The Prince's Fake Fiancée

by Leah Ashton

  ‘As you already know, we have specially invited influencers, journalists and bloggers coming for the first time, but we also have some of our regular clients and their entire families staying with us over the Pascha weekend. We need to balance the needs of both groups, and our focus has to be on guest satisfaction at all times. No request is too big, and I want each of you to be proactive and anticipate the guests’ needs. At no other time has the Christou business motto been more apt: We deliver perfection.’

  His shoulders stiffened and his gaze slowly ran across the crowd.

  ‘The future of The Korinna is reliant on us excelling in everything we do from the moment we open our doors again. And everyone else on Talos needs us to succeed too—we need to lead the way in making Talos a year-round destination, especially during the winter months when so many businesses on the island struggle.’

  Loukas stepped back and for a moment stared down at the pale sandstone of the patio. When he looked back up there was a vulnerability in the way his mouth worked, the way he blinked hard.

  ‘The past few years have been difficult for us all, but it’s now time for The Korinna to shine again.’ He paused, his voice catching. ‘As many of you know, it was my father’s dream that in addition to our hotels here in Greece we would also own some of Europe’s leading five-star hotels. Soon I hope to announce the acquisition of some of those premises. But for now let’s make The Korinna dazzle—make it the gold standard for what we in the Christou Group promise to deliver to our guests, both current and future. Let’s do my parents proud.’

  Around her people shuffled and cleared their throats. She rapidly blinked her eyes, sideswiped by Loukas’s emotion. This was the man who had looked as if he wanted to commit murder less than fifteen minutes ago.

  She remembered Angeliki’s poorly disguised attempt at bravado when she had described losing both her parents at only ten years of age. The same bravado Georgie had used to adopt herself when having to explain her mum’s absence as a child.

  Loukas’s gaze swept across the crowd and settled on her. Her heart dipped and soared at his grave expression.

  ‘None of us can allow anything to get in the way of The Korinna’s success.’

  * * *

  Loukas entered his office and threw his weekend bag on the office sofa.

  He rolled his neck against the steel rod that seemed to have inserted itself down the centre of his spine.

  Why had he felt so damn emotional during his speech to the staff?

  He sat down at his desk and scrubbed his face with a hand. Inhaling a weary breath, he fired up his computer. Flicking through his emails, he clicked on one from his legal team. He read it and sighed.

  His instinct had been right—there really was no way out of the clause that had been inserted into the lease by the religious order who had sold the Convento San Francesco over a hundred years ago.

  The convent, in the heart of Florence, had since become an exclusive five-star boutique hotel—a hotel his father had coveted since he and Loukas’s mother had visited on their honeymoon and just about been able to afford a drink in the bar. They had both fallen in love with its walled garden and cloisters, and his father—perhaps foolishly—had pledged to his mother that one day he would buy it in memory of their wedding and their honeymoon.

  Loukas wanted it. For his parents. This was the first time that it had come up for sale in over a century. He might never get this opportunity again. He had to buy this hotel for his father. He couldn’t fail him yet again.

  There was only one problem—to buy it, he had to be married. The religious order, for reasons that had been lost in time, had specified that the convent could only be sold to a married person.

  His legal team had spent the past month attempting to have the clause removed. But it was watertight. As he had expected. In anticipation of this outcome he had employed a dating agency who specialised in executive clients.

  He was not interested in finding love. He’d never had any intention of getting married. He had spent his childhood constantly fighting for his parents’ love—his father’s in particular—and constantly being rejected when he had not lived up to his expectations. He had learnt that loving others made him vulnerable and open to the constant fear and pain of rejection. Love was an exhausting emotional rollercoaster he had no interest in or intention of riding.

  What he needed was a wife in name only, and in the past few weeks he had come to realise that he could turn this need for a wife of convenience into an opportunity to recruit extra talent into the business—someone who would help drive the business forward but would also have the toughness to tackle the ongoing problems with his family: namely Nikos’s irresponsibility, Marios’s stubbornness and Angeliki’s lack of independence.

  It was a point that had been driven home when he’d recently returned from a business trip abroad to his apartment in Athens to find Angeliki drunk and almost incoherent... She’d been coherent enough though to tell him that she hated her two-timing boyfriend, Dimitris, but that she couldn’t break it off because he had the best body she’d ever seen. And all kinds of other stuff no brother should ever hear from his baby sister.

  Angeliki needed a strong female role model—for far too long she had been indulged by her older brothers. She needed someone who would push her to want to achieve more in life than the approval of some lowlife guy.

  The dating agency had put forward some promising candidates—successful and ambitious women. He had even dated some. But so far they had all come up short.

  Tonight’s email from his legal team confirming that there was no way out of the clause, together with all the other debacles—an unfinished hotel, VIP guests set to arrive in less than a week, his siblings nowhere to be seen—had brought home the fact that he needed a wife with greater than ever urgency.

  He picked up his office phone and called his dating agency account manager, Zeta.

  ‘Loukas... Hi...’ Zeta sounded more and more nervous every time he called.

  ‘I have called the three profiles you sent through today. The first had nothing to offer the business.’ Zeta tried to interrupt him but he continued on, ‘The second candidate laughed when I explained that Talos was a two-hour journey by land and sea from Athens...’

  He swung around in his chair to face his office window and stared out towards the Saronic Gulf as he continued.

  ‘And the third couldn’t answer me when I asked her how she would deal with the scenario of an eighteen-year-old girl calling at four in the morning from a payphone in Athens asking if she knew where her phone and purse was.’

  Zeta let out a weary sigh at the other end of the phone. ‘We’re running out of suitable candidates.’

  ‘Spread your net wider. I need a wife within the next month. A wife who will accept the nature of our marriage—that it will be in effect a business contract for a two-year period, with generous terms and conditions. The Christou Group is about to expand rapidly. We have already acquired five new hotels in the past year and plan on many more. This will be an ideal time for an ambitious person to be at the centre of that growth. I need someone who is driven, astute, already successful in her career, willing to live on Talos and support me in managing my family. That isn’t a lot to ask, is it?’

  Zeta started to make some strangled-sounding noises at the end of the line. In no mood to hear her usual argument that he needed to be more flexible, he ended the call—but not before telling Zeta that he would quadruple her fee if she found him a suitable wife within the next month.

  ‘Is now a good time to talk?’

  He twisted around to find the mermaid standing at his door, waiting for his answer.

  Thrown by the sight of her hand, distractedly playing with the thin silver strap of her bikini top, and seeing the other resting on the smooth taut skin of her midriff, he looked away, silently cursing Nikos. Again.


  Georgie Jones—all blonde hair, shiny eyes and sunshine personality—was exactly Nikos’s type. He didn’t need to go to Detective School to figure out that she was either Nikos’s newest love interest or soon would be. No wonder Nikos had given her the position as PA. How convenient to have her so nearby.

  The idea of moving Nikos away to a monastery on a faraway island was rapidly becoming the best plan he’d had in a long time. But first he had to deal with returning this mermaid to wherever she belonged.

  ‘Please come in.’

  She shuffled into the office, her full and rather enticing lips, painted a coral-pink, pulling into an open smile that slowly faded as she stopped in front of his desk.

  She squared her shoulders and her hazel eyes held his steadily. ‘It would be a huge honour to work for you, and in a hotel as prestigious as The Korinna. I won’t lie or beat around the bush—I need this job.’

  She gave him a quick smile that at first seemed open, but on closer inspection he saw that her eyes held a steely determination.

  ‘However, I respect the fact that you weren’t aware of my appointment and that it has put us both in a difficult position. I think I have a potential compromise, if you agree. And that is that I initially work for you for a trial period of a few days.’

  * * *

  Time slowed down to excruciatingly long seconds as Loukas studied her with obvious exasperation. Would he accept her proposal?

  Life had taught her to be diplomatic, to negotiate and gently persuade rather than fight her way to acceptance by others. After years of being a newcomer she knew only too well that she had to give people space in order to come to realise that she posed no threat. And that included her new boss.

  His office faced out towards the azure beauty of the Saronic Gulf, but when he stood up his huge Greek warrior size seemed to devour all the evening light that had been pouring in through the folding glass doors that led to a private balcony.

  He moved to rest against a bookcase and asked, ‘Exactly what experience have you of being a PA?’

  ‘I’ve worked as a PA in an architectural firm in Spain for the past eighteen months. Before that I was a theatre hand, a trainee pastry chef, a dog-walker...’ She paused, seeing that Loukas wasn’t overly impressed, and quickly added, ‘I’m flexible and I use my initiative, and I also speak Portuguese, Spanish, Italian...and passable Greek.’

  His eyes narrowed in suspicion, he approached her as though he didn’t buy a word about her linguistic skills. ‘You speak all those languages?’

  While her brain objected to his cynical tone, her heart was conducting a most peculiar dance in her chest. Goosebumps were popping up on her skin as her eyes were drawn to the smooth skin of his chest visible beneath the open neck of his shirt. She blinked as heat blasted inside her stomach.

  She dragged her eyes away from the dark toffee skin tone and then, intending to let them travel up to meet his eyes, found herself waylaid by his mouth—was his lower lip slightly fuller than the upper one?—and then his nose, its straightness and perfection suiting his serious personality.

  Eventually she managed to answer, ‘I moved around a lot as a child because of my dad’s work.’

  ‘Why are you here on Talos?’

  Light golden-brown eyes marred by tension lines at the corners held hers. She needed to get Loukas to relax in her company.

  She stepped back and gave her best excited smile. ‘I’m renovating a property.’

  The tension lines tightened even more. ‘The old Alavanos property?’

  His question came out in a rumble, his voice even lower than usual.

  The nod of her head elicited a deep sigh of disbelief from him.

  ‘So, let me get this right... Nikos has employed as my PA someone who is soon going to be a business rival of ours?’

  If only. The Talos Escape Guesthouse, as she had decided to call it, wouldn’t be opening anytime soon if she didn’t pull together enough money to actually furnish the guest rooms. But she wasn’t going to admit that to anyone. Sunny side up. That was her motto.

  ‘I’m going to open up a small guesthouse in the summer months, catering for the swimming holiday business. It’s hardly going to be a rival to The Korinna.’

  Loukas shifted away from her and went and stood behind his desk. ‘Miss Jones, you can’t work here. I apologise that Nikos had you believing otherwise.’

  He sat down at his desk, briefly gestured to the door and began to riffle through the paperwork on his desk.

  Georgie opted not to take up his invitation to leave. She couldn’t let go of this financial lifeline.

  Engrossed in his paperwork, he was either oblivious to her presence or choosing to ignore her, so she said to the rather beautiful wavy dark brown hair on the top of his head, ‘Why?’

  He lifted that noble head of his slowly and eyed her unhappily. Throwing the pen in his hand to the desk, he said impatiently, ‘Thanks to Nikos, my PA Eleni ran away last week. I have now made it company policy that there is to be no relationships between employees. A policy that is to be implemented at all twenty-six hotels within the Christou Group. I can hardly go against that policy within days of its implementation.’

  ‘I’m not following... How does that impact me in my role as your PA?’

  He crossed his arms and threw her a sceptical stare.

  Confused, she said, ‘I would never date my boss... And anyway, I... I overheard your telephone conversation just now. Aren’t you looking for a wife? I’m not wife material.’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘I was talking about you and Nikos.’

  ‘Oh.’ Despite the inferno igniting her cheeks she heard herself laugh. ‘Nikos and me! Are you serious? He’s like a little brother. We’re friends—nothing more. Just as I’m friends with Marios and Angeliki.’

  ‘You’re friends with them too?’

  ‘I’ve got to know them over the past few months through Nikos. Marios and I share an interest in sea-swimming and Angeliki is teaching me Greek—she’s stayed over with me some nights.’

  ‘Really?’

  Why did he sound so appalled...so surprised?

  She rested a hand on the flimsy material of her mermaid tail, itching to whip it off, to go and put on some proper clothes. But perhaps she should fess up to everything in order to clear the air completely between them. Although she got the feeling he wasn’t going to like it.

  ‘There’s something else we need to talk about, as I’m presuming that you aren’t aware of it... I’ve moved into your family villa.’

  * * *

  She had what?

  The mermaid wove a finger through the ends of her golden hair and gave him an uncertain smile before adding, ‘Nikos said I should stay at the villa as I will need to work late most days and the four-mile cycle back to my house in the dark is pretty terrifying, with all those open drops down to the sea.’

  Had Nikos lost his mind? Yes, those who lived in the furthest reaches of the island often had to endure less than favourable road conditions on this car-less island. But he was the only person who still lived in the family villa.

  Earlier this year, when he had made it clear how unhappy he was with their work, one by one the others had moved out. Nikos and Angeliki had originally shared an apartment overlooking the harbour in town, but had reluctantly agreed to move in to the new management apartment adjacent to The Korinna, that Loukas had commissioned as part of the renovations.

  Nikos needed to be on hand when Loukas—who, along with his role as CEO of the Christou Group was also general manager of The Korinna—was away on business. Marios lived on his boat, moored at the town’s old harbour.

  Was having Georgie move in to the villa another of Nikos’s ways of getting him back for pushing him so hard? Or was Georgie lying to him? Were she and Nikos an item and this was their way of living close to one another w
hilst pretending that they weren’t breaking the company’s newest human resources policy?

  ‘Why didn’t Nikos have you move in with him and Angeliki?’

  She gave him a quizzical look. ‘I don’t think Nikos is in the mood for company at the moment...he’s pretty heartbroken.’

  Nikos? Heartbroken? When had that happened? Why the hell didn’t he know anything about it?

  ‘Because of Eleni?’

  Georgie considered him for a moment, as though wondering why he should even have to ask that question. ‘Yes, of course because of Eleni.’

  His guilt and frustration at his fractured relationship with his siblings coiled in his stomach. He didn’t need this stranger reminding him of how much he was messing up in his role as head of the family.

  But she obviously wasn’t a stranger to his siblings...and she knew more about their lives than he did. That fact stuck in his gut like a piece of indigestible news.

  ‘How did you meet Nikos?’

  ‘Through Eleni. She and I met one day on the beach. We became friends and she and Nikos used to visit me.’

  They had? ‘I thought their relationship was a short affair.’

  ‘They’ve been together since the start of this year.’ For a moment she looked at him and worried at her lip with her teeth. Then, in a rush, she added, ‘I guess you weren’t aware as you travel so much with work. That’s why Nikos left today—he’s followed Eleni to Thessaloníki to try to speak to her.’

  Had it come to this? A stranger having to find excuses for him as to why he had no idea what was going on in his brother’s life?

  Along with his reconnaissance visits to some of the most exclusive hotels in Europe, he had deliberately spent most of the winter and the spring on week-long stays in their different hotels dotted throughout Greece—principally to carry out organisational and management reviews and to get direct customer feedback from their guests.