just for the record, I don’t approve of office affairs, romances or even friendships. So stop taking swipes at me by the way you dress, or the way you look at me, or the way you put that Lassiter-Brunel file in front of me, expecting me to find that article and question your motives so you could tell me what Brunel presumed about us. It was irritating and juvenile. There is no us. The rest of what you said lives only in your head. Now I have some calls to make.’
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 commendably 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.
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