Ruthless Greek Boss, Secretary Mistress

It didn’t. He battled with his libido but it seemed determined to confound him, and he wondered what on earth was precipitating this reaction when Lucy had worked for his company for two years already. He’d only met her intermittently in that time, as she’d worked for his legal counsel, and she certainly hadn’t had any discernible effect on him then. But now she was his assistant, and a welcome relief after dealing with a succession of simpering, moon-eyed idiots.

With that in mind, he called on all his powers of logic to explain the bizarre anomaly of his physical reaction, and finally felt some equanimity return: he was a red-blooded male, he was bound to respond arbitrarily to some women, even only passably attractive ones.

Except this wasn’t the first time: he uncomfortably recalled one morning when he’d stepped into the staff elevator, because his own private one had been closed for repairs. Someone had run to stop the doors closing and launched themselves into the lift with such force that they’d careened into him. He’d felt every contour and curve of a very lush female body plastered against his for a second. It had been Lucy.

The memory seared him now. She’d been as curvaceous as something brought to life from a painting by Rubens, and the minute she’d walked into his office to interview for this job he’d remembered that moment in annoyingly vivid detail. Right now all he could think about was how she’d felt pressed against him. Especially when compared to the more sparingly built Augustine Archers of this world.

Lucy Proctor had shown no hint of remembering the moment in the lift, though, and Aristotle certainly wasn’t going to admit to such a chink in his own legendary control. But when she sat in front of him now, the vision of her thighs straining against that too-tight skirt on the periphery of his vision, he could feel his body responding to her with a strength that disturbed him—a strength almost beyond his control…

The object of his uncharacteristic pondering looked up then quizzically, clearly wondering why he wasn’t saying anything. Irrational rage rushed through him. He wasn’t used to being rendered speechless like this. But in that moment, as if to compound every other revelation, he noticed she had the most unusually coloured eyes: a dark slaty grey that was almost blue, framed with the longest blackest lashes. Her mouth opened, as if to speak, and entirely against his will his eyes moved down. He’d not noticed until now that she had a sizeable gap between her front teeth. It was all at once innocent and unbelievably erotic.

Shocking and out of nowhere Aristotle had a sudden vision of those lips wrapped around a part of his anatomy, those almond-shaped eyes looking up into his as she—Lust exploded into his brain and turned everything red.

Lucy looked up at her boss and her mouth went dry. Her pulse, which had finally started slowing down, picked up pace again and she could feel herself grow hot. He was looking at her with such intensity that for a moment she thought—Instantly she shut down those rogue thoughts, and as if she’d imagined it the lines in his face tightened. He was positively glowering at her. Inwardly she quivered, outwardly she clung onto her poise and acknowledged that it was no wonder his adversaries hadn’t ever got the better of him.

‘Sir?’ she said, thankful that her voice sounded cool and calm, unruffled.

He kept glowering at her for another long moment, and Lucy felt inexplicably as if some sort of battle of wills she was unaware of was going on.

Eventually he bit out, ‘I think you can start calling me Aristotle.’

His voice sounded rough. She guessed it must be the remnants of his anger at the recent scene, but even so Lucy’s belly quivered. She knew some close colleagues called him Aristotle, and she’d heard the beautiful blonde requesting breathily to speak to ’Ari’ when she’d phoned before the dramatics this morning, but the thought of addressing this man by his first name was having a seismic effect on her whole body.

‘Very well,’ she finally managed to get out. But couldn’t bring herself to actually say it.

Aristotle sat down as if he hadn’t just invited her to call him something far more intimate than Sir, or Mr Levakis, and proceeded to dictate with such lightning speed that it took all of Lucy’s wits and concentration to keep up. In truth she was glad of the distraction, but by the time he was done her head was ringing.

He dismissed her with a brusque flick of his hand, his head already buried in some paperwork, and Lucy stood up. She was at the door when she heard a curt, ‘Oh, and see to it, please, that Augustine Archer is sent something…’

Lucy turned around, and the look of dark cynicism she saw on Levakis’ face made her draw in a breath.

‘…suitable.’

Lucy looked at him, nonplussed for a moment. Her previous boss had never made such a request. Did he mean…?

As if he could read her mind, Aristotle said ascerbically, ‘That’s exactly what I mean. I don’t care who you call, just make sure it’s expensive, anything but a ring, and send it over with a note. I’ll e-mail you the address.’

Lucy’s hand was clutching the door, and she didn’t know why this feeling of something like disappointment was curling through her. Anyone with half a brain cell would have been able to tell her this was exactly how a man like him operated. And wasn’t it confirmation of another rumour about him? How well he compensated his lovers? But still…he wasn’t even taking the time to compose a note himself.

She forced herself to sound non-committal. ‘How would you like the note to read?’

He shrugged one broad shoulder and smiled sardonically, cruelly. ‘Make it up. What kind of platitude would you like to hear from a man who has just dumped you?’ His mouth twisted even more. ‘I think it’s safe to say that someone like Ms Archer will throw away the card and move straight to the main prize, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Just keep it as impersonal as possible.’

Shock at his cold words impacted Lucy right in her belly. Her face must have given something away, because Aristotle lounged back in his chair and looked at her with a dangerous gleam in those fascinating green eyes.

‘You don’t approve of my methods?’

Lucy could feel a tide of heat climb up from her chest. She alternately shook and nodded her head, and some garbled words came out. ‘Not at all…’ She realised what she’d said and groaned inwardly when she saw a flash of something dark cross his face. She could not let her own personal opinion of his behaviour jeopardise this job. Too much now depended on her wages.

She gestured clumsily. ‘I mean, I have no problem doing as you suggest. Your methods…are your methods. It’s not for me to judge.’

He sat up and raised a brow, and Lucy wondered dismally how on earth they had got onto this. She wanted to be back outside, with a wall and door between them, catching her breath and restoring her equilibrium, not discussing how best to let his mistress down.

But he said, ‘So you admit there is something to judge, then?’

Lucy shook her head, drowning in heat now. ‘No—look, I’m sorry, I’m not being very articulate. I’ll do as you ask and make sure that the accompanying note is appropriate.’ She added hurriedly, ‘I can show it to you before I send it…?’

He shook his head and his face became impassive, hard. Lucy stood there for another moment, not sure what to do and then he bit out,

‘That’ll be all.’

Stung, and more than mortified, Lucy mumbled something incoherent and fled, shutting the door behind her. Amidst the embarrassment, anger surged—why was she surprised or, worse, disappointed? She’d seen this kind of behaviour from men all her life.

But still, what an absolute—She halted her racing thoughts as she sat behind her desk and fought to steady her breathing and hammering heart. The last five minutes was the closest she’d come to a personal discussion with her new boss. She should have just bowed her head and walked out. She cursed her expressive face. Her mother had always told her it would get her into trouble. And hadn’t it just? Her inherent distaste for his coldly generous dismissive treatment of his ex-mistress hadn’t been well hidden enough. But the truth was it had tapped into a deeply buried pain, a very familiar pain. She’d witnessed the other side of someone on the receiving end of that treatment. Over and over again.

Lucy shuddered inwardly when she woke her computer from sleep and struggled to concentrate on work. Aristotle’s cynical view of how Ms Archer would receive his gift was no doubt spot-on; hadn’t she witnessed her own mother reduced to that level after years of similar treatment? Although Augustine Archer didn’t strike her as the kind of woman who had to survive on hand-outs. No, this was a different league. Lucy’s soft mouth tightened as bile rose from her belly. That kind of so-called main prize would have been just the kind of thing her mother would have used to pay for Lucy’s school uniform for another year—the sort of thing that had financed their lives.

Lucy forced her anger down. She had to think of her boss purely in professional terms. What he did or how he acted personally was none of her business. She didn’t have to like him; she just had to work for him.

Thank goodness she’d forged a different path. She would never be beholden to any man or, worse, held in his sexual or financial thrall. She’d worked too hard and her mother had sacrificed too much to make sure she avoided exactly that scenario. Just as her computer screen came back to life and she saw her bespectacled face momentarily reflected on the dark surface she felt unmitigated relief that she need never fear the kind of attention her mother and women like Augustine Archer courted. She was safe from all of that.

Aristotle watched the closed door for an inordinate amount of time. Heat still coursed through his body—heat that confounded him and every effort he made to try and dampen it. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the sway of that well-rounded bottom as she’d stopped by the door, and how he’d blurted out the first thing that had come into his head, as if he’d had to stop her, not let her leave.

He flung himself back in his seat and raked a hand through unruly hair, unusually diverted from work. He cursed the fact again that he’d had to let Augustine go at this point in negotiations. He briefly considered wooing her back, but his fists clenched in rejection of that idea. He would never debase himself by grovelling to a woman—not for anything.

He considered the request he’d just made of Lucy; he’d always made the call to a jewellers himself before, and would instruct them to compose a suitably impersonal note. Usually it wasn’t even a note—just his name. A clear indication that whatever he and the particular woman had shared was over and she shouldn’t come calling again. And invariably they knew not to. Few were as impertinent as Augustine Archer, confronting him directly. His mouth twisted in recognition of the fact that as he got older and remained single he represented some kind of irresistible challenge to those women.

He diverted his thoughts from an area he didn’t want to investigate: that of having to contemplate giving up his freedom, which he knew would be inevitable at some stage. The future was unavoidable. He would have to find a suitable wife and produce an heir, purely to protect all that he was now putting in place from the greedy clutches of others.

The prospect evoked no more emotion in him than mild uninterest and irritation. He’d long ago learnt the lesson of what marriage really meant—at the age of five, when his father had introduced Helen Savakis as his new stepmother and she’d quickly shown him the cold hatred she had for a son who wasn’t her own. Whatever dim and distant memories Ari might have had of his mother, who’d died when he was four, and a halcyon time that might never have existed except in some childish fanciful memory bank, had long been quashed and buried.

The fact that those nebulous memories rose to haunt him in dreams so vivid that he sometimes woke in tears was a shameful weakness he’d always been determined to ignore. It was one reason he’d never spent a full night with a woman.

As if drawn by a magnet his thoughts again went to his assistant, who was fast assuming a place in his imagination that he did not welcome. Why had he felt goaded into saying all he just had? And then been surprised by the blatant look of distaste on her face—annoyed by it? And he had not left it at that but engaged her in a dialogue about it. As if he even cared what her opinion of him was! He was aware of a niggling desire that he’d wanted to see her somehow…rattled. Since she’d been working for him she’d always seemed to fade into the background, barely noticeable.

But he was noticing her and she had just reacted, her cheeks flushing prettily. He frowned at that. Since when had he started thinking of her as pretty? And since when had he been interested in pretty?

And, not only that, what on earth had compelled him to tell her to call him Aristotle when he’d always preferred his PAs to call him Mr Levakis? It was something in the way she’d looked up at him and said sir.

In a bid to restore some order to his life, which seemed to be morphing out of all recognition, he rang through to Lucy and gave her the name and number of the latest English socialite who had been chasing him, instructing her to set up a date for that evening. He ignored the way even her voice seemed to send a frisson of reaction straight to his groin. With that done he felt some semblance of calm wash over him. Life would return to normal. He would forget all about this bizarre obsession with his secretary’s far too provocatively well-built body and concentrate on the merger.

The following morning, when Lucy was walking the short distance from her bus stop to work, she still burned with mortification. In her hand she carried a small overnight bag which held a change of clothes and some evening wear. She’d taken a call from the head of Human Resources the day before and been informed stoutly that she needed to think a little more thoroughly about the way she dressed, and that it might be a good idea to have a change of clothes in the office at all times to cover for emergencies. Like too-tight skirts, she thought churlishly. The fact that Levakis had gone over her head and asked someone to speak to her made her skin crawl with humiliation—not to mention the fact that he’d obviously noticed her bursting out of that skirt.

With getting her mother settled in her new home she simply hadn’t had time since she’d started working for him to kit herself out with a new wardrobe, despite being given a generous allowance to do so. It had been full-on from day one.

Luckily last night had been late-night shopping, and Levakis had left relatively early for the date Lucy had set up for him. Her belly clenched at the thought of that. The woman she’d rung hadn’t been in the slightest bit fazed that Aristotle himself hadn’t bothered to call, and of course she’d been free at a moment’s notice. A wave of disgust washed through Lucy and she pushed it down along with bitter memories. She didn’t care what he did or who he did it with. A voice mocked her inwardly: who was she to judge anyway?

Just at that moment the heavens opened from a slate-grey sky and Lucy yelped as torrential rain poured down, comprehensively drenching her in seconds. No! She ran across the road towards the refuge of the huge gleaming Levakis building, her mind filled with the fact that they had an important meeting to attend in less than an hour on the other side of London.