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‘Didn’t Nikos tell you? He recruited me while you were away. It’s only a temporary role, to tide you over until a permanent replacement can be found.’
She gave him a friendly smile, keen to build bridges with her new boss and neighbour, but that only made his scowl deepen further.
For a brief second his gaze moved down over her body. And then he looked away, as though irritated with himself. He shuffled the beaten-up-looking soft tan leather weekend case he was carrying into his opposite hand.
‘Where are my other siblings?’
‘Marios had a scuba-diving appointment and Angeliki has gone to Athens. I think she has a date tonight.’
His long fingers rubbed against his temple, as though he were defeated by her answer. She gave him another small smile, wishing she could think of something to say that would help. That would ease the lines of tension pulling at the corners of his eyes.
‘Nikos owes you an apology. He had no authority to recruit you. Let’s talk in my office.’
Though her heart plummeted to the floor at Loukas’s job-terminating-sounding tone, she had to think of the party, and the staff members who had been so excited for days about the celebration.
‘I’m supposed to be hosting the party. Can we talk tomorrow?’ She paused and then, unable to stop herself, she added, ‘Nikos’s costume is in his office. You could wear it for the party... It’s a Captain Hook costume. I think it would suit you.’
He looked at her incredulously, and then his eyes narrowed as he realised that she was teasing him. His scowl told her that, unlike Nikos, he wasn’t one for playful banter. He really was different...unfortunately.
‘I’ve work to do. I need to wrap this party up. There’s too much that still has to be completed before we open. I will speak to the staff and then we will talk in my office,’ he said, before heading in the direction of the hotel terrace along a path lined with thickly blossoming lavender.
She chased after him but her mermaid tail slowed her progress. Unable to catch him, she shouted out in desperation. ‘Loukas! No!’
He turned around and stared at her, clearly peeved. Under his unimpressed gaze she waddled towards him, feeling less like an elegant mermaid and more like a hung-over duck.
‘The party has only just started. The staff will be so disappointed. They’ve put huge effort into designing their costumes.’
His gaze travelled down over her costume and then he looked back up with a raised eyebrow. As if to ask, And precisely why should I be worried about any of this?
But then his gaze moved back down over her body again, this time lingering at her breasts, at her waist. His eyes darkened.
Pinpricks of awareness flooded her body. This was her boss. Her neighbour. Her friends’ brother. She had no business being so aware of him physically.
She stepped back, overwhelmed by his size, by the heat licking her insides.
At her movement, the dark appreciation in his eyes turned to annoyance. His mouth twisted unhappily.
For long seconds he studied her coolly. ‘I won’t stop the party but you and I still need to talk.’
And then, much to her consternation he held out his arm.
‘Let me help you.’ Those brown eyes stared at her intently. ‘You seem to be floundering out of your natural habitat.’
He was messing with her...wasn’t he?
His expression remained stern as he waited for her to respond. She wanted to say no, that she’d manage, but to do so would somehow feel as if she was giving in to him. That she would be admitting to feeling like a mermaid out of water around him.
She flashed her best sassy smile at him, clasped her hand with intent on his tanned forearm, and gritted her teeth as the nerve-endings on her fingers tingled at the warmth of his skin, the strength of his flexed forearm.
‘Mermaids belong in the sea, Miss Jones. I hope you manage to survive the evening.’
Her eyes shot over to study him. He had to be joking this time... Maybe he was as capable of teasing as his siblings were, but yet again his expression gave nothing away.
At an excruciatingly slow pace and in silence they made their way around the corner to the hotel’s sun terrace.
The terrace—so elegant with its borders of lush shrubs interspersed with olive and citrus trees, the bright pinks and purples of bougainvillea and pelargonium trained along the external walls, and its plush outdoor seating areas—was crowded with all the hotel staff, dressed for the nautical themed party.
They separated and she detoured to speak to The Korinna’s head chef, Jean-Louis, who was dressed as Poseidon, complete with curly wig, beard and golden trident.
As she laughed with Jean-Louis over their respective costumes, and then checked with him that all was okay with the catering for the event, she found herself tracing Loukas’s progress through the crowd as pirates, sharks and surf babes eagerly stopped him to chat. It was clear that he was respected and liked by his staff. Why was his relationship with his three siblings so different, then? All three had variously grumbled about him in the past, describing him as everything from a control freak to a nightmare with zero sense of fun.
Loukas was the consummate host, giving his complete if rather serious attention to those he spoke to. But as she was dragged into having her photograph taken with some of the hotel’s personal trainers Georgie sensed a growing tension, a greater unease in him as he made his way towards the terrace steps where the party DJ was stationed.
Once there, he spoke to the DJ, who immediately ended the song blasting out of the speakers. He waited until the crowd grew silent before he started to speak.
‘The Korinna reopens its doors next week. Thank you for all your hard work and co-operation so far in completing the renovations. We now need to give one final push over the coming days to complete the work so we can deliver the five-star service we always promise our valued guests.’
He moved out to the edge of the steps to get closer to the crowd. His deep voice—which was in keeping with his hulking size and delivered little punches to her stomach every time he spoke—dropped to an even lower grave timbre.
‘As you already know, we have specially invited influencers, journalists and bloggers coming for the first time, but we also have some of our regular clients and their entire families staying with us over the Pascha weekend. We need to balance the needs of both groups, and our focus has to be on guest satisfaction at all times. No request is too big, and I want each of you to be proactive and anticipate the guests’ needs. At no other time has the Christou business motto been more apt: We deliver perfection.’
His shoulders stiffened and his gaze slowly ran across the crowd.
‘The future of The Korinna is reliant on us excelling in everything we do from the moment we open our doors again. And everyone else on Talos needs us to succeed too—we need to lead the way in making Talos a year-round destination, especially during the winter months when so many businesses on the island struggle.’
Loukas stepped back and for a moment stared down at the pale sandstone of the patio. When he looked back up there was a vulnerability in the way his mouth worked, the way he blinked hard.
‘The past few years have been difficult for us all, but it’s now time for The Korinna to shine again.’ He paused, his voice catching. ‘As many of you know, it was my father’s dream that in addition to our hotels here in Greece we would also own some of Europe’s leading five-star hotels. Soon I hope to announce the acquisition of some of those premises. But for now let’s make The Korinna dazzle—make it the gold standard for what we in the Christou Group promise to deliver to our guests, both current and future. Let’s do my parents proud.’
Around her people shuffled and cleared their throats. She rapidly blinked her eyes, sideswiped by Loukas’s emotion. This was the man who had looked as if he wanted to commit murder less than fifteen minutes ago.
She remembered Angeliki’s poorly disguised attempt at bravado when she had described losing both her parents at only ten years of age. The same bravado Georgie had used to adopt herself when having to explain her mum’s absence as a child.
Loukas’s gaze swept across the crowd and settled on her. Her heart dipped and soared at his grave expression.
‘None of us can allow anything to get in the way of The Korinna’s success.’
* * *
Loukas entered his office and threw his weekend bag on the office sofa.
He rolled his neck against the steel rod that seemed to have inserted itself down the centre of his spine.
Why had he felt so damn emotional during his speech to the staff?
He sat down at his desk and scrubbed his face with a hand. Inhaling a weary breath, he fired up his computer. Flicking through his emails, he clicked on one from his legal team. He read it and sighed.
His instinct had been right—there really was no way out of the clause that had been inserted into the lease by the religious order who had sold the Convento San Francesco over a hundred years ago.
The convent, in the heart of Florence, had since become an exclusive five-star boutique hotel—a hotel his father had coveted since he and Loukas’s mother had visited on their honeymoon and just about been able to afford a drink in the bar. They had both fallen in love with its walled garden and cloisters, and his father—perhaps foolishly—had pledged to his mother that one day he would buy it in memory of their wedding and their honeymoon.
Loukas wanted it. For his parents. This was the first time that it had come up for sale in over a century. He might never get this opportunity again. He had to buy this hotel for his father. He couldn’t fail him yet again.
There was only one problem—to buy it, he had to be married. The religious order, for reasons that had been lost in time, had specified that the convent could only be sold to a married person.
His legal team had spent the past month attempting to have the clause removed. But it was watertight. As he had expected. In anticipation of this outcome he had employed a dating agency who specialised in executive clients.
He was not interested in finding love. He’d never had any intention of getting married. He had spent his childhood constantly fighting for his parents’ love—his father’s in particular—and constantly being rejected when he had not lived up to his expectations. He had learnt that loving others made him vulnerable and open to the constant fear and pain of rejection. Love was an exhausting emotional rollercoaster he had no interest in or intention of riding.
What he needed was a wife in name only, and in the past few weeks he had come to realise that he could turn this need for a wife of convenience into an opportunity to recruit extra talent into the business—someone who would help drive the business forward but would also have the toughness to tackle the ongoing problems with his family: namely Nikos’s irresponsibility, Marios’s stubbornness and Angeliki’s lack of independence.
It was a point that had been driven home when he’d recently returned from a business trip abroad to his apartment in Athens to find Angeliki drunk and almost incoherent... She’d been coherent enough though to tell him that she hated her two-timing boyfriend, Dimitris, but that she couldn’t break it off because he had the best body she’d ever seen. And all kinds of other stuff no brother should ever hear from his baby sister.
Angeliki needed a strong female role model—for far too long she had been indulged by her older brothers. She needed someone who would push her to want to achieve more in life than the approval of some lowlife guy.
The dating agency had put forward some promising candidates—successful and ambitious women. He had even dated some. But so far they had all come up short.
Tonight’s email from his legal team confirming that there was no way out of the clause, together with all the other debacles—an unfinished hotel, VIP guests set to arrive in less than a week, his siblings nowhere to be seen—had brought home the fact that he needed a wife with greater than ever urgency.
He picked up his office phone and called his dating agency account manager, Zeta.
‘Loukas... Hi...’ Zeta sounded more and more nervous every time he called.
‘I have called the three profiles you sent through today. The first had nothing to offer the business.’ Zeta tried to interrupt him but he continued on, ‘The second candidate laughed when I explained that Talos was a two-hour journey by land and sea from Athens...’
He swung around in his chair to face his office window and stared out towards the Saronic Gulf as he continued.
‘And the third couldn’t answer me when I asked her how she would deal with the scenario of an eighteen-year-old girl calling at four in the morning from a payphone in Athens asking if she knew where her phone and purse was.’
Zeta let out a weary sigh at the other end of the phone. ‘We’re running out of suitable candidates.’
‘Spread your net wider. I need a wife within the next month. A wife who will accept the nature of our marriage—that it will be in effect a business contract for a two-year period, with generous terms and conditions. The Christou Group is about to expand rapidly. We have already acquired five new hotels in the past year and plan on many more. This will be an ideal time for an ambitious person to be at the centre of that growth. I need someone who is driven, astute, already successful in her career, willing to live on Talos and support me in managing my family. That isn’t a lot to ask, is it?’
Zeta started to make some strangled-sounding noises at the end of the line. In no mood to hear her usual argument that he needed to be more flexible, he ended the call—but not before telling Zeta that he would quadruple her fee if she found him a suitable wife within the next month.
‘Is now a good time to talk?’
He twisted around to find the mermaid standing at his door, waiting for his answer.
Thrown by the sight of her hand, distractedly playing with the thin silver strap of her bikini top, and seeing the other resting on the smooth taut skin of her midriff, he looked away, silently cursing Nikos. Again.
Georgie Jones—all blonde hair, shiny eyes and sunshine personality—was exactly Nikos’s type. He didn’t need to go to Detective School to figure out that she was either Nikos’s newest love interest or soon would be. No wonder Nikos had given her the position as PA. How convenient to have her so nearby.
The idea of moving Nikos away to a monastery on a faraway island was rapidly becoming the best plan he’d had in a long time. But first he had to deal with returning this mermaid to wherever she belonged.
‘Please come in.’
She shuffled into the office, her full and rather enticing lips, painted a coral-pink, pulling into an open smile that slowly faded as she stopped in front of his desk.
She squared her shoulders and her hazel eyes held his steadily. ‘It would be a huge honour to work for you, and in a hotel as prestigious as The Korinna. I won’t lie or beat around the bush—I need this job.’
She gave him a quick smile that at first seemed open, but on closer inspection he saw that her eyes held a steely determination.
‘However, I respect the fact that you weren’t aware of my appointment and that it has put us both in a difficult position. I think I have a potential compromise, if you agree. And that is that I initially work for you for a trial period of a few days.’
* * *
Time slowed down to excruciatingly long seconds as Loukas studied her with obvious exasperation. Would he accept her proposal?
Life had taught her to be diplomatic, to negotiate and gently persuade rather than fight her way to acceptance by others. After years of being a newcomer she knew only too well that she had to give people space in order to come to realise that she posed no threat. And that included her new boss.
His office faced out towards the azure beauty of the Saronic Gulf, but when he stood up his huge Greek warrior size seemed to devour all the evening light that had been pouring in through the folding glass doors that led to a private balcony.
He moved to rest against a bookcase and asked, ‘Exactly what experience have you of being a PA?’
‘I’ve worked as a PA in an architectural firm in Spain for the past eighteen months. Before that I was a theatre hand, a trainee pastry chef, a dog walker...’ She paused, seeing that Loukas wasn’t overly impressed, and quickly added, ‘I’m flexible and I use my initiative, and I also speak Portuguese, Spanish, Italian...and passable Greek.’
His eyes narrowed in suspicion, he approached her as though he didn’t buy a word about her linguistic skills. ‘You speak all those languages?’
While her brain objected to his cynical tone, her heart was conducting a most peculiar dance in her chest. Goosebumps were popping up on her skin as her eyes were drawn to the smooth skin of his chest visible beneath the open neck of his shirt. She blinked as heat blasted inside her stomach.
She dragged her eyes away from the dark toffee skin tone and then, intending to let them travel up to meet his eyes, found herself waylaid by his mouth—was his lower lip slightly fuller than the upper one?—and then his nose, its straightness and perfection suiting his serious personality.
Eventually she managed to answer, ‘I moved around a lot as a child because of my dad’s work.’
‘Why are you here on Talos?’
Light golden-brown eyes marred by tension lines at the corners held hers. She needed to get Loukas to relax in her company.
She stepped back and gave her best excited smile. ‘I’m renovating a property.’
The tension lines tightened even more. ‘The old Alavanos property?’
His question came out in a rumble, his voice even lower than usual.
The nod of her head elicited a deep sigh of disbelief from him.
‘So, let me get this right... Nikos has employed as my PA someone who is soon going to be a business rival of ours?’
If only. The Talos Escape Guesthouse, as she had decided to call it, wouldn’t be opening anytime soon if she didn’t pull together enough money to actually furnish the guest rooms. But she wasn’t going to admit that to anyone. Sunny side up. That was her motto.
‘I’m going to open up a small guesthouse in the summer months, catering for the swimming holiday business. It’s hardly going to be a rival to The Korinna.’
Loukas shifted away from her and went and stood behind his desk. ‘Miss Jones, you can’t work here. I apologise that Nikos had you believing otherwise.’
He sat down at his desk, briefly gestured to the door and began to riffle through the paperwork on his desk.
Georgie opted not to take up his invitation to leave. She couldn’t let go of this financial lifeline.