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Sara had spent most of her life comparing herself to a nameless, faceless man who had helped to create her but she had never met—until six weeks ago. Now she knew that she had inherited her green eyes from her father. He was no longer faceless, or nameless. His name was Lionel Kingsley and he was a well-known politician. She’d been stunned when he had phoned her and revealed that there was a possibility she might be his daughter. She had agreed to a DNA test to see if he was really her father but she had been sure of the result before the test had proved it. When she looked into a mirror she saw her father’s eyes looking back at her.
For the first time in her life she felt she was a whole person, and so many things about herself suddenly made sense, like her love of art and her creativity that she’d always suppressed because her mother had pushed her to concentrate on academic subjects.
Lionel was a widower and had two grown-up children. Her half-siblings! Sara felt excited and nervous at the thought of meeting her half-brother and half-sister. She understood Lionel’s concern that his son and daughter from his marriage might be upset to learn that he had an illegitimate daughter, and she had told herself to be patient and wait until he was ready to acknowledge publicly that he was her father. Finally it was going to happen. Lionel had invited her to his home at the weekend so that he could introduce her to Freddie and Charlotte Kingsley.
Sara had seen pictures of them and discovered that she bore a striking resemblance to her half-siblings. But the physical similarities between her and her half-sister did not apply to their very different dress styles. Photographs of Charlotte wearing stylish, figure-hugging clothes had made Sara realise how frumpy she looked in comparison. The smart suits she wore to the office reflected the importance of her role as PA to the chairman of the company and she had reminded herself that if Alekos had wanted a decorative bimbo to be his PA he wouldn’t have chosen her.
The new clothes she had bought while she had been on holiday did not make her look like a bimbo, Sara reassured herself. The skirt and blouse she was wearing were perfectly respectable for the office. Shopping in the chic boutiques on the French Riviera where her father owned a holiday villa had been a revelation. Remembering the photos she’d seen of her stylish half-sister had prompted Sara to try on colourful summery outfits. She had dropped a dress size from plenty of swimming and playing tennis and she loved being able to fit into skirts and dresses that showed off her more toned figure.
She ran her fingers through her new layered hairstyle. She still wasn’t used to her hair swishing around her shoulders when she turned her head. It made her feel more feminine and, well...sexy. She’d had a few blonde highlights put through the front sections of her hair to complement the natural lighter streaks from where she had spent a month in the French sunshine.
Maybe it was true that blondes did have more fun. But the truth was that meeting her father had given her a new sense of self-confidence. The part of her that had been missing was now complete, and Sara didn’t want to fade into the background any more. Travelling to work on the Tube this morning, she’d wondered if Alekos would notice her changed appearance.
She stared at her flushed face in the mirror and grimaced. All right, she had hoped he would notice her, instead of treating her like a piece of office furniture: functional, necessary but utterly uninteresting.
Well, she had got her wish. Alekos had stopped dead in his tracks when he’d seen her and his shocked expression had changed to a speculative gleam as his eyes had roamed over her. Heat had swept through her body when his gaze lingered on her breasts. She felt embarrassed thinking he might have noticed that her nipples had hardened in a telltale sign that he excited her more than any man had ever done.
Her decision to revamp her appearance suddenly seemed like a bad idea. When she’d dressed in dowdy clothes she hadn’t had to worry that Alekos might catch her glancing at him a dozen times a day, because he rarely seemed to notice that she was a human being and not a robot. Remembering the hot, hard gleam in his eyes when she had been in his office just now sent a tremor through her, and a little part of her wished she could rush back home and change into her safe navy blue suit. But when she’d returned home from her holiday she’d found that all her old clothes were too big, and she’d packed them into black sacks and donated them to a charity shop.
There was no going back. The old Sara Lovejoy was gone for ever and the new Sara was here to stay. Alekos would just have to get used to it.
CHAPTER TWO
AT EXACTLY NINE THIRTY, Sara knocked on Alekos’s door and took a deep breath before she stepped into his office. He was sitting behind his desk, leaning back in his chair that was half turned towards the window, and he was holding his phone to his ear. He spared her a brief glance and then swung his gaze back to the window while he continued his telephone conversation.
She ordered herself not to feel disappointed by his lack of interest. Obviously she must have imagined that earlier he had looked at her with a glint of desire in his eyes. Just because she had a new hairstyle and clothes did not mean that she had become Alekos’s fantasy woman. She knew his type: elegant blondes with legs that went on for ever. In the past two years a steady stream of models and socialites had arrived in his life and exited it a few months later when Alekos had grown bored of his affair with them.
Sara had hoped she would be able to control her reaction to Alekos but her heart leapt wildly in her chest as she studied his profile. Slashing cheekbones, a square jaw shadowed with dark stubble and eyes that gleamed like polished jet all combined to give him a lethal magnetism that women invariably found irresistible. His thick black hair had a habit of falling forwards across his brow and she was tempted to run her fingers through it. As for his mouth... Her eyes were drawn to his beautiful mouth. Full-lipped and sensual when he was relaxed and utterly devastating when he smiled, his mouth could also curve into a cynical expression when he wished to convey his displeasure.
‘Don’t stand there wasting time, Sara.’ Alekos’s voice made her jump, and she flushed as she registered that he had finished his phone call and had caught her out staring at him. ‘We have a lot to get through.’
‘I was waiting for you to finish your call.’ She was thankful that two years of practice at hiding her reaction to his smouldering sensuality allowed her to sound calm and composed even though her heart was racing. The way he growled her name in his sexy accent, drawing out the second syllable...Saraaa...was curiously intimate—as if they were lovers. But of course they were not lovers and were never likely to be.
She forced herself to walk unhurriedly across the room, but with every step that took her closer to Alekos’s desk she was conscious of his unswerving gaze. The unholy gleam in his eyes made her feel as if he were mentally undressing her. Every centimetre of her skin was on fire when she sat down on the chair in front of his desk.
It would be easy to be overwhelmed by him. But when she had been promoted to his PA she’d realised that Alekos was surrounded by people who always agreed with him, and she had decided that she could not allow herself to be intimidated by his powerful personality. She’d noted that he did not have much respect for the flunkeys and hangers-on who were so anxious to keep on the right side of him.
She had very quickly proved that she was good at her job, but the first time she had disagreed with Alekos over a work issue he’d clearly been astounded to discover that his mousy assistant had a backbone. After a tense stand-off, when Sara had refused to back down, he had narrowed his gaze on her determined expression and something like admiration had flickered in his dark eyes.
She valued his respect more than anything because she loved her job. Working for Alekos was like riding a roller coaster at a theme park: exciting, intense and fast-paced, and it was the knowledge that she would never find a job as rewarding as her current one that made Sara take a steadying breath. She could not deny it was flattering that Alekos had finally noticed her, but if she wanted to continue in her role as his PA she must ignore the predatory glint in his eyes.
She held her pencil poised over her notepad and gave him a cool smile. ‘I’m ready to start when you are.’
Her breezy tone seemed to irritate him. ‘I doubt you’ll be so cheerful by the time we’ve finished today. I’ll need you to work late this evening.’
‘Sorry, but I can’t stay late tonight. I’ve made other plans.’
He frowned. ‘Well, change them. Do I need to remind you that a requirement of your job is for you to work whatever hours I dictate, within reason?’
‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that I have always worked extra when you’ve asked me to,’ Sara said calmly. ‘And I’ve worked unreasonable hours, such as when we stayed up until one a.m. to put together a sales pitch for a sheikh before he flew back to Dubai. It paid off too, because Sheikh Al Mansoor placed an order for a one-hundred-million-pound yacht from GE.’
Alekos’s scowl did not make him any less gorgeous; in fact it gave him a dangerous, brooding look that turned Sara’s bones to liquid.
‘I can stay late every other night this week if you need me to,’ she went on in an effort to appease him. Alekos’s bad mood threatened to spoil her excitement about meeting her father after work. Lionel Kingsley’s high profile as an MP meant that he did not want to risk being seen in public with Sara. As they couldn’t go to a restaurant, she had invited him to her home and was planning to cook dinner for him before he attended an evening engagement.
‘Oh, I can’t stay late on Friday either,’ she said. ‘And actually I’d like to leave an hour early because I’m going away for the weekend.’ She remembered the plans she’d made to visit her father at his house in Berkshire. ‘I’ll work through my lunch hour to make up the time.’
‘Well, well.’ Alekos’s sardonic drawl put Sara on her guard. ‘You go away for a month and return sporting a new haircut, a new—and much improved, I have to say—wardrobe, and now suddenly you have a busy social life. It makes me wonder if a man is the reason for the new-look Sara Lovejoy.’
‘My personal life is none of your business,’ she said composedly. Technically, she supposed that a man was the reason for the change in her, but she had not met a lover, as Alekos had implied. She had enjoyed getting to know her father when he had invited her to spend her holiday at his villa in the south of France but she had promised Lionel that she wouldn’t tell anyone she was his daughter.
Deep down she felt disappointed that her father wished to keep their relationship secret. It was as if Lionel was ashamed of her. But she reminded herself that he had promised to introduce her to her half-siblings on Friday, and perhaps then he would openly welcome her as his daughter. She pulled her mind back to the present when she realised Alekos was speaking.
‘It will be my business if your work is affected because you’re mooning over some guy.’
Sara still refused to rise to Alekos’s verbal baiting. She tapped the tip of her pencil on her pad and said with heavy emphasis, ‘I’m ready to start work when you are.’
Alekos picked up a client’s folder from the pile on his desk, but he did not open it. Instead he leaned back in his chair, an unreadable expression on his handsome face as he surveyed her for long minutes while her tension grew and she was sure he must see the pulse beating erratically at the base of her throat.
‘Why did you change your holiday plans and go to France rather than Spain?’
‘The holiday company I’d booked with cancelled my trip, but a...friend invited me to stay at his villa in Antibes.’
‘Would this friend be the man whose voice I heard in the background when I phoned you with a query from the Miami office a week ago?’
Sara tensed. Could Alekos possibly have recognised her famous father’s voice?
‘Why are you suddenly fascinated with my private life?’
‘I’m merely concerned for your well-being and offering a timely reminder that holiday romances notoriously don’t last.’
‘For goodness’ sake!’ Sara told herself not to be fooled by Alekos’s ‘concern for her wellbeing’. His real concern was he did not want his PA moping about or unable to concentrate on her work because she’d suffered a broken heart. ‘What makes you think I had a holiday romance?’
He trailed his eyes over her, subjecting her to a thorough appraisal that brought a flush to her cheeks. ‘It’s obvious. Before you went on holiday you wore frumpy clothes that camouflaged your figure. But after spending a month in France you have undergone a transformation into a frankly very attractive young woman. It doesn’t take a detective to work out that a love affair is probably the cause of your new-found sensuality.’
‘Well, of course you would assume that a man is the reason I’ve altered my appearance.’ Sara’s temper simmered. ‘It couldn’t be that I decided to update my wardrobe for me.’ His cynical expression fuelled her anger but she also felt hurt. Had she really looked so awful in her navy blue suit with her hair secured in a neat bun, as Alekos had said? It was pathetic the way her heart had leapt when he’d complimented her new look and told her she was attractive.
‘You are such a male chauvinist,’ she snapped. Ignoring the warning glint in his eyes, she said furiously, ‘I suppose you think I altered the way I dress in the hope of impressing you?’
The landline phone on his desk rang and Sara instinctively reached out to answer it. Simultaneously Alekos did the same and, as his fingers brushed against hers, she felt a sizzle of electricity shoot up her arm. ‘Oh!’ She tried to snatch her hand away, but he snaked his fingers around her wrist and stroked his thumb pad over her thudding pulse.
‘When you dressed to come to work this morning, did you choose your outfit to please me?’ His black eyes burned like hot coals into hers.
Sara flushed guiltily. ‘Of course not.’ She refused to admit to herself, let alone to Alekos, that for the past two years she had fantasised about him desiring her. She stared at his chiselled face and swallowed. ‘Are you going to answer the call?’ she said breathlessly.
To her relief, he let go of her wrist and picked up the phone. She resisted the urge to leap out of her seat and run out of his office. Instead she made herself stroll across the room to the coffee machine. The familiar routine of pouring water into the machine’s reservoir and inserting a coffee capsule into the compartment gave her a few moments’ breathing space to bring herself under control.
Why had she goaded Alekos like that? She had always been careful to hide her attraction to him but he must have noticed how the pulse in her wrist had almost jumped through her skin because it had been beating so hard, echoing the thudding beat of her heart.
She could not put off carrying their coffees over to his desk any longer, and she was thankful that Alekos did not glance at her when he finished his phone call and opened the file in front of him. He waited for her to sit down and pick up her notepad before he began to dictate at breakneck speed, making no allowances for the fact that she hadn’t taken shorthand notes for a month.
It set the tone for the rest of the day as they worked together to clear the backlog that had built up while Sara had been away. At five o’clock she rolled her aching shoulders and went to the bathroom to brush her hair and apply a fresh coat of rose-pink lip gloss that was her new must-have item of make-up.
In Alekos’s office she found him standing by his desk. He was massaging the back of his neck as if he felt as tired from their busy day as she was. She had forgotten how tall he was. He had inherited his six-foot-four height from his maternal grandfather, who had been a Canadian, he’d once explained to Sara. But in every other aspect he was typically Greek, from his dark olive complexion and mass of black hair to his arrogant belief that he only had to click his fingers and women would flock to him. The trouble was that they did, Sara thought ruefully.
Alekos was used to having any woman he wanted. She told herself it was lucky that there had been no repeat of the breathless moments that had occurred earlier in the day, when rampant desire had blazed in his eyes as he’d trapped her wrist and felt the giveaway throb of her sexual awareness of him.
He must have heard his office door open, and turned his head in her direction. They had played out the same scene hundreds of times before, and most days when she came to check if he needed her to do anything else before she went home he did not bother looking up from his computer screen as he bid her goodnight. But he was looking at her now. She watched his hard features tauten and become almost wolf-like as he stared at her with a hungry gleam in his eyes that excited her and filled her with illicit longing.
Something tugged in the pit of her stomach, tugged hard like a knot being pulled tighter and tighter, as if an invisible thread linked her body to Alekos. And then he blinked and the feral glitter in his eyes disappeared. Perhaps it had never been there and she had imagined that he’d stared at her as if he wanted to devour her?
‘I’m just off now.’ She was amazed that her voice sounded normal when her insides were in turmoil. ‘I’ll finish typing up the report for the shareholders first thing tomorrow.’
‘Did you remember that we are attending the annual dinner for the board members on Thursday evening?’
She nodded. ‘I’ll bring the dress I’m going to wear for the dinner to work and get changed here at the office like I did for the Christmas party.’
‘You had better check with the restaurant that they won’t be serving seafood. Orestis Pagnotis is allergic to it and, much as I’d like to have the old man off my back, I’d better not allow him to risk suffering a possibly fatal reaction,’ Alekos said drily.
‘I’ve already given the restaurant a list of the dietary requirements of the guests.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘Is Orestis still being a problem?’
He shrugged. ‘He’s one of the old school. He joined the board when my grandfather was chairman, and he was a close friend of my father.’ Alekos gave a frustrated sigh. ‘Orestis believes I take too many risks and he has the support of some of the other board members, who fail to understand that the company needs to move with the times rather than remain in the Stone Age. Orestis’s latest gripe is that he thinks the chairman should be married.’
Alekos muttered something in Greek that Sara guessed was not complimentary about the influential board member. ‘According to Orestis, if I take a wife it will prove that I have left my playboy days behind and I will be more focused on running GE.’
Her heart dipped. ‘Are you considering getting married?’
Somehow she managed to inject the right amount of casual interest into her voice. She knew he had ended his affair with a stunning Swedish model called Danika shortly before her holiday, but in the month she had been away it was likely that he had met someone else. Alekos never stayed celibate for long.
Perhaps he had fallen in love with the woman of his dreams. It was possible that Alekos might ask her to organise his wedding. She would have to pin a smile on her face and hide her heartache while she made arrangements for him and his beautiful bride—she was certain to be beautiful—to spend their honeymoon at an exotic location. Sara pulled her mind away from her unwelcome thoughts when she realised Alekos was speaking.
‘I’ll have to marry eventually.’ He sounded unenthusiastic at the prospect. ‘I am the last male Gionakis and my mother and sisters remind me at every opportunity that it is my duty to produce an heir. Obviously I will first have to select a suitable wife.’
‘How do you intend to select a suitable wife?’ She could not hide her shock that he had such a cavalier attitude towards marriage. ‘Will you hold interviews and ask the candidates, who are your potential brides, to fill out a detailed questionnaire about themselves?’ She was aware that her voice had risen and Alekos’s amused smile infuriated her further.
‘Your suggestion is not a bad idea. Why are you so outraged?’ he said smoothly.
‘Because you make marriage sound like a...a cattle market where finding a wife is like choosing a prize heifer to breed from. What about love?’
‘What about it?’ He studied her flushed face speculatively. ‘Statistically, somewhere between forty and fifty per cent of marriages end in divorce, and I bet that most of those marriages were so-called love matches. But with such a high failure rate it seems sensible to take emotion out of the equation and base marriage on social and financial compatibility, mutual respect and the pursuit of shared goals such as bringing up a family.’
Sara shook her head. ‘Your arrogance is unbelievable. You accuse some of GE’s board members of being stuck in the Stone Age, but your views on marriage are Neolithic. Women nowadays don’t sit around twiddling their thumbs and hoping that a rich man will choose them to be his wife.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Alekos murmured drily. ‘When I decide to marry—in another ten years or so—I don’t envisage I’ll have a problem finding a woman who is willing to marry a multimillionaire.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t marry for money,’ Sara said fiercely. Deep inside her she felt an ache of regret that Alekos had trampled on her silly dream that he would one day fall in love with her. Realistically, she knew it would never happen but hearing him state so emphatically that he did not aspire to a marriage built on love forced her to accept that she must get over her embarrassing crush on him.
‘You would prefer to gamble your future happiness on a fickle emotion that poets try to convince us is love? But of course love is simply a sanitized word for lust.’
‘If you’re asking me whether I believe in love, then the answer is yes, I do. Why are you so sceptical, Alekos? You once told me that your parents had been happily married for forty-five years before your father died.’
‘And therein proves my point. My parents had an arranged marriage which was extremely successful. Love wasn’t necessary, although I believe they grew to be very fond of each other over the course of their marriage.’
Sara gave up. ‘You’re just a cynic.’
‘No, I’m a realist. There is a dark side to love and I have witnessed its destructive power.’
A memory slid into Alekos’s mind of that fateful day twenty years ago when he’d found Dimitri walking along the beach. His brother’s eyes had been red-rimmed and he’d wept as he’d told Alekos he had discovered that his girlfriend had been unfaithful. It was the last time Alekos had seen Dimitri alive.
‘Love is an illusion,’ he told Sara harshly, ‘and you would do well to remember it before you rush to give away your heart to a man you only met a few weeks ago.’
After Sara had gone, Alekos walked over to the window and a few minutes later he saw her emerge from the GE building and walk along the pavement. Even from a distance he noted the sexy wiggle of her hips when she walked and a shaft of white-hot lust ripped through him.
He swore. Lusting after his PA was so unexpected and he assured himself that his reaction to Sara’s transformation from dowdy to a very desirable woman was down to sexual frustration. He hadn’t had sex since he’d split from his last mistress almost two months ago.
‘What are you looking for?’ Danika had asked him when he’d told her their affair was over. ‘You say you don’t want permanence in a relationship, but what do you want?’
Right now he wanted a woman under him, Alekos thought, conscious of his erection pressing uncomfortably against the zip of his trousers. A memory flashed into his mind of Sara leaning across his desk with her skirt pulled tight over her bottom. He imagined her without her skirt, her derrière presented for him to slide her panties down so that he could stroke his hands over her naked body. In his fantasy he had already removed her blouse and bra and he stood behind her and slid his arms round her to cup her firm breasts in his hands...