Ari tore his mouth away and looked down at her, at their bodies still plastered together.

‘You’re so beautiful. Why do you hide yourself away, Lucy?’

His words broke her out of this sensual stasis: so beautiful… She wasn’t beautiful. She’d heard those words a million times before. Not directed at her—never at her. But at someone else. Someone who had craved them; someone who had spent her life being defined by men’s opinion of her.

The shock of everything suddenly hit, and made Lucy jerk back violently, knocking his hand away and pulling her dress together again. She had a mortifying image in her head of wantonly pressing as close as she could, and the shame of her reaction to that made her feel nauseous.

Her voice was shaking and thin, too high. ‘This is completely inappropriate. I’m your assistant.’

Abby Green got hooked on Mills & Boon® romances while still in her teens, when she stumbled across one belonging to her grandmother in the west of Ireland. After many years of reading them voraciously, she sat down one day and gave it a go herself. Happily, after a few failed attempts, Mills & Boon bought her first manuscript.

Abby works freelance in the film and TV industry, but thankfully the four a.m. starts and the stresses of dealing with recalcitrant actors are becoming more and more infrequent, leaving her more time to write!

She loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her through her website at www.abby-green.com She lives and works in Dublin.

Ruthless
Greek Boss,
Secretary
Mistress

By

Abby Green

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This is for Ann and Iona—getting to number ten wouldn’t have been half the amazing journey it’s been without either one of you by my side. I’m indebted to both of you wonderful ladies and writers, and am looking forward to all of our shared experiences to come! With much thanks and love, for everything.

Chapter One

‘YOU’RE the coldest man I ever met. If you have a heart it’s made of stone. You’re cruel and contemptible. I hate you.’ The woman’s strident voice quivered dangerously on the last word and came through the heavy oak door with effortless ease.

There was silence, and then the ominously low rumble of a man’s voice. Short, sharp, succinct. Lucy could imagine only too well the glacial look that was most likely accompanying those indistinct words. She sighed as she heard the woman splutter indignantly, but then she was off again, her voice rising so high now that Lucy feared for the crystal decanter on the drinks board nearby. While Lucy was new to these scenes first-hand, she had to reflect that the rumours she’d heard over the past two years hadn’t been a myth after all. The voice was drawing her attention back to the present moment.

‘Don’t think that you can seduce your way back into my bed after treating me like this!’

Lucy had just enough time for a cynical smile as she reflected that if her new boss was to so much as arch an eyebrow this woman would undoubtedly be back in his bed in a heartbeat before the door was suddenly flung open. She looked studiously at her computer screen, trying to sink down in her seat and be as unobtrusive as possible.

Being unobtrusive was her trademark: it was what had got her this coveted job, along with her impeccable credentials and references. There was a lull, a pseudo-calm in the middle of the storm. Lucy didn’t look up, but could visualise the woman standing dramatically on the threshold of the palatial office. Tall, sleek and blonde. Stunningly beautiful, from the top of her shiny head to the tip of her expensively manicured toes, evident through the peepholes of a pair of sky-high heels. She was reputedly one of the most alluring women in the world, but apparently hadn’t managed to hold his attention for longer than a few weeks.

‘Needless to say you won’t be hearing from me again.’

The door slammed shut with such violence that Lucy winced. He wouldn’t appreciate that. Even though Lucy had only been working for him for two months she already knew that he hated scenes. A cloud of noxious perfume lingered in the wake of the tall woman’s exit. She hadn’t even glanced Lucy’s way.

Lucy breathed a sigh of relief and then heard a loud thump, as if a fist was connecting with a hard surface. She counted to ten, and on the count of ten the door opened. She looked up and willed any emotion or reaction from her face. Her boss stood there, filling the frame easily. Veritable sparks of energy crackled from his body.

Aristotle Levakis, CEO of Levakis Enterprises which encompassed all aspects of a dizzyingly successful global imports and exports business.

Tall, broad-shouldered, lean hipped. Every hard-muscled, dark olive-skinned inch of him adding up to a—currently bristling—Greek alpha male in his potent and virile prime.

His distinctive light green eyes skewered Lucy to the spot, almost as if the last ten minutes had been her fault. Instantly she felt breathless; her heart hammered. She hated that she was aware of him. But the best part of two years spent viewing him from a distance, along with every other ogling female in his thousand-employee-strong company, had done little to help diminish the devastating impact of working in such close proximity to him. A memory surfaced and familiar heat flooded her. If only she had been kept at a safe distance he might not be having this effect on her now—but there had been that moment in a lift, almost a year ago…Lucy ruthlessly crushed that memory stone-dead. Now was not the time.

But, much to her chagrin and dismay, she couldn’t halt her reaction. It was something about the way he’d obviously just raked a hand through his unruly ink-black hair, leaving it even more dishevelled, and the way his jaw was so defined and hard it looked as if it was hewn from granite. His cheekbones and that full lower lip softened the hard edges, giving him the look of a master of sensuality—which by all accounts he was. Yet dark brows drawn together over those deep-set, amazing eyes took away any lingering pretty edges.

‘Lucy,’ he rapped out, distaste for the recent dramatics etched all over his handsome face. ‘Get in here. Now.’

Lucy blinked and landed back to earth with a bump. What was she doing? Sitting here mentally listing her boss’s attributes as if he wasn’t standing there looking at her as if he wanted to throttle someone. Caught short, which she never was, she scrambled up somewhat inelegantly from her chair and walked towards him, but then, to add insult to injury, she dropped her pad and pen from suddenly nerveless fingers. She bent down to pick them up, cursing herself in her head, and cursing the fact that her skirt was too tight when it resisted her movement. She’d put it in the wrong wash and it had shrunk about two sizes; with no time to shop for a replacement it had had to do, but now she was terrified it might split at the seams. The thought of that made her go hot all over.

If Aristotle Levakis so much as guessed for a second that he had any effect on her she’d be out on her ear and replaced so fast her head would be spinning. She didn’t have to remind herself that was exactly what had happened to his last two unfortunate assistants.

Speed had been of the essence as his in-house headhunters had scrambled to find the next best person. Lucy had since discovered that Levakis Enterprises was involved in a top secret series of merger meetings, and the luxury of extending the search to outside the company hadn’t been an option.

As luck would have had it, Lucy’s boss, Levakis’ senior legal counsel, had retired the very day of the last unfortunate PA’s demise. Lucy had been vetted and promoted within twenty-four hours to the most terrifying and yet exciting position of her career so far: Levakis’ personal secretary, heading up a team of five junior administrative assistants, not to mention staff in Athens and New York.

When she straightened up, taking care to breathe in, all this raced through her brain and she felt thoroughly flustered. She pushed her glasses higher on her nose and felt her cheeks grow even hotter. Aristotle moved back to let her precede him into his office, and she caught the look of exasperation that crossed his face as he articulated her own thoughts out loud with narrowed eyes,

‘What is wrong with you today?’

She burned inside with humiliation at her lack of control. She was no better than the swooning legions of girls who gathered in the kitchens on each floor of this impressive London headquarters to eulogise over his mythical sexual prowess and inestimable wealth.

‘Nothing,’ Lucy muttered, and called on every bit of training she had to regain her composure. When she heard him shut his door behind them and follow her in she closed her eyes for a split second and took deep breaths. She chastised herself roundly. This job was so important; the sharp increase in wages meant that she was finally able to take care of her mother properly.

She couldn’t jeopardise all that now by turning into a bumbling, stumbling, mooning idiot—no matter how gorgeous her boss happened to be. A voice mocked her inwardly. It wasn’t as if she even wanted a man like him to notice her. She had to control these wayward thoughts. They disturbed her more than she cared to admit, making her think of long-buried memories of her childhood.

It should be easy enough to do after witnessing that last little scene. Evidently Aristotle Levakis went for quivering, highly strung thoroughbreds, all lean and sleek with good bloodlines. Lucy Proctor was more along the lines of a…a placid cart horse, and her bloodline was considerably less blue than he was used to. More of a murky brown.

She watched as Levakis came back around the other side of his desk and gestured impatiently for her to sit down and take notes, not even glancing her way. Lucy willed her heartbeat to slow down and sat, legs tucked under the chair demurely, pen poised over a blank sheet of paper, and prayed that her skirt wouldn’t split open.

Aristotle Levakis stood behind his desk, hands deep in the pockets of his trousers, and looked at the demurely bent head of his new assistant. It was most irritating to be faced with the fact that Augustine Archer had forced him to reject her by demanding more of a commitment than he was prepared to give right now. To any woman.

His assistant shifted in her seat minutely, making Ari’s eyes narrow on her. That ripple of awareness ran through him again. It was faint, elusive, yet irritatingly insistent, and had been ever since she’d walked into his office two months before in a primly structured suit.

An uncomfortable suspicion made him tense inwardly; was it this awareness that had had an effect on the lessening and ultimate annihilation of his desire for Augustine Archer? Her shrieked words still vibrated in the air, but at that moment Aristotle would be hard pushed to bring her image to mind. Immediately as he realised the import of what he was thinking he rejected the notion as utterly absurd.

Lucy Proctor, his relatively new assistant, was as far removed from his habitual choice of lover as could be humanly possible. He couldn’t believe he was even giving a second of his time to this subject, or putting those two words Lucy and lover in the same sentence, but almost against his will his eyes flicked down from shiny, albeit non-descript dark brown hair to where her knees were tight together, legs tucked under the chair.

His almost contemptuous regard stopped for a moment to take in what could only be described as wantonly voluptuous thighs encased far too snugly in the confines of a pencil skirt. Irritation prickled stronger. He would have to have a word with the head of Human Resources and tell her to pass on a discreet message about the code of dress he expected from his assistant. And yet his expert eye hadn’t missed the surprisingly small waist, cinched in by a belt. That realisation stung him.

He tried to reassert his self-control. She was big…all over…His eyes flicked back up to the line of more than generous breasts under her silk shirt. And yet, prompted a little rogue voice, she looked as firm as a succulent peach. And her face…that was something he realised now he hadn’t really given much time to study, seeing her only as someone employed to do his bidding, but now, much to his chagrin, his gaze wanted to stop and linger. Look properly. Take in the surprisingly graceful curve of a well-defined cheekbone. Aristotle’s blood was starting to heat up; with a kind of desperation he noted that she wore glasses, as if that might have the effect of a cold douche on his suddenly raging hormones.

It didn’t. He battled with his libido but it seemed determined to confound him, and he wondered what on earth was precipitating this reaction when Lucy had worked for his company for two years already. He’d only met her intermittently in that time, as she’d worked for his legal counsel, and she certainly hadn’t had any discernible effect on him then. But now she was his assistant, and a welcome relief after dealing with a succession of simpering, moon-eyed idiots.

With that in mind, he called on all his powers of logic to explain the bizarre anomaly of his physical reaction, and finally felt some equanimity return: he was a red-blooded male, he was bound to respond arbitrarily to some women, even only passably attractive ones.

Except this wasn’t the first time: he uncomfortably recalled one morning when he’d stepped into the staff elevator, because his own private one had been closed for repairs. Someone had run to stop the doors closing and launched themselves into the lift with such force that they’d careened into him. He’d felt every contour and curve of a very lush female body plastered against his for a second. It had been Lucy.

The memory seared him now. She’d been as curvaceous as something brought to life from a painting by Rubens, and the minute she’d walked into his office to interview for this job he’d remembered that moment in annoyingly vivid detail. Right now all he could think about was how she’d felt pressed against him. Especially when compared to the more sparingly built Augustine Archers of this world.

Lucy Proctor had shown no hint of remembering the moment in the lift, though, and Aristotle certainly wasn’t going to admit to such a chink in his own legendary control. But when she sat in front of him now, the vision of her thighs straining against that too-tight skirt on the periphery of his vision, he could feel his body responding to her with a strength that disturbed him—a strength almost beyond his control…

The object of his uncharacteristic pondering looked up then quizzically, clearly wondering why he wasn’t saying anything. Irrational rage rushed through him. He wasn’t used to being rendered speechless like this. But in that moment, as if to compound every other revelation, he noticed she had the most unusually coloured eyes: a dark slaty grey that was almost blue, framed with the longest blackest lashes. Her mouth opened, as if to speak, and entirely against his will his eyes moved down. He’d not noticed until now that she had a sizeable gap between her front teeth. It was all at once innocent and unbelievably erotic.

Shocking and out of nowhere Aristotle had a sudden vision of those lips wrapped around a part of his anatomy, those almond-shaped eyes looking up into his as she—Lust exploded into his brain and turned everything red.

Lucy looked up at her boss and her mouth went dry. Her pulse, which had finally started slowing down, picked up pace again and she could feel herself grow hot. He was looking at her with such intensity that for a moment she thought—Instantly she shut down those rogue thoughts, and as if she’d imagined it the lines in his face tightened. He was positively glowering at her. Inwardly she quivered, outwardly she clung onto her poise and acknowledged that it was no wonder his adversaries hadn’t ever got the better of him.

‘Sir?’ she said, thankful that her voice sounded cool and calm, unruffled.

He kept glowering at her for another long moment, and Lucy felt inexplicably as if some sort of battle of wills she was unaware of was going on.

Eventually he bit out, ‘I think you can start calling me Aristotle.’

His voice sounded rough. She guessed it must be the remnants of his anger at the recent scene, but even so Lucy’s belly quivered. She knew some close colleagues called him Aristotle, and she’d heard the beautiful blonde requesting breathily to speak to ’Ari’ when she’d phoned before the dramatics this morning, but the thought of addressing this man by his first name was having a seismic effect on her whole body.

‘Very well,’ she finally managed to get out. But couldn’t bring herself to actually say it.

Aristotle sat down as if he hadn’t just invited her to call him something far more intimate than Sir, or Mr Levakis, and proceeded to dictate with such lightning speed that it took all of Lucy’s wits and concentration to keep up. In truth she was glad of the distraction, but by the time he was done her head was ringing.

He dismissed her with a brusque flick of his hand, his head already buried in some paperwork, and Lucy stood up. She was at the door when she heard a curt, ‘Oh, and see to it, please, that Augustine Archer is sent something…’

Lucy turned around, and the look of dark cynicism she saw on Levakis’ face made her draw in a breath.

‘…suitable.’

Lucy looked at him, nonplussed for a moment. Her previous boss had never made such a request. Did he mean…?

As if he could read her mind, Aristotle said ascerbically, ‘That’s exactly what I mean. I don’t care who you call, just make sure it’s expensive, anything but a ring, and send it over with a note. I’ll e-mail you the address.’

Lucy’s hand was clutching the door, and she didn’t know why this feeling of something like disappointment was curling through her. Anyone with half a brain cell would have been able to tell her this was exactly how a man like him operated. And wasn’t it confirmation of another rumour about him? How well he compensated his lovers? But still…he wasn’t even taking the time to compose a note himself.

She forced herself to sound non-committal. ‘How would you like the note to read?’

He shrugged one broad shoulder and smiled sardonically, cruelly. ‘Make it up. What kind of platitude would you like to hear from a man who has just dumped you?’ His mouth twisted even more. ‘I think it’s safe to say that someone like Ms Archer will throw away the card and move straight to the main prize, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Just keep it as impersonal as possible.’

Shock at his cold words impacted Lucy right in her belly. Her face must have given something away, because Aristotle lounged back in his chair and looked at her with a dangerous gleam in those fascinating green eyes.

‘You don’t approve of my methods?’

Lucy could feel a tide of heat climb up from her chest. She alternately shook and nodded her head, and some garbled words came out. ‘Not at all…’ She realised what she’d said and groaned inwardly when she saw a flash of something dark cross his face. She could not let her own personal opinion of his behaviour jeopardise this job. Too much now depended on her wages.

She gestured clumsily. ‘I mean, I have no problem doing as you suggest. Your methods…are your methods. It’s not for me to judge.’

He sat up and raised a brow, and Lucy wondered dismally how on earth they had got onto this. She wanted to be back outside, with a wall and door between them, catching her breath and restoring her equilibrium, not discussing how best to let his mistress down.

But he said, ‘So you admit there is something to judge, then?’

Lucy shook her head, drowning in heat now. ‘No—look, I’m sorry, I’m not being very articulate. I’ll do as you ask and make sure that the accompanying note is appropriate.’ She added hurriedly, ‘I can show it to you before I send it…?’

He shook his head and his face became impassive, hard. Lucy stood there for another moment, not sure what to do and then he bit out,

‘That’ll be all.’

Stung, and more than mortified, Lucy mumbled something incoherent and fled, shutting the door behind her. Amidst the embarrassment, anger surged—why was she surprised or, worse, disappointed? She’d seen this kind of behaviour from men all her life.

But still, what an absolute—She halted her racing thoughts as she sat behind her desk and fought to steady her breathing and hammering heart. The last five minutes was the closest she’d come to a personal discussion with her new boss. She should have just bowed her head and walked out. She cursed her expressive face. Her mother had always told her it would get her into trouble. And hadn’t it just? Her inherent distaste for his coldly generous dismissive treatment of his ex-mistress hadn’t been well hidden enough. But the truth was it had tapped into a deeply buried pain, a very familiar pain. She’d witnessed the other side of someone on the receiving end of that treatment. Over and over again.

Lucy shuddered inwardly when she woke her computer from sleep and struggled to concentrate on work. Aristotle’s cynical view of how Ms Archer would receive his gift was no doubt spot-on; hadn’t she witnessed her own mother reduced to that level after years of similar treatment? Although Augustine Archer didn’t strike her as the kind of woman who had to survive on hand-outs. No, this was a different league. Lucy’s soft mouth tightened as bile rose from her belly. That kind of so-called main prize would have been just the kind of thing her mother would have used to pay for Lucy’s school uniform for another year—the sort of thing that had financed their lives.

Lucy forced her anger down. She had to think of her boss purely in professional terms. What he did or how he acted personally was none of her business. She didn’t have to like him; she just had to work for him.

Thank goodness she’d forged a different path. She would never be beholden to any man or, worse, held in his sexual or financial thrall. She’d worked too hard and her mother had sacrificed too much to make sure she avoided exactly that scenario. Just as her computer screen came back to life and she saw her bespectacled face momentarily reflected on the dark surface she felt unmitigated relief that she need never fear the kind of attention her mother and women like Augustine Archer courted. She was safe from all of that.

Aristotle watched the closed door for an inordinate amount of time. Heat still coursed through his body—heat that confounded him and every effort he made to try and dampen it. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the sway of that well-rounded bottom as she’d stopped by the door, and how he’d blurted out the first thing that had come into his head, as if he’d had to stop her, not let her leave.

He flung himself back in his seat and raked a hand through unruly hair, unusually diverted from work. He cursed the fact again that he’d had to let Augustine go at this point in negotiations. He briefly considered wooing her back, but his fists clenched in rejection of that idea. He would never debase himself by grovelling to a woman—not for anything.

He considered the request he’d just made of Lucy; he’d always made the call to a jewellers himself before, and would instruct them to compose a suitably impersonal note. Usually it wasn’t even a note—just his name. A clear indication that whatever he and the particular woman had shared was over and she shouldn’t come calling again. And invariably they knew not to. Few were as impertinent as Augustine Archer, confronting him directly. His mouth twisted in recognition of the fact that as he got older and remained single he represented some kind of irresistible challenge to those women.

He diverted his thoughts from an area he didn’t want to investigate: that of having to contemplate giving up his freedom, which he knew would be inevitable at some stage. The future was unavoidable. He would have to find a suitable wife and produce an heir, purely to protect all that he was now putting in place from the greedy clutches of others.

The prospect evoked no more emotion in him than mild uninterest and irritation. He’d long ago learnt the lesson of what marriage really meant—at the age of five, when his father had introduced Helen Savakis as his new stepmother and she’d quickly shown him the cold hatred she had for a son who wasn’t her own. Whatever dim and distant memories Ari might have had of his mother, who’d died when he was four, and a halcyon time that might never have existed except in some childish fanciful memory bank, had long been quashed and buried.

The fact that those nebulous memories rose to haunt him in dreams so vivid that he sometimes woke in tears was a shameful weakness he’d always been determined to ignore. It was one reason he’d never spent a full night with a woman.

As if drawn by a magnet his thoughts again went to his assistant, who was fast assuming a place in his imagination that he did not welcome. Why had he felt goaded into saying all he just had? And then been surprised by the blatant look of distaste on her face—annoyed by it? And he had not left it at that but engaged her in a dialogue about it. As if he even cared what her opinion of him was! He was aware of a niggling desire that he’d wanted to see her somehow…rattled. Since she’d been working for him she’d always seemed to fade into the background, barely noticeable.

But he was noticing her and she had just reacted, her cheeks flushing prettily. He frowned at that. Since when had he started thinking of her as pretty? And since when had he been interested in pretty?

And, not only that, what on earth had compelled him to tell her to call him Aristotle when he’d always preferred his PAs to call him Mr Levakis? It was something in the way she’d looked up at him and said sir.

In a bid to restore some order to his life, which seemed to be morphing out of all recognition, he rang through to Lucy and gave her the name and number of the latest English socialite who had been chasing him, instructing her to set up a date for that evening. He ignored the way even her voice seemed to send a frisson of reaction straight to his groin. With that done he felt some semblance of calm wash over him. Life would return to normal. He would forget all about this bizarre obsession with his secretary’s far too provocatively well-built body and concentrate on the merger.

The following morning, when Lucy was walking the short distance from her bus stop to work, she still burned with mortification. In her hand she carried a small overnight bag which held a change of clothes and some evening wear. She’d taken a call from the head of Human Resources the day before and been informed stoutly that she needed to think a little more thoroughly about the way she dressed, and that it might be a good idea to have a change of clothes in the office at all times to cover for emergencies. Like too-tight skirts, she thought churlishly. The fact that Levakis had gone over her head and asked someone to speak to her made her skin crawl with humiliation—not to mention the fact that he’d obviously noticed her bursting out of that skirt.

With getting her mother settled in her new home she simply hadn’t had time since she’d started working for him to kit herself out with a new wardrobe, despite being given a generous allowance to do so. It had been full-on from day one.

Luckily last night had been late-night shopping, and Levakis had left relatively early for the date Lucy had set up for him. Her belly clenched at the thought of that. The woman she’d rung hadn’t been in the slightest bit fazed that Aristotle himself hadn’t bothered to call, and of course she’d been free at a moment’s notice. A wave of disgust washed through Lucy and she pushed it down along with bitter memories. She didn’t care what he did or who he did it with. A voice mocked her inwardly: who was she to judge anyway?

Just at that moment the heavens opened from a slate-grey sky and Lucy yelped as torrential rain poured down, comprehensively drenching her in seconds. No! She ran across the road towards the refuge of the huge gleaming Levakis building, her mind filled with the fact that they had an important meeting to attend in less than an hour on the other side of London.

Aristotle strode through the reception area, raking a hand through rain-wet hair, and mentally cursed the inclement English weather which had momentarily darkened the enormous glass atrium. He stepped into his own private lift—no possibility of a lush, curvaceous body colliding with his today—and stabbed at the button to whisk him all the way to the top of the building, irritated beyond belief to be thinking of that again. Was he actually hoping for it? he asked himself derisively.

His starkly handsome face was reflected back to him in the steel surface of the door, but he didn’t see that as the lift zoomed skyward. No, what he saw and what he relived was the fact that last night he’d taken a beautiful available woman on a date and she had done nothing for him. His mouth twisted. It hadn’t been for lack of trying on her part, or even on his, which had been a novel sensation.

In a bid not to be dictated to by his malfunctioning hormones, he’d escorted Arabella—or had it been Mirabella?—up to her apartment, but had realised with sickening inevitability that nothing would be happening. With her, anyway. He’d been rendered impotent from the waist down. She’d become petulant and increasingly desperate, seeing correctly that she hadn’t managed to snare Aristotle’s interest, and he’d had to extricate himself with more diplomacy than a head of state during peace negotiations.

So now, as he strode out of his lift and towards his main office, he was thoroughly disgruntled. Ignoring the assistants sitting meekly at their desks in the ante-room that preceded his and Lucy’s offices, he opened the door and took a breath, preparing to fire a series of commands at the woman who had been the singular cause of his unsatisfying night.

But the office was empty.

He had the most curious sensation of his belly hollowing out before he heard movement coming from the door which led into the bathroom just off their offices. While he had a private bathroom too, this more communal bathroom had a shower and a dressing room, which Aristotle availed himself of whenever he was required to go straight to a function from work.

Closing the main door quietly behind him, without really being aware of what he was doing, he walked silently into the office. He heard a muffled curse and then something drop.

Feeling like a voyeur, and not liking it, he halted by the door which lay slightly ajar. Through the crack he saw Lucy, and when his eyes registered what he was seeing his whole body locked, every muscle taut. Unable to move, all he could do was take in the sight with widening eyes. Lucy’s wet hair hung in long dark tendrils over luminously pale shoulders. She was bending over to pull trousers up over long, surprisingly slender legs. Her legs led upwards to those shapely thighs, which curved out to a lushly rounded bottom encased in some kind of black lace and silk concoction.

She wriggled her bottom and her hips as she pulled the trousers up fully, and then twisted towards Aristotle to tie the fastening at the side. Heat engulfed him. His blood hummed and his heart picked up an unsteady beat. Facing him as she did, both hands to one side, her perfectly formed breasts were enticingly pushed together and towards him with unknowing and unbelievably erotic appeal. Her bra looked hardly adequate to contain the generous mounds of alabaster flesh—he wondered dimly if any of her clothes fitted properly. And who would have known that she’d have such exotic tastes in undergarments underneath that prim exterior? Arousal soared.

Another muffled curse came as an even longer tendril of dark hair swung over her shoulder and clung wetly to the slope of one unashamedly voluptuous breast. Aristotle’s gaze moved up with supreme difficulty, and he saw that gap in her front teeth as she bit her lip, a hectic flush across her cheeks.

As if entranced by a siren song, he couldn’t move. His gaze slid down again and took in that small waist, which he’d only noted yesterday, and her belly, which was sucked in to help with the obstinate fastening. It was soft but gently contoured, as if she fought some kind of battle to keep her body in check but it was determined to thwart her efforts and retain its inherently seductive softness. Her hips flared out generously from that waist with such hourglass perfection Aristotle felt momentarily dizzy.

Abruptly she moved, having at last managed to fasten her trousers, and straightened. Her belly was still sucked in, pushing her breasts out even more as she reached for something else which Aristotle could see was a shirt.

His brain wouldn’t function. He couldn’t move. All he could see was Lucy and her half-naked body, that long dark hair clinging provocatively to her skin like wet skeins of silk.

That thing that he called awareness had just exploded into full-on lust.

Lucy yanked the tag off her new shirt and pulled it on impatiently, all fingers and thumbs on the buttons of the slippery grey silk material. She’d never have gone for something like this normally, but after being hauled over the coals the day before she’d known that she had no choice but to buy the kind of uniform that someone like Aristotle Levakis would expect—and that meant expense, and things like silk as opposed to cotton. She breathed out thankfully. At least she’d had that change of clothes. No way could she have faced him this morning looking like the drowned rat she’d been just moments before.

With the shirt finally closed she tucked it in hurriedly and desperately listened out for a heavy footfall or the door opening. She knew he was due in any minute—he was more punctual than any boss she’d ever known. That had to be the reason her heart was thumping so hard: the fear of being caught like this. She raked a brush through her hair, wincing as it caught on the still-damp strands, and quickly twisted it up into a chignon of sorts. It would have to do.

Slipping her feet into flat shoes, she stuck her glasses back on, gathered up her wet things, looked up—and stopped breathing. In the crack of the open door her boss was just standing there, looking at her.

Chapter Two

HOW long had he been standing there? The words barely impinged on Lucy’s consciousness. She was too full of raging heat, embarrassment, and something more disturbing.

On some self-protective level she refused to believe he had seen her yanking her clothes on with all the grace of a baby elephant. He wasn’t moving. He looked slightly shell-shocked, and mortification rushed through Lucy. She managed to move and opened the door fully, gabbling something she hoped was coherent to fill the awful silence.

‘I got caught in the rain shower. I was just changing.’

She stepped out and past Aristotle, who turned to follow her with his eyes as she retreated to the safe zone behind her desk, not even sure why she needed to feel safe.

When she could bring herself to look at him, she registered that his hair was damp, his suit slightly wet. She met his eyes, and in that instant something passed between them, something electric and elemental, and Lucy knew that he had seen her dressing—even though stubbornly she still refused to believe it. She recoiled from the uncomfortable awareness deep within her. It scared the life out of her.

Still babbling, she said, ‘Looks like you got caught too. Do you want to change before we go? I’ve instructed Julian to have the car downstairs in fifteen minutes, and I can have your suit sent out to be cleaned.’

Aristotle, seemingly completely unconcerned about the meeting or changing his clothes, lounged back against the doorjamb and crossed his arms. His gaze swept down over Lucy’s outfit and she cringed, wondering if she’d left a tag on somewhere. She fought the urge to check herself.

He just continued to look at her with that disturbing intensity before saying, ‘Tell me, did you wear that skirt yesterday on purpose? Aware of how provocative it was?’

Shock, disbelief and cold horror slammed into Lucy. Her mouth opened for a moment but nothing emerged. She couldn’t articulate, but finally managed a strangled, ‘Of course not. I would never be so…’ Words failed her again and she closed her mouth helplessly.

Aristotle could see injured pride straighten her spine, the shock on her face. He had the absurd impulse to apologise, but couldn’t help remembering the way she’d looked so wantonly luscious in it, straining against the material. He could imagine inching it up over those pale quivering thighs as she stood with her back against him, how the full globes of her bottom would press into him as he pushed her forward over his desk, reaching down between them to hitch her skirt higher and free his own—What the hell was wrong with him? His mind never deviated to lurid sexual fantasies with so little provocation.

He stood away from the door abruptly and curtly informed Lucy to make sure she had all the necessary papers and documents required for the meeting ready. He then went into the dressing room and breathed deep, as if he could inhale some common sense. But instead an evocatively feminine scent teased his nostrils and brought the last few minutes vividly back. Along with his libido.

With a growl of intense irritation Aristotle yanked a clean suit from the well-stocked wardrobe and stripped off to step into the shower, turning it onto cold. It did little to help.

Lucy flinched minutely and scowled at her computer when she heard the phone being slammed down in her boss’s office. He’d just taken a call from his half-brother in Athens, and while he never seemed to welcome those calls he usually acted with more restraint than that. She shook her head. He’d been in a foul humour for two weeks now. Ever since that morning. Heat still crawled over her skin when she thought of the way he’d lounged against the door and looked at her, and mentioned that skirt. He believed she might have worn it like that on purpose.

And yet since then he had proceeded to treat her either as if a) he couldn’t bring himself even to mention her name, or b) as if he might turn to stone if he so much as looked at her for longer than two seconds.

Lucy had to assure herself that nothing had happened, and if anything this was just a normal working relationship. Aristotle was famous for his brusque, no-nonsense approach. What had she expected? Warm and fuzzy? She shifted in her seat uncomfortably, the fact was she did feel inordinately warm—especially when he was around. She also felt constantly on edge, as if a kind of prickly heat lay just under the surface of her skin. She felt achy and jittery, but no symptoms of a flu or a cold had developed, so she couldn’t put it down to that. She was beginning to despair of ever having any sense of equilibrium again. At times like this she longed for the uncomplicated working relationship she’d had with her last boss. Her mouth quirked wryly. But then, he had been nearing seventy, well past retirement age, and had a huge typically Greek family.

Lucy nearly shot out of her chair when she heard a coolly drawled, ‘Something funny on the internet today?’

She quickly pressed a key so that her blank document disappeared, and took a breath before looking up, steeling herself. She had to steel herself a lot around this man. She smiled brightly, but it faded when she saw something dark cross his face.

‘No…I was just…going over the latest mail from the Parnassus Corporation.’

She mentally crossed her fingers and breathed a sigh of relief, because that was exactly what she had been doing—before she’d been looking at a blank document for minutes on end like some moon-eyed idiot.

Aristotle emerged from his office and prowled towards Lucy. Her blood-rate shot up.

‘Liar,’ he said softly.

Her back straightened. ‘Excuse me?’

He came to her desk and rested on his hands over it, looming over her. She fought against shrinking back as his eyes bored into hers. It was making her dizzy after days of only the most cursory eye contact.

He arched one slashing dark brow. ‘If that’s the case, tell me what Parnassus proposes we do in the final stages of sealing the merger?’

Lucy looked up, spellbound. As if from a long way away her more rational and professional self, the one that wasn’t melting into a puddle in her chair, came back. Miraculously, information came into her brain, and she clung onto it like a life-raft.

Unable to break eye contact, and feeling as if her voice had been dipped in rust, Lucy said, ‘He…he suggests that the final stages take place in Athens, as that’s where the two companies originated one hundred years ago. He thinks it should be there that the merger is finally revealed. He wants it to be a triumphant homecoming to the country he and his family fled from when he was young, and for Athens to be the symbolic and actual birthplace of the greatest merger in Greek shipping and industrial history.’

Silence lengthened and tautened between them. Electric awareness quivered in the air until finally Aristotle just said quietly, ‘Good. And I presume you have everything in order for you to travel to Athens for three weeks?’

Lucy just blinked stupidly for a moment as numerous things impacted her brain. Primarily the fact that she hadn’t actually considered the fact that of course she’d be expected to go to Athens too, in little over a week from now.

All she could say was, ‘Yes, I do,’ when in actual fact for some reason—even though it had been talked about for weeks—she’d never considered for a moment that she’d be accompanying Aristotle on such a prestigious engagement.

Her lack of foresight mocked her; of course it had to be her, no one else had had access to all the vital and top secret information—information so secret that she’d had to sign a contract the day she’d been hired, forbidding her to divulge any information to anyone. If she committed such an offence it could see her being fired on the spot, and certainly ruined for any future employment within these circles…

The full enormity of the size of this merger and the importance of the man in front of her started to sink in very belatedly. Mortifyingly, Lucy knew that a large part of her distraction had to do with finding herself working for someone who had reached into a secret part of her and shaken her up so much that she had to spend an inordinate amount of time just denying it to herself. Even now, as he still loomed over her, she denied it to herself.

She reassured herself desperately that she was just reacting to Aristotle Levakis’ undeniable charisma, like any other red-blooded human being.

With that in mind she took a sheaf of papers that needed filing off her desk and stood up, clutching them to her chest. It was a blatant attempt to put some distance between them. Aristotle straightened too, and with arms folded surveyed her closely. That treacherous heat pooled within her again, but now she knew what it was she could deflect her own reaction to it.

She hitched up her chin. ‘Was there anything else?’

He shook his head slowly and a lazy smile curved his lips. Lucy felt like clinging onto something.

‘No, that’s all for now.’ He turned to go back to his office, but just when Lucy was about to let out a sigh of relief he turned back. With his forearm resting high on the doorjamb, drawing her eye to his long and hard muscled body, he said, ‘Don’t forget we have that engagement tonight. Be ready to leave at six-thirty. I’ll get dressed in my office; you can use the dressing room.’

He disappeared into his own office then, shutting the door behind him, and Lucy all but sagged onto the floor in a heap. She had forgotten all about the function they were to attend that night. She cursed herself as she sank down heavily into her chair. What was wrong with her? Forgetting the function, not realising she would have to go to Athens…Her brain was turning to mush. And in this job that was not a luxury she could afford.

How could she have forgotten that terse conversation just days ago, when he’d said to her with a grimace on his face, ‘You’re going to have to come to the Black and White Ball with me.’

Lucy’s belly had clenched. She’d expected that she might have to accompany her boss to some functions, but with Aristotle’s extremely healthy social life she hadn’t considered it would become a reality so soon. And did he have to look so reluctant at the prospect?

She’d ignored the ridiculous feeling of hurt and asked hopefully, ‘But surely there must be someone else…’ anyone else ‘…you could call?’

After all, as she’d restrained herself from pointing out, last-minute dates were not something he shied away from. He’d had more than a few since the Honourable Augustine Archer and then the even more Honourable Mirabella Ashton, each one well-documented in the press that gloried in his playboy exploits. And yet the morning after each date he’d appeared taciturn and as irritable as she’d ever seen him.

He’d curtly instructed her to send each night’s delectation a disgustingly expensive bunch of flowers. Lucy had cynically assumed that none of the women were performing well enough to hold his interest and merit a piece of jewellery.

It was then that she’d realised that she hadn’t arranged a date for him in at least a week. The thought had unsettled her more than she’d liked to admit.

He’d looked at her with narrowed eyes. ‘As I am currently partnerless, not that it’s any of your business, I’ve decided that you will accompany me. Do you have a problem with that?’

Feeling sick, Lucy had shaken her head rapidly. She had to stop reacting to this man and provoking him. ‘No. Not at all. I’ll put it in the diary now.’

Lucy came back to the present moment. She was still holding the sheaf of papers clutched to her chest like some kind of shield. She looked at the open diary beside her and there in stark letters was written ’Black and White Ball, Park Lane Hotel. Seven p.m.’ The thought of spending any more time than was absolutely necessary with this man was causing nothing short of sheer panic inside her.

She put down the papers and picked up the phone to make a call to the home where her mother was resident. She asked them to pass on the message that she wouldn’t be able to visit that evening.

The matron on the other end said gently, ‘I’ll pass on the message, Lucy love, but you do know that it won’t make any difference, don’t you?’

Lucy felt very alone all of a sudden. She swallowed back the ever-present guilt, pain and grief, and nodded even though the other woman couldn’t see her. Her voice was thick with emotion. ‘I know…but I’d appreciate it all the same, if you don’t mind.’

Lucy could hear Aristotle moving around in his own office as she changed in the dressing room. This was a formal event, so she had to wear a long dress, and the one she looked at now in the mirror was perfectly respectable—if completely boring. It was black, which meant it was slimming, and it had a high neck which covered her breasts adequately. Anything that did that was fine with her. And anyway, she told herself stoutly, she wasn’t dressing to impress, she was dressing to accompany her boss in a work capacity.

She left her hair up and put on some make-up: mascara and a little blusher. Then, slipping her feet into a pair of plain black high heels, she picked up her weekend bag stuffed with her work clothes and took a deep breath before walking out, feeling ridiculously nervous and hating herself for it.

That breath hitched in her throat and her brain stopped functioning when she saw Aristotle emerge from his own office, resplendent in a traditional tuxedo. The black made him look even darker, and very dangerous. Lucy fought back the wave of awareness, her hands gripping her bag.

He looked up from adjusting his cufflinks then, and the snowy perfection of his shirt made the green of his eyes pop out. He ran quick eyes over Lucy, making her squirm inwardly before quirking a brow and saying mockingly, ‘Well, if you’re trying to fade into the background it’s already working.’

Lucy swallowed past a dry throat. ‘I’m your assistant, not your date.’

More’s the pity, Aristotle surprised himself with thinking as he took her in, just a few feet away. Although not in that dress. It was basically a sack: a black sack covering her from neck to toe. It might as well have been a burkha for all he could see of her body, and he knew with a hunger that had been growing day by day and minute by minute that he very much wanted to see her body showcased in something much more revealing and tight. Like that skirt which had assumed mythic proportions in his fantasies. He beat back an intense surge of desire, in spite of the awful dress, and noted the hectic flush on her cheeks, the wary glitter of her eyes.

She was intriguing him more and more—not only with her luscious curves, but in the way she reacted to him, his spikily quick responses. Every expression was an open book as it crossed her face. She wasn’t afraid of him, and that was heady in itself. That she didn’t approve of him was glaringly obvious, and it was a novel sensation to have that from a woman.

Aristotle was looking at her far too assessingly. Lucy’s belly quivered in response and she told herself sternly that she wasn’t responding to him; she was just responding to the charisma of the man.

But then he strolled towards her nonchalantly and she had to fight the urge to turn tail and run. He walked around her as if inspecting a horse, and she turned around, unable to bear the thought of him looking at her too-large bottom. She cursed her genes again and felt acutely self-conscious. Why couldn’t she be a slim, petite little thing like her mother?

Her voice was high and defensive. ‘Is there something wrong? This dress fits perfectly well. It’s not too tight, if that’s what you’re afraid of.’ She wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

Aristotle’s eyes flicked to hers. They glittered with something dark and indefinable.

‘The dress is fine. For an old lady.’

Lucy sucked in a shocked breath. She’d spent a small fortune from her allowance on this dress. But before she could say anything he was gesturing to her head.

‘It’s too late to do anything about the dress, but leave down your hair. You look like you’re going to work.’

His normally accentless voice had lapsed into something unmistakably Greek, and it resonated within Lucy. Her mind blanked and her hand went up instinctively in a protective gesture. Her hair was part of her armour, she suddenly realised. No way could she take it down. She might as well just strip off the dress and stand in front of him in her underwear. Treacherous heat licked through her again, making a mockery of her attempts to rationalise it. She shook her head dumbly.

His eyes held hers and he just said quietly, ‘Take it down Lucy.’ It was so utterly shocking to be standing in front of her boss and have him speak to her like this, that Lucy found herself obeying him. With extreme reluctance she took out the pins from the back. She could feel her hair loosen and fall with annoying and heavily layered predictability around her shoulders and down her back.

Aristotle fisted his hands in his trouser pockets to stop them reaching out to feel the texture of that heavy silky mass of hair. It was darker than he’d originally thought, and luxuriously unruly, reaching down as far as her shoulderblades. He had an image of her reclining back on a sumptuous divan, tendrils of that glorious hair over her shoulders and trailing over her the tops of her bare—Get a grip, man! With a supreme effort of will Aristotle reined himself in and said gutturally, ‘That’s better. Now you look as if you’re ready for a function. Let’s go.’

With an easy and automatic courtesy which surprised Lucy, and she wasn’t sure why that was, he took her case from her white-knuckle grip and led the way out of the office. She stumbled as she followed his graceful stride down the corridor to his private lift. She had a moment of dithering, stupidly wondering if she should take the staff lift just a few feet further down, but as if reading her mind again Aristotle flicked her an impatient glance and she stepped in.

It was only when they were ensconced in the lift that the memory of the last time she’d shared such a space with him came back in all its glory.

She couldn’t help her reaction flowering. Too much had happened since then. Now she stood there, with her hair down, feeling as exposed as if he’d just run his hands over her naked flesh—especially when she recalled his look from moments ago, a look that had to have been some projection of her own awful, twisted feelings. The tall man beside her oozed with sexual heat. She could smell him and feel him. Suddenly she had the strangest sensation of holding something huge back…Wanton images hovered tantalisingly on the periphery of her mind and threatened to burst through, mocking her for a control that was beginning to feel very shaky.

Lucy gritted her jaw and looked resolutely up at the display as the lift seemed to inch downwards, willing it with every fibre of her being to go faster.

The effort it took to stay apart from Lucy in that lift, amidst a rush of memories of how she had felt pressed against him, which once again stunned him with their vividness, washed away Aristotle’s last resistance where this woman was concerned. He’d never experienced this level of sexual awareness before, and in truth frustration was a novel sensation when he was so used to getting what he wanted, when he wanted. He didn’t stop to question his decision or his motives for a second.

It was quite simple. He had to have this woman in his bed—and as a soon as possible. He would sleep with her. Then she would lose her allure and this bizarre spell she held over him would be broken. In three months he could let her go. Or less, if he got bored. According to her contract he could terminate employment with due notice; she, however, could not walk away unless she wanted to seriously sabotage her career. Because of the top secret nature of the merger she was tied to Levakis Enterprises until the whole thing became public.

Work, which he’d always strictly compartmentalised as separate from pleasure, would become pleasure—his pleasure. And Lucy’s too. He wanted her with him every inch of the way as he took her again and again to sate this burning ache. Somehow instinctively he knew that one night would not be enough, and it made him uncomfortable to acknowledge it.

Nevertheless, as the lift descended the final few floors, a fizz of anticipation ran through Aristotle’s veins and he felt truly alive for the first time in a long time. Even thoughts of the merger were receding into a background place. A dim and distant alarm bell sounded at the back of his mind, but he was too fired up to notice or dwell on it.

The lift juddered softly to a stop and the doors swished open. He stood back and gestured for Lucy to precede him, looking at her carefully as she did so. She was avoiding his eye with all the finesse of a guilty-looking six-year-old caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

She stumbled slightly stepping out of the lift, and Aristotle took her bare silky smooth arm just above the elbow. The frisson of pleasure that went through him nearly made him sway. He could feel the swell of her breast tease his fingers and a primal instinct to possess this woman coursed through him. The fact that she held herself so rigidly at his side didn’t put him off. She was as unmistakably his as—for now—he was hers.

A colleague of Aristotle’s had just walked away. Lucy watched him go with a feeling of mounting terror. She did not want to be alone with her boss.

They were standing side by side under the seductively soft lighting of the main ballroom in the exclusive London hotel when she heard his drawling query, ‘You don’t need your glasses? Or are you wearing contacts?’

She nearly choked on her sparkling water and lowered the drink carefully, realising without even making a reflex gesture to check that she had indeed forgotten her glasses. She could picture them right now, sitting on the vanity cabinet in the dressing room of the office. She flushed guiltily and sent a quick, fleeting look to Aristotle. Standing here in this milieu, with his tall, hard body just inches away, was making her nervous. It made her so nervous, in fact, that she didn’t stop the truth from spilling out.

‘They aren’t prescription glasses.’

She saw him frown from the corner of her eyes. ‘So why do you wear them?’

He sounded aghast, and Lucy had no doubt that he could not understand why any woman would knowingly want to make herself any less attractive than she already was. A sense of extreme vulnerability washed through her.

She shrugged minutely and avoided his eye. ‘I started wearing them when I was looking for work after college.’ She squirmed inwardly. How could she explain to this man that she’d grown sick and tired of prospective bosses ogling her sizeable assets rather than her CV? A memory made her shiver with distaste: her first boss, whispering lasciviously on more than one occasion that he liked big girls.

Ever since then Lucy had made sure to be covered up at all times, hair pulled back and glasses firmly on. Yet, uncomfortably, she had to acknowledge that she’d found working with Aristotle Levakis something of a relief in that she knew there was no way on this earth a man like him would look twice at her. That assertion suddenly seemed shaky.

As if to compound the feeling, from the corner of her eye she could see Aristotle turn subtly, so that he had his back to the room full of people. She even saw one person in the act of approaching falter and turn away, as if he’d sent off some silent signal she couldn’t see. She couldn’t resist sending him another quick look. He had an expression on his face that caught and held her, and she couldn’t look away.

His eyes flicked down to her breasts—in exactly the way she’d seen men do all her life, ever since she’d developed out of all proportion in her early teens. But instead of her usual feeling of disgust and invasion, to her shame and horror she could feel herself respond. Her breasts grew heavy, their tips tight and hard. For a cataclysmic moment she actually felt the novel desire to know what it would feel like to have this man touch them. Shock at the sheer physicality of her reaction made her feel clammy.

Aristotle’s eyes glittered. A whisper of a smile hovered around his mouth and then he said, ‘And did it work?’

Shame and chagrin rushed through Lucy. Was she really so weak? With one look this man was felling all her careful defences like a bowling ball sending skittles flying.

Her voice sounded strangled. ‘I found that, yes, it did work.’

Until now.

Lucy felt like a trapped insect, flat on its back and helpless in the face of a looming predator. Determined to negate her disturbing reaction, she looked away and said crisply, ‘Plenty of people wear glasses for cosmetic reasons. I would have thought that you’d approve.’

His voice was curt. ‘Your CV and your work ethic speak for themselves, Lucy. You don’t need to bolster your image by making it more businesslike.’

Too-tight skirts, yes. Glasses, no. Aristotle swallowed a growl of irritation at his wayward mind.

Lucy looked back. She was more than surprised at his easy commendation of her ability. So far it was only the fact that she hadn’t been let go that had given her any indication of how well she was doing her job. She had to fight the urge to cross her hands defensively over her chest, but that was ridiculous. He wouldn’t be looking at her like that. He’d just been making a point.

She inclined her head and said, ‘Fine. I won’t wear them.’ She bit back the reflex to say sir. The last thing she needed now was for him to repeat his request to call him Aristotle. What she did need was for this evening to be over as soon as possible and to have a whole two days away from this man, to get her head together and clear again. Especially when the prospect of spending three weeks in Athens with him loomed on the horizon like a threatening stormcloud.

A few hours later Lucy breathed a sigh of relief when the car drew to a smooth halt outside her apartment block in south London. She’d tried to insist on taking a cab from the hotel, but Aristotle wouldn’t listen. Then she’d tried to insist that he be dropped home first, but again he’d been adamant.

She reached for the door on her side and looked back to say a crisp goodnight. Her ability to speak left her. Aristotle was lounging in the far corner like a huge, dark avenging angel. A surge of panic gripped her and she felt blindly for the door handle, all but scrambling in her haste to get out and away. But just as she opened the door, extending one leg out of the car, the awful sound of ripping material made her heart stop. An ominously cold breeze whistled across the tops of her thighs.

She looked down and her jaw dropped when she saw a huge rip extending down the side of her dress from mid-thigh to hem. Only peripherally was she aware that it must have snagged on something. Her white thighs gleamed up at her in the gloom.

As all this was impacting on her brain, she heard a coolly sardonic, ‘You don’t seem to have much luck with clothes, do you?’

The sensation of wanting the ground to open up and swallow her whole had never seemed more strong than at that moment. She heard Aristotle say something unintelligible to his driver and then he got out. Lucy couldn’t move. She was terrified that if she did something else would rip and her entire dress might fall off. But then Aristotle was standing there, looking down at her with a mocking smile and extending a hand.

With the utmost reluctance she put her hand in his and felt the world tilt crazily as he pulled her up. With her other hand she scrabbled to hold her dress together. Her face felt as red as a traffic light. Aristotle now had a light grip on her arm, and Lucy noticed that he held her bag in his other hand.

That, and the way he was looking at her now, made her feel extremely threatened. It was the way he’d been looking at her that morning in the office.

She felt jittery and stiff all at once, and tried to get her arm back.

‘It must have caught on something. I’ll be fine from here. You must be impatient to get home.’

But Aristotle ignored her and easily steered them towards the path, not letting go for a second. Lucy’s blood was starting to fizzle and hum in her veins. She tried again while keeping a desperate clasp on her ruined dress. ‘Really, Mr Levakis, my door is just here.’

She even dug her heels in, but he called back to the driver, ‘That’s all, Julian. You can go. I’ll get a cab from here.’

‘You’re sure, sir?’ The driver’s surprise was evident in his voice.

‘Yes. Goodnight, Julian.’

And with that, before Lucy could formulate a word or acknowledge the escalation of pure mind-numbing panic in her breast, she was being led to her door and Aristotle was looking down at her with his trademark impatience.

‘Your keys?’

Lucy spluttered. The driver was pulling away from the kerb, making her even more panicked. ‘Mr Levakis, really, you don’t have to do this. Please. Thank you for the lift, but you shouldn’t have let Julian go. You’ll never get a cab from here…’

He looked down at her, those green eyes utterly mesmerising. ‘I thought I told you to call me Aristotle. Now, your keys? Please.’

Much like earlier, when he’d told her to take down her hair, Lucy found herself obeying. She knew on some dim, rational level that it was just shock. She awkwardly dug her keys out of her handbag, while trying not to let the dress gape open, and watched wordlessly when Aristotle took them and opened the door, leading them into the foyer and to the lift. He looked at her again with a quirked brow and Lucy said faintly, ‘Sixth floor.’

As the lift lurched skyward Lucy felt somehow as though she must be dreaming. She’d wake any moment and it would be Monday morning and everything would be back to normal. But then the lift bell pinged loudly and Aristotle, her boss, was looking at her again expectantly. She had no choice but to step out and walk to her door a few feet away.

Her brain was refusing to function coherently. She simply could not start to pose the question, even to herself, as to what he was doing here. She turned at her door with a very strong need to make sure she went through it alone and this man stayed outside.

She held out her hand for her keys, which he still held. She couldn’t look him in the eye. The bright fluorescence of the lighting was too unforgiving and harsh. Although she knew that it wouldn’t dent his appeal.

‘Thank you for seeing me safely in.’

‘You’re not in yet.’

With more panic than genuine irritation Lucy sent him a fulminating glance and grabbed her keys. She opened the door with a hand that was none too steady. She could have wept with relief when the door swung open. She turned back and pasted on a smile.

‘There—see? All safe. Now, if you just take a right when you go out, the main road is about a hundred yards up the street. You should be able to get a cab from there.’

Chapter Three

ARISTOTLE leaned nonchalantly against the wall, hands in the pockets of his trousers. At some stage since they’d left the hotel in town he’d undone his bow tie, and it hung rakishly open along with the top buttons of his shirt. Dark whorls of hair were visible, and Lucy felt weak with shock again at his bizarre behaviour. Belatedly she wondered if he might be drunk and she looked at him suspiciously. But then she recalled that, like her, he’d barely touched alcohol all evening. So if he wasn’t drunk…Her belly fluttered ominously.

‘I thought you said I’d never get a cab from there? Would you let me wander the mean streets of south London alone and defenceless? I can call a cab from your apartment…and I could murder a coffee…’

This man and the word defenceless did not belong in the same sentence. He smiled and her world tipped alarmingly for a second. Lucy had to swallow her retort, along with the stomach-churning realisation that she was being subjected to her boss’s teasing and charming side. She heard the lift jerking into life again. More people arriving home from a night out. Suddenly she was terrified that it might be her very bubbly but very nosy neighbour Miranda. She could just imagine trying to explain this: a gorgeous, lounging six-foot-four Greek tycoon in their mildew stained hallway. Her dress was suddenly the least of her worries.

‘OK, fine. I’ll call you a cab and get you a coffee.’

Lucy walked in and stood back to let Aristotle through. Immediately the air seemed to be sucked out of the room and replaced with his sheer dynamism. Lucy closed her door just as she heard the very drunken-sounding laughter of her neighbour and gave a sigh of relief.

As Aristotle started to prowl around her humble sitting room Lucy spied a lacy bra hanging over the chair nearest the kitchen. She dived for it while he was turned away and hurriedly balled it up. Aristotle turned round and Lucy’s belly spasmed.

‘Coffee,’ she babbled. ‘I’ll get the coffee on.’

She turned and fled into the small kitchen off the sitting room and stuffed the bra into a cupboard, taking out coffee and setting the kettle to boil. She kept looking surreptitiously into the sitting room. Aristotle was still prowling around. Except now he’d taken off his jacket, and she could see the broad line of his back tapering down into an impossibly lean waist. Her gaze followed the line down over taut buttocks and long, long legs…

The shrill, piercing scream of the kettle made her jump, and she winced when drops of boiling water splashed on clumsy hands. She gathered her dress together and walked back into the sitting room, noticing that Aristotle had put on some lights. Their glow of warmth lent an intimacy to the scene that raised her blood pressure. She had the vague thought of going to get changed out of the dress, but couldn’t contemplate the idea of removing a stitch of clothing while he was anywhere near. She noticed then that he was studying a photo in his hand, with a slight frown between those black brows. Lucy was terrified he might recognise the woman in the picture. She handed him the coffee, forcing him to put the picture down and take the cup.

He just gestured with his head. ‘Who is that? You and your mother?’

Lucy looked down at the photo in the frame and fought the urge to snatch it out of sight. It was a favourite one of her and her mum, taken in Paris when Lucy had been about twelve. They were wrapped up against the cold, their faces close together, but even from the picture you could tell that Lucy hadn’t taken after her mother’s delicate red-haired beauty. She’d already been taller than her mother by then.

She nervously adjusted it slightly and replied, ‘Yes,’ clearly not inviting any more questions.

Aristotle looked at Lucy. She was as nervous and skittish as a foal—avoiding his eye, her hand in a white-knuckle grip on that dress. That was what had pushed him over the edge. Seeing those soft pale thighs exposed to his gaze, one long leg already out of the car. It had taken every ounce of restraint not to reach out and run his hand up the soft inner skin of one gloriously lush thigh.

Especially after an evening that had been a form of torture, trying to focus on work while she’d stood beside him. Following her out of the car and up to this apartment had felt as necessary as breathing. But now he forced himself to take a step back, sensing her extreme nervousness.

She gestured jerkily to a seat. ‘Please, sit down while you have your coffee. I’ll call a cab. It may take a while to come at this hour.’

Aristotle sat down on a springy couch under the window and watched as Lucy went to the phone on the other side of the room and made the call, turning her back firmly to him. He tried to bank down the intense surge of desire even her back was igniting within him and thought back to the function.

She’d been a surprisingly pleasurable and easy date, offering intelligently insightful comments on more than one person, showing snippets of dry humour. At one point she’d caught him off-guard entirely, when she’d seamlessly switched to accentless and fluent French. He’d become accustomed to people saying they were multi-lingual and meaning they had the basics, like hello and goodbye. Something dark lodged in his chest. He’d also been inordinately aware of the keen male interest she’d generated and how seemingly oblivious she’d been to it. He wasn’t used to that.

Fighting the sudden surge of something very primal, he let his eyes drift down over her body and long legs; a vivid image exploded into his head of the moment her dress had split. He wondered how those legs might feel wrapped around his waist as he thrust deeper and deeper into her slick heat. Arousal was immediate and uncomfortable. He shifted on the seat, and even the evident relief in Lucy’s voice when she got through to the cab company did little to dampen it.

When Lucy put the phone down, she could finally turn and look her boss in the eye. Escape was imminent. She just had to make some small talk. ‘Ten minutes for the cab.’ She sat down gratefully in the chair beside the phone, relief making her feel weak. She was still clutching the torn dress over her legs, hanging on to it like a lifeline.

Aristotle leant forward and put down his coffee cup. He had an intense gleam in his green eyes. ‘We’re going to be spending a lot of time together in Athens.’ He looked around her apartment, and then back to her. ‘I thought this might be a good opportunity to get to know each other a little better.’

Something treacherously like disappointment rushed through Lucy, but everything within her rejected it. Had she been so blind? Had she truly suspected for a moment that Aristotle had been rushing her up here to try and make love to her? She felt very brittle all of a sudden.

‘Of course. I mean, I could…’ She racked her brain. Evidently she had to find some way of giving some information to Aristotle, so he didn’t feel as if he had to follow her up to her apartment to talk to her. ‘I could fill out a questionnaire…?’

He arched a brow.

‘A personal questionnaire…if you want to get to know more…about my history.’ A leaden weight made her feel heavy inside. She’d become an expert at putting a glamorous spin on her life with her mother. On her history. Glossing over the reality.

But Aristotle was shaking his head and standing up, coming towards her. He came and stood right in front of her, and Lucy realised that she was in a very vulnerable position, her eye level at his crotch. She stood too, so suddenly that she swayed, and Aristotle put out his hands to steady her. They were on her waist. Immediately it was an invasion of her space—especially when she was so self-conscious about her body.

With one hand she tried to knock him away but his hands were immovable. Her other hand was still clinging onto her dress with a death grip. She looked at him and her brain felt hot, fuzzy. He was too close. She could smell his fresh citrusy scent, mixed in with something much more male, elemental. All she could see were his eyes; all she could feel were those hands, like a brand on her body.

He was talking. She tried to concentrate on his words.

‘…more along the lines of this…’

And then, as realisation exploded inside her, Aristotle’s head was coming down, closer and closer. Everything went dark as his mouth covered hers, warm and firm and so exotic that she couldn’t move.

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