Unworldly Secretary, Untamed Greek

by Kim Lawrence

  He didn’t have a clue what it was like to be her! She jumped to her feet, sending her chair hurtling into the wall behind her. ‘I know a damn sight more about it than you do!’ she yelled, recoiling slightly as the volume of her own voice hit her.

  He did not look offended by her accusation.

  ‘So you accept the situation and walk away. Don’t you want to fight for him?’

  ‘And how do you suggest I do that?’ Her response made him realise just how far past sensible she had allowed the conversation to go. ‘Look, you might have nothing to do but I think this joke has gone far enough…’ Silently willing him to take the hint, Beth thought her prayers had been answered when Theo rose to his feet.

  Her relief was short-lived. He made no move to leave. Instead, he dragged a hand through his hair and allowed his gaze to travel from the soles of her sensible shoes to the top of her glossy head. ‘One obvious suggestion springs to mind. You could dress like a woman and not like a middle-aged librarian.’

  An angry flush of mortification mounted her cheeks. ‘I’m not about to pretend I’m someone I’m not.’

  ‘An admirable sentiment, but do you suppose that Ariana gets to look the way she does without a hell of a lot of effort? And I’m not talking about the Botox. Ever heard the comment no pain, no gain? Well, in Ariana’s case it’s no food, no gain.’

  ‘She’s naturally slim!’ Beth protested.

  He let out a deep growl of laughter. ‘You really are naive.’

  Beth clenched her teeth. ‘If I was in love with your brother—which I am not—I’d be happy he has found someone to make him happy,’ she retorted piously.

  ‘Which makes you either incredibly virtuous and totally boring or a liar.’ He watched a fresh wave of warm colour wash over her skin and realised that she wore no make-up at all, but then he conceded that a woman with skin that smooth and flawless did not need to. ‘You do realise,’ he drawled, ‘that most men find the doormat mentality a real turn-off?’

  Beth levelled a glare of seething dislike at his lean sardonic face. ‘I don’t claim to be selfless, though that would be preferable to being totally selfish,’ she flung back, too angry to reconsider the wisdom of insulting this man.

  He had a well earned reputation for being utterly ruthless, and she knew he would not lose any sleep about sacking a humble secretary. Andreas might try to prevent it, but she had seen him cave in under pressure from Theo far too often to have any illusions that he would stand up to his brother and save her.

  He arched a brow and observed, with an amused look, ‘The saint has claws.’ And, now that he thought about it, Theo realized, rather spectacular eyes he was able to see properly now that she had removed the glasses.

  On anyone else, he would have suspected that the colour—deep green shot with flecks of amber—of those almond-shaped eyes had been achieved with the assistance of contact lenses, but with this woman, who appeared to go out of her way to blend into the background, he seriously doubted it!

  Finding herself the focus of the prolonged scrutiny of his heavy-lidded stare made her want to crawl out of her skin. Resisting the temptation to retreat behind the heavy curtain of hair that hung around her small face, she slid her fingers into the thick skein and tucked it behind her ears. Gran always said she had beautiful hair, but Beth would have happily exchanged her impossibly thick mop of mousey-brown wayward waves for smooth blonde or exciting red hair.

  ‘He does not see you as a woman; he sees you as a piece of office furniture.’

  Beth’s breath caught as though someone had just landed a blow, which in a way they had; Theo used the truth with the ruthless surgical precision of a blade. Was he born this vicious? she wondered.

  She opened her mouth to automatically refute his cruel assertion and then her innate honesty kicked in; he was probably right, she thought dully.

  Theo hadn’t finished. ‘Do you think he even knows the colour of your eyes? You are useful to him; he knows that you will go the extra mile for him.’ He stopped, satisfied he had made his point.

  Make it any more clearly and she’d be stretched out in a dead faint at his feet; she was looking at him like a child who had just been told there was no Santa Claus.

  Aware that he was breathing too hard, Theo made a conscious effort to slow his inhalations. It was a long time since he had allowed anyone to get under his skin enough to make him feel guilty about his actions in any way. And why should he feel guilty?

  It was totally irrational. All he’d done was tell her the truth, though possibly, he conceded, he might have done so less brutally.

  It was just the way she idolised Andreas which made him want to shake some sense into her head; the woman was wasting her life mooning like some heroine in a romantic novel over a man who did not know she was alive.

  ‘You’re right.’

  The sudden admission drew his alert gaze to her face. She looked pale but composed as she elaborated, ‘I am in love with Andreas and, yes, he doesn’t know I’m alive, not in that way, but I’m leaving.’ Her slender shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘So the problem goes away.’

  The admission had clearly cost her. Theo felt a fresh stirring of admiration—whatever else she was, the woman had guts.

  ‘Excellent—now we are on the same page.’

  Beth sank back down into her chair, her wary gaze trained on his lean face. Once again, Theo had surprised her. She had fully expected he would be unable to resist the opportunity to rub her nose in it but, instead, he had allowed her admission to pass, almost without comment, and had turned all enigmatic.

  She didn’t want to ask but she couldn’t help herself. ‘What page would that be?’ That they would share anything, even a page, seemed extremely unlikely to Beth.

  ‘We each, for our own reasons, think it would be a mistake for Andreas to marry Ariana.’ He dipped his head and waited for her response.

  ‘That really has nothing to do…’ The sardonic expression in his expressive eyes stopped her mid-sentence. ‘All right,’ she conceded crankily. ‘I don’t think that Ariana is good enough for Andreas.’ Now, she thought, this was where he pointed out that she was hardly what anyone would call objective.

  ‘She is poison.’

  Beth was unable to display a similar restraint in her response. ‘You didn’t always think that.’ She encountered his wry stare and blushed. ‘Well, you were going to marry her yourself,’ she added defensively. Everyone knew that name-calling was a classic response of the dumped lover.

  ‘Any woman I find attractive is immediately of interest to Andreas. If we were lovers, he would find you irresistible.’

  An image of his sleek, bronzed, powerful male body appeared in her head—an uneducated guess, but enough to send embarrassed colour flying to her cheeks. So it wasn’t the first time she had wondered what he looked like naked, and where was the harm in that?

  Her defiant gaze slid from his as she scoffed, ‘And back to planet earth.’ If offered the opportunity to find out for real, she would have run for the hills.

  ‘Would it not be pleasant for you to have Andreas notice you are a woman?’ His dark eyes skimmed her body, his glance disturbingly intimate as it lingered on the suggestion of curves.

  Beth, her mind still spinning from the moments she had allowed herself to imagine him without his clothes, was thrown into total confusion at the thought that he might be doing the same about her.

  ‘I…’ Beth swallowed to alleviate the dryness in her throat. In her chest, her heart was pounding like a piston.

  ‘I have a proposal. Are you willing to hear me out?’

  Beth regarded him warily. ‘Would it matter if I said no?’

  Her ironic response drew a laugh. ‘But you won’t. We both have reasons for wanting this engagement to end.’

  While he did not elaborate on his own reasons, it did not, Beth thought, take a genius to figure them out. Theo Kyriakis still carried a torch for his old love. Seeing her again had resurrected all tho
se old feelings and he was determined that his brother would not have her.

  Maybe equally determined that he would win her back.

  Well, good luck to him. In Beth’s mind, the pair were well suited; they deserved one another!

  ‘If we pool out resources,’ he continued, ‘I think we might be able to pull it off.’

  There was no might in his voice, just cast iron certainty, but that was Theo Kyriakis—a man who was pretty much a stranger to self-doubt. As for resources, Beth was using all hers just to stay upright.

  ‘You will need suitable clothes, hair and so forth but yes…’ he narrowed his eyes, as though visualising the changes he spoke of ‘…I think it will work.’

  ‘Suitable for what?’ It cost nothing to humour him and she was actually curious to know where he was going with this.

  ‘The celebration meal tonight, we will go together as a couple and test the waters.’

  She waited for the punchline but none came. Her jaw dropped. ‘You’re serious…my God, you’re insane.’

  Theo looked totally unperturbed by her response. ‘One man’s insanity is another man’s inspiration.’

  This smooth retort drew a choked laugh from Beth—he really was unbelievable.

  ‘Inspired!’ She shook her head. ‘You’re not inspired; you’re stark raving mad! No one is going to believe we’re a couple.’

  ‘They will; just trust me on this, Elizabeth.’ She looked at him, so smooth and persuasive, and thought sure, like she’d trust a politician during election year. ‘When we were kids, Andreas always wanted the flavour of ice cream I got.’

  ‘I’m not an ice cream.’ As if she could become part of some romantic triangle! Or was it quadrangle? Absurd did not do the suggestion justice.

  ‘But you are—or could be—an attractive woman.’

  It was a clinical assessment and one that was made with no hint of sexual suggestion. Despite this, or maybe because of it, under her dismissive expression Beth experienced a swell of tentative excitement.

  Could she really be beautiful?

  She shook her head and adopted a scornful expression but, underneath, the tempting possibilities continued to slide through her mind. What would it be like to have Andreas look at her as though she were an attractive woman?

  ‘What have you got to lose?’

  ‘I’m assuming you’re talking about something beyond sanity and self-respect?’

  ‘You want Andreas.’ The blunt pronouncement made Beth shift uncomfortably. ‘Will you ever forgive yourself if you don’t try?’

  Theo watched the expressions flit across her face and gave a nod of satisfaction. He had sold enough deals to know when he had clinched it; she might not be happy about it and it might take a few more minutes of fairly pointless protest but Elizabeth Farley would play the game.

  Chapter Four

  ‘YOU need to make Andreas think of you as a woman.’

  She regarded him with a cranky glare. ‘So you said, but just what does he think I am now?’

  ‘He thinks you’re Angela Simmons.’ He watched her struggle not to ask the obvious.

  She lasted a minute or so before she sighed, ‘All right, who is Angela Simmons?’ It was not a name she was familiar with and Beth was pretty familiar with all the women Andreas had dated over the past three years.

  ‘We both got sent away to an English prep school; she was the kid who wrote all his history essays until the staff caught on.’

  His father had been more appalled to learn that the establishment three generations of Kyriakis males had studied at now allowed females to attend than he had been at his younger son’s scheme to cheat the system.

  He had been a lot more annoyed when the same school had three years earlier written Theo dislikes authority and is not a team player on his own report card.

  It was a frequently occurring theme during his school days and it never failed to produce a furious response from his father, who worked hard to eradicate the rebellious streak in the son he considered too emotional and arty. Theo did not resent his father’s attitude; he considered he had been tough but fair and he had only ever had Theo’s best interests at heart. He considered it his job to prepare his son for the future that was mapped out for the eldest Kyriakis son.

  His father’s voice echoed in his mind. Along with privilege, Theo, comes responsibility.

  When he had added, You weren’t born a leader, Theo, but we can make you one, Theo had known he was thinking of his elder brother, Niki, who had died so tragically young.

  Niki had been born a leader.

  He had not embarrassed his father with emotional outbursts—he had been charming and universally admired. Niki had not spent his free time alone in the art room; he had captained the school sports teams to triumph.

  Niki was dead and it was his fault. Nobody had ever come out and said so, but it was what they thought—it was what he thought.

  He snapped back to the present to find Beth regarding him with mute dislike and continued, ‘Andreas didn’t pay her or bully her; she just wanted to do something nice for him because she worshipped him.’

  ‘You’re comparing me to a teenager?’ A teenager had the excuse of extreme youth—she didn’t.

  ‘They were seven.’

  ‘Seven? He was sent away to school at seven?’ At seven, she had been climbing into her gran’s bed every night after waking from night terrors.

  ‘We both were.’

  ‘That’s barbaric!’ she exclaimed.

  Theo shrugged dismissively in response to her shocked response but, should he ever have a son—a possibility that seemed at present doubtful—this was a Kyriakis tradition he intended to break with.

  ‘At another time I’d love to hear your views on modern parenting, but…’

  Beth compressed her lips and thought sarcastic rat. ’I suppose you’d say it made you the man you are.’

  A man perfectly suited to the brutal cut-throat world he operated in—great at work, hopeless in relationships. She knew the kind; well, not personally, obviously, but you only had to look at him to know he was not a giver, though very possibly good in bed?

  The uncensored maverick addition made her eyes widen in alarm.

  ‘No, actually, I agree with you.’

  ‘What about?’ Calm down—there is no way he can know you were wondering what he was like in bed.

  ‘It is a totally barbaric practice; I would never do that to my son.’ And you told her this why, exactly?

  ‘Your son?’ Beth echoed in surprise, even as she instantly envisaged a baby with golden skin and dark hair lying in her arms, looking up at her with Theo’s eyes.

  She blinked hard to banish the image. Of course he was going to have children; why was the idea so startling? And why had she seen herself holding his baby?

  ‘Kyriakis tradition does not consider it so important for daughters to develop toughness and independence while still in the womb.’

  ‘So their role is to have babies.’

  ‘And look decorative,’ Theo added, deadpan. ‘But there were just the three of us, no girls.’

  ‘Three?’ she exclaimed, momentarily sidetracked. It was the first she had heard of another brother.

  She saw something flicker at the back of his eyes but there was no trace of emotion in Theo’s voice as he said, ‘Niki was the eldest; he died the year I was sent to prep school.’ Where his guilt had remained unexpressed and his silent grief for the big brother he had worshipped had been interpreted as truculence.

  ‘Andreas never mentioned him.’ This surprised her as he spoke about Theo all the time.

  In fact the number of times he came into the conversation—Theo this, Theo that—had been irritating the hell out of Beth for years; it made her angry to know that Andreas had spent his life living in his big brother’s shadow.

  ‘Is there any reason he should have?’ When they had been growing up, if anyone mentioned their brother’s name their father would retreat to his study f
or days at a time. In later years, it had become an unspoken rule within the family that his name was not mentioned; this had not changed, even after their father’s death.

  ‘Because I’m just the PA?’

  He viewed her with narrow-eyed irritation. ‘Do you have to be so defensive? That chip on your shoulder is not attractive.’

  Beth ignored the chip jibe, levelled a sweet smile at his face and said, ‘When the alternative is agreeing with everything you say—yes.’

  ‘My brother did not mention an event that happened when he was little more than a baby; I would not read too much into it. A man does not feel the need to reveal every microscopic detail about himself, though when you are together I’m sure he will bare his soul to you,’ he said sardonically, wondering if the female existed who did not feel the need to delve into every corner of a man’s life from his politics to childhood traumas.

  ‘You did.’

  ‘I—’ Theo stopped, an arrested expression spreading across his dark features as he realised she was right.

  A flicker of wariness appeared in his eyes as he met Beth Farley’s challenging gaze. After a six month mutually pleasing arrangement, the last woman he had slept with, the divine and work-orientated Camilla, had known little about his personal likes and dislikes outside the bedroom and he had felt no impulse whatever to reveal them.

  Not that it was a totally equal comparison. Elizabeth Farley was not the woman in his life, though, possibly, considering his growing fascination with her sulky sexy mouth, he should find a replacement for Camilla.

  His brother’s assistant was just a good listener, which was why he chose women who were interested in very little other than themselves—you knew exactly where you were with egocentric, beautiful women. It was the warm, fluffy ones oozing empathy you had to view with suspicion—they were the ones who morphed into bunny-boilers when you rejected their devotion.

  They did not understand the meaning or the advantages of keeping things light.

  Theo drew their conversation to a close by withdrawing a phone from his pocket and selecting a number. While he was waiting for someone to pick up, he consulted his watch. ‘It’s eleven now; that gives us eight hours.’