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She had impressed him when he had not expected to be impressed, yet something told him that if she walked out of the door Cecelia Andrews would not be coming back.
He could feel her hesitation.
And because he was Luka Kargas he knew when to push, and how. ‘So, I’ll ask again, when can you start, Cecelia?’
Never! Her instincts screamed.
Yet she had so badly wanted this job and the challenge it would bring and, though he was undoubtedly attractive, Cecelia knew herself well enough to be certain she would never get involved with anyone at work.
‘Now,’ Cecelia said, shocked at her own decision. ‘I can start now.’
‘Then welcome aboard.’
And as he shook her hand, Cecelia told herself she could handle it.
CHAPTER ONE (#u245a72a6-f6f3-5e34-95b9-5db1f3a65382)
LUKA, AFTER CAREFUL consideration I’ve decided...
Waking just before her alarm went off, Cecelia lay listening to the hiss of bus doors opening on the street outside her London flat and working out how best to resign.
And when to do it?
Did she get it over and done with in the morning? Or wait until the end of the day to tell him that she would not be renewing her contract?
Most people would say she was mad to quit.
The pay was amazing, the travel wonderful, if exhausting, but in the eleven months she had worked for Luka, Cecelia had hit the limit on her primness radar.
He was a playboy in the extreme.
And that wasn’t some vague, unsourced opinion.
It was fact.
Cecelia ran his diary after all!
Quite simply, she couldn’t do it any more and so on Friday, as Luka had headed to the rooftop to swan off in his chopper for a debauched weekend in France, Cecelia had reached for her phone and accepted a six-month contract as personal assistant to an esteemed and elderly foreign diplomat.
While the money and perks would be worse in her new job, the peace of mind it would bring was, to Cecelia, worth its weight in gold.
Only as she reached for her phone to check the time did Cecelia see the date and remember that it was her birthday.
There was never much fuss made of it and she had long since told herself to get over that fact. Her aunt and uncle, who had raised her since the age of eight, simply didn’t bother with such things and before she had died, neither had her mother.
She saw that a message had come in overnight from Luka.
Shan’t be in today, Cece. Cancel my meetings and I’ll call you later.
Cecelia ground her teeth at the annoying shortening of her name that she had repeatedly asked him to stop using. But then she frowned, because in the eleven months that she had worked for Luka he had never taken a day off. Luka had a phenomenal workload yet never missed a beat. But now, on the one day she really needed to speak to him, he wasn’t going to be there.
Cecelia wanted her resignation handed in and sorted, and for her time with Luka to be over. As well as that he had an important meeting with Mr Garcia and his entourage in NYC later today. Although it was an online meeting, it had been incredibly hard to set up and it was going to be extremely messy to cancel.
Despite the absence of her boss—in fact, because of the absence of her boss—today was shaping up to be an exceptionally busy one, and so Cecelia forced herself up and out of bed.
She showered quickly and began to get ready.
Her routines were set in stone and, despite the extensive travel and odd hours required by her job, there were certain things that never changed. She could be in Florence, New York, or home in London but these things remained—her clothes were set out the night before, as was her breakfast, which she ate before tackling her hair.
Routines were vital to Cecelia’s sense of well-being, for during the first eight years of her life, when she had lived with her mother, chaos had been the only certainty.
The reddish fire to Cecelia’s strawberry blonde mane had, courtesy of foils, been dimmed to a neutral blonde. She smoothed and sleeked out her long curls and then tied them back into a neat, low ponytail.
Next, Cecelia applied her make-up.
She didn’t wear much, but as Luka’s PA it was expected that she was always well turned out.
It wasn’t always the case. A famous actress she had once worked for had insisted that Cecelia wear no make-up whatsoever as well as extremely plain clothing. With another employer, for practical reasons, her wardrobe had mainly consisted of boots and jeans.
Cecelia’s skin was pale and needed just a dash of blusher to liven it up. She added a coat of mascara to her lashes, which enhanced her deep green eyes, but, as she did so, a rather bitchy voice coming from the radio caught her attention.
‘What on earth did she expect, getting mixed up with Luka Kargas?’
Cecelia stabbed herself in the eye with the mascara wand at the sound of her boss’s name.
It wasn’t so much that it was a surprise to hear Luka mentioned, more an annoyance that even at seven a.m. and alone in her bedroom still there was no escape from him.
Luka was extremely prominent and, although his name often graced the finance reports, his antics and bad-boy ways were regularly discussed in the tabloids and on the news.
They were having a field day discussing him now!
It would seem that he had used every last second of the weekend to create his own particular brand of havoc. A wild party had taken place aboard his yacht, currently moored off the coast of Nice, on Friday.
Cecelia sat at her dressing table, lips pursed as she heard that the raucous celebrations had continued on to Paris, where Luka and selected guests had hit the casinos. Now it was a case of tears after bedtime for some supermodel who had hoped that things might be different between herself and Luka.
Well, more fool her, then, Cecelia thought.
Everyone knew Luka’s track record with women.
But they didn’t really know Luka—there was a private side to him that no one, and certainly not his PA, had access to.
From what Cecelia could glean, Luka had led a very privileged life. His father owned a luxurious resort in Xanero. The famed Kargas restaurant there was now the flagship venue of its own very exclusive brand in several countries. Luka, though, focused more on expanding the hotel side of things and lived life very much in the fast lane. He dated at whim and discarded with ease and all too often it was Cecelia mopping up the tears or fielding calls from scorned lovers.
Yes, he was a playboy in the extreme.
And he unsettled her so.
Cecelia had once glimpsed that life.
Her mother Harriet’s death had been intensely embarrassing for her well-to-do family for she had died as she’d lived and had gone out on a high—knickers down and with the proverbial silver spoon up her nose.
Harriet had left behind a daughter with whom no one had quite known what to do. Her father’s name did not appear on the birth certificate and Cecelia had glimpsed him just once in her life.
And she never wanted to see him again.
Cecelia’s staid aunt and uncle, who had always sniffed in disapproval at Harriet’s rather bohemian existence, had, on her death, taken in the child. With tangled curls and sparkling green eyes, little Cecelia had been a mini replica of her mother, but in looks only.
The little girl had craved routine.
In fact, it had been a very young Cecelia who had kept any semblance of order in her mother’s life.
She had put out her own school uniform and taken money from her mother’s purse to ensure there was food, and she’d always got herself up in the morning and made her own way to school.
After an unconventional start, Cecelia now lived a very conventional life and was efficient and ordered. Even though she travelled the globe with her work, she was generally in bed by ten on weekdays and eleven at weekends.
She had perfectly nice friends, though none close enough to remember her birthday, and this time last year she had been engaged.
Gordon and the break-up had been the only problem she had caused for her aunt and uncle, who could not fathom why she might end things with such a perfectly decent man.
It hadn’t been Gordon’s fault, and she had told him so when she’d ended it.
It was bloody Luka’s!
Though of course Cecelia hadn’t told Gordon that.
Still, there wasn’t time to dwell on it this morning.
She pulled on her flesh-coloured underwear and then glanced out of the window where the sun split a very blue sky, and found she simply could not face putting on the navy linen suit that she had laid out last night.
To hell with it!
Given that Luka wouldn’t be in the office today, and that she wouldn’t now be sitting in on meetings, Cecelia made an unplanned diversion to her wardrobe.
She wasn’t exactly blinded by colour. But there was the dress she had bought to wear to a friend’s wedding she had recently attended.
It had been a rare impulse purchase.
It was a pale cream halter neck, which Cecelia had decided as soon as she’d left the boutique was too close to white and might offend the bride.
She loved it, though, and, maybe because it was her birthday, she decided to wear it.
While it showed rather too much of her back and arms, she took care of that with the pale lemon, sheer, bolero-style cardigan she had bought on the same day.
The dress was mid-calf-length so she didn’t bother with stockings, and then she tied on some espadrilles.
Yes, perhaps because Cecelia knew she would soon be leaving Kargas Holdings she was finally starting to relax.
As she closed the front door to her flat, Cecelia decided that despite Luka’s absence she would still be giving in her notice today. It would be far easier to do it over the phone or online.
‘You’re looking very summery,’ Mrs Dawson, her very nosy neighbour, said as she passed her in the hall. ‘Off to work?’
‘I am.’
The pale lemon bolero didn’t even make it past the escalators to the underground. It was hot and oppressive and as she stood, holding a rail, she saw that Luka’s weekend escapades had made headlines on the newspaper a commuter held.
She looked at the photo beneath the headline. It was of Luka on the deck of his yacht moving in on a sophisticated, dark-skinned beauty. His naked chest and thick black hair were dripping water over the woman and though their bodies did not touch it was an incredibly intimate shot.
Cecelia tore her eyes from the picture and stared fixedly ahead but that image of him seemed to dance on the blacked-out windows of the Tube.
Having left the underground, Cecelia walked towards the prominent high-rise building that housed Kargas Holdings. She smiled at the doorman and then entered the foyer and took the elevator. She had a special pass that allowed her to access the fortieth floor, which was Luka’s in its entirety.
There weren’t just offices and meeting rooms, there was also a gym and pool, though Cecelia couldn’t recall him using them—they were more a perk for the staff.
And there was a suite that was every bit as luxurious and as serviced as any five-star hotel. When in London, Luka often slept there when he chose to work through the night or had a particularly early morning flight.
Yes, it was his world that she entered, but knowing that he wasn’t there meant Cecelia breathed more easily today.
It was just before eight and it would seem that she had beaten Bridgette, the receptionist, to work. There were a couple of cleaners polishing windows and vacuuming and the florists had arrived, as they did each morning to tend the floral displays.
Cecelia made a coffee from the espresso machine before heading to her desk that was housed in a large area outside Luka’s vast office.
The gatekeeper, Luka called her at times, though she felt rather more like a security guard at others.
As well as greeting his clients and guests, Cecelia was the final hurdle for his scorned lovers to negotiate if they somehow made it past the security in place downstairs.
Occasionally it happened, though generally Cecelia fielded them by phone.
And there it was again, springing to mind—the sudden image of him, wet from the ocean and dripping water, and Cecelia shook her head as if to clear it.
She hung her little cardigan on a stand and was just about to take a seat when his voice caught her completely unawares.
‘Is that coffee for me, Cece?’
Cecelia swung around and there, strolling out of his office, was Luka. Apart from being unshaven there was little evidence of his wild weekend on display. He wore black pants and a white fitted shirt that showed off his toned body and his thick black hair, which, though perhaps a little tousled, still fell into perfect shape.
And he was not supposed to be here.
‘I thought you weren’t coming in today,’ Cecelia said.
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Because you texted me in the middle of the night and told me you weren’t.’
‘So I did.’
He looked at the usually poised and formal Cece caught unawares. To many it might seem no big deal—she was simply holding a coffee and wearing a summer dress. Usually she was buttoned to the neck in navy or black, but it wasn’t just her clothing that was different today.
‘Thanks,’ he said, and took from her hand the coffee she had made.
