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‘No, I wasn’t, but I might as well have been.’ Because her junkie mother had been no use to herself, never mind the child she’d given birth to. The remembered pain bruised her insides and unshed tears burned the backs of her eyes. She blinked rapidly to stop them falling but a furtive glance showed Sakis had noticed the crack in her composure.
The plane lifted off the ground and shot into the starlit sky.
Sakis’s gaze remained on her for long minutes. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked gently.
Brianna’s heart hammered harder. ‘No.’ She’d already said too much, revealed far more than was wise. Deliberately unclenching her fists, she prayed he would let the matter rest.
The jet started to level out. Snatching his phone from the table, Sakis nodded and unbuckled his seatbelt. ‘Regardless of your protests, you need to sleep.’ He held out his hand to her. The look on his face told her nothing but her acquiescence would please him.
Immensely relieved that he wasn’t probing into her past any longer, she thought it wise to stifle further protest. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she placed her hand in his and stood. ‘If I do, then so do you.’
His smile was unexpected. And breath-stealing. Heat churned within her belly, sending an arrow of need straight between her thighs.
‘We’ve dovetailed right back to the very point I was trying to make. I have every intention of getting some sleep. Even super-humans like me deserve some down time.’
A smile tugged at her lips. ‘That’s a relief. You were beginning to show us mere mortals up.’
His smile turned into an outright laugh, his face transforming into such a spectacular vision of gorgeousness that her breath caught. Then her whole body threatened to spontaneously combust when his hand settled at her waist. With a firm nudge, he guided her back down the aisle.
‘No one in their right mind would call you a mere mortal, Moneypenny. You’ve proved beyond any doubt that you’re the real thing—an exceptionally gifted individual with a core of integrity that most ambitious people lose by the time they reach your age.’
At the door to her cabin, she turned to face him, her heart hammering hard enough to make her head hurt a little. ‘I think what you’ve done since the tanker crashed shows you’re willing to go above and beyond what most people would do in the same circumstances. That is integrity.’
His gaze dropped to her lips, lingered there in a way that turned her body furnace hot. ‘Hmm, is this the start of an exclusive mutual admiration society?’
The breath she’d never quite managed to recapture fractured even further. When his eyes dropped lower, her nipples tightened, stung into life by green fire that lurked in those depths. Reaching behind her, she grasped the doorknob, desperate for something to cling to.
‘I’m just trying to point out that I’m nothing special, Mr Pantelides. I just try to be very good at my job.’
His gaze recaptured hers. ‘I beg to differ. I think you’re very special.’ He stepped closer and his scent filled her nostrils. ‘It’s also obvious no one has told you that enough.’ The hand that still rested at her waist slid away to cover the hand she’d gripped on the door. Using the pressure of hers, he turned the knob. ‘When this is all over, I’ll make a point to show you just how special you are.’
The door gave way behind her and she swayed backward, barely managing to catch herself before she stumbled. ‘You...don’t have to. Really, you don’t.’
His smile was a touch strained and he braced his hands on the doorjamb as if forcibly stopping himself from entering the room. ‘You say you’re not special and yet you refuse even the promise of a reward where most people would be making a list.’
‘I work for one of the most forward-thinking men in one of the best organisations in the world. That’s reward enough.’
‘Careful, there; you’re in danger of swelling my ego to unthinkable proportions.’
‘Is that a bad thing?’ She wasn’t sure where the need for banter came from but her breath caught when his sensual lips curved in a dangerously sexy smile.
‘At a time when everything around me seems to be falling apart, it could be a lethal thing.’ His gaze shot to the bed and his smile slipped a fraction, in proportion to the escalating strain on his face. ‘Time for you to hit the sack. Kalispera, Brianna,’ he murmured softly before, stepping back abruptly, he strode to his own door.
At the click of his door shutting, Brianna stumbled forward and sagged onto the bed, her knees turned to water.
She glanced down at her shaking hands as reality hit her square in the face.
Sakis Pantelides found her attractive. She wasn’t naïve enough to mistake the look in his eyes, nor was she going to waste time contemplating the why. It was there, like a ticking time bomb between them, one she needed to diffuse before the unthinkable happened.
Brianna could only hope that, once they were back on familiar ground, things would return to normal.
They had to. Because, frankly, she was terrified of what she would let happen if they didn’t.
* * *
Sakis stood under the cold shower and cursed fluidly. Theos. I seemed as if he’d spent the last forty-eight hours cursing in one form or the other. Right now, he cursed the rigid erection that seemed determined to defy the frigid temperature.
He wanted to have sex with Brianna Moneypenny. Wanted to shut off the shower, stride next door, strip the clothes off her body and drive into her with a grinding force that defied rhyme or reason.
He slapped his palm against the soaked tile and cursed some more. Gritting his teeth, his hand dropped to grip his erection. A single stroke made him groan out loud. Another stroke, and his knees threatened to buckle.
With an angry grunt, he dropped his hand and turned the shower off. He was damned if he was going to fondle himself like an over-eager teenager. Things were fraught for sure. That and the fact that he hadn’t had sex in months was messing with his mental faculties, making him contemplate paths he would never otherwise have done. For God’s sake, sex had no place in his immediate to-do list.
What he needed to do was focus on getting the threat of a takeover annihilated and the situation at Pointe Noire brought under control.
Once they were back on familiar ground, things would return to normal.
He ruthlessly silenced the voice that mocked him not to be so sure...
* * *
Three hours later, Brianna sat wide awake in her luxurious cabin bed, staring through a porthole at the pitch-black night that rested on a bed of white clouds. She’d left her tablet in one of the two briefcases she’d seen the stewardess stow in Sakis’s cabin. Short of knocking on his door and asking for it, she had nothing to do but sit here, her thoughts jumbling into a mass of anxiety at what awaited her in London.
She had no doubt Sakis would trounce the takeover bid into smithereens—he was too skilled a businessman not to have anticipated such a move. And he was too calculating not to have the answers at his fingertips.
All the same, Greg had proved, much to her shock and disbelief, that he was just as ruthless—and without a single ounce of integrity—and she shuddered at the chaos he could bring to Sakis should he be given the opportunity.
Her shoulder tingled as her tattoo burned. Raising her hand, she slid her fingers under her light T-shirt and touched the slightly raised words etched into her skin.
Greg had succeeded in taking away her livelihood once; had come terrifyingly close to destroying her soul.
There was no way she could rest until she made sure he wasn’t a threat to Sakis and to her. Not that he had any reason to seek her out. No, she was the gullible scapegoat he’d led to the slaughter—then walked away from scot-free. The last thing he’d expect was for her to have risen from the ashes of the fire he’d thrown her in.
That was how she wanted things to stay. Once upon a time, she’d harboured feelings of revenge and retribution; how could she not, when she’d been stuck in an six-by-eight dark space, racked alternatively with fear and deep bitterness? But those feelings had burned themselves out.
Now she just wanted to be Brianna Moneypenny, executive assistant to Sakis Pantelides, the most dynamically sexy, astoundingly intelligent man she knew.
A man she’d come disastrously close to kissing more than once in the last forty-eight hours...
No. Her fingers pressed down harder over the tattoo, letting the pain of each word restore her equilibrium.
Nothing had changed.
Nothing could change.
* * *
The board members were gathered in the large, grey mosaic-tiled conference room on the fiftieth floor of Pantelides Towers, the iconic, futuristically designed building poised on the edge of the River Thames.
Sakis strode in at seven o’clock sharp. He nodded to the men around the table and the three executives video-conferencing in on three wide screens.
Brianna’s heart thumped as she followed him in. She had no idea if the information-gathering Sakis had implemented before they’d boarded the plane had yielded any results. He didn’t know either—she’d asked him. Only the files currently placed in front of each executive held the answer as to whether Greg Landers was in part behind this hostile takeover bid.
Seeing a spare copy on the stationery table off to one side of the boardroom, Brianna moved towards it.
‘I won’t need you for this meeting. Return to the office. I’ll come and find you when I’m done.’
Shock ricocheted through her. She barely managed to keep it from showing on her face. ‘Are you sure? I can—’
His jaw tensed. ‘I think we’ve already established that you’re invaluable to me. Please don’t overplay your hand, Moneypenny. Otherwise alarm bells will start ringing.’
The tight grit behind his words took her aback. It was the same tone he’d used since he’d emerged from his cabin an hour before they’d landed. His whole façade was icily aloof and the potent sexual charge that had surrounded them a few short hours before, the fire in his eyes as he’d looked at her outside her cabin on the plane, was nowhere in sight.
She held her breath for the relief that confirmed that things were back to normal, only to experience a painful pang of disconcerting disappointment, immediately followed by a more terrifying notion.
Did Sakis know? Had he somehow found out about her past? She stared at him but his expression gave nothing away, certainly nothing that indicated he knew her deepest, darkest secret.
He didn’t know. She’d been much too careful in exorcising her past; had used every last penny she’d owned two years ago to ensure there would be no coming back from what she’d been before.
All the same, it took a huge effort to swallow the lump in her throat. ‘I don’t... I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about. I’m only trying to do—’
‘Your job. I know. But right now your job isn’t here. I need you to take point on the situation on Point Noire. Make sure the media are kept in line and the investigators update us on developments. I don’t want the ball dropped on this. Can you handle that?’
Her gaze slid to the file marked confidential lying so innocuously on the table, fear and trepidation eating away inside her. Then she forced her gaze to meet his. ‘Of course.’
The hard glint in his eyes softened a touch. ‘Good. I’ll see you in a few hours. Or sooner, if anything needs my attention.’
He stepped into the room and the electronic door slid shut behind him. Brianna gasped at the bereft feeling that hollowed out her stomach.
He isn’t shutting you out. It’s just a delicate situation that needs careful handling.
Nevertheless, as she walked back towards her office and desk situated just outside Sakis’s massive office suite, she couldn’t help but feel like she’d lost a part of her functioning self.
Ridiculous.
For the next several hours, she threw herself into her work. At two o’clock on the button, her phone rang.
‘I haven’t had an update in four hours,’ came Sakis’s terse demand.
‘That’s because everything’s in hand. You have enough on your plate without resorting to micro-management,’ she snapped, then bit her lip. She was letting her anxiety get the better of her. ‘What I mean is, you have the right people in place to deal with this. Let them do their jobs. It’s what you pay them for, after all.’
‘Duly noted.’ A little bit of the terseness had leached from his voice but the strain still remained. She could barely hold back from asking the question burning on her lips: is Greg Landers one of those challenging to take over Pantelides Shipping? ‘Update me anyway.’
‘The tug boat is on site and preparing to move the tanker away. The salvage crew co-ordinator tells me our marine biologist is providing invaluable advice, so we scored big there.’
‘You scored big.’ His voice had dropped lower, grown more intimate. A fresh tingle washed over her.
‘Um...I guess. The social media campaign has garnered almost a million followers and the feedback shows a high percentage support Pantelides Shipping’s stance on the salvage and clean-up process. The blogger is doing a superb job, too.’
‘Brianna?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m glad I took your advice about the media campaign. It’s averted a lot of the bad press we could’ve had with this crash.’
Her normal, professional, politically correct answer faded on her tongue. Heart hammering, she gripped the phone harder and spoke from the heart. ‘I care about this company. I didn’t want to see its reputation suffer.’
‘Why? Why do you care?’ His voice had dropped even lower.
‘You...you gave me a chance when I thought I would have none. You could’ve chosen someone else from over a hundred applicants for this job. You chose me. I don’t take that lightly.’
‘Don’t sell yourself short, Brianna. I didn’t pick your name out of a box. I picked you because you’re special. And you continue to prove to me every day what a valuable asset you are.’
She loved the way he said her name. The realisation sent a pulse of heat rushing through her.
‘Thank you, Mr Pantelides.’
‘Sakis,’ came the rumbled response.
She shook her head in immediate refusal, even though he couldn’t see her. ‘N...no,’ she finally managed.
‘I will get you to call me Sakis before very long.’ His voice held a rough texture that made her tremble.
Closing her eyes, she forced herself to breathe and focus. ‘How are things going with the...the board meeting?’
‘Most of the key players have been identified. I’ve fired the warning shot. They can heed it or they can choose to come at me again.’ His words held a distinct relish that made her think he almost welcomed the challenge of his authority. Sakis was a man who needed an outlet for his passions, hence the rowing when he could, and the fully equipped gyms in his penthouse and homes all around the world.
He would be just as passionate in the bedroom. She hurriedly pushed the thought away.
‘Have we heard anything else?’ he asked, his voice turning brisk once more.
She knew he meant the missing crew. ‘No, nothing. The search parameters have been widened.’ And because she feared what would spill from her lips if she hung on, she said, ‘I need to make a few more phone calls; rearrange your schedule...’
He went silent for several seconds, then he sighed. ‘If Lowell’s wife calls, put her straight through to me.’
‘I will.’ She hung up quickly before she could ask about what he’d found out. Unwilling even to think of it, she threw herself back to her work.
At six, the executive chef Sakis employed for his senior staff poked his head through her office door and asked if she wanted dinner.
She rolled her shoulders, registered the stiffness in her body and shook her head.
‘I’m going to hit the gym first, Tom. Then I’ll forage for myself, thanks.’
He nodded and left.
Picking up her phone and tablet, she quickly made her way via the turbo lift to the sixtieth floor, where Sakis’s private multi-roomed penthouse suites were located. There were six suites in total, four separate and two inter-connected. Sakis used the largest suite which was linked by a set of double doors to her own suite when she stayed here. From this high, the view across London’s night sky was stunning. The Opera House gleamed beneath the iconic London Eye, with the Oxo Tower’s famous lights glittering over the South Bank.
She took the shortcut through Sakis’s living room, her feet slowing as they usually did when confronted with the visually stunning architectural design of the penthouse.
