Bride by Day

He spoke impeccable English in the deepest voice she’d ever heard. Yet in spite of his less than friendly demeanor, she caught traces of his attractive Greek accent. Let’s face it, Sam. He’s the most gorgeous male you’ve ever seen in your life, let alone your dreams.

“That’s right.”

“What happened to the man who usually cleans this suite?”

“Jack went home ill, and asked if I would finish up.”

He continued to stand motionless, feet apart. With her fanciful imagination, he could be the god Zeus, astride Olympus, issuing his latest decree. Sam thought he was closer to forty than thirty, yet she considered him young to run such a vast empire. If rumor among the night crew could be believed, legions of world-famous singers, models and movie stars had tried to become the wife of the mysterious Greek tycoon, but all had failed.

Of course it didn’t mean that there wasn’t a special woman somewhere in the cosmos who had a softening effect on him. Since Sam heard that he flew to Greece on a regular basis, she assumed he had a love interest in a beautiful woman from his own country and race. Someone who kept a low profile away from the public eye, and the paparazzi.

The woman would have to be incredibly brave to take him on... And very lucky, a tiny voice whispered.

“I’ll get straight to the point Last night, while in midflight between Athens and New York, a vitally important telephone call came in to this office. My secretary attempted to route it through to me, but there was too much static on the line, so she left the phone number on my desk. I drove here straight from the airport, only to discover that the note was gone.”

He hadn’t accused Sam yet, but the inference couldn’t have been more clear.

She smoothed a damp tendril away from her forehead, all the while conscious of his inquisitive eyes following the movement of her hand whose broken nails and calloused, oil-stained fingers were a far cry from those of his immaculate secretary.

Sam had never been the kind of person to envy another woman. But for once in her life, she wished she had the kind of remarkable looks and polish to attract a man like him.

“I’ve been cleaning the offices in this building for the last six months, and know better than to touch anything. All I did was dust, vacuum, and scour the bathrooms.”

His brows became a black bar of intimidation. “You saw nothing on this desk?”

Her eyes darted to the mirrorlike finish. Only a telephone was on display. For a man of Mr. Kostopoulos’s legendary business acumen, she wondered how he ran his megacorporation with everything out of sight.

“No. It looked exactly as it does right now, as if you’d just had it delivered from the furniture store.”

She shouldn’t have said that last bit. She knew she shouldn’t have said it. Speaking her mind was just one of her many flaws.

“If it isn’t in my head, it’s not important,” he stated bluntly, reading her thoughts with humiliating accuracy. “The clutter I leave to my secretary’s discretion.” His low voice rumbled through her body.

If the truth be known, clutter was Sam’s middle name. She’d lived with it all her life. In an office like this, where everything was in perfect order and spotless, she’d go crazy. In fact, she would have said so if he’d been anyone else except the man who could get her fired.

“Do you recall emptying the wastebasket?” he demanded in a decidedly chilly tone.

She lifted her rounded chin a little higher. “I would have done, but there was nothing in it.”

His lips twisted unpleasantly. No doubt he thought she was being impudent again. Clearly not satisfied with her answers, he buzzed his secretary. “Please come inside, Mrs. Athas, and bring your notepad with you.”

Seconds later, the woman who dealt on a daily basis with his billion-dollar clutter, entered his inner sanctum. She was carrying the small notepad in her hand. It’s yellow color triggered a memory.

Sam groaned, alerting her interrogator.

“You were about to say something?” he prodded, a merciless gleam entering those black depths.

“I—I remember now,” she stammered. “I did see a yellow piece of notepaper, but it was on the floor next to the wastebasket. I assumed someone had aimed for it, but had missed...”

The inference didn’t escape him and his lips thinned, making her quiver inwardly. “Since it was exactly what I needed, I—” She looked everywhere except at him. “I put it in my pocket.”

By now his hands were on his hips. To her consternation, his secretary had conveniently disappeared. Sam took this as the worst of omens.

He muttered several epithets not worthy of repeating before he demanded, “Explain to me why you would have confiscated a supposed piece of refuse from my private office.”

His arrogance was too much!

“Actually, there’s a perfectly good reason,” she fired back, cognizant of heat building in her cheeks.

“For your sake, there’d better be,” he stated with more than a hint of underlying menace.

Sam didn’t like to be threatened. Staring him down she began, “I was vacuuming the carpet beneath your desk when I saw the exact piece of paper I needed to finish my collage.”

“Collage?” he bit out.

“My senior art project,” she defended boldly because she was on steady ground. “At the beginning of this semester my professor, Dr. Giddings, insisted that we could only use those bits of paper left on the grass, the ground, the sidewalk or the floor. No cheating by dipping into garbage receptacles, no using scissors to alter shape. Everything had to go into the collage as found.”

Warming to her subject she blurted, “With the exception of newspapers, telephone directories or cardboard, we could use absolutely anything else made of paper. The whole idea of the project was to be as original as possible, and still create an interesting design worthy of hanging in an art gallery.”

Not stopping for breath she explained, “When Dr. Giddings first gave us the assignment, I didn’t realize how fun, how challenging this final project would be. For weeks I’ve been walking around the city with my eyes on the ground, and I’ve come up with the most amazing finds which are now attached to my canvas.”

By now his eyes had become black slits. “So you’re telling me that the note my secretary left on this desk is now a part of your collage?”

“Yes. But I didn’t take it from your desk. She must have created a draft and inadvertently knocked it to the floor without realizing it.”

While Sam spoke, he raked a bronzed hand through vibrant, ebony hair. She longed to twine her fingers in it, and the distraction made it practically impossible for her to concentrate.

What was wrong with her? Up to now she’d never become seriously interested in the men who’d wanted a relationship with her. Yet Mr. Kostopoulos, a total stranger, had already ignited a fire in her that was growing stronger with every sparring comment.

“Your explanation is so incredibly absurd, I’m half inclined to believe you’re telling me the truth.”

“It’s certainly no more absurd than the fact that you have a Picasso hanging on the wall.”

He blinked. “What does the Picasso have to do with this conversation?”

Obviously he wasn’t used to anyone standing up to him. She got a perverse thrill out of shocking him.

“It has everything to do with it. You’re an art lover who probably can’t paint a straight line.” Mistake number nine or ten. She’d lost count, but it didn’t matter. Something about him had made her lose control.

“Dr. Gidding’s is an artist who wouldn’t know the first thing about your corporate clutter. The point is, you both love Picasso. While you spend your millions on his art so you can look at it from your comfortable leather chair, my poverty-stricken professor, who probably won’t be a legend until long after he has gone, has made us study Picasso and put his credo to the test.”

The man confronting her looked incredulous. “What credo?”

“Picasso said, and I quote, ‘The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place; from the sky, from the earth, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web, from a scrap of paper. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it.’ End of quote.”

He thought she was insane. Right now, she felt that she was...

“Being a disciple of Picasso, Dr. Giddings challenged us to create beauty from the scraps of paper we found.”