ She trailed off as Melissa shook her head.

‘That would just make you look like an idiot. An unstable idiot who lies in public.’

Which basically meant she was an unstable idiot who lied in public. Ben Chatsfield’s mocking question echoed through her mind.

Do you always leap before you look?

Apparently so. Which was surprising, because she’d never thought of herself as impetuous. She’d planned her acting career with the resolute focus of a military general. Yet in the space of twenty-four hours she’d been acting like a crazed person. She was just so stressed. Isabelle was on her case about wanting to buy her shares in the hotel, and while Olivia had no real ties to the hotel, she still felt reluctant to step away from her family’s business so completely. Her real focus, though, was on securing this film role which could make—or break—her career. She had not, Olivia acknowledged, been at her best.

No wonder Ben thought so little of her. And he was going to think even less of her when he heard about this latest mishap. Which he most certainly would, since she’d just said it to a voracious reporter.

This was bad.

‘I screwed up, clearly,’ she told Melissa. Honesty was the best policy, right? ‘What can I do to make it better?’

‘I’m not sure. What is your relationship with Ben Chatsfield, Olivia?’

‘I told you, I don’t have one...’

‘Then why were the two of you in a clinch in The Chatsfield’s pool?’

‘It was an accident.’

‘An accident?’

Olivia sighed. ‘I didn’t look before I leaped,’ she said. ‘Literally.’

At least Melissa gave a small smile when Olivia explained just how she and Ben had ended up tangled together in the deep end. But then she sighed and frowned again.

‘I think the best thing, for now anyway, is to go along with the ruse.’

‘The ruse?’

‘That you’re seeing Ben Chatsfield. Assuming you can get him to agree, of course.’

‘Oh. Uh. Sure.’ Not.

‘At least until the Berlinale is over and we have this film role confirmed. After that you can just say the two of you broke up.’

‘Right.’ Ben was so not going to be on board with this. Olivia pictured the look of disbelief on his face when she explained what she wanted—needed—him to do. Not just disbelief, but disdain. Derision. All those nasty D words.

‘So you guys are friends, right?’ Melissa asked. ‘He’ll agree to play along for a little while?’

Olivia gave her agent a breezy smile. She wasn’t an actress for nothing. ‘Oh, sure,’ she said, and held up two crossed fingers. ‘We’re like that. Not a problem at all.’

Uh-huh.

CHAPTER THREE

‘HAVE YOU SEEN the newspapers?’

Ben held his cell phone away from his ear as Spencer’s voice boomed down the line. ‘The newspapers? No. I’ve been too busy trying to find proper accommodation for an actress’s toy poodle. And by toy poodle, I don’t mean toy. I mean a real-live dog she decided to bring with her to the hotel.’

‘We have an arrangement with a local kennel,’ Spencer said dismissively, and Ben gritted his teeth.

‘That might have been good to know for the past two hours.’ He drummed his fingers on the desk, forced his voice back to measured. ‘So what’s in the newspapers?’

‘You are.’

‘What?’ Though he knew the media had dubbed him a celebrity chef, he’d managed to keep a low profile ever since he’d opened his first restaurant. He didn’t want or need publicity; food spoke for itself. And he wasn’t exactly the world’s most charming people-person. He had no idea why he’d make the papers now.

‘You and a certain Harrington,’ Spencer elaborated, and for a second Ben still came up blank. ‘A certain... You mean Olivia?’ What other Harrington had he come into contact with, ever?

‘Olivia, yes,’ Spencer bit out. ‘So when were you going to enlighten me that you’re dating a Harrington?’

‘I’m what?’ Now Ben was the one booming. His PA, Rebecca, in the office adjoining his gave him a quick, curious glance. Ben sat back in his chair, drove one hand through his hair and let out a low breath.

‘I am not dating a Harrington. Any Harrington, and definitely not Olivia. Not,’ he continued with a definite edge to his voice, ‘that I need to answer to you if I was.’

‘So you are...’

‘No. I’m just reminding you that I’m not your damn employee, Spencer. I’m doing you a favour for two weeks, and my personal life is none of your concern.’

Spencer was silent for a moment. ‘Fair enough,’ he said at last, and he sounded grudging. ‘But the newspapers are saying you are dating a Harrington, and that affects the negotiations...’

‘Then the newspapers are wrong,’ Ben answered shortly. ‘What a surprise.’

‘That’s not what Olivia is saying,’ Spencer added, and Ben bolted upright, his hand clenched so tightly around his phone his knuckles ached.

‘What?’

‘She gave an interview this afternoon, which is breaking news on all the entertainment websites as we speak. I quote, “We’ve been seeing each other since The Chatsfield tried to take over The Harrington.” And the we in that, in case you’re wondering, is you and Olivia.’

Ben’s jaw went slack as his mind spun. So this was her revenge for his smack-down last night? So much for the heartfelt apology she’d given him that morning. Clearly she had more acting talent than he’d given her credit for.

Instead she decided to tell the worldwide media that they were dating?