office a week ago?’
Sara tensed. Could Alekos possibly have recognised her famous father’s voice?
‘Why are you suddenly fascinated with my private life?’
‘I’m merely concerned for your well-being and offering a timely reminder that holiday romances notoriously don’t last.’
‘For goodness’ sake!’ Sara told herself not to be fooled by Alekos’s ‘concern for her wellbeing’. His real concern was he did not want his PA moping about or unable to concentrate on her work because she’d suffered a broken heart. ‘What makes you think I had a holiday romance?’
He trailed his eyes over her, subjecting her to a thorough appraisal that brought a flush to her cheeks. ‘It’s obvious. Before you went on holiday you wore frumpy clothes that camouflaged your figure. But after spending a month in France you have undergone a transformation into a frankly very attractive young woman. It doesn’t take a detective to work out that a love affair is probably the cause of your new-found sensuality.’
‘Well, of course you would assume that a man is the reason I’ve altered my appearance.’ Sara’s temper simmered. ‘It couldn’t be that I decided to update my wardrobe for me.’ His cynical expression fuelled her anger but she also felt hurt. Had she really looked so awful in her navy blue suit with her hair secured in a neat bun, as Alekos had said? It was pathetic the way her heart had leapt when he’d complimented her new look and told her she was attractive.
‘You are such a male chauvinist,’ she snapped. Ignoring the warning glint in his eyes, she said furiously, ‘I suppose you think I altered the way I dress in the hope of impressing you?’
The landline phone on his desk rang and Sara instinctively reached out to answer it. Simultaneously Alekos did the same and, as his fingers brushed against hers, she felt a sizzle of electricity shoot up her arm. ‘Oh!’ She tried to snatch her hand away, but he snaked his fingers around her wrist and stroked his thumb pad over her thudding pulse.
‘When you dressed to come to work this morning, did you choose your outfit to please me?’ His black eyes burned like hot coals into hers.
Sara flushed guiltily. ‘Of course not.’ She refused to admit to herself, let alone to Alekos, that for the past two years she had fantasised about him desiring her. She stared at his chiselled face and swallowed. ‘Are you going to answer the call?’ she said breathlessly.
To her relief, he let go of her wrist and picked up the phone. She resisted the urge to leap out of her seat and run out of his office. Instead she made herself stroll across the room to the coffee machine. The familiar routine of pouring water into the machine’s reservoir and inserting a coffee capsule into the compartment gave her a few moments’ breathing space to bring herself under control.
Why had she goaded Alekos like that? She had always been careful to hide her attraction to him but he must have noticed how the pulse in her wrist had almost jumped through her skin because it had been beating so hard, echoing the thudding beat of her heart.
She could not put off carrying their coffees over to his desk any longer, and she was thankful that Alekos did not glance at her when he finished his phone call and opened the file in front of him. He waited for her to sit down and pick up her notepad before he began to dictate at breakneck speed, making no allowances for the fact that she hadn’t taken shorthand notes for a month.
It set the tone for the rest of the day as they worked together to clear the backlog that had built up while Sara had been away. At five o’clock she rolled her aching shoulders and went to the bathroom to brush her hair and apply a fresh coat of rose-pink lip gloss that was her new must-have item of make-up.
In Alekos’s office she found him standing by his desk. He was massaging the back of his neck as if he felt as tired from their busy day as she was. She had forgotten how tall he was. He had inherited his six-foot-four height from his maternal grandfather, who had been a Canadian, he’d once explained to Sara. But in every other aspect he was typically Greek, from his dark olive complexion and mass of black hair to his arrogant belief that he only had to click his fingers and women would flock to him. The trouble was that they did, Sara thought ruefully.
Alekos was used to having any woman he wanted. She told herself it was lucky that there had been no repeat of the breathless moments that had occurred earlier in the day, when rampant desire had blazed in his eyes as he’d trapped her wrist and felt the giveaway throb of her sexual awareness of him.
He must have heard his office door open, and turned his head in her direction. They had played out the same scene hundreds of times before, and most days when she came to check if he needed her to do anything else before she went home he did not bother looking up from his computer screen as he bid her goodnight. But he was looking at her now. She watched his hard features tauten and become almost wolf-like as he stared at her with a hungry gleam in his eyes that excited her and filled her with illicit longing.
Something tugged in the pit of her stomach, tugged hard like a knot being pulled tighter and tighter, as if an invisible thread linked her body to Alekos. And then he blinked and the feral glitter in his eyes disappeared. Perhaps it had never been there and she had imagined that he’d stared at her as if he wanted to devour her?
‘I’m just off now.’ She was amazed that her voice sounded normal when her insides were in turmoil. ‘I’ll finish typing up the report for the shareholders first thing tomorrow.’
‘Did you remember that we are attending the annual dinner for the board members on Thursday evening?’
She nodded. ‘I’ll bring the dress I’m going to wear for the dinner to work and get changed here at the office like I did for the Christmas party.’
‘You had better check with the restaurant that they won’t be serving seafood. Orestis Pagnotis is allergic to it and, much as I’d like to have the old man off my back, I’d better not allow him to risk suffering a possibly fatal reaction,’ Alekos said drily.
‘I’ve already given the restaurant a list of the dietary requirements of the guests.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘Is Orestis still being a problem?’
He shrugged. ‘He’s one of the old school. He joined the board when my grandfather was chairman, and he was a close friend of my father.’ Alekos gave a frustrated sigh. ‘Orestis believes I take too many risks and he has the support of some of the other board members, who fail to understand that the company needs to move with the times rather than remain in the Stone Age. Orestis’s latest gripe is that he thinks the chairman should be married.’
Alekos muttered something in Greek that Sara guessed was not complimentary about the influential board member. ‘According to Orestis, if I take a wife it will prove that I have left my playboy days behind and I will be more focused on running GE.’
Her heart dipped. ‘Are you considering getting married?’
Somehow she managed to inject the right amount of casual interest into her voice. She knew he had ended his affair with a stunning Swedish model called Danika shortly before her holiday, but in the month she had been away it was likely that he had met someone else. Alekos never stayed celibate for long.
Perhaps he had fallen in love with the woman of his dreams. It was possible that Alekos might ask her to organise his wedding. She would have to pin a smile on her face and hide her heartache while she made arrangements for him and his beautiful bride—she was certain to be beautiful—to spend their honeymoon at an exotic location. Sara pulled
