Demetrios took a step towards her. Despite herself, she stepped back. The look on his face was frightening.
“And you think that will solve the difficulty between us? That all you have to do is run away and everything will be fine?”
“There is nothing between us. And I am not running away.”
His eyes grew hot and dark. He moved closer; she stumbled back.
“You run, even now,” he said softly. His gaze moved over her, down the length of her body, then up again. “What are you afraid of, Samantha?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly, and hated how defensive she sounded. She’d had this all planned, and now…“I’m not afraid of anything. I just don’t think working for you is a good idea.”
“You lie.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
He reached out. She jerked back, but not quickly enough. His fingers threaded lightly through her hair.
“Don’t—don’t do that.”
“Do what?” His gaze moved over her face; she could almost feel it, like a caress. “Nicholas says you’ve done many things that take courage.”
“Nicholas talks too much.”
“He says you see life as a challenge.” His hand slid to the nape of her neck and she fought the almost overpowering desire to close her eyes and purr under his touch. “And yet, you fear me.”
Sam jerked free of his hand. “That’s ridiculous!”
“You fear what it would be like to find yourself in my bed.”
“My God, what an ego you have!”
“Is it because you know how it would be between us? That you’d lose all control in my arms?”
“All right. That’s it.” She brushed past him, reached for the door. “Goodbye, Mr. Karas.”
Demetrios caught her wrist. “I would be a lover who demands your soul as well as your body,” he said in a rough whisper. “That terrifies you.”
She was trembling and she didn’t know the reason. Nothing he said was true. She wasn’t a wide-eyed innocent, afraid to lose her virginity, afraid she would find such a transcendent experience in his arms that it would leave her empty once their affair ended.
She was trembling with anger, that was all. Anger, at his incredible conceit.
“You’d like to think that,” she said, “but my reasons for not wanting to work for you are much simpler. I don’t want to work with a man who wants to seduce me. I don’t believe in sleeping with my employer. My career depends on my reputation, and it’s far too important for me to jeopardize it.”
“Fine.”
“It took me a long time to establish my credentials. People who deal with me know that I’m all business.”
Demetrios nodded. “Very well.”
“I’m not about to do anything to…What do you mean, ‘very well’?”
“I mean that you’re right. I, too, keep the two parts of my life—business and pleasure—separate from each other.”
Sam stared at him. “But—but a minute ago, you were—”
“I accept your terms, Samantha.”
“What terms? I didn’t—”
“We’ll shun all intimacy and maintain a working relationship only. Do you agree?”
She blinked. In the past five minutes, she’d quit, he’d fired her, he’d told her that sex with him would turn her world upside down but that sex would be off limits. Was she crazy, or was he?
“Are you saying you’ve decided not to fire me?”
Hell. That was what he was saying, all right, and how had that happened, when his very first words to her had been, “You’re fired”?
“Yes,” he said calmly, “I have.”
“Why?” Sam folded her arms. “What changed your mind?”
The sight of you, Demetrios thought, the look of challenge in your eyes, the scent of your skin, the softness of it…
“It’s a business decision. I admit, I was…irritated.”
“Irritated? By what?”
“Miss Brewster. Samantha. Must we—”
“Yes. We must. And I much prefer Miss Brewster, Mr. Karas.”
Demetrios gritted his teeth. “Very well, Miss Brewster. It was your attitude.”
“My attitude? Oh, that’s wonderful. That’s incredible.” Her eyes flashed with anger. “I do not have an attitude, Mr. Karas. You, on the other hand, have nothing but.”
“Then we are more than a match for each other. Unless…”
“Yes?”
An insolent smile angled across his mouth. “Unless you don’t think you’re up to the challenge.”
“My God!” Sam threw up her hands in disgust. “Your conceit is appalling.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes,” she snapped, “it most certainly is.”
“Fine.” He took a step towards her, caught the ends of her belt in his hands. “In that case,” he said softly, “I have only two more questions.”
Sam’s heart lifted into her throat. He was drawing her towards him, undoing the sash. Stop him, she told herself, don’t let him do this…
His eyes locked on hers as he parted the robe. “Are you naked under this robe, Miss Brewster?”
The hoarsely whispered question stunned her. Slap him, she told herself, put your hands on his chest and push him away.
Instead, she lifted them, curled her fingers into his shirt. Her body was on fire and Demetrios hadn’t even touched her—but he did, now. He slipped his hands beneath the robe, slid them up her back, then down, stroked her as she tried not to tremble.
“And are you a good translator?”
She caught her breath as he cupped her naked bottom, lifted her to him, brought her against his erection, and she felt a silken wetness bloom between her thighs.
“No,” she said shakily, “I’m not good. I’m excellent.”
He gave a soft laugh, lowered his face, bit lightly at her throat. “Fine. Because that’s all I want of you, gataki. Do you understand?”
“What did that—” Her breath hitched. His hands were moving on her, sliding over her skin. “What does that mean? What you called me?”
“Kitten.” He cupped her breasts, stroked his thumbs over her nipples, and she made a sound that was almost a moan. It was all he could do not to lift her in his arms, carry her to the sofa and take her, bury himself inside her. “Are we agreed, then? You will work for me. Nothing more.”
The idea wasn’t even a possibility. How could it be, when just his touch was driving her insane? “Samantha?”
But she had never walked away from a challenge. She was strong, not weak. Why walk away when all she had to do was find the right balance of power?
“Yes,” she said, “we’re agreed.” Slowly, she ran the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip, then rose on her toes. “But I want you to know what you’ll be missing,” she whispered, and she put her hands in his dark, silky hair, drew his head down to hers and lost herself, if only for a moment, in the heat, the passion, of his kiss.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS raining in Piraeus, the seaport that had been Athens’ commercial lifeline to the world for more than 2500 years.
Rain was unusual in the Greek islands at this time of year, especially a downpour like this. Demetrios, seated at the head of an olive-wood table in the conference room of Karas Lines, watched as the fat drops beat against the windows. The effect was hypnotic. That was what he told himself each time his attention wandered from the meeting.
It was safer to pretend he was diverted by the rain than to admit he couldn’t concentrate because of Samantha. Samantha, who had burned in his arms that morning in New York—and who had since turned into an Ice Queen.
She was seated to the left and slightly behind him, the very essence of efficiency and decorum. He couldn’t see her, not without turning around, but he knew exactly how she looked. It was the same, day after day, week after week. By now, her image was lodged in his brain. She sat straight, holding a notepad and pen in her lap. Her knees were carefully aligned, her
ankles demurely crossed. If she moved, it was only to write something on the pad or, occasionally, to lean towards him and speak softly into his ear.
That was what she’d done a few moments ago and he hadn’t heard much of what anyone said since then. His senses were still on overload, trying to get past the almost imperceptible brush of her breast against his arm, the scent of her skin.
It would have been easier to stop breathing.
How could a man drive such things from his mind?
Hiring her had been a mistake. Not because she wasn’t good at what she did. On the contrary. When he’d asked her if she was good, she’d said she wasn’t just good, she was excellent. It was true. She was the best translator he’d ever employed.
She was also the only one who had ever made it impossible for him to keep his mind on business. No one had ever had that effect on him before.
Did she know? How could a woman who never smiled at him, who never offered a word that was not related to her job, manage to find ways to drive him crazy?
She’d just made a notation—his senses were so attuned to her that he could hear the faint scratch of pen on paper. The Italian seated across from him, a man who owned a long-dead title as well as a company that built the fastest, most elegant cruise ships in the world, was droning on and on, mostly in English though he occasionally lapsed into his own tongue and turned to his translator for help. Demetrios was doing his best to pay attention but for the life of him, he couldn’t have repeated a single word the man had just said.
He could, however, describe Samantha’s perfume. Vanilla. Jasmine. Something delicate. Mysterious. She’d just leaned towards him again and murmured something in his ear. The faintest drift of her fragrance carried to his nostrils but he felt the impact in a far different part of his body.
“Excuse me,” he said abruptly.
He pushed back his chair, smiled—or hoped he smiled—and gave a casual wave of his hand to indicate that everyone should continue talking. His secretary had laid coffee and pastries on a table near the windows and he strolled to it, carefully examined the tiny cakes as if his life depended on making the correct selection even though the thought of biting into one and actually trying to chew and swallow it was beyond the realm of possibility.
Instead, he poured a cup of coffee he didn’t want. It gave him an excuse to stay away from the conference table and his unsmiling, silent, stiff-necked translator, the woman he’d agreed not to view as a woman…and how in hell could he manage that, when just the whisper of her nylons each time she crossed or uncrossed her legs was an aphrodisiac?
His reaction was ridiculous. He knew it. Determinedly, he turned his back to the conference table, lifted the coffee cup and sipped at the hot liquid.
A man wasn’t supposed to think the things he was thinking when he was in the middle of a multimillion dollar business deal. He wasn’t supposed to sizzle with tightly controlled anger, either. You needed a cool head when you dealt with people like these.
No sex.
He and Samantha had made an agreement, and he was adhering to it. Why wasn’t she?
She was a walking, talking, breathing symbol of seduction, and never mind that look of cool removal, the stark black suit and low-heeled shoes, the way she drew all that incredible hair away from her face and clasped it, demurely, at her neck.
Demetrios’s hand tightened on the cup.
He should have fired her that morning in New York. To this moment, he couldn’t figure out what had happened. All he knew was that things had gone wrong somewhere between that dingy lobby and her tiny excuse for an apartment. Not only had he veered from his original intention, he’d lost the upper hand.
One moment Samantha had been telling him she would not work for him, and the next…The next, he’d touched her. Felt the heat of her skin, the silk of her breasts. Tasted the sweetness of her mouth. And then she’d kissed him, all but given herself to him in that kiss…
God. He couldn’t do this. Have these thoughts. Let these memories turn his body hard and hot with desire.
All of this, all of it, was her fault. Why had she kissed him that morning? To tease him? To drive him out of his mind and leave him wondering what it would be like to take her to bed? But those moments had affected her, too. He could still hear her soft moans, feel the race of her pulse beneath his lips. He knew when a woman was lost in the heat of passion, and she had been lost that morning in his arms.
Could she forget that easily?
Anger hummed in his blood. Evidently, she could. Otherwise, she would not treat him as if he were a stranger. He swung around and looked at her. And she would not behave like this, smiling across the table at the Frenchman who owned a company the equal of the Italian’s and laughing at something he said.
A cold knot formed in Demetrios’s belly. Where were her ethics? Surely, she knew better. She worked for him. He had the right to expect her loyalty and obedience. Did she think she was here to socialize with the men with whom he did business?
Why didn’t she do what was expected of her? Nothing had gone as he’d intended. Not here. Not at his home on Astra, where he’d instructed his housekeeper to prepare a guest suite for her. Samantha had changed his plans in the blink of an eye.
“What’s that?” she’d said as his helicopter set down on his private island.
He’d barely glanced at the small house in the garden. “A guest cottage, but hardly anyone uses it.”
“I’ll use it,” she’d said. “That will give me the space and privacy I need to set up my computer and printer.”
“There is plenty of space in the main house,” he’d replied, and immediately found himself in the unbelievable position of arguing with an employee who didn’t seem to understand that it was her place to accept his decisions without question. That he’d let himself be drawn into such a situation still made him furious.
“Stay where you wish,” he’d said coldly, and ended the dispute.
She had.
She lived in the guest house, took her meals there despite his logical protestations.
“You are to dine with me,” he’d said, striding through the door to her quarters that first night after he’d found his dining room table set for one and listened to his housekeeper’s halting explanation of how the Amerikaníoa had told the gardener, who had told the laundress, who had told her, that she would take her meals on a tray in the guest house.
Demetrios had clenched his fists. “She told the gardener, who told the maid, who told you?”
Yes, the housekeeper said. The gardener spoke a little English, because he had a daughter who lived in America. The laundress, who had once lived in America, was more proficient, so the gardener asked the laundress to speak with the Amerikaníoa, and she said it was true, she would eat alone, and she would come to the kitchen to collect her own tray and to return it.
“To the kitchen,” Demetrios had ground out, between his teeth. “How thoughtful of her.”
He’d gone directly to the guest house and walked in, unannounced, to tell her she would learn to do as she was told, but Samantha had other ideas.
“In the future,” she’d told him, “please remember to knock and wait to be admitted.”
“Admitted?” he’d said incredulously, “admitted to my own guest house?”
“As long as I’m living in it, yes. As for dining with you…” She’d smiled politely. “You pay me to translate for you, Mr. Karas. That service does not include dining with you.”
What answer could he have given to such a statement? She saw dining with him as an obligation? So be it. He’d only been trying to be kind to her, a stranger in his country, but he was glad she’d turned him down. Why would he want to look across the table and see her each evening? It was far better to dine alone.
But, yes, he paid her to translate for him. That meant he expected her beside him all day, every day, at the office. She didn’t seem to understand that. For a week, he’d watched her hurry out of the building
whenever they broke for lunch, then watched her return with her cheeks pink and glowing, her hair just a little disheveled.
She had a lover, he’d thought, and before the rage inside him had completely taken over, he’d realized that was ridiculous. Samantha knew no one in Piraeus or, for that matter, in Athens. Apparently, she took her lunch alone. The others—the Frenchman, the Italian, even their translators—often joined him for lunch in his corporate dining room. It was a small but handsome room, and there was a café not far away that could be counted on to send over whatever was requested.
The others seemed more than willing to avail themselves of the arrangement. Why didn’t she?
In the second week, he’d asked his secretary, very casually, if she knew where his translator went each day during lunch.
“She walks,” his secretary said.
“She walks? Here? Alone, on the docks?”
His secretary had shrugged as if to agree that such a thing was unheard of. “Yes, sir. I suggested it was unwise, but—”
“But, she does not take advice,” Demetrios said grimly, and his secretary had nodded.
He’d waited for Samantha to return. Then he’d explained that it was not safe for a woman to wander this part of Piraeus alone. He’d done it quietly, carefully, so that she might understand his concern was not the least bit personal but was only for her welfare, which was his responsibility.
It would have been more sensible to have expected a pig to fly.
“My welfare is my responsibility, thank you.”
Only a fool would not have known the simple words were meant as an insult. He was certain she would have gone right on with her midday strolls but, like it or no, she was his responsibility. She was a foreigner working in his country, for him. So, the next morning, he’d announced that he had given the matter some thought and he’d decided it would be more efficient…“and more conducive to our reaching an accord,” he’d added with a hard-won smile…if they had lunch as a group not just occasionally but as a daily practice.
From then on, they all met for a catered meal in the corporate dining room—until today, when Samantha had gone to lunch with the Frenchman.
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