Chapter One
‘YOU’RE the coldest man I ever met. If you have a heart it’s made of stone. You’re cruel and contemptible. I hate you.’ The woman’s strident voice quivered dangerously on the last word and came through the heavy oak door with effortless ease.
There was silence, and then the ominously low rumble of a man’s voice. Short, sharp, succinct. Lucy could imagine only too well the glacial look that was most likely accompanying those indistinct words. She sighed as she heard the woman splutter indignantly, but then she was off again, her voice rising so high now that Lucy feared for the crystal decanter on the drinks board nearby. While Lucy was new to these scenes first-hand, she had to reflect that the rumours she’d heard over the past two years hadn’t been a myth after all. The voice was drawing her attention back to the present moment.
‘Don’t think that you can seduce your way back into my bed after treating me like this!’
Lucy had just enough time for a cynical smile as she reflected that if her new boss was to so much as arch an eyebrow this woman would undoubtedly be back in his bed in a heartbeat before the door was suddenly flung open. She looked studiously at her computer screen, trying to sink down in her seat and be as unobtrusive as possible.
Being unobtrusive was her trademark: it was what had got her this coveted job, along with her impeccable credentials and references. There was a lull, a pseudo-calm in the middle of the storm. Lucy didn’t look up, but could visualise the woman standing dramatically on the threshold of the palatial office. Tall, sleek and blonde. Stunningly beautiful, from the top of her shiny head to the tip of her expensively manicured toes, evident through the peepholes of a pair of sky-high heels. She was reputedly one of the most alluring women in the world, but apparently hadn’t managed to hold his attention for longer than a few weeks.
‘Needless to say you won’t be hearing from me again.’
The door slammed shut with such violence that Lucy winced. He wouldn’t appreciate that. Even though Lucy had only been working for him for two months she already knew that he hated scenes. A cloud of noxious perfume lingered in the wake of the tall woman’s exit. She hadn’t even glanced Lucy’s way.
Lucy breathed a sigh of relief and then heard a loud thump, as if a fist was connecting with a hard surface. She counted to ten, and on the count of ten the door opened. She looked up and willed any emotion or reaction from her face. Her boss stood there, filling the frame easily. Veritable sparks of energy crackled from his body.
Aristotle Levakis, CEO of Levakis Enterprises which encompassed all aspects of a dizzyingly successful global imports and exports business.
Tall, broad-shouldered, lean hipped. Every hard-muscled, dark olive-skinned inch of him adding up to a—currently bristling—Greek alpha male in his potent and virile prime.
His distinctive light green eyes skewered Lucy to the spot, almost as if the last ten minutes had been her fault. Instantly she felt breathless; her heart hammered. She hated that she was aware of him. But the best part of two years spent viewing him from a distance, along with every other ogling female in his thousand-employee-strong company, had done little to help diminish the devastating impact of working in such close proximity to him. A memory surfaced and familiar heat flooded her. If only she had been kept at a safe distance he might not be having this effect on her now—but there had been that moment in a lift, almost a year ago…Lucy ruthlessly crushed that memory stone-dead. Now was not the time.
But, much to her chagrin and dismay, she couldn’t halt her reaction. It was something about the way he’d obviously just raked a hand through his unruly ink-black hair, leaving it even more dishevelled, and the way his jaw was so defined and hard it looked as if it was hewn from granite. His cheekbones and that full lower lip softened the hard edges, giving him the look of a master of sensuality—which by all accounts he was. Yet dark brows drawn together over those deep-set, amazing eyes took away any lingering pretty edges.
‘Lucy,’ he rapped out, distaste for the recent dramatics etched all over his handsome face. ‘Get in here. Now.’
Lucy blinked and landed back to earth with a bump. What was she doing? Sitting here mentally listing her boss’s attributes as if he wasn’t standing there looking at her as if he wanted to throttle someone. Caught short, which she never was, she scrambled up somewhat inelegantly from her chair and walked towards him, but then, to add insult to injury, she dropped her pad and pen from suddenly nerveless fingers. She bent down to pick them up, cursing herself in her head, and cursing the fact that her skirt was too tight when it resisted her movement. She’d put it in the wrong wash and it had shrunk about two sizes; with no time to shop for a replacement it had had to do, but now she was terrified it might split at the seams. The thought of that made her go hot all over.
If Aristotle Levakis so much as guessed for a second that he had any effect on her she’d be out on her ear and replaced so fast her head would be spinning. She didn’t have to remind herself that was exactly what had happened to his last two unfortunate assistants.
Speed had been of the essence as his in-house headhunters had scrambled to find the next best person. Lucy had since discovered that Levakis Enterprises was involved in a top secret series of merger meetings, and the luxury of extending the search to outside the company hadn’t been an option.
As luck would have had it, Lucy’s boss, Levakis’ senior legal counsel, had retired the very day of the last unfortunate PA’s demise. Lucy had been vetted and promoted within twenty-four hours to the most terrifying and yet exciting position of her career so far: Levakis’ personal secretary, heading up a team of five junior administrative assistants, not to mention staff in Athens and New York.
Whe
n she straightened up, taking care to breathe in, all this raced through her brain and she felt thoroughly flustered. She pushed her glasses higher on her nose and felt her cheeks grow even hotter. Aristotle moved back to let her precede him into his office, and she caught the look of exasperation that crossed his face as he articulated her own thoughts out loud with narrowed eyes,
‘What is wrong with you today?’
She burned inside with humiliation at her lack of control. She was no better than the swooning legions of girls who gathered in the kitchens on each floor of this impressive London headquarters to eulogise over his mythical sexual prowess and inestimable wealth.
‘Nothing,’ Lucy muttered, and called on every bit of training she had to regain her composure. When she heard him shut his door behind them and follow her in she closed her eyes for a split second and took deep breaths. She chastised herself roundly. This job was so important; the sharp increase in wages meant that she was finally able to take care of her mother properly.
She couldn’t jeopardise all that now by turning into a bumbling, stumbling, mooning idiot—no matter how gorgeous her boss happened to be. A voice mocked her inwardly. It wasn’t as if she even wanted a man like him to notice her. She had to control these wayward thoughts. They disturbed her more than she cared to admit, making her think of long-buried memories of her childhood.
It should be easy enough to do after witnessing that last little scene. Evidently Aristotle Levakis went for quivering, highly strung thoroughbreds, all lean and sleek with good bloodlines. Lucy Proctor was more along the lines of a…a placid cart horse, and her bloodline was considerably less blue than he was used to. More of a murky brown.
She watched as Levakis came back around the other side of his desk and gestured impatiently for her to sit down and take notes, not even glancing her way. Lucy willed her heartbeat to slow down and sat, legs tucked under the chair demurely, pen poised over a blank sheet of paper, and prayed that her skirt wouldn’t split open.
Aristotle Levakis stood behind his desk, hands deep in the pockets of his trousers, and looked at the demurely bent head of his new assistant. It was most irritating to be faced with the fact that Augustine Archer had forced him to reject her by demanding more of a commitment than he was prepared to give right now. To any woman.
His assistant shifted in her seat minutely, making Ari’s eyes narrow on her. That ripple of awareness ran through him again. It was faint, elusive, yet irritatingly insistent, and had been ever since she’d walked into his office two months before in a primly structured suit.
An uncomfortable suspicion made him tense inwardly; was it this awareness that had had an effect on the lessening and ultimate annihilation of his desire for Augustine Archer? Her shrieked words still vibrated in the air, but at that moment Aristotle would be hard pushed to bring her image to mind. Immediately as he realised the import of what he was thinking he rejected the notion as utterly absurd.
Lucy Proctor, his relatively new assistant, was as far removed from his habitual choice of lover as could be humanly possible. He couldn’t believe he was even giving a second of his time to this subject, or putting those two words Lucy and lover in the same sentence, but almost against his will his eyes flicked down from shiny, albeit non-descript dark brown hair to where her knees were tight together, legs tucked under the chair.
His almost contemptuous regard stopped for a moment to take in what could only be described as wantonly voluptuous thighs encased far too snugly in the confines of a pencil skirt. Irritation prickled stronger. He would have to have a word with the head of Human Resources and tell her to pass on a discreet message about the code of dress he expected from his assistant. And yet his expert eye hadn’t missed the surprisingly small waist, cinched in by a belt. That realisation stung him.
He tried to reassert his self-control. She was big…all over…His eyes flicked back up to the line of more than generous breasts under her silk shirt. And yet, prompted a little rogue voice, she looked as firm as a succulent peach. And her face…that was something he realised now he hadn’t really given much time to study, seeing her only as someone employed to do his bidding, but now, much to his chagrin, his gaze wanted to stop and linger. Look properly. Take in the surprisingly graceful curve of a well-defined cheekbone. Aristotle’s blood was starting to heat up; with a kind of desperation he noted that she wore glasses, as if that might have the effect of a cold douche on his suddenly raging hormones.
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 re