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“Excellent idea,” Mari said, moving toward her.
“Terrible idea,” Nikos disagreed. Didn’t Debbie’s Dollies have any backbone? “Come back here.”
“Keep right on going,” Mari suggested, herding the blonde ahead like a sheepdog nipping at the heels of a ewe. “Thomas, would you show Miss... Miss.. ?”
“Truffles,” the blonde supplied nervously.
“Would you show Miss...Truffles the way out, please?” Mari said quite pleasantly, though Nikos was sure he could hear a hint of a smile when she said the ridiculous name. He gritted his teeth. Surely even a blonde with very little brain could have thought of a better moniker than that!
“And give her something for coming all this way,” Mari added.
“You stay right here,” Nikos commanded. But the blonde wasn’t listening to him. She fumbled to open the door. Mari opened it for her.
“He doesn’t need to give me anything. We have his credit card number,” the blonde said nervously.
“You’re not charging me! You didn’t do any—”
“We’re supposed to charge whether or not they—” Truffles-the-blonde apologized to Mari. She wasn’t even looking at him! “For the, um, er...house-call, y‘know?” she said a little desperately.
“Of course.” Mari nodded sagely. “Makes perfect sense.”
“The hell it does!” Nikos shoved himself up, trying to get out of the chair. “You can’t give my money away like that!”
She turned and gave him a blithe smile. “I didn’t. You did.”
“Come along, miss,” Thomas said smoothly, taking the blonde by the arm. He gave Nikos a hard level look over his shoulder and a slow despairing shake of his head as he steered the woman down the path. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Nikos wasn’t sure if Thomas meant the blonde or him, but judging from the look on the old gardener’s face he had a pretty good idea.
The door shut. The silence was deafening.
Used to prevailing in arguments about bedtime, homework and when to allow a friend to sleep over, Mari found it a little difficult to pretend that she commonly vanquished women of the evening—as Aunt Bett called them—in the course of her work.
It’s not much different than a sleepover, she told herself firmly, then rolled her eyes.
Surreptitiously she wiped damp palms on the sides of her navy skirt and drew several steadying breaths before she shut the door after Thomas and ‘Miss—she still smiled as she thought the name—Truffles, and turned to face the ire of Nikos Costanides head on.
Big mistake.
The sizzle she’d felt from his kiss seemed to arc right across the room and hit her between the eyes. He was slumped back into his chair again, glaring at her, looking for all the world like a sulky child who’d just had his treat taken away, and she could feel her palms dampen and her mouth dry out. There was some deep primitive response going on inside her, too, that she didn’t really want to focus on.
‘Hormones, dear,’ her Aunt Bett would have said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And doubtless Uncle Arthur would have winked at her.
Well, now was not the time for hormones!
No matter how curious she was, she couldn’t simply jump a man she didn’t know. A man she probably didn’t even want to know!
What, she wondered, were you supposed to do if these suddenly wide-awake and raring-to-go hormones aimed you at entirely the wrong man?
Go slow, she cautioned herself. Learn as much as you can about the phenomenon. Then, once she understood it better, she could transfer the feeling to someone more suitable than Nikos Costanides.
Right now the thought of what he and Miss Truffles would be doing if she hadn’t arrived set a blush on Mari’s cheeks. Was that why he’d been so eager? she wondered with sudden dismay. Had he been primed for any woman, and simply let it all out for her?
Now there was food for thought.
She slanted a glance at him again, wondering just what sort of man he was. Surely he didn’t routinely hire “women of the evening” and parade them past his father and family!
If he did, it was no wonder his father was out of patience with him.
“You don’t look like you’d have to hire that sort of thing,” she said now.
Nikos blinked. Then, “I don’t,” he said flatly.
“Then why—?”
He plucked irritably at the fabric on the arm of the chair. “Think about it,” he growled at last.
Mari tried. She thought about everything that had happened since she’d knocked on the door, expecting Stavros Costanides and his four-year-old son and getting a virile man clad only in a bath towel instead. A virile man in a bath towel who’d said, “About time,” and then hauled her into his arms and kissed her!
She hurried past that part of the memory before it could affect her equilibrium again. But as soon as she did, she had to back up and go over it again, because somehow she suspected it was the key.
Obviously he’d mistaken her for Miss Truffles. But why was he waiting to kiss Miss Truffles? It wasn’t as if he knew the woman, for heaven’s sake!
Mari was sure he’d never seen her before in his life. Anyway, even in Mari’s non-existent experience, a man didn’t lie in wait to kiss a woman he hired by the hour.
Unless, perhaps, he was doing it for effect.
Effect. On whom?
She remembered the gathering at the poolside. There had been a lot of women, a few children. And his father.
She remembered seeing him there, starting to go over to talk to him, but then him shaking his head and waving her on. Waiting. Watching.
For Nikos to open the door. To meet his nanny. To blow sky-high?
Perhaps. Or maybe to be amenable then to another “discussion” with his father. Yes, she was willing to believe that was what Stavros had been doing.
And Nikos?
She suspected that, for all their differences, he was his father’s son.
“What were you trying to prove?” she asked.
“I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I was trying to get him to damned well throw me out!”
“Ah.” Flaunt the hooker in front of the family and watch Daddy take action. She understood now. But... “He’s keeping you prisoner?”
Nikos lifted the cast. “I can’t drive. As soon as I can, I’m out of here.”
“I see.” She did. Sort of. She wondered what Stavros was playing at, hiring her, then. Nikos was certainly not going to be wearing the cast another six months.
“I doubt it,” he said flatly. “He’s a manipulator.”
“And you’re not?”
He frowned. “I’m only doing this in response to what he’s done. He doesn’t have to keep me here.”
“He started it, in other words?”
The frown deepened. “You make it sound like two little kids fighting.”
“I see some similarity,” Mari pointed out.
“You don’t see a damn thing.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”
“I don’t want anything to do with you.”
Mari wasn’t entirely sure she wanted anything to do with him, either. If she hadn’t felt what she’d felt when they’d kissed, she would have been running the other way.
“Why are you staying?” Nikos demanded.
“I gave my word.”
“He as much as lied to you!”
“I know that.” Mari shrugged. “I’m not going to play on his level.”
“You’re going to reform me instead?” he said cynically.
I wish, Mari thought. She ran her tongue over her lips. “I’m going to stay here because that’s what I’ve been hired to do. I’m going to try to help because that’s my job. What happens between your father and you—well, I’ll do my best.”
“It won’t be good enough,” Nikos said. Then almost to himself he added, “It never is.”
Mari, caught by his words, wanted to ask what he meant, but he hauled himself to his feet and crutched past her toward his bedroom. “I have a headache. I’m going to sleep. Do whatever the hell you want. Just go away and leave me alone.”
She left him alone.
She went looking for his father. She had plenty of questions that only Stavros Costanides could answer.
He wasn’t with his wife and her shower guests. Julietta waved a hand toward the house. “He took Alex in a little while ago. He’s probably in his office by now. It’s on the second floor. Go right on up. I think he’s expecting you.” As she said this last with a completely straight face, Mari merely thanked her and headed toward the house.
“‘I think he’s expecting you’,” she muttered under her breath. “I’ll bet.”
Stavros was sitting at his desk, the phone to his ear, when she appeared in the doorway. When he saw her, he smiled and beckoned her in.
Man didn’t smile back. She entered the office, but she didn’t take the seat he indicated. She had no intention of sitting down and putting herself at an even greater disadvantage.
“Tell Adrianos to get right on it,” Stavros said into the phone. “That’s right. As quick as he can.” This last was almost a bark. Then he hung up and turned a thousand-watt smile on her. “Ah, Miss Lewis, you’ve come to chat.”
“Not quite.”
“You can’t quit,” he reminded her. “You signed the contact.”
“I know that. What I don’t know is what you expect me to do! If you intended to annoy and humiliate your son, I think you succeeded. Beyond that, I’m at a loss.”
“He was annoyed? Good. Humiliated? It serves him right. He has done plenty to humiliate me. And I want exactly what I said that I wanted. He is a problem. I want him not to be.”
“He’s thirty-two years old!”
“And he needs to grow up. He is lazy. He will not work in the company. He would prefer to be sailing his boat. Dancing attendance on unsuitable women. Creating gossip. Irritating me.” He fixed her with a charming, conspiratorial smile. “I want it to stop.”
His smile was, in its way, as handsome as his son’s. But Mari felt no sizzle, only annoyance. “He won’t cooperate, Mr. Costanides.”
He lifted a brow. “And always your charges cooperate, Miss Lewis?” His tone was deceptively mild.
“Not always,” she admitted.
“So you have ways... yes?” He looked hopeful. He made it sound like she tortured them into behaving properly.
“I teach by love and care and example,” she said with an edge to her voice.
He nodded. “Just so.” He steepled his hands on his desk and regarded her complacently over the top of them. “I should like to you love and care for Nikos.”
A frisson of primal fear skittered down her spine. Perhaps it was because he’d used the words love and Nikos in such close proximity—even though Mari knew he didn’t mean that kind of love!
She paced to the far end of his office and turned, with her hands on her hips. “And you think that will work?” she demanded finally, when he just looked at her expectantly.
“My dear Miss Lewis, you yourself assured me it would work.”
“But—”
But there was nothing to say to that because, in fact, she had. And it had worked—with all her other charges. But this was different!
“He’s not a child!” she argued.
“No, he is not. But I lost him when he was a child. I think I have to start there to get him back.”
It was the first real honest remark she thought he’d made. Mari took a seat in the chair she’d been avoiding. “Why, Mr. Costanides?” She leaned her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in her palm so she could look at him as she asked quietly, “Why now?”
For a moment Stavros Costanides stared off out the window toward the beach and the ocean beyond. It was a beautiful view, but Mari didn’t think he was seeing it. What was he seeing? Nikos? As a child? And himself? A young father? His expression grew almost pained for a moment. Then he seemed to recollect himself. His jaw tightened and he looked back at her as he admitted almost grudgingly, “I need him now.”
“You didn’t before?” she pressed.
He gave an irritable wave of his hand. “We don’t talk about ‘before.’ Before is over. It is now that matters. Now and the future.”
Mari didn’t believe that. He’d said himself that what was happening now was a result of what had gone before. But obviously he wasn’t willing to talk about it.
