START ONE

'WHAT on earth are you wearing on your head?' Grace Bell demanded as she pressed the button for the service lift.

Stella raised a self-conscious hand to the floral scarf which covered her hair. 'It'll keep the dust off.' 'Since when have you been so fussy?' Stella heaved a sigh and decided to be honest with the older woman. '

There's this guy who often works late on my floor...and, well, he's—' 'Making a nuisance of himself, is he?' Grace's round face tightened with disapproval but she wasn't surprised by the news.

Even in an overall Stella would attract keen male attention. Fashioned on petite but shapely lines, the young woman had hair so naturally fair it gleamed like silver, and clear green eyes enhanced by unexpectedly dark brows and lashes.

'I bet he thinks he's onto a sure thing with a humble cleaner. Old or young?' 'Young.' Stella stood back to let Grace enter the lift first.

'He's getting on my nerves. I've been thinking about mentioning him to the supervisor.' Grace grimaced. 'No, whatever you do, don't make it official, Stella.

If this lech works late, he must be quite important. Let's face it, you're more expendable than some business whizzkid!' 'Don't I know it.' Stella sighed. 'It's still a man's world.'

'He must be pretty persistent if he's getting you down...' Grace frowned, thinking of how feisty Stella could be, although nobody would ever think it to look at her. 'Look, you do my floor tonight and I'll do yours.

That'll give you a break. Then maybe one of the other cleaners will consider doing a permanent switch with you.' 'But I haven't got security clearance to clean the top floor,' Stella reminded the older woman reluctantly. 'Oh, never mind that!' Grace dismissed impatiently.

'Why should anyone need special permission just to polish floors and empty bins? But if the security guard does around while you're up there, take yourself off out of sight if you can.

Some of those blokes would report us. And don't go through those big double doors at the front. That's Harlequin's office suite and I'm not allowed in there...OK?'

As the older woman pushed her trolley out onto the floor mat was usually Stella's responsibility, Stella gave her a grateful smile.

'I appreciate this, Grace.' Stella had never been on the top floor of the Harlequin International building before. When she emerged from the service lift, she realized that the layout was different from the floors below.

Rounding a corner, she saw a large, luxurious reception area to her right. Beyond it, all the lights had been turned off, but she could dimly see an impressive set of double doors in the gloom.

But when she looked to her left, another set of plainer double doors also greeted her at the far end of the corridor. She raised her eyebrows, but assumed the unlit passage closer to Reception housed the office suite that was off-limits.'

Deciding to start at the opposite end and work her way back along the corridor, Stella relaxed. She was delighted by the prospect of an evening shift uninterrupted by Joshua Clark and his suggestive remarks.

Her canvas-shod feet making little sound, Stella opened one of the heavy double doors and had crossed the room to reach for the overflowing wastepaper basket before she registered that the interconnecting office beyond was still occupied.

The door stood slightly ajar, spilling out the unmistakable sound of male voices. Usually, she would have announced her presence, but, having taken Grace's advice on board, she decided it would be wiser just to beat a quick, quiet retreat. The very last thing she wanted to do was get the older woman into trouble.

Just as she was about to step back out again she heard male footsteps coming down the corridor, and practically had a heart attack on the spot.

Without even thinking about what she was doing, she shot behind the door to conceal herself, her heart pounding like a piston. The steps got closer and closer, and then stopped right on the other side of the open door.

At that point, Stella just stopped breathing altogether. In the rushing silence, she could now hear every word of the dialogue carrying through from the office next door. '...so as long as I continue to appear to be interested in acquiring Davidson Components, Marco Technic will remain a sitting duck,' a dark-accented male drawl was murmuring with satisfaction.

'I'll make my move the minute the market opens on Wednesday.' Stella heard whoever else was on the other side of the door catch their breath audibly.

She felt like a total idiot. What the heck had she been thinking of? The maintenance trolley parked outside supplied visible proof of her presence somewhere nearby. However, the man in the doorway advanced no deeper into the room. To her surprise and relief, she heard him start back down the corridor much more quietly than he had walked up to it.

Stella slowly sucked in much-needed air. She was creeping out from concealment on literal tiptoe when the door of the interconnecting office suddenly shot wide to frame an intimidating male, who seemed at that moment to be as tall as a skyscraper. She froze, green eyes huge in her flushed and discomfited face.

Eyes as black as pitch raked over her in a challenging appraisal as aggressive as a loaded gun. 'What the hell are you doing in here?' he shot at her in upset disbelief.

I was just leaving—' 'You were hiding behind the door listening!' he contradicted in pure outrage. 'No, I wasn't listening.' Stella was genuinely shocked by the level of his annoyance, and then, as she recognized him, her tension rocketed right off the scale.

No, they hadn't met before, but there was a dirty great enormous portrait of the guy in the ground-floor foyer. That portrait was the target of much teasing and admiring female comment. Why? Diornysios Harlequin was drop-dead gorgeous.

Diornysios Harlequin, popularly known as Dior, the ruthless, asset-stripping Greek billionaire who ran Harlequin International. Oh, dear heaven, she registered sickly, she'd picked the wrong set of double doors to intrude behind.

Now both her job and Grace's had to be on the line! A grey-haired older man appeared from behind Dior Harlequin. Frowning at her in dismay, he dug out a mobile phone. 'She's not the regular cleaner, Dior.

I'll get onto security straight away.' 'There's no need for that,' Stella protested through teeth that were starting to chatter. 'I'm just covering for the usual cleaner tonight...that's all. I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to interrupt you...I was just about to step back outside—' 'But you had no business being there in the first place,' the older man condemned. Dior Harlequin studied her broodingly, eyes so dark they glittered like reflective mirrors and unnerved her. 'She was hiding behind the door, Rowan.'

'Look, it may have looked like I was hiding behind the door,' Stella argued in growing desperation.

She was hiding behind the door, Rowan.' 'Look, it may have looked like I was hiding behind the door,' Stella argued in growing desperation.

'But why would I be hiding? Does that make sense? I'm just a cleaner. I can see I made a mistake coming in here, and I'm sorry.

I'll get out right now—' Without warning, a large brown hand stretched out to close round her narrow wrist and halt her backward drift towards the door.

'You're not going anywhere. What's your name?' 'Stella...I mean, Eleanor Caroline ...what are you doing?' she gasped. But it was too late.

Dior Harlequin had already tugged lose the scarf she had tied around her head. Her silvery pale hair fell around her shoulders in tumbled disarray. He towered over her, easily six foot three.

Feeling threatened by his sheer size, Stella gazed up at him, green eyes locking into fathomless black. Her tummy clenched as if she had dropped from a height, the oddest sensation of dizziness making her head swim and her knees shiver.

His frowning appraisal had become an outright smoldering stare of sexual assessment.

'You don't look like any cleaner I've ever met,' he finally breathed in a roughened, accented undertone. 'You meet a lot?' Stella heard herself ask foolishly, but then she had been thrown way off balance by what she had seen in his eyes.

That age-old oversexed male to the female reaction she despised. 'Stella...there is an Eleanor Caroline on the maintenance roster,' the older man he had referred to as Rowan cut in flatly. 'But she's supposed to be working on level eight, and Security hasn't cleared her for this floor.

I'll have her supervisor sent up to identify her.' As the other man relayed that data, the Greek tycoon's hard, dark features tautened.

'No. Get off that phone now. The fewer people who know about this intrusion the better.' Releasing her wrist, he stepped back to swing out a swivel chair. 'Take a seat, Stella.' 'But I—' 'Sit!' he emphasized as if he was dealing with a puppy in dire need of basic training.

Her teeth locking together at that style of address, Stella dropped down, her slim back rigid but her heartbeat still racing. So she had walked in where she shouldn't have. She had apologized.

she had all but groveled, she reflected resentfully. So why the continuing fuss? 'Perhaps you'd care to explain what you're doing on this floor?

Why you came into this particular office and why you chose to stay and eavesdrop behind a door?' Dior Harlequin spelled out with harsh exactitude.

The silence simmered. Momentarily, Stella wondered if bursting into tears would get her off the hook. She met those hard green eyes and her heart skipped a startled beat.

With Dior Harlequin already behaving as if she had committed a criminal offense, honesty now seemed the wisest and safest course. 'I've been having a bit of a problem with this bloke who works late on level eight,' Stella admitted with fierce reluctance. 'What sort of problem?' Rowan prompted.

Dior Harlequin let his intense dark gaze roam with bold intimacy over Stella's small tense figure, lingering at length on the tilted ** of her breasts defined by the overall and the slender perfection of her legs.