Harlequin Presents--July 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Natalie Anderson

  The doors to the lift parted.

  At the last moment, he bypassed the button to his office and stabbed the one for his penthouse. Only then did he reach for his phone. But it wasn’t to answer the frantic messages from his client. That would come later, when he had a definitive answer as to what had gone wrong.

  Instead, he sent a short, sharp message to his executive assistant, the woman who was taking up far too much real estate in his mind.

  Alexis Sutton’s response was equally brief. And as expected, she turned up at his penthouse door five minutes later.

  ‘A shot of espresso or two fingers of Macallan?’ She held up the choice of offerings when he opened to her knock.

  Christos pulled his fisted hands from his pockets, strolling forward until he was a couple of feet from Alexis. ‘If I want a drink, I’ll make it myself. Did you bring the list I wanted?’ he demanded. The growl in his voice was unmistakable, but the woman before him barely blinked.

  Christos knew he wasn’t an easy man to work for. Alexis’s ability to remain unflustered was why she’d lasted this long as his assistant. It was why he’d made that proposition to her a year ago when his grandfather’s subtle hints had grown into real threats.

  ‘I won’t be around forever, Christos.’

  ‘Show me you’re the right heir to Drakonisos or I’ll make other arrangements.’

  Costas Drakakis had forced his hand, and Christos had implemented a plan that’d proceeded smoothly for ten whole months.

  Until an uncharacteristically pleasant dinner with clients and a nightcap with his assistant had lowered his inhibitions, blurring the stark professional lines he’d sworn never to cross.

  ‘I did,’ Alexis replied in that nuanced voice he’d spent far too long analysing over the past few weeks. Sometimes crisp, sometimes sharp. Always intelligent. And always with that huskiness that lately triggered a need to hear it wrapped in lust, moaning his name. Again. ‘But I still think you should have a drink. You haven’t had your shot of caffeine since this morning, and the whisky will mellow you out. After that, I’ll give you exactly five minutes to lose your cool. Then we’ll get back to business.’

  Christos took another half step, his teeth clenching hard enough to make his jaw hurt. As much as he appreciated her no-nonsense approach, she was verging on insubordination. ‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’

  She lifted her head, met his gaze with unflinching chocolate-brown eyes shot through with threads of gold that always made him think they were gathering momentum to flash pure fire at him. She didn’t answer immediately, giving him an unwanted few moments to notice the silken mass of her chestnut hair, the glistening gloss of her lip balm, the pulse beating at her throat, the thin leather belt cinching her narrow waist and the floral undertones of her favourite scent.

  He’d held that trim waist in his hands, knew he could span it, easily...as he had when he’d pulled her close that night...

  ‘I’m talking to the great Christos Drakakis, lawyer extraordinaire, the man who leaves opponents and judges alike quaking in their shoes.’

  ‘Then you’ll know that I’m in no mood to be messed around right now.’

  ‘Yes, I know you want someone to pay for what’s happened, hence the request for the list. And you’re in the mood for another one of your let’s-test-Alexis games today. Well, I’m not playing. So...now that we’ve exhausted all areas of concern, which is it to be?’ She raised the coffee cup and the tumbler of whisky higher until the smell of roasted beans and aged single malt trailed into his nostrils. ‘One is getting cold and the ice is melting in the other.’

  Her little speech triggered equal parts vexation and calming reassurance inside him. Not everything had gone to hell. ‘I want neither. The list, if you please.’

  Her arms lowered. She regarded him for a resigned moment. ‘I sent it to your phone before I came up. I also have several files to put together for you downstairs. Just let me know which ones you want to work on next and I’ll have them ready.’ She swivelled on expensive heels and started walking away, her navy pencil skirt twitching in the prim little way he’d have once laid hefty bets on fully complimenting her character.

  Until he’d had a taste of the gorge-deep passion that lurked beneath the deceptively cool exterior. Christos hadn’t quite made up his mind whether he resented her for that unconscious subterfuge yet.

  She’d mastered the art of walking away from him before he was done with her. Increasingly in the last several weeks. Today, it was especially aggravating.

  ‘Alexis.’ The warning in his voice was enough to make her falter.

  Christos was almost sure her shoulders stiffened momentarily before she relaxed them. An instant later she was walking away again, her curvy hips swaying as she headed for the coffee table in the middle of his living room. He waited until she reached it and started to bend down to place the whisky and coffee on it.

  ‘Stop.’

  She straightened, still holding the drinks. Their gazes locked. Held. After a moment he saw the merest flicker of apprehension, which absurdly pleased him. He enjoyed not being the only one unsettled before noon on what should’ve been a routine Monday morning.

  He took his time approaching her, each step a small battle to rein in his fraying control. The unnerving sensation he’d experienced in the pit of his stomach after his phone call with his grandfather last night.

  ‘Your cousin is now in the running...’

  ‘I’m going to give it to you straight,’ Alexis said, her voice a crisp scythe through his moody thoughts. ‘If you were any other man, I’d have thought that you’d come up here to wallow in your defeat. But you’re not any other man. You’re Christos Drakakis.’

  ‘Yes, I am. And you also know how much I hate sycophants.’ He reached her in time to see her lips pinch for a second before, like him, she shook off her annoyance.

  Christos skirted her once, then faced her. He relieved her of the tiny, expensive bone-china cup and downed the hot beverage in one swallow. Then he repeated the process with the amber liquid swirling in the crystal-cut glass.

  The kick of caffeine before the calm of alcohol threw a veil of equilibrium over his senses. He released the single button to his bespoke suit and loosened his tie.

  Jerking it free, he flung it on the sofa. With his gaze still on her, Christos tugged open the top three buttons of his shirt. He wasn’t in the least bit ashamed of enjoying the reaction that flitted across her face.

  Despite the brick wall she’d thrown up after that night in his penthouse, she wasn’t immune to him. Selfishly, since his day had gone to hell so very unexpectedly, he revelled in the quickening of her breath, the flair of gold in her brown eyes, the smallest step she took away from him under the guise of straightening the coffee-table book on medieval architecture. They were the same tics she’d exhibited soon after accepting the position as his executive assistant, that he’d dreaded her acting upon, only to discover that she had no intention of doing so after three years in her role.

  At first, Christos had resigned himself to waiting for the inevitable moment when Alexis, like his three prior seemingly superefficient and professional assistants, would drop the not-so-subtle hint that she would love their boss/assistant relationship to become something more.

  That moment had never arrived, but he’d remained sceptical, then increasingly on edge because Alexis was his most proficient assistant, anticipating his needs and executing them sometimes even before he recognised they existed. But Christos wasn’t a man who took things at face value—the harrowing events of his childhood had eroded his trust. So like the sword of Damocles hanging over his head, each interaction with her had become a watchful exercise, until it had grown into a peculiar kind of anticipation.

  It had been well into the first year before he’d spotted a single sign that she was aware of him. But even that had been ru
thlessly snuffed out, his assistant seemingly as capable of clamping down her responses as he was.

  Until that night.

  Now, he watched her gaze dart to his neck and upper chest before flicking away. But the lips that were pursed minutes ago had grown softer, parting slightly as the tempo of her breathing escalated.

  ‘I drank the coffee and the whisky.’ In truth, he’d realised he needed both the moment he’d seen her holding them. Even now, they were further calming him, creating a little distance from the unsettling after-effects of his unexpected failure. ‘Now are you ready to do my bidding?’

  The tip of her pink tongue darted out, touched the inner edge of her lower lip before retreating. That small act was enough to redirect the surge of fire in his chest south. To confirm that once again he was treading dangerous ground when it came to how much he enjoyed her reaction to him.

  He didn’t want to lose Alexis as an executive assistant or jeopardise the private agreement he had with her to secure his birthright. She’d lasted three years working with him because she was the best. But if he was to accommodate his grandfather’s increasing demands, then knowing Alexis wasn’t the cold wall she usually projected would come in handy.

  ‘If that bidding involves getting Demitri on the line for you, then yes. The poor man is going out of his mind since the verdict was handed down. I told him you would return his calls within the hour,’ she answered.

  The reminder that beyond these walls, and the bubbling cauldron of whatever was going on between him and his assistant, there was a disaster waiting to be cleared up wasn’t welcome. But he’d never shied away from challenges. Not that Demitri Kyrios would challenge him after keeping crucial information from him.

  Alexis took another step back. ‘Shall we say, five minutes?’

  She was almost at the door, her brisk efficiency back in place like a well-worn suit of armour.

  ‘Three,’ he replied. He’d prevaricated enough. He rebuttoned his suit, reknotted his tie and crushed his frustration until it was a non-existent blip at the back of his mind. ‘Make sure I have the complete transcript of today’s proceedings on my desk.’

  She looked over her shoulder. ‘It was the first thing I did when I heard the outcome.’

  He allowed a ghost of a smile to cross his lips. ‘Be careful, Alexis. We don’t want to get to the point where I imagine you’re willing to cater to my every need, do we?’ he challenged.

  ‘I’m here to cater to your every professional need. If you don’t want me to be fully efficient in that capacity, then maybe I should find another employer? I’m sure someone out there will appreciate my dedication.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’ If so, it wasn’t an idle one.

  A month ago, he’d come across an email from a headhunting agency offering her an impressive salary and benefits package if she jumped ship to another firm. Whether she’d left the email open deliberately for him to see because he’d been in a particularly testy mood that day, he wasn’t sure. But its existence had niggled at him, prompting him to discreetly request she be given a mid-year review by HR and a thirty per cent raise.

  The uncertainty that she’d still choose to leave him chafed with each passing day. The same feelings of uncertainty had dogged his formative years, although he’d hoped he’d put that period far behind him. But he could do nothing about it, not when she was instrumental in helping him secure Drakonisos, the one thing that mattered to him above all things.

  Admitting it was enough to rake up his dying frustration and a few more emotions that should be buried deep enough to be dead. But weren’t.

  ‘No, sir. It’s a gentle reminder that we both have options,’ she answered his almost forgotten question.

  ‘Sir?’

  Her lips pursed. ‘It’s the correct form of address. I don’t know what you have against it.’

  She hadn’t called him that since her initial interview, when, for some reason, the sound of it falling from her lips had spiked his temperature high enough to make him demand she never use it again.

  He walked over to the door and held it open for her to walk through. ‘You’re not going anywhere. I’m not ready to do without you. Not just yet anyway.’

  A look flitted through her eyes, gone before he could decipher it. Then her head dipped in a stiff nod as they walked together down a short corridor to the lift that would take them down to his office. ‘That’s good to hear. Your executive chef sent through the autumn menu today. I’d hate to be deprived of his culinary delights this side of Christmas.’

  ‘I’m sure his ego will be boosted to know he’s the only reason you’re bringing yourself to remain in my employ.’ He pressed the button to summon the lift, noting the reduced desire to stab at it. He didn’t want to admit her presence was the reason he’d calmed down, but Christos couldn’t deny it.

  Her unflappability in the face of his sometimes heated Greek temperament was one he appreciated.

  ‘I’ve tried to resist his cooking, but he gets me every time. I’ve had to up my thrice-weekly gym sessions to counterbalance the high calories.’

  Christos’s eyes narrowed as she preceded him into the lift. ‘Is that the reason you’ve been absent from your desk between six and seven lately?’

  She leaned past him to press the switch that closed the doors before resting her gaze on the bright green digital floor counter. ‘Yep. I didn’t think you noticed, though.’

  His gaze drifted past her profile and down her trim body to her slim legs and heeled feet. ‘I noticed both your absence, and the fact that your efforts aren’t necessary.’

  Their gazes met and again he experienced a split-second connection that froze time, before she raised a cool eyebrow. ‘You pound your treadmill every night without fail. Are your efforts necessary?’

  This time the smile that threatened stayed for longer than a second. ‘Touché.’

  Her gaze dropped to his mouth, lingering as her own lips curved.

  Then the doors opened, and Christos was back in his true domain. In the kingdom he’d built brick by brick with one simple but solid goal in mind: to make sure people like his father never got another chance to perpetrate their despicable wrongs on helpless victims like him and his mother. And if his clients came to him already in the clutches of such vile treatment, to ensure he used the rule of law to make the perpetrators pay as high a price as possible.

  Before he tackled this recent rare failure, however, he needed to safeguard the two-miles-square piece of land in the Aegean that had been his sanity and salvation as a boy. The place where the seeds of the man he was today had been sown. The only place where he’d known a semblance of acceptance. Perhaps even affection? He shrugged the question away. While he wasn’t overly eager to probe the emotions tied to his need to possess Drakonisos, he wasn’t prepared to sit back and let his grandfather hand it over to his cousin either.

  To do that he needed to revisit his private agreement with Alexis. One that, in his moments of quiet, he’d repeatedly questioned his sanity over.

  ‘Alexis.’ The throb of...something in his voice stilled her.

  ‘Yes?’ Her response was a little wary. Between heartbeats, that momentary lightening of tension receded, and they were back in the tight bubble of awareness that flared up so readily between them these days. ‘Did you want something else?’ she tagged on when he took a moment to form the words.

  ‘Yes. It’s time to reprise your other role.’

  Christos wasn’t quite sure how to process her visible paling. The widening of her eyes. The decisive step she took back from him. All negative reactions when he wanted the opposite. When he’d dared hope for enthusiasm, even?

  ‘But...it’s only June. We’re not supposed to travel to Greece for another two months.’ Her voice held a shaky, uneven texture that spoke to how she felt. How, probably like him, she preferred to keep the entire sub
ject at the back of her mind, calling upon it only when strictly necessary.

  But again, when he should’ve taken her response in his stride, because this was only another clinical transaction after all, he felt...disgruntlement.

  Their deal hadn’t been a one-sided affair. She’d negotiated her own terms, extracted her own rewards.

  Just as everyone had seen him in the key moments of his life, he’d been seen as a pawn. A means to an end.

  He refused to feel guilty about stacking the deck in his own favour.

  ‘There’s been a development regarding my grandfather.’ Another twist in their relationship he suspected was orchestrated by yet another greedy party.

  Her eyes widened even further, another layer of tension and electric awareness arcing in the space between them. Space he closed by strolling towards her until they were a foot apart. Until he was certain he could hear her frantic heartbeat and the tiny rush of air leaving her parted lips. ‘And? What exactly does that mean?’

  ‘It means it’s time for you to be my wife again, Alexis.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  YES, SHE WAS married to her boss, according to the pristine little document tucked in the farthest corner of her lingerie drawer that proclaimed her as Mrs Alexis Drakakis, wife of Christos Drakakis, enigmatic multimillionaire, world-renowned lawyer and rumoured heir to his grandfather’s billion-euro empire.

  A document she hadn’t been able to glance at since the single time she’d held it in her hand, wondering if she’d made the right decision or was still caught in the ninety seconds of madness that had made her agree to her boss’s preposterous proposition.

  A three-year deal struck—after that brief moment of insanity had passed—when she’d believed she could fully control every outcome with the same cool, unflappable efficiency as she ran his office.

  For a while, it had worked. Heck, in the beginning she’d managed to forget, for several hours at a time at least, her marital ties to the formidable man who ran his international law firm with an iron fist. Forget that underneath the marriage certificate lay a box containing a five-carat princess-cut diamond set in platinum, alongside a matching wedding ring, which he’d presented to her with firm-jawed, emotionless expediency at the sterile registrar’s office in Marylebone a year ago.