Dismissed, appalled, devastated—whipped by his cold assassination—Mia spun away and walked across his office on legs that shook.
Irritating and juvenile….
‘I hate him,’ Mia whispered once she was on the other side of the door.
‘Did you say something?’ Fiona glanced up from her work.
Wishing she was dead or at least far, far away from this place, Mia stumbled across the room to sink down in the chair behind her desk before her trembling legs crumbled altogether. ‘He’s in a very bad mood today and I hate him.’
‘Don’t we all, darlin’,’ Fiona responded dryly. ‘Our gorgeous boss is pure sex on legs but as cold as ice. It’s such a waste of good male flesh.’ Sitting back from her computer console, Fiona’s floppy blonde curls bounced on her head as she gave Mia’s pale face the once-over. ‘Bit your head off, did he?’
More than just my head, Mia thought tragically. ‘I don’t know how you have put up with him for as long as you have.’
‘I’m immune.’ Fiona waggled her left hand at Mia, showing off the three sparkling rings she wore on her marriage finger. ‘I’ve got my own sexy brute to go home to each evening, and he’s never cold.’
‘He wants me to cancel the Lassiter-Brunel deal’.
Fiona went still. ‘So you told him.’
Mia pressed her trembling lips together and nodded. ‘He didn’t believe me.’
‘Then why is he pulling out of the deal?’ the secretary quizzed with a frown.
‘To—to punish me,’ Mia answered. ‘He knows I don’t know how to do such a thing so he’s making me do it to teach me a lesson about the consequences of making up stories.’
‘Nikos Theakis is throwing away a lucrative deal just to teach you a lesson?’ Fiona laughed. ‘I don’t believe it. There has to be more to his reasoning than that.’
There was, Mia thought bleakly. She had told him some other things he had not wanted to hear about. ‘And he’s not taking me with him to his lunch today…’
And that harsh rebuff was striking her as hard as everything else. It was like being cut off from the main lifeline which kept her functioning. She might hate him but she revelled in being around him.
Why had she told him he constantly touched her? Why hadn’t she kept her big mouth shut?
‘Perhaps that’s a good thing,’ Fiona said gently.
Blinking her ridiculously long eyelashes Mia brought her gaze into focus on the other woman, read her sympathetic expression and went hot.
‘He wants coffee.’ Looking away she stood and walked across the office to the coffee machine to prepare a small tray, then on impulse she begged Fiona, ‘Will you take it in? I don’t think I can stand another visit in there right now.’
‘Sure…’ Always relaxed, always sunny, Fiona came to take the tray from her, then paused. ‘Mia…’ she posed gently, ‘take a bit of advice from someone older and wiser than you are…get yourself a man.’
Glancing up, she groaned, ‘Oh, Dio. Am I so obvious?’
Fiona’s sympathetic smile said it all. ‘You know, when you first arrived here everyone in the building was more than ready to dislike you for who you are and how you came by this job. It took you just a week to win us all over. You’re hard-working, sweet and nice, but he isn’t nice—to women.’
Mia started despising herself for bringing this lecture on.
‘He uses them, Mia,’ Fiona pressed on her. ‘He does not respect them.’
‘As they use him.’ She felt some crazy need to defend Nikos Theakis even though he did not deserve it.
‘Yes.’ Fiona couldn’t argue with that. ‘Especially Miss Supermodel Lucy Clayton who received her farewell gift by special messenger last week. By next week another woman just like her will have been put in her place. It’s the way he works. The way he likes to keep it,’ Fiona stressed. ‘He’s an amazing risk taker in the business arena. An absolute financial genius everybody admires and respects, and he’s com-mendably honest and committed to any promises he makes—in business—but in his personal life?’ Fiona shook her head. ‘He’s a smooth, cool, bone-meltingly gorgeous sexual predator. He does not connect sex with his emotions—if he has any—the jury is still out on that. So take my advice and don’t go there. Don’t even want to go there because if he decides to take you he will spoil you for ever. So get yourself a man,’ she repeated, ‘and wean yourself off him while you still can.’
‘Where is my coffee?’ the sexual predator demanded.
Chapter Three
BOTH women jumped guiltily and turned to see Nikos Theakis standing in his office doorway. By his closed expression there was no way they could tell if he’d overheard them talking about him, but for the first time since she’d started working here, Mia saw two hot coins of guilt hit Fiona’s creamy cheekbones and knew her own cheeks wore the same hot sting.
Good, Nikos thought, tamping down hard on his anger for the second time this morning as he strode across the room to take the tray from his blushing secretary, then strode back into his office with it without uttering another word.
Get yourself a man…His lips compressed into a tight line as he set down the tray. Why had he not thought of offering his PA the same piece of advice?
The answer to that question was not a nice one. But then, as his secretary had just pointed out to Mia, he wasn’t nice.
It rankled—the not-nice part and the man part.
Throwing himself down in his chair Nikos swung it around to face the window. So I don’t respect women. A flash of irritation shot across his face. He did respect them or why the hell did he restrict himself to the kind that preferred to play the game the way he liked to play it? He wasn’t looking for love. He was not looking for marriage, so he steered well clear of the kind of women looking for either or both.
And that was respecting them, he determined. It would have been nice if Fiona had recognised that.
Vaguely surprised that there was a dose of hurt rolling round inside him, Nikos frowned. He was good to his staff, fair—generous, as Fiona had pointed out. He’d believed he had their respect. His secretary had shocked him with her view of him. It angered him that she’d felt it necessary to warn Mia off.
He rested a long forefinger along the line of his mouth where the smooth skin covering his lips felt tightly stretched, his eyes narrowed by an unwanted feeling of distaste at the idea of Mia turning all of that untapped passion on for some other man.
What if she took Fiona’s advice—?
‘Damn,’ he muttered, not liking what was rattling around inside him. Where was the guy who focused purely on business? The guy who barely noticed a woman unless she was stretched out naked on a bed?
Perhaps
