A flicker of regret slid across her face. She would miss her job. Also, if she was honest, she would miss the expression on people’s faces when she casually threw into the conversation she was Ezio Angelos’s PA... Yes,theEzio Angelos...
Levering her back from the wall of the lift as it arrived at the top floor, she felt a stab of guilt at the selfish and shallow thought. She straightened her slender shoulders and reflected wryly that there might be no need to resign. Maybe she was already sacked. Ezio was not exactly renowned for his patience and she wasextremelylate.
She glanced quickly at her phone just to check for messages from Sam but there weren’t any. She was only partially soothed. There had been no messages from him last night when she’d thought he was at his chess club. It turned out that he’d actually been in the local hospital A&E department.
And she had only found out thanks to the owner of a corner shop who had been incredibly kind—considering Sam had just tried to shoplift a can of beer from him—and had gone in the ambulance with the would-be thief after Sam’s efforts to be accepted by thecoololder school kidshad triggered an asthma attack. The worst one he’d had in years.
If it hadn’t been for the actions of the shop keeper in being so quick to call an ambulance, and who wasn’t pressing charges, Sam’s future might be looking very different today.
She shuddered. He might not have a future!
They owed that man a lot... Tilda could have kissed him...she actually had. His well-meant advice on parenting was a very small price to pay for his kindness.And, let’s face it, she thought, sketching a bleak, self-condemnatory grimace,I need it!
The lift opened directly into a large room that was dominated by her own desk. She could see the shadow of her assistant distorted through the thick glass partition. Even now, after four years, the novelty of having an assistant and not beingtheassistant hit her some days.
She reached the open door, beyond which lay the spectacular architectural award-winning office with the glass wall along with its outward-projecting glass-floored section that only someone with a head for heights would venture near—Tilda hadn’t.
In her own head, Tilda had never thought of it as an office. Insteadlairhad always seemed a more appropriate description, fit forthe sleek predator her boss of four years was.
She took a deep breath, stepped inside thelairand turned to close the door just as Rowena emerged from her office alcove, desperately mouthing,‘He’s in a vile mood,’as she dramatically mimed a cutting motion across her throat in a well-meant dramatic warning.
Tilda didn’t need the warning. Even without Tilda seeing his face, Ezio’s clenched body language said it all. His loose-limbed body was rigid and she could almost see the quivering tension in his broad shoulders as he stood facing the glass wall, oblivious to the dizziness of the drop visible beneath his feet, listening to the disembodied voice on speaker phone that she immediately recognised belonged to Saul Rutherford.
The image of the man frequently termed ‘a silver fox’, a legend in his own life time, flashed into her head. In his seventies, Saul still ran his successful IT firm, niche rather than revolutionary these days, but his name still carried clout.
‘I would let my company go under before I would let Baros get his claws into it.’ Tilda could hear the bubbling anger in the normally softly spoken man’s shaking voice.
‘There is no question of either of those eventualities coming to pass, is there, Saul?’
Nothing of the explosive quality he was exuding was evident in Ezio’s measured response, which emerged cool and silky-smooth, giving no hint of the frustration she could see drawn on his lean, dark ‘fallen angel’ features as he swivelled round, looking exclusive and sleek in one of the gorgeously cut suits he habitually wore. He registered her presence with a narrowing of his black, dark-framed eyes—eyelashes like his were wasted on a man—and a sharp, stabbing motion of one long, elegant brown finger that she followed to the crumpled tabloid lying open on the desk.
Even before she saw the two-year-old, digitally altered photo, the fake headline above it drew a grimace. This represented a sharp escalation of the drip-drip of stories attributed to people close to the ‘couple’.
Surely this was the moment for him to speak directly to Athena? Because ignoring her wasn’t working... Maybe, she mused, it was theignoringthat was part of the problem.
Or maybe it was just revenge, spite or maybe...?
She gave her head a tiny shake and closed down the line of speculation.
It was hard to take on the new reality, which was that she was no longer totally invested in her boss’s projects or problems. It was no longer her job to point out the options he didn’t want to see and to quite often get her head bitten off for her trouble.
Focusing on the plusses somehow didn’t make her feel any happier, but this wasn’t about being happy; it was about being there for her brother.
Ezio was no longer her problem, but Athena Baros was his. Tilda was actually amazed this sort of situation didn’t occur more often, considering the callous way Ezio dumped the women in his life, but generally they seemed remarkably un-resentful. Certainly, none had previously planted a series of false stories which left the impression that their romance had been rekindled.
Sources close to the socialiteinfluencerAthena Baros denied it. She had maintained a loud silence but her enigmatic smile had set names trending. According to an online survey, nine out of ten people were convinced that not only were the beautiful pair secretly engaged, Athena was pregnant.
Tilda wondered if Ezio had read the same survey. Being sane, she hadn’t asked. It wasn’t that, as far as she could tell, he gave a damn how many articles were written about his love life—which was just as well, as when your name appeared regularly in the top five eligible bachelors on the market the stories were par for the course. But this was different because this time it wasn’t personal, it was business, and when it came to business Ezio was never casual. Focused and ruthless, yes, but not casual.
He had invested a good deal of time and effort in the Rutherford deal. Tilda knew it was part of his vision for the future of Angelos Industries. And if her boss was invested, he expected her to be too, and that was the problem. While she’d been giving her all to her job, what had been left over for the really important things? Her priorities had got seriously skewed, but that was going to stop right here, right now.
She might not a be parent but she was the closest thing to a parent that Sam had now.
The self-recriminatory groove in her forehead smoothed out as she lifted her chin. Beating herself up over past mistakes would achieve nothing; her priorities had been redrawn. Ezio’s billion-making deals did not even make the revised top hundred. She was about to focus all her energies on keeping her brother safe, stopping him from falling in with the wrong crowd and wrecking his life.
This had been a warning and she was heeding it.
‘Even without us joining forces on this project, Rutherford has the respect of the industry and balance sheets to match. Of course, if you join us you will step into a different league...’