Acquired by Her Greek Boss

by Chantelle Shaw

  ‘You obviously like flowers,’ he murmured. ‘Who painted the murals?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Seriously?’ He was amazed. ‘You’re very talented. Did you study art?’

  ‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘My mother thought I would be wasting my time going to art school. It was her idea that I trained as a secretary because it’s a more reliable career.’

  * * *

  Sara wished Alekos would leave. She considered struggling to force him to put her down, but his arms around her were like iron bands and she did not relish an undignified tussle. It was bad enough that he believed she had been affected by alcohol and it was the reason she had tripped and hurt her ankle. He had probably only carried her into the house because he’d felt it was his duty not to leave her sprawled in the gutter. But she did not want him in her bedroom. It was her personal space, and when her mother had been alive it had been the only place where she had been able to indulge the creative side of her nature that she’d recently discovered she had inherited from her father.

  Her father who had refused to tell her half-siblings that she was his daughter.

  Every word of the text her father had sent her was imprinted on her memory. She told herself it was understandable that Lionel Kingsley cared more about his children from his marriage than for the illegitimate daughter whose existence he had only been aware of for a few months. But it felt like a rejection and it hurt. She had no other family. Her mother had grown up in a children’s home, and after Joan had died Sara had felt completely alone until she had met her father.

  The tears she’d managed to hold back while she had been at the party filled her eyes and slid down her face. She brushed them away with her hand and swallowed a sob but she felt so empty inside, knowing that she would not now meet her half-brother and half-sister at the weekend. And maybe never, she thought bleakly. Perhaps her father regretted finding out about her.

  ‘Sara, why are you crying? Does your ankle hurt?’ Alekos sounded terse. Sara knew he hated displays of emotion as much as she hated displaying her emotions in front of anyone. Even when her mother had died she’d accepted Alekos’s rather stilted words of sympathy with quiet dignity and had sensed his relief that she’d kept her emotions out of the office.

  But she could not stop crying. Perhaps the whisky she’d drunk at the party had loosened her grip on her self-control. Her father’s text had left her utterly bereft and the sense of loneliness that she’d always felt—because she’d never had a strong emotional bond with her mother—now overwhelmed her and she turned her face into Alekos’s chest and wept.

  Somewhere in her haze of misery she acknowledged that the situation was undoubtedly Alekos’s worst nightmare. She remembered an occasion when one of his ex-lovers whom he’d recently dumped had stormed into his office in floods of tears and accused him of breaking her heart. Alekos had literally shuddered in disgust at his ex’s undignified behaviour. What must he think of her? Sara wondered. But her tears kept coming. It was as though a dam inside her had burst and allowed her pent-up emotions to escape.

  She expected Alekos to stand her on her feet before he beat a hasty retreat from the house. But he didn’t. Instead he sat down on the edge of her bed and cradled her in his lap. She was aware of the muscled strength of his arms around her, and the steady beat of his heart that she could hear through his chest was oddly comforting. It was a novelty to feel cared for, even though she knew Alekos’s show of tenderness wasn’t real. He did not care about her. He’d reminded her when he’d offered to drive her home from the party that she was a member of his staff and therefore his responsibility.

  But it was nice to pretend for a few minutes that he actually meant the gentle words of comfort he murmured. His voice was softer than she’d ever heard it, and she could almost fool herself that it was the intimate voice of a lover caressing her senses like the brush of velvet against her skin. Gradually her harsh sobs subsided and as she drew a shaky breath she inhaled the spicy musk of Alekos’s aftershave mixed with an indefinable male scent that was uniquely him.

  In that instant she became conscious of his hard thighs beneath her bottom and the latent strength of his arms around her. Heat flared inside her and she felt a sensuous heaviness in her breasts and at the molten heart of her femininity.

  She could not have said exactly when she sensed a change in him, only that she became aware that his breathing became irregular and his heartbeat beneath her ear quickened and thudded hard and fast. Desire stole through her veins as she lifted her head away from his chest. Her heart lurched when she saw the fierce glitter in his eyes.

  ‘Sara—’ His voice throbbed with a raw hunger that made her tremble as she watched him lower his face closer to hers. She stared at his mouth. His sensual, beautiful mouth. So often she had imagined him kissing her with his mouth that promised heaven. ‘You’re driving me crazy,’ he growled before he covered her lips with his and the world went up in flames.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HE HAD WANTED to kiss Sara all evening. All week, if he was honest, Alekos admitted to himself, remembering how he had barely been able to keep his hands off her at the office. By the end of each day his gut had felt as if it were tied in a knot, and punishing workouts at the gym after work had failed to relieve his sexual frustration.

  There was only one way to assuage the carnal hunger that ignited inside him and made him shake with need. The ache in his groin intensified when Sara parted her lips beneath his and her warm breath filled his mouth. He kissed her the way he’d fantasised about kissing her when he’d first caught sight of her wearing her backless dress. At the party he’d struggled to concentrate on his conversations with the other guests, when all he could think about was running his hands over Sara’s naked back. Now he indulged himself and stroked his fingertips up her spine before he clasped her bare shoulders and pulled her even closer to him.

  If she had offered the slightest resistance, perhaps he would have come to his senses. But his heart slammed into his ribs when she wound her arms round his neck and threaded her fingers into his hair. Her eager response decimated the last vestiges of his control, and he groaned as he dipped his tongue into her mouth and tasted her. She was nectar, sweet and hot and utterly intoxicating. In the far recesses of his mind Alekos was aware that he should stop this madness. Sara was his secretary, which meant she was off-limits. But it was impossible to associate the beautiful, sensual woman who had driven him to distraction over the past few days with his plain PA who had never warranted a second glance.

  She shifted her position on his lap and he groaned again as her bottom ground against his rock-hard erection. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so turned on. He felt as if he was going to explode and the faint warning voice inside his head was drowned out by the drumbeat of his desire to feel Sara’s soft curves beneath him.

  He manoeuvred her so that she was lying on the bed and he stretched out on top of her before capturing her mouth once more and kissing her with a deepening hunger that demanded to be appeased. Trailing his lips down her throat, he slid his hand behind her neck into the heavy silk of her hair and discovered that three tiny buttons secured the top of her dress. Three tiny buttons were all that prevented him from pulling the top of her dress down and revealing her ripe breasts that had tantalised him when they had been pressed against his chest. Urgency made his fingers uncooperative. He swore beneath his breath as he struggled to unfasten the buttons and something soft fell across his face.

  Lifting his head, Alekos found himself eye to eye with a large pink rabbit. The incongruousness of making love to a woman on a narrow single bed adorned with stuffed animals catapulted him back to reality. This was not any woman. This was Sara, his efficient, unflappable PA, who apparently had an unexpected liking for cuddly toys. He was only here in her bedroom because she had shockingly burst into tears.

  Usually, when faced with a weeping woman, Alekos’s instinct was to extricate himself from the situation a
s quickly possible. But Sara’s tears had had an odd effect on him and inexplicably he’d found himself trying to comfort her. He had no idea why she had been crying. But he remembered that in the car when he’d driven her home she had read a text message on her phone and had looked upset.

  Memories pushed through the sexual haze that had clouded Alekos’s mind. Sara had hurried out of the office at the beginning of the week to meet someone. She had admitted she’d spent her holiday with a male ‘friend’ at his villa, and she had returned from the French Riviera transformed from a frump into a gorgeous sexpot. At the start of this evening she had seemed happy, but something had happened that had caused her to act out of character and she’d gulped down a double whisky as if it was no stronger than milk.

  The most likely explanation Alekos could think of for Sara’s distress was that her holiday romance was over. So what the hell was he—the consolation prize? He rolled away from her and sat up, assuring himself he was glad he had come to his senses before any harm had been done. Before he’d made the mistake of having sex with her. A kiss was nothing and there was no reason why they couldn’t put it behind them and continue with their good working relationship as they had done for the past two years.

  He stared at her flushed face and her kiss-stung mouth that tempted him to forget everything and allow the passion that had sizzled between them moments ago to soar to its natural conclusion. But apart from all the other considerations to them sleeping together—and there were many—Alekos did not relish the idea that Sara wanted someone else and he was second best. Theos, he’d spent much of his life feeling second best to his dead brother and believing that, in his father’s opinion, he was inferior to Dimitri.

  ‘Alekos.’ Sara’s soft voice made his gut clench. She sat up and pushed her hair back from her face. She looked as stunned as he felt, and oddly vulnerable. For a moment he had the ridiculous idea that having a man in her bedroom was a new experience for her. ‘We...we shouldn’t have done that,’ she said huskily.

  He was well aware of that fact, but he was irritated she had pointed it out. ‘It was just a kiss.’ He shrugged, as much to emphasise the unimportance of the kiss to himself as well as to her. ‘Don’t look so stricken, Sara. It won’t happen again.’ Anger with himself for being so damned weak made him say harshly, ‘It wouldn’t have happened at all if you hadn’t practically begged me to kiss you.’

  ‘I did no such thing.’ Fiery colour flared on her cheeks. ‘You kissed me. One minute you were comforting me because I was upset, and the next...’

  Alekos did not want to think about what had happened next. Remembering how he had explored the moist interior of Sara’s mouth with his tongue, and the little moans she had made when he had kissed her, caused his erection to press uncomfortably against the restriction of his trousers.

  ‘Ah, yes, you were upset—’ he focused on the first part of her sentence ‘—I’m guessing that the reason you were crying was because your holiday lover has dumped you. Your eagerness to kiss me was because you’re on the rebound from the guy in France who has rejected you.’

  ‘There was no holiday lover,’ she said tightly. ‘The “guy in France” was my father. I spent my holiday at his villa.’ Sara’s bottom lip trembled. ‘But you’re right to think I feel rejected. I’m starting to believe my father regrets that he got in contact with me. Until recently I didn’t know about him, or that I have a half-brother and half-sister.’ Tears slid down her cheeks. She gave a choked sob and covered her face with her hands, and so did not see Alekos’s grim expression.

  He had never seen Sara cry until tonight and his abhorrence of emotional displays meant that he really didn’t want to stick around. But the fact that she was crying in front of him suggested something serious had happened to upset her. Why, even when she had come to work one Monday morning just before Christmas and told him that her mother had died at the weekend she had kept her emotions in check.

  He felt an odd tug in his chest as he watched Sara’s body shudder as she tried to regain control of herself. Ignoring a strong temptation to leave her to it, he pulled the dressing table stool next to the bed and sat down on it before he handed her some tissues from the box on the bedside table.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said indistinctly. Her tears had washed away most of her make-up, and again Alekos was struck by her air of innocence that he told himself he must have imagined.

  ‘What did you mean when you said you think your father regrets contacting you? Had there been a rift between the two of you?’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s complicated. I met my father for the first time six weeks ago. When my holiday plans to Spain fell through he invited me to stay at his villa in Antibes. He wasn’t there for the whole time, but he came to visit me and we began to get to know each other. I pretended to anyone who asked that I was employed as a housekeeper at the villa because my father was worried about the media.’ Her voice broke. ‘I’m a scandal from his past, you see, and he doesn’t want his other children to find out about me.’

  ‘But why would the media be interested in your father?’

  ‘Because he’s famous. I promised I would keep my relationship to him secret until he is ready to publicly acknowledge that I am his illegitimate daughter.’

  * * *

  She was her father’s shameful secret, Sara thought miserably. And from the text that Lionel had sent her earlier, it seemed as though she would remain a secret and never meet her half-siblings. She hadn’t revealed her father’s identity to anyone, not even her closest friend, Ruth, who she had known since they were at primary school. But the truth about her father that at first had been such a wonderful surprise had become a burden she longed to share with someone.

  She blinked away yet more tears. Her head ached from crying and she wished she could rest it on the pillows. But if she did that, Alekos might think she was inviting him to lie on the bed with her and kiss her again. She darted a glance at him and heat ran through her veins as she remembered the weight of him pressing her into the mattress and the feel of his muscular thighs as he’d ground his hips against her pelvis.

  Of course she hadn’t ‘practically begged him to kiss her’, as he’d accused her, she assured herself. But she hadn’t stopped him. She bit her lip. Alekos had been the one to draw back, and if he hadn’t... The tugging sensation in the pit of her stomach became a sharp pull of need as her imagination ran riot and she pictured them both naked, their limbs entwined and his body joined with hers.

  She flushed as her eyes crashed into his glittering dark gaze and she realised that he was aware she had been staring at him.

  ‘Why did you only meet your father for the first time recently?’

  ‘He wasn’t part of my life when I was growing up.’ She shrugged to show him it didn’t hurt, even though it did. ‘My mother was employed as my father’s secretary when they had an affair. He was married with a family, but he decided that he wanted to try and save his marriage and ended his relationship with Mum. She moved away without telling him that she was pregnant. She refused to talk about him and I have no idea why, in the last week of her life, she wrote to him and told him about me.’

  She sighed. ‘My father found out about me six months ago, but his wife was ill and he waited until after she had died before he phoned and asked if we could meet. He said he was glad he had found me. He’d assumed that my mother had told me his identity. Now I’m wondering if his reason for finding me was because he feared I might sell the story about my famous father to the newspapers. If the press got hold of the story it could damage his relationship with his children from his marriage. And I imagine the scandal that he’d had an affair, even though it was years ago, might harm his political career.’

  Alekos’s brows rose. ‘Your father is a politician?’

  Sara felt torn between her promise to protect her father’s identity and what she told herself was a selfish need to unburden her secret to someone. But to Alekos? Strangely, he was the one person s
he trusted above all others. The tabloids made much of his playboy reputation, but she knew another side to him. He was dedicated to GE and worked hard to make it a globally successful business. He was a tough but fair employer and he was intensely protective of his mother and sisters. He guarded his own privacy fiercely, but could she trust that he would guard hers?

  ‘It’s vital that the story isn’t leaked to the media,’ she cautioned.

  ‘You know my feelings about the scum who are fondly known as the paparazzi,’ he said sardonically. ‘I’m not likely to divulge anything you tell me in confidence to the press.’

  She snatched a breath. ‘My father is Lionel Kingsley.’ It was the first time she had ever said the words aloud and it felt strange. Alekos looked shocked and she wondered if she had been naïve to confide in him. Now he knew something about her that no one else knew, and for some reason that made her feel vulnerable.

  He gave a low whistle. ‘Do you mean the Right Honourable Lionel Kingsley, MP—the Minister for Culture and the Arts? I’ve met him on a few occasions, both socially and also in his capacity as Culture Secretary, when I sponsored an exhibition of Greek art at the British Museum. As a matter of fact he was a guest at a party I went to earlier this week.’

  ‘It sounds as though you have a lot more in common with my father than I do,’ Sara muttered. She didn’t move in the exalted social circles that Alekos and Lionel did, and she would definitely never have the opportunity to meet her father or her half-siblings socially. She tried to focus on what Alekos was saying.

  ‘What has happened to make you think your father regrets finding you?’

  ‘I was supposed to go and stay at his home at the weekend so that I could meet my half-siblings. But Lionel has decided against telling Freddie and Charlotte about me. It’s only two months since their mother died. They were very close to her, and he’s worried about how they will react to the news that he had been unfaithful to his wife.’