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“Thank you,” Nikos said tightly. He waited until she was settled, then lowered himself gingerly into the armchair across from her. He adjusted the towel. She looked at it, the color rising in her cheeks. Quickly she glanced away, her gaze going toward the door again.
“Don’t even think about it.”
She looked at him, startled, but she didn’t try it.
And thank God for that, because the truth was, he didn’t think he had the strength to stop her.
Fortunately she didn’t move. She sat right where she was, hands folded in her lap like some proper Sunday school teacher, looking at him with a combination of wariness and expectancy. There was nothing sultry or seductive about her—except the way she’d kissed him.
“You haven’t been doing this long, have you?”
“Four years.”
“Four years?” He couldn’t imagine.
“I started while I was working on my master’s degree. I have excellent qualifications. I’m very good at what I do,” she told him firmly. “I have references.”
Nikos bit back a grin. “I’d like to see them.”
Her eyes flashed green fire at him. “I don’t have to show them to the likes of you! I don’t understand why you’re keeping me here,” she said fretfully. “I must have made a mistake and got the wrong cottage. Please! I need to talk to Mr. Costanides.”
Nikos stuck his casted leg out in front of him and settled back into the chair. “You’re talking to him.”
“You’re not Mr. Costanides! I’ve met Mr. Costanides! He’s much older. He has a mustache. He‘s—”
Nikos sat bolt upright. She’d met his father? Bloody hell!
He couldn’t believe it. The old man might have had his profligate tendencies over the years, but Nikos had never thought they’d ever extended to bringing home women of the evening! Stavros had always had too much respect for family. That was, in fact, precisely why Nikos was throwing this woman in the old man’s face now.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“My name is Mari Lewis,” she said stiffly.
Which meant precisely nothing. “The dolly?” he prompted.
“Dolly?” Her brow furrowed. “No. What dolly? I’m the nanny.”
The nanny?
Nikos gaped. And then, replaying the whole scene in his mind, he began to understand what had happened. And with understanding came not consternation, but an even greater satisfaction. An unbelievable satisfaction. The grin spread all over his face.
He’d kissed the new nanny? He’d swaggered out dressed in only a towel and, before his father’s eyes, had swept his half-brother, Alex’s, brand-new nanny off her feet?
No wonder the old man was looking apoplectic.
It was even better than he’d dared hope!
No matter how badly he wanted to strongarm Nikos into the company, Stavros would never let him stay here after he’d sullied darling Alexander’s new nanny.
Let him stay, hell! Rigid, strait-laced Stavros would throw his philandering firstborn out on his ear!
He might even go so far as to make his secondborn his heir. And why not?
As far as Nikos could see, Alexander, the four-year-old result of his father’s second marriage, was the center of the old man’s universe, anyway. Alexander was the sun around which Stavros Costanides spun, the darling doted-upon child that his elder son had never been—which didn’t bother Nikos a bit.
In fact it made him feel a little sorry for the kid.
Not that he’d ever had much to do with the boy. He barely even knew his half-brother. Stavros did his best to keep his younger son away from his disreputable older one.
He’d never exactly told Nikos to stay away, had never come right out and said Nikos was a bad influence on the boy, but Nikos didn’t have to be told.
Nothing he did had ever pleased the old man.
He’d long ago stopped trying to. It was a hell of a lot more interesting—and rewarding—to be the thorn in Stavros Costanides’s side. As long as he could leave when things got unbearable.
Since the accident Nikos hadn’t been able to leave. As if the cast wasn’t impediment enough, the head injury he’d received in the car accident required him to be on medication. He couldn’t drive until he was through with it. And Stavros wasn’t allowing anyone else to drive him.
“You’re keeping me prisoner!” Nikos had accused him.
“I am looking out for your well-being,” his father had replied. “Besides,” he’d added scornfully, “it’s not as if you have any pressing demands on your time. Work, for example?” A bitter smile had touched Stavros’s features. “God forbid.”
Nikos hadn’t replied. There was no point. Stavros had long ago decided that he was a good-for-nothing. It was Nikos’s greatest joy to do his best to confirm his father’s estimation.
“It’s time you settled down,” his father had gone on implacably. “Until you are able to drive away under your own power, you will stay here.”
And there was no arguing with him. No going around him. No convincing anybody to spirit him away. He was stuck until he could drive—with his father and his father’s notion of how things ought to be done.
It was exactly what his father had been angling for. It had been the subject of their quarrel right before Nikos’s accident. It had been the subject of the quarrel they’d had last week.
Stavros had come to the cottage to try to badger Nikos into studying the company prospectus. “Learn about your inheritance,” he’d demanded.
“I know all about my inheritance,” Nikos had retorted bitterly, and he’d tossed the prospectus aside.
“I’ll shape you up if it’s the last thing I do,” his father had vowed, glowering down at Nikos who had stared insolently back.
Nikos’s jaw tightened. “I’d like to see you try!”
“Would you?” Stavros went very quiet. “Fine. Count on it.” He’d turned on his heel and stalked out. The door shut quietly, ominously, behind him.
Nikos had ignored it, ignored him. He’d been enormously pleased that, for the last five days, the old man had been avoiding him completely. So he wasn’t counting on Stavros being able to “shape him up.”
He was counting on getting out of here—away from his father, away from all the demands and distrust, away from the bitterness and the battles and the disappointment they’d been to each other for all of Nikos’s thirty-two years. He didn’t need it, God knew.
Let Alex have it—all of it—and the grief that went with it.
He looked at the woman sitting primly on the sofa now. She did look like a nanny. Or a nun.
Poor Alex.
She must have impeccable credentials, Nikos thought. He paused and corrected himself—must have had impeccable credentials. His father wouldn’t have picked anyone less worthy than Mary Poppins to look after the likes of master Alex.
“Sorry about that,” he said with a repentance he didn’t feel. In fact, he was still grinning.
She wasn’t. “It’s not funny. I have a reputation to uphold. Standards to maintain.”
“I wouldn’t give you a nickel for your reputation now, sweetheart,” Nikos said cheerfully. “Or your standads. ”
“Mr. Costanides will be upset.”
“I devoutly hope so.” He wondered if the old man was even now bearing down on the cottage, determined to rescue Mary Poppins from his grip.
“He expected me at three. It’s important for me to arrive on time,” she said. “To be punctual. To be fair. To be strict. Mr. Costanides says his son needs that.”
Did he? Nikos didn’t know Alex well enough to say. Certainly the kid wasn’t as headstrong as he’d been.
“Punctual. Fair. Strict. You must be a regular paragon. I’m sure you’ll impress the hell out of him,” he said lazily. “What other virtues do you have?”
“I don’t use profanity,” she said.
Ah, so she could sting when she wanted to. Nikos grinned. “Little brat getting out of hand? Don’t want him turning out like his big brother, do we?”
The nanny looked perplexed. “Big brother? Are there two children? Mr. Costanides didn’t mention a brother.”
“I’m not surprised,” Nikos said drily.
“But, yes,” Miss Mari Lewis went on quite sincerely, “he did say Nikos had been giving him some problems.”
“What?”
His yelp caused her to jump. But instead of answering him, she folded her hands in her lap, pressed her lips together, and looked like he’d have to torture the information out of her.
“What did you say?” Nikos demanded again.
She gave a quick determined shake of her head. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Not about the child—or his behavior. It’s indiscreet. Improper. It’s entirely between me and my employer.”
But Nikos wasn’t listening to her babbling. “The boy,” he demanded, hobbling close, glowering down at her. “What did you call him?”
Mari Lewis blinked at him like some near-sighted owl, but he wasn’t ruffling her feathers. She lifted her chin, as if to tell him he wasn’t going to intimidate her. Then, “Nikos,” she said, exactly as he’d thought she had.
His teeth came together with a snap. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No,” he said again. “His name is Alexander.”
“No,” she replied just as firmly, “it’s not.”
She reached down and picked her bag up and pulled out a contract. She held it out toward him. “See for yourself. It says right there. His name is Nikos. I might have got the wrong cottage, but I have not got the wrong child!”
Yes, she damned well had!
But, from his father’s standpoint, obviously, no, she had not.
The old man hadn’t been apoplectic at all. He might have been a little astonished when Nikos had hauled Mary Poppins into his arms and kissed her, but ultimately he would have been amused—and justified.
His son’s flagrant disregard for propriety, his inappropriate kissing of a total stranger would have only underscored Stavros’s notion that he had done the right thing.
The old rogue had hired a nanny to straighten him out!
Far from running down here to rescue her, the old man was probably standing up on the deck now, congratulating himself—and laughing his fool head off.
Nikos’s teeth came together with a snap. His headache returned with a vengeance. He dropped his head back and shut his eyes, his mind whirling furiously. And furious was the operative word.
“I’ll shape you up if it’s the last thing I do. ” His father’s words came back to haunt him. To mock him. To humiliate him.
It was Stavros Costanides, down to the ground.
“Mr....er...I’m sorry, I don’t know your name—” the very proper nanny’s voice broke into his bitter reverie “—but you really do have to let me go. I have to find the right cottage. I have to—”
Nikos opened his eyes and glared at her.
She blinked again, but met his gaze determinedly.
Just how determined was she? He couldn’t imagine. He could bet, though. And he was willing to bet he could run her off in less than twenty-four hours.
A corner of his mouth tipped up slightly. Did the old man think he was just going to roll over and give up his wicked ways without a fight?
Well, if he did, he’d vastly underestimated his older son.
Whatever he was paying Miss Mari Lewis, it had better be a bundle. She was damned well going to earn it.
“You don’t have the wrong cottage,” Nikos told her.
“But you said—” She looked around, puzzled. “But... where’s Nikos?”
He smiled. It was a hard smile. There was nothing pleasant about it. “I’m Nikos.”
She gaped at him.
“Welcome to your new job, Ms. Lewis. Apparently my father has hired you to babysit me.”
He was obviously a madman.
But he was the most stunningly handsome madman she’d ever seen. He had dark brown eyes and tousled black hair, a lean face with high cheekbones and a wicked-looking dimple just to one side of his mouth that deepened when he gave her that bitter smile of his.
And he kissed like—
Mari didn’t want to think about what he kissed like! She’d never been kissed like that in her life!
